Why is everybody crazy with thickness? Either it's in your backpack or it's on a table somewhere. Unless you have an overfull backpack, why do you care? Is.5" worth $480? (okay, so the mac leads by four, not one, so I should ask whether.5" is worth $120)
A thinner and lighter machine IS very practical. I get more room in my backpack. Less weight. Try flying often...
Roberto
We have politicians who find nothing wrong with admitting on television that they don't know what a browser is. The internet could be switched off tomorrow for all they care. If they need to send something, there's always fax.
Yes, but *I* would have problems with P2P-over-fax.
Roberto
Apparently, they may be going to Y. They may even go to Z. And, according to a non-authoritative source, they may even bypass Y and Z and go to AA. Microsoft is going to beat them with the next version of Windows, called Windows (Stable) AAA Quality.
Roberto
I come from a rather seismic region of northeastern italy. I experienced quite a few earthquakes. I remember the Friaul earthquake in 1976 - I was a kid back then, but even some 200 km from the epicentre the earth wasdancing quite wildly. We all ran out onto the streets.
My brother was serving mandatory army service and he was stationed close to the epicentre, and he had to help. He told me how miserable people were, but then they started rebuilding their houses even before state aid was paid to them. In comparison, in southern italy there you can still see people living in sheds almost 28 years after the Irpinia earthquake in 1980, because they did not want to help themselves and state aid has been gobbled up by the mafia -- this is a classical example of the differences between north and south italy.
Even a few months ago, as I was visiting my parents, the earth shook a bit. And during my recent stay in Chile, I felt the earth shake a couple of times. Earthquakes are very common, but the big ones make us feel how small we are in comparison to the small planet we live on.
because on the surface the SDK and new software is awesome. It is when people started reading the legal fine print and found out if you develop apps for the iPhone apple owns your soul and IP.
If you are a professional shareware developer, you know that easily more than 30% of the revenues can be eaten up by redistributing the software, licensing copy protection/registration schemes and the like. Apple will do the work for you with the added bonus that your software will be automatically exposed to the whole iPhone user community. They are not owning your soul and IP - they are doing in fact a great favour to the developers and, of course, an even bigger one for themselves. I think 20% would have been fairer, but that's it.
No, he was right. In germany there is a "Kirchensteuer", a church tax. If you are registered as Catholic or Protestant you have to pay some additional taxes to the Catholic or to the Lutheran church. You can change your mind, and go to an office of the city court and unregister. I had to do that because they asked me if I was Catholic or Protestant on immigration. I said Protestant - because I am free evangelical and knew nothing about this german tax. Years after, when I got my Ph.D., no longer got scholarships, but instead a real (still academic) job, I discovered that they were giving a part of my income to the Lutheran church. But that was NOT my church (in fact I already gave money to my church, that decided NOT~ to have this kind of agreement with the State). So I went to the tribunal to "quit" a church I never attended...
I kind of understand why this kind of thing would be a problem for a country like Switzerland, where in Zürich alone 20% of the population is of foreign descent, but how much of an incoming immigration problem does Nigeria really have? Well, they have immigration problems from other african countries. Unemployment rate is low (less than 5%) and they are the 57th richest country in the world. Benin, at 80th place, is a much poorer coutry and they share a long border. Ciad, another bordering country, is around 90th place. They are also slightly better placed than Camerun. At the end, people from neighbouring countries might try to move to Nigeria to get slightly better conditions and a higher change of getting a job. I never seen actual immigration data for Nigeria, but it is not entirely unreasonable to assume that they have to guard their borders at least a little bit.
Roberto
Well, the xps is the "thin" one. And it costs more than the similarly-specced apple notebook.
The inspiron is the bulky, heavy, thick cheap-plastic one. Read the reviews on dell's site, people
broke the motherboard just by normally pressing the power button. Wow.
BTW, the inspiron is cheaper. It has no camera, inferior wireless connectivity, less software, you need an antivirus (not
included in the package), which is not necessary on the mac, and the OS is the crippled Home Basic version of Vista
(with OS X the only thing you do not get are the server specific tools - but for the rest you get the top version of the
operating system). And, yes, on the dell site I found an Inspiron 1420 for about the price you mentioned but with a 1.6 Ghz
CPU, not a 2.2 Ghz one.
So... does the asus have firewire? (firewire 800 no less?) gigabit or just 10/100? a camera? bluetooth? a remote control? microphone? is it heavier or lighter? is it thinner or thicker? Does it have a remote? DVI out or only VGA? 802.11n or just a/b/g? is the keyboard backlit? Does it have a magnetic release on the power-cord? express-card slot?
