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I use a black one, a red one, and a blue one. I did not get the titanium one.

Nice to finally have some girls on /. :-)

I use a black one, a red one, and a blue one. I did not get the titanium one.

Nice to finally have some girls on /. :-)

What I do is make incremental backups to a set of 3 hard drives (which I just recently upgraded to USB 3.0 and 2TB each). I rotate them to/from my work location (but you could do this with a friend's or family member's house). I take one to work, and bring the other one that was at work back with me at the end of the day, and run the backup to it that night or the next day or two. I rotate about twice a week since usually a few days of lost data due to, say, my house burning down and destroying the backup drive, too, would be the least of my worries. So there is always at least one at home and at least one at work. If you are more paranoid, get 5 drives and do it more often. Or maybe use 2 sites away from home. If you work for the NSA ... uh ... nevermind.

I use a black one, a red one, and a blue one. I did not get the titanium one.

What I do is make incremental backups to a set of 3 hard drives (which I just recently upgraded to USB 3.0 and 2TB each). I rotate them to/from my work location (but you could do this with a friend's or family member's house). I take one to work, and bring the other one that was at work back with me at the end of the day, and run the backup to it that night or the next day or two. I rotate about twice a week since usually a few days of lost data due to, say, my house burning down and destroying the backup drive, too, would be the least of my worries. So there is always at least one at home and at least one at work. If you are more paranoid, get 5 drives and do it more often. Or maybe use 2 sites away from home. If you work for the NSA ... uh ... nevermind.

I use a black one, a red one, and a blue one. I did not get the titanium one.

What I do is make incremental backups to a set of 3 hard drives (which I just recently upgraded to USB 3.0 and 2TB each). I rotate them to/from my work location (but you could do this with a friend's or family member's house). I take one to work, and bring the other one that was at work back with me at the end of the day, and run the backup to it that night or the next day or two. I rotate about twice a week since usually a few days of lost data due to, say, my house burning down and destroying the backup drive, too, would be the least of my worries. So there is always at least one at home and at least one at work. If you are more paranoid, get 5 drives and do it more often. Or maybe use 2 sites away from home. If you work for the NSA ... uh ... nevermind.

I use a black one, a red one, and a blue one. I did not get the titanium one.

What I do is make incremental backups to a set of 3 hard drives (which I just recently upgraded to USB 3.0 and 2TB each). I rotate them to/from my work location (but you could do this with a friend's or family member's house). I take one to work, and bring the other one that was at work back with me at the end of the day, and run the backup to it that night or the next day or two. I rotate about twice a week since usually a few days of lost data due to, say, my house burning down and destroying the backup drive, too, would be the least of my worries. So there is always at least one at home and at least one at work. If you are more paranoid, get 5 drives and do it more often. Or maybe use 2 sites away from home. If you work for the NSA ... uh ... nevermind.

I use a black one, a red one, and a blue one. I did not get the titanium one.

You have to support legacy 9x systems? Ouch.

Here's a few other tidbits to help then. :D

Your legacy systems are highly unlikely to have healthy IDE HDDS after this long in service, and getting replacements is not likely to be possible in another 5 years.

If you use this "preboot ramdisk" method, you can use a poor man's SSD, like a CF->IDE adaptor. the limited speed (often painfully slow. My CF adaptor is limited to PIO4 tranfers! Gerk!) And limited writelife of this super bargain basement solution are mostly overcome by the read once, write never nature of this setup. The adaptors themselves are cheap. If you don't want to dish out the $$ for CF modules, you actually *can* chain an SDHC->CF adaptor to the IDE interface, and use dirt cheap SD cards. (These solutions are very popular with embedded systems where rugged and cheap are both required. Tradeoff is speed. Boot up time will be painful, but once up, will be a speed demon.)

That would let your industrial install 9x systems live for a *very* long time, and would put a lot less wear on the system's PSU.

Since you are booting them via syslinux, you can have a great many fully configured disk images stored on the media. A commodity 32gb SDCard could hold 64 fully configured image configurations, and present a list on bootup! (Even more if you use win95B, or win98 first edition, which can live in 256mb and 384mb images, respectively. Tested!)

For ease of maintenance, I strongly suggest a uniform workstation hardware base, so that you can use one system as the testbed, build images from it, and deploy them everywhere else. Possbly use a startup script to change the network IDs to avoid collisions on the fly.

Ideally, once all set up, this is a "set and forget" solution. However, the tradeoff is in prepping suitable images, which isn't a trivial exercise.

It takes about 10 seconds to remove the memory card and plug it into a tablet/laptop/whatever. Unless you need photos uploaded essentially as you shoot them (which I suspect woudn't work very well at the same time you were taking new pictures), there is no reason to have the camera able to connect to a network.