Im sure the asus has at least some of those. But I doubt it has most of them. And if you add it all up, there is a good chunk of value in there, easily enough to justify the extra 400-500 for a lot of people.
Well said. And when I point out these things, the USUAL reply I get is "but mac laptops do not have built in camera card readers".
In my opinion, there is no worse waste of money in having a card reader in a laptop. Which card? SD? CF? XD?
micro/mini variants of the above?
I shot with a DSLR that supports only CF cards. Most laptops have only a builtin SD card reader, and
not up to date, by the
way, to the latest SDHD specifications. So the slot is pretty much useless for most users, and most pro or
advanced amateur photographers. Just one more hole for dust. Apple keeps the interfaces that are stable and more or less guaranteed to
be used for some time span. Memory cards are not in this category. And, frankly, I would feel uneasy if I had
to carry something that is just there to have one more "feature" and make happy the marketeers, instead of
a "key feature" that is going to be used.
My main gripe: If only apple notebooks had more usb ports. 2 (and 3 on the 17" MBP) is not much.
I use an external USB CF reader, and to plug it, sometimes I must unmount and detach the small portable USB HD, that needs to be connected to two USB ports to get enough energy. That's very inconvenient.
Most college kids I see at coffee shops have a Mac notebook... I guess Apple's strategy of marketing to younger people is finally paying off. Also, does this prove the iPod's halo effect is Real?
It is not only that. If you go to academic conferences in sciences, you see now sometimes that nearly a half of the laptops open at a given time are Apples.
Some of the reasons for their widespread adoption in academia are that they are no longer significantly more expensive than non-apple laptops, they are the closest thing to a Turing machine you can get (you can basically run ANYTHING on them, natively or via emulation/virtualization), they also are robust and - why not - nice looking.
People going to conferences around the world (this year I have been to Polynesia, Western Canada, then I will go to Chile... all flights from central Europe, not counting flights within the E.U.) also favor light laptops. In their size categories, Apple laptops tend to be among the lightest ones that also provide an optical drive.
There are similarly equipped PC laptops around the same size and weight, but often they tend to cost more -to offer the same functionality and look ugly. This is also a bonus, esp. if you have to fly through legalised torture institutions like british airports. Apart from Apple laptops you still see nice Sony Vaio subnotebooks, and a few other random laptops, evenly shared by the other manifacturers. Most participants from the Far East have tiny laptops. Sometimes I think Apple is not producing a subnotebook right now because they would simply unable to cope up with the demand.
Add to this that a lot of people in the academia have been scorched by Dell dumping on them second choice laptops with faulty screens (maybe in the U.S. it is different, but most Dell laptops bought by my university came with white blotches on the LCD screen, and the repair program almost "required" you to stay without a computer for one month, of course to discourage you), and now you see it coming.
Our administration in theory forces us to buy laptops that they have chosen and for which they agreed on a special price (in practice, we get older models for a price that is better than their original list price, but that could be bought now for much less...). But they will allow you to buy anything if you need to run a specific operating system. There are professors here that bought Macbooks because they "need" to run OS X, then the first thing they do is to install Vista on them (some kept an OS X partition just for fun and ended up switching, but this is rare among german professors. OTOH the students, including mine, are starting to play with OS X a lot).
Slashdot Mirror
Why is everybody crazy with thickness? Either it's in your backpack or it's on a table somewhere. Unless you have an overfull backpack, why do you care? Is .5" worth $480? (okay, so the mac leads by four, not one, so I should ask whether .5" is worth $120)
A thinner and lighter machine IS very practical. I get more room in my backpack. Less weight. Try flying often... Roberto
The last time I had "a wet stain on my pants and said in a low tone..."I must have this"" is the first time my wife kissed me.
And then you married her...
Well, I am surprised she married him ;-)
Roberto
We have politicians who find nothing wrong with admitting on television that they don't know what a browser is. The internet could be switched off tomorrow for all they care. If they need to send something, there's always fax.
Yes, but *I* would have problems with P2P-over-fax. Roberto
Roberto
My brother was serving mandatory army service and he was stationed close to the epicentre, and he had to help. He told me how miserable people were, but then they started rebuilding their houses even before state aid was paid to them. In comparison, in southern italy there you can still see people living in sheds almost 28 years after the Irpinia earthquake in 1980, because they did not want to help themselves and state aid has been gobbled up by the mafia -- this is a classical example of the differences between north and south italy.
Even a few months ago, as I was visiting my parents, the earth shook a bit. And during my recent stay in Chile, I felt the earth shake a couple of times. Earthquakes are very common, but