You're kind of assuming the photographer is right next to the cameras - professional wireless whatsits (e.g. Nikon and Canon) are intended for full remote control of multiple cameras. So at a sports event, a photographer might have one down behind the goal with a wide-angle lens, another pointing at the other goal, etc. etc. etc. - all uploading to the photo agency for up-to-the-moment imagery. Newspapers needed things soon, the internet needs it now.

Still decidedly embarrassing if they are so easily compromised, of course.

It takes about 10 seconds to remove the memory card and plug it into a tablet/laptop/whatever. Unless you need photos uploaded essentially as you shoot them (which I suspect woudn't work very well at the same time you were taking new pictures), there is no reason to have the camera able to connect to a network.

You're kind of assuming the photographer is right next to the cameras - professional wireless whatsits (e.g. Nikon and Canon) are intended for full remote control of multiple cameras. So at a sports event, a photographer might have one down behind the goal with a wide-angle lens, another pointing at the other goal, etc. etc. etc. - all uploading to the photo agency for up-to-the-moment imagery. Newspapers needed things soon, the internet needs it now.

Still decidedly embarrassing if they are so easily compromised, of course.

Even though he is a self-starter ...

Okay, awesome! What you should do is get him a raspberry pi then pick up an HDMI cable, a cheap keyboard and cheap mouse (both of which should be wired as it lags to offload wireless processing to the pi) from monoprice. Right now, B&H Video has a deal where you get 2 x 16GB cards for $15 if you add two of these to your cart with free shipping. Okay, I've actually already bought several sets of this stuff from these exact same suppliers and handed them off to a bunch of kids that are loving them right now. So that's all legit. You'll need to have a TV or monitor with an HDMI in and it helps if you have a cheap webcam (one of the tutorials I'm gonna mention uses it). You'll also need a second computer with a way to access SD flash cards (pick up a USB toaster for $5 if you don't have this)> Optional would be male-to-female wires like these with any breadboard so he can tinker with making his own stuff -- you'll probably have to drop more cash on more electronic devices to interface with it if you go this route though.

Next, you might consider this book but I prefer this one more. Okay then you send your kid here to get the hard float raspbian wheezy and you tell him how to figure out how to get it on the flash card to boot on the pi. There's a wiki for all this stuff. Then you send him here and make him do these tutorials. Then you make him read all the issues of the MagPi. And if he's smart enough, you buy him some more peripherals. There should be a lot more tutorials coming out for this device.

Once he has all that stuff, you go to the liquor store. Now, the liquor stores around my house sell a lot of types of vodkas and Absolut is great but I've found that Sobieski satiates me just as well. It's made from this Dankowski rye that makes great gimlets. Try to buy a case of handles and haggle him down to ~$13 a handle (that stuff is really cheap). Then you go to the store and you get some of that Real Lime lime juice. Not the key lime shit, the actual lime juice. You're gonna need a decent blender because this thing is gonna be working all summer long. Also, a bag of hazelnuts. Go home and fill a cup to the top with ice and put in about one finger of lime juice. Fill the rest with Sobieski. Blend that shit up, garnish with a couple crushed hazelnuts to really dry that shit out and kick back. Trust me, your kid is going to come and talk to you about python and apt-get and registers and you are not going to want to have to deal with that. So just get good and fucking faced in the sun all summer long. Your kid will thank you for staying out of his hair. A summer of riproarin' fall down drunk? You can thank me later.

Well, for one, if you build your own PC's and don't want to pirate software, then Linux is free.

The enthusiast can live the with the weight and bulk of the DIY PC. But the desktop form factor is clearly evolving towards the style and convenience of other home appliances: Sony VAIO L Series 24" Multi-Touch All-in-One Desktop Computer

Also, once you get good on Linux the power of having a Unix command line available really becomes a boon. It took me a good year to 18 months of primary use on Linux, but at this point I truly feel more comfortable and efficient in Linux than in Windows.

The geek is like the backyard mechanic who spends all his spare hours under the hood. Most of his neighbors would prefer a relaxed cross-country drive. There will always be some overlap. But fundamentally they have a different set of skills and a different set of values.

They aren't.

An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A . for US$1049

A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139

They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.

A difference of $90? That difference is more than made up by the extended coverage cost, on the same pages you linked: $190 for 3 years (Apple) vs. $299 for 3 years (ASUS).

Shh. It's much easier to hate on apples when you compare them to oranges.

They aren't.

An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A . for US$1049

A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139

They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.

A difference of $90? That difference is more than made up by the extended coverage cost, on the same pages you linked: $190 for 3 years (Apple) vs. $299 for 3 years (ASUS).

Shh. It's much easier to hate on apples when you compare them to oranges.

They aren't.

An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A . for US$1049

A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139

They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.

A difference of $90? That difference is more than made up by the extended coverage cost, on the same pages you linked: $190 for 3 years (Apple) vs. $299 for 3 years (ASUS).

They aren't.

An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A . for US$1049

A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139

They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.

A difference of $90? That difference is more than made up by the extended coverage cost, on the same pages you linked: $190 for 3 years (Apple) vs. $299 for 3 years (ASUS).

Are you joking? http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/872800-REG/ASUS_UX31A_DB51_UX31A_DB51_Zenbook_Prime_13_3.html 1920 x 1080 Native Resolution, better than MBA, also cheaper.

This is why.

Look at the power of web/email machines under US$500. This is all that most users need. Ultrabooks really aren't for the common users.

Sorry, but NO.
I'm so fucking tired of those 15.6" laptops. I had a 15.6" laptop and I don't want one ever again, it's simply too big and heavy to be portable. Most people who actually need portability will tell you the same, if they try using a smaller laptop for some time.
People buying 15" laptops because "OMG, it's so cheap and has better specs!" are fucking up the market for everyone else. Now finding a decent sub 14" laptop is a real challenge.

Ultrabooks are what laptops should be. Portable, while at the same time not uncomfortably small and weak like netbooks. (I wish they had replaceable RAM and SSDs, tho.)

I'd go as far as to say MacBook Air.

You'd be wrong.

Mac's are still making less than 3% global sales. I'll get back to this in a moment, I would like to correct another error you made first.

If the price is the same,

They aren't.

An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A . for US$1049
A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139

They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.

The difference is the "so called" Retina display is 1440x900 and the Zenbook has a 1920x1080, the Zenbook also has better speakers, and SD card port and standardised Micro HDMI ports.

Now I'll get to why the Ultrabook (and Air) is not going gangbusters

This is why.

Look at the power of web/email machines under US$500. This is all that most users need. Ultrabooks really aren't for the common users. Businesses don't buy Apple or even Asus, they buy from the likes of HP, Lenovo or Dell because when your ring up Apple and say, "I want 300 computers delivered per week for the next 5 weeks" they'll laugh at you, but when you ring Dell and ask the same question they ask which day you want them delivered. Ultrabooks are twice the price of decent laptops and seeing as they meet the needs of most users, most users will pick the cheaper option.

I'm probably buying my mum a laptop soon, She just wants to use it for email, internet shopping and farmville so I sure as hell wont be buying a A$2000 Macbook for that. Her eyes aren't so good so "Retina(R)" displays are useless. I'll look for the lightest 15" 1366x768 screen available under A$600.

I'd go as far as to say MacBook Air.

You'd be wrong.

Mac's are still making less than 3% global sales. I'll get back to this in a moment, I would like to correct another error you made first.

If the price is the same,

They aren't.

An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A . for US$1049
A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139

They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.

The difference is the "so called" Retina display is 1440x900 and the Zenbook has a 1920x1080, the Zenbook also has better speakers, and SD card port and standardised Micro HDMI ports.

Now I'll get to why the Ultrabook (and Air) is not going gangbusters

This is why.

Look at the power of web/email machines under US$500. This is all that most users need. Ultrabooks really aren't for the common users. Businesses don't buy Apple or even Asus, they buy from the likes of HP, Lenovo or Dell because when your ring up Apple and say, "I want 300 computers delivered per week for the next 5 weeks" they'll laugh at you, but when you ring Dell and ask the same question they ask which day you want them delivered. Ultrabooks are twice the price of decent laptops and seeing as they meet the needs of most users, most users will pick the cheaper option.

I'm probably buying my mum a laptop soon, She just wants to use it for email, internet shopping and farmville so I sure as hell wont be buying a A$2000 Macbook for that. Her eyes aren't so good so "Retina(R)" displays are useless. I'll look for the lightest 15" 1366x768 screen available under A$600.

I'd go as far as to say MacBook Air.

You'd be wrong.

Mac's are still making less than 3% global sales. I'll get back to this in a moment, I would like to correct another error you made first.

If the price is the same,

They aren't.

An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A . for US$1049
A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139

They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.

The difference is the "so called" Retina display is 1440x900 and the Zenbook has a 1920x1080, the Zenbook also has better speakers, and SD card port and standardised Micro HDMI ports.

Now I'll get to why the Ultrabook (and Air) is not going gangbusters

This is why.

Look at the power of web/email machines under US$500. This is all that most users need. Ultrabooks really aren't for the common users. Businesses don't buy Apple or even Asus, they buy from the likes of HP, Lenovo or Dell because when your ring up Apple and say, "I want 300 computers delivered per week for the next 5 weeks" they'll laugh at you, but when you ring Dell and ask the same question they ask which day you want them delivered. Ultrabooks are twice the price of decent laptops and seeing as they meet the needs of most users, most users will pick the cheaper option.

I'm probably buying my mum a laptop soon, She just wants to use it for email, internet shopping and farmville so I sure as hell wont be buying a A$2000 Macbook for that. Her eyes aren't so good so "Retina(R)" displays are useless. I'll look for the lightest 15" 1366x768 screen available under A$600.

Although there is an unjustifiable disparity for the common items they examined, it's even worse for specialist equipment.

E.g. I would like to purchase a large format printer to be able to print and sell my photographs. The price difference between the US and Australia is over 100% !

B and H - $1,575.00

computeronline.com.au - $3645.00 inc GST

camerapro.net.au - $3,156.00 [Includes GST]

Although Australia is a smaller market than the US, and so there are higher stock costs and lower turnover, having something cost more than twice as much here as it does in the US is just ridiculous.

Here's the family pack for $110 --
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/645759-REG/Microsoft_GFC_00236_Windows_7_Home_Premium.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/645759-REG/Microsoft_GFC_00236_Windows_7_Home_Premium.html

I have dual 24" stacked, found a decent stand, something like this one:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/818015-REG/Bentley_D600_Vertical_Dual_Monitor_Stand.html

but mine has a desktop stand instead, it works quite well.

1: I personally found the Eye-Fi to be too slow and I had drain the battery and keep the laptop and camera on at the same time.
2: 3G data prices on vacation in not my home country are crazy.
3: having to do this in the only cafe that had wifi was nice the first day, then a chore every other day.
4: I didn't like spending my vacation working

so I use a product similar to this one. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/828315-REG/Digital_Foci_P19_320_PST_251_Photo_Safe_II.html

basically a portable HD with battery power and a card reader. I take the phone, tablet, camera and backup drive in a small hard shell case and leave the computer at home. the tablet is just the luxury item so I can view things in a larger format and only gets used on the plane or for research that the phone's screen is too small for. I really don't need it.

everything is backed up for when I return, and then I put it together .

If I absolutely have to work on the remote event, then it's camera > laptop [edit, select] > phone > 3g to web publish. Full online backup is going to cost significant time and money.

Most sites using java don't serve JSP pages directly. They do it through some sort of MVC framework where servlets call the JSP behind the scenes. I've written sites where the url a user sees is a .html but it's actually just a call to a servlet that parses the url to server up the appropriate content and it uses a jsp for the presentation layer.

I'm pretty sure Blogger.com is written in java or at least uses java heavily.

This site I'm pretty sure uses Java because they used to use it in the past. The vendor they used is out of business and I would assume they switched to a different appserver but stuck with java. I could be wrong. An example url on their site is:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/browse/Computers-Solutions/ci/9581/N/4294542559

"/c" is the controller servlet. The rest of the url provides information like url parameters that tell the controller what to display.

Struts is a common Java web framework and by default urls for struts applications end in ".do"

I agree with what yous say. Just adding information.

Even THIS crazy contraption still has rabbit-ear antennas built in it to receive analog signals even through the digital antenna. Just because you never needed one and had cable or satellite doesn't mean a lot of people don't use them on a daily basis.

Microphones: actually haven't changed their shape, but only the really nice and expensive ones still look like that.
Microphone Examples

Magnifying Glasses: Still quite widely in use, but apparently not so well-known among the Jersey Shore iPhone OMGLolcats crowd as they are among the Bill Nye vs Niel DeGrasse Tyson awesomeness level debaters.
Mag Glass Example

Binoculars: Really? People don't know what these are? They are still the best way to get a stereo 3D view of something at huge distances in a compact device. I have several pair on my shelf right now. People have them at sporting events every time I go.
Binocular Example

Television: My television still has an antenna. After the recent switch from analog to digital, however, it is no longer the rabbit ear dual collapsible one in the icon. It now looks vaguely like some sort of alien ship or horrible instrument of torture with alternating flat fins(and sharp edges...). Not sure it's worth changing the icon, though.
Antenna Example

Wrenches and Gears: Because what happens under the hood of your car is pure magic, and nobody can explain it. Even if young folks don't know what gears actually do, they recognize them from the steampunk jewelry and stuff.
Gears Example

As far as we know, modern inkjet prints can be extremely long-lasting, based on accelerated testing. If you pop for a high-end printer, e.g. Epson 3880, you can make really good prints that will (probably) last decades. High-dollar printers, in my experience, don't have the problems that cheap inkjets do. They're much more durable even if you don't use them that often, but you probably should use them regularly.

But then you're off in the rabbit hole of display/printer calibration (non-trivial), ICC profiles, $500 to refill the inks, etc. Each print will probably cost several dollars. It's probably not worth it for most people. But if you're going to buy your own, save yourself a lot of frustration and get a really good printer (and IPS monitor).

I've had good luck with MPix for making high quality prints. Others are probably good also.

I have no idea how long photo books last, but there are a lot of them out there. I've had good luck with MyPublisher and Blurb for prints that look like what I sent them.

So, aside from keeping multiple digital backups, verifying them regularly, off-site storage of backups, and updating formats over years, which presumably you would do anyway, do this:

Print the photos you like best on archival inkjet paper and put them into an archival box. Take notes of who, what, where, when. Reference the original digital file. That has as good a chance as anything of lasting a few decades.

A good discussion is here at TOP, and read the comments too.

+5 insightful and it doesn't answer his question at all. Typical of most forum answers unfortunately. He didn't ask 'is it worth it to setup a NAS with these old drives I have?', he asked 'how do I setup these old drives with NAS?'. Some people enjoy doing this kind of thing. Some people fix up old cars when it is surely easier and you can get better performance just buying a new one.

I have an entire network at home with outdated hardware and outdated routers. I've put some routers behind other routers. Why? Because I learn how to setup varying firewalls and test them all within my home. I better understand how things work. Does the end result give me anything that newer hardware wouldn't? Does putting routers behind each other give me any benefit at home? Only in my knowledge. I know more about subnets, port forwarding, and static vs dynamic ips than 90% of certified techs do.

I enjoy this kind of tinkering. It's why I'm a geek. So while I'm not an expert I'll at least share my thoughts on answering the question. I would suggest starting with the interfaces. If speed is not issue (and presumably power consumption) you might start with unifying them in a way in which you can add more. You'll either need to start adding cards to connect to all of those drives or consider something like this to be able to keep adding drives.

Once you get them all connected the next part of the question is making them backup each other up. You might consider combining them with software partitions (ie striping them) and then using software to back them up. In other words, take you're total drive space and split it in two. Create two software partitions adding up to the total. Then make one partition your primary and the other the backup. More than likely the split won't divide evenly between your drives and you won't want to split one physical drive between your two software partitions so take that into consideration (ie in other words your smallest drive will only use part of it's space to pick up the slack on one of your partitions, the remainder will either be wasted or create a 3rd partition that isn't backed up).

You might consider looking at FreeNAS based on BSD.

I haven't ever done anything like this so my thoughts are just speculation. You are likely to run into a lot of road bumps but you are likely to learn a lot in the process. I'd love to know how it turns out.

My only guess at such a company would be Chik-Fil-A since they close on Sundays despite the obviously lost business.

B&H photo/video does the same. Last I checked, even their website was closed for sales on the sabbath.

It looks to me like disk is not that much more expensive than tape. A 1.5TB LTO-5 blank tape is $52.58, or $35/TB. A 4TB USB drive is $229.00, or $57/TB. For backing up 8TB of fileservers at my job, I prefer USB drives. I can just bring them over from the server room and plug them into my laptop if I need to look back in time.

Thats not a mac system that anyone price conscious is buying. The comparison that matters is iMacs and Mac Minis.

Moving goal posts,

Alright, I'll play. Picking BH Photovideo as Apple.com tries to direct me to Apple.com.au and I cant be bothered to try to re-direct it (US Mac prices are high, Oz Mac prices are insane).
13" Macbook Pro.
i5 Dual core (2430), 4 GB RAM, Intel 3000 HD graphics, 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD, slot loading drive, 1200x800 Res, USB 2.0, no SD card reader, 1 year warranty.
2.04 KG
US $1,129

Asus U36SD
i5 Dual core (2430), 4 GB RAM, Nvidia Optimus (Geforce 520 switchable with Intel 3000 HD), 640 5400 RPM HDD, tray loading drive, 1366x768 res, USB 3.0 and 2.0, SD card reader, 2 year international warranty.
1.68 KG
US$799

So the Asus has the better graphics, USB3, larger HDD, tray loading driver and twice the warranty life. The mac has the screen (only because I'm biased towards 16:10, the screen on my Asus U46SV is fantastic despite being 16:9).

Asus even beat them in the Ultrabook stakes,
Both are, 1.7 GHz i5, 4 GB RAM, 256 SSD.
Macbook Air 13" 1400x900 res, No SD Card reader, USB 2.0 1.34 KG, US$1,498.
Asus Zenbook U31E 1600x900 res, SD card reader, USB3 and 2, 1.3 KG, US$1,275.

Looks like Asus is both better priced and better spec'd in both scenarios.

I have one problem with my Asus U46SV (the 14" model) is that Asus' naming convention is fucking confusing when you dont understand it. However that doesn't seem to bother me much now I've bought it.

Thats not a mac system that anyone price conscious is buying. The comparison that matters is iMacs and Mac Minis.

Moving goal posts,

Alright, I'll play. Picking BH Photovideo as Apple.com tries to direct me to Apple.com.au and I cant be bothered to try to re-direct it (US Mac prices are high, Oz Mac prices are insane).
13" Macbook Pro.
i5 Dual core (2430), 4 GB RAM, Intel 3000 HD graphics, 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD, slot loading drive, 1200x800 Res, USB 2.0, no SD card reader, 1 year warranty.
2.04 KG
US $1,129

Asus U36SD
i5 Dual core (2430), 4 GB RAM, Nvidia Optimus (Geforce 520 switchable with Intel 3000 HD), 640 5400 RPM HDD, tray loading drive, 1366x768 res, USB 3.0 and 2.0, SD card reader, 2 year international warranty.
1.68 KG
US$799

So the Asus has the better graphics, USB3, larger HDD, tray loading driver and twice the warranty life. The mac has the screen (only because I'm biased towards 16:10, the screen on my Asus U46SV is fantastic despite being 16:9).

Asus even beat them in the Ultrabook stakes,
Both are, 1.7 GHz i5, 4 GB RAM, 256 SSD.
Macbook Air 13" 1400x900 res, No SD Card reader, USB 2.0 1.34 KG, US$1,498.
Asus Zenbook U31E 1600x900 res, SD card reader, USB3 and 2, 1.3 KG, US$1,275.

Looks like Asus is both better priced and better spec'd in both scenarios.

I have one problem with my Asus U46SV (the 14" model) is that Asus' naming convention is fucking confusing when you dont understand it. However that doesn't seem to bother me much now I've bought it.

Thats not a mac system that anyone price conscious is buying. The comparison that matters is iMacs and Mac Minis.

Moving goal posts,

Alright, I'll play. Picking BH Photovideo as Apple.com tries to direct me to Apple.com.au and I cant be bothered to try to re-direct it (US Mac prices are high, Oz Mac prices are insane).
13" Macbook Pro.
i5 Dual core (2430), 4 GB RAM, Intel 3000 HD graphics, 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD, slot loading drive, 1200x800 Res, USB 2.0, no SD card reader, 1 year warranty.
2.04 KG
US $1,129

Asus U36SD
i5 Dual core (2430), 4 GB RAM, Nvidia Optimus (Geforce 520 switchable with Intel 3000 HD), 640 5400 RPM HDD, tray loading drive, 1366x768 res, USB 3.0 and 2.0, SD card reader, 2 year international warranty.
1.68 KG
US$799

So the Asus has the better graphics, USB3, larger HDD, tray loading driver and twice the warranty life. The mac has the screen (only because I'm biased towards 16:10, the screen on my Asus U46SV is fantastic despite being 16:9).

Asus even beat them in the Ultrabook stakes,
Both are, 1.7 GHz i5, 4 GB RAM, 256 SSD.
Macbook Air 13" 1400x900 res, No SD Card reader, USB 2.0 1.34 KG, US$1,498.
Asus Zenbook U31E 1600x900 res, SD card reader, USB3 and 2, 1.3 KG, US$1,275.

Looks like Asus is both better priced and better spec'd in both scenarios.

I have one problem with my Asus U46SV (the 14" model) is that Asus' naming convention is fucking confusing when you dont understand it. However that doesn't seem to bother me much now I've bought it.

Thats not a mac system that anyone price conscious is buying. The comparison that matters is iMacs and Mac Minis.

Moving goal posts,

Alright, I'll play. Picking BH Photovideo as Apple.com tries to direct me to Apple.com.au and I cant be bothered to try to re-direct it (US Mac prices are high, Oz Mac prices are insane).
13" Macbook Pro.
i5 Dual core (2430), 4 GB RAM, Intel 3000 HD graphics, 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD, slot loading drive, 1200x800 Res, USB 2.0, no SD card reader, 1 year warranty.
2.04 KG
US $1,129

Asus U36SD
i5 Dual core (2430), 4 GB RAM, Nvidia Optimus (Geforce 520 switchable with Intel 3000 HD), 640 5400 RPM HDD, tray loading drive, 1366x768 res, USB 3.0 and 2.0, SD card reader, 2 year international warranty.
1.68 KG
US$799

So the Asus has the better graphics, USB3, larger HDD, tray loading driver and twice the warranty life. The mac has the screen (only because I'm biased towards 16:10, the screen on my Asus U46SV is fantastic despite being 16:9).

Asus even beat them in the Ultrabook stakes,
Both are, 1.7 GHz i5, 4 GB RAM, 256 SSD.
Macbook Air 13" 1400x900 res, No SD Card reader, USB 2.0 1.34 KG, US$1,498.
Asus Zenbook U31E 1600x900 res, SD card reader, USB3 and 2, 1.3 KG, US$1,275.

Looks like Asus is both better priced and better spec'd in both scenarios.

I have one problem with my Asus U46SV (the 14" model) is that Asus' naming convention is fucking confusing when you dont understand it. However that doesn't seem to bother me much now I've bought it.

'Cause you're asking entirely too much for nothing more than a single piece of software. To whit:

Here is your competition.

Perhaps a lower price point would keep you from going tits up...

'Cause you're asking entirely too much for nothing more than a single piece of software. To whit:

Here is your competition.

Perhaps a lower price point would keep you from going tits up...

'Cause you're asking entirely too much for nothing more than a single piece of software. To whit:

Here is your competition.

Perhaps a lower price point would keep you from going tits up...

'Cause you're asking entirely too much for nothing more than a single piece of software. To whit:

Here is your competition.

Perhaps a lower price point would keep you from going tits up...

I set up a package deal with camera, lenses, bag, SD card, etc. for about 3% more than the best NYC camera shop deal and I could pick my stuff up locally (and return it locally if necessary) and I didn't have to worry about getting grey-market stuff.

Out of curiosity, did you look at B&H Photography as well? I visited that store when I was in NYC, as they have a stellar reputation (both online and local). I would expect most /.'ers to be happy to pay a 3% premium to avoid Best Buy, but maybe you had a different/nonexistent experience?

First off, drop the posters. I agree...

You want little neon lights strings illuminating the room so it looks like TRON.

You want posts of Yori & Quora. So girls know they can be programs too!

Seriously, I'm not sure the room is the biggest deal. But I would press for the following.

Two high res projectors or better yet 55"-65" LCD screens. On opposite sides from each other.

I would use L desks. Four workstations to an L. Two students on each wing of the L.

Why?

Because this facilitates paired programming, and small group programming (2,4). And if arranged in an offset (8) students.

All computers should be dual monitor. This will allow you to present and it be viewed on one screen while they work on the other.

Suggest putting in an order for a couple of Kinects as well. As these could provide an avenue for development that the kids might enjoy.

Arrange the room so that you can have two groups, each with a large screen and a Kinect. This can allow them to compete.

****

As for GLARE, it's really simple. Put up huge honking windows. But have them be completely covered with white cotton. Essentially turning all of the windows into large "light soft boxes".

This way the room is bright but glare is reduced. Try to get "matte finish" monitors.

Ask to have all computers equipped with two hard drives. One which contains the core OS and software. A second which can contain a virtual machine software and for which students can muck around and learn.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Standard-Softboxes/ci/1337/N/4276734332

I have a slave strobe that fits into a standard light socket. I use it to improve exposure from weak flashes in a dark room. Here it is: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/121845-REG/Smith_Victor_690001_45_W_S_Screw_in_Strobe.html

I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price,

BZZZT, wrong, but thanks for playing. Asus U36SD.
US$861

Macbook Air 13"
US$1250

The Asus has a faster processor, switch-able graphics, USB 3, HDMI, VGA, SATA 3, Gigabit Ethernet and if you wanted to stick a 128 GB SSD into it, you're still $150 up on the Macbook. The Macbook also solders the RAM to the mainboard meaning it's non-upgradable and does not use a standard form factor or SATA interface meaning if you want to upgrade that you need to pay more then you would for standard hardware and yes, people do upgrade the RAM and HDD in their laptops, especially as SSD's get cheaper (well, get cheaper for most of us).

Not to mention that Asus supports the U3xSD series with their 2 year international warranty where as Apple only has a 1 year North America only warranty.

So can we do away with the myth that Mac's are cheap. I can get a Dell with an SSD for A$800. That's in Australia where everything costs more.

I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price,

BZZZT, wrong, but thanks for playing. Asus U36SD.
US$861

Macbook Air 13"
US$1250

The Asus has a faster processor, switch-able graphics, USB 3, HDMI, VGA, SATA 3, Gigabit Ethernet and if you wanted to stick a 128 GB SSD into it, you're still $150 up on the Macbook. The Macbook also solders the RAM to the mainboard meaning it's non-upgradable and does not use a standard form factor or SATA interface meaning if you want to upgrade that you need to pay more then you would for standard hardware and yes, people do upgrade the RAM and HDD in their laptops, especially as SSD's get cheaper (well, get cheaper for most of us).

Not to mention that Asus supports the U3xSD series with their 2 year international warranty where as Apple only has a 1 year North America only warranty.

So can we do away with the myth that Mac's are cheap. I can get a Dell with an SSD for A$800. That's in Australia where everything costs more.

I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price,

BZZZT, wrong, but thanks for playing. Asus U36SD.
US$861

Macbook Air 13"
US$1250

The Asus has a faster processor, switch-able graphics, USB 3, HDMI, VGA, SATA 3, Gigabit Ethernet and if you wanted to stick a 128 GB SSD into it, you're still $150 up on the Macbook. The Macbook also solders the RAM to the mainboard meaning it's non-upgradable and does not use a standard form factor or SATA interface meaning if you want to upgrade that you need to pay more then you would for standard hardware and yes, people do upgrade the RAM and HDD in their laptops, especially as SSD's get cheaper (well, get cheaper for most of us).

Not to mention that Asus supports the U3xSD series with their 2 year international warranty where as Apple only has a 1 year North America only warranty.

So can we do away with the myth that Mac's are cheap. I can get a Dell with an SSD for A$800. That's in Australia where everything costs more.

Funny, I'd rather spend my time using a computer than configuring it

I'd rather be using my computer then fighting it because I have a need it's designer didn't envisage.

I'd never use a basic image manipulation program like Paint after all.

My 4 years of supporting Mac's in an enterprise taught me that Mac's have a very, very limited feature set and if you want it do anything different you're in for a world of pain that makes compiling the most obstinate Linux distro from scratch feel like a holiday.

BTW, Installed LinuxMint last night, most pain free install I've ever had and everything I need works out of the box. No compiling needed.

paying about the same for the privileged.

Keep telling yourself that, you're only fooling yourself. Macbook 13" = US$1129 - Old Core 2 Duo CPU, old Nvidia 3 series, only 2 GB RAM.
Asus U31SD = US$725 - 2nd Gen i3, new Nvidia 5 series/hybrid Intel IGM, 4 GB RAM.

Even if I buy a 128 GB SSD, The current gen Asus it's still $200 cheaper then the old tech Mac. The price for a Macbook gets 50% worse if I try to buy one locally (in Australia) but the Asus only goes up by 10-15%.

No doubt you have all kinds of wonderful excuses (your cognitive dissonance wont let you accept Mac's are nearly twice the price as other PC's) but provide links or I'll just repeat myself.

Funny, I'd rather spend my time using a computer than configuring it

I'd rather be using my computer then fighting it because I have a need it's designer didn't envisage.

I'd never use a basic image manipulation program like Paint after all.

My 4 years of supporting Mac's in an enterprise taught me that Mac's have a very, very limited feature set and if you want it do anything different you're in for a world of pain that makes compiling the most obstinate Linux distro from scratch feel like a holiday.

BTW, Installed LinuxMint last night, most pain free install I've ever had and everything I need works out of the box. No compiling needed.

paying about the same for the privileged.

Keep telling yourself that, you're only fooling yourself. Macbook 13" = US$1129 - Old Core 2 Duo CPU, old Nvidia 3 series, only 2 GB RAM.
Asus U31SD = US$725 - 2nd Gen i3, new Nvidia 5 series/hybrid Intel IGM, 4 GB RAM.

Even if I buy a 128 GB SSD, The current gen Asus it's still $200 cheaper then the old tech Mac. The price for a Macbook gets 50% worse if I try to buy one locally (in Australia) but the Asus only goes up by 10-15%.

No doubt you have all kinds of wonderful excuses (your cognitive dissonance wont let you accept Mac's are nearly twice the price as other PC's) but provide links or I'll just repeat myself.

Funny, I'd rather spend my time using a computer than configuring it

I'd rather be using my computer then fighting it because I have a need it's designer didn't envisage.

I'd never use a basic image manipulation program like Paint after all.

My 4 years of supporting Mac's in an enterprise taught me that Mac's have a very, very limited feature set and if you want it do anything different you're in for a world of pain that makes compiling the most obstinate Linux distro from scratch feel like a holiday.

BTW, Installed LinuxMint last night, most pain free install I've ever had and everything I need works out of the box. No compiling needed.

paying about the same for the privileged.

Keep telling yourself that, you're only fooling yourself. Macbook 13" = US$1129 - Old Core 2 Duo CPU, old Nvidia 3 series, only 2 GB RAM.
Asus U31SD = US$725 - 2nd Gen i3, new Nvidia 5 series/hybrid Intel IGM, 4 GB RAM.

Even if I buy a 128 GB SSD, The current gen Asus it's still $200 cheaper then the old tech Mac. The price for a Macbook gets 50% worse if I try to buy one locally (in Australia) but the Asus only goes up by 10-15%.

No doubt you have all kinds of wonderful excuses (your cognitive dissonance wont let you accept Mac's are nearly twice the price as other PC's) but provide links or I'll just repeat myself.

My solution to this was to use a generic looking messenger bag that had a padded computer insert, and add an inexpensive camera/lens insert for around $20-25.

For example:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/509016-REG/Tenba_638_251_Pro_Digital_2_0_Photo.html

That way, I can customize the bag for whatever I need to carry and save weight when needed. Let's say I'm going to a conference for work and sightseeing a few days afterwards. For the trip out, I put both inserts in the bag. When I'm at the conference, I take the camera insert out and keep the computer insert in. When I'm sightseeing, I do the reverse (camera in, computer out).

You could probably do this with a backpack instead of a messenger bag too. Plus, having a non-dedicated bag won't advertise "I have an expensive computer" or "I'm carrying an expensive camera" as much as dedicated bag would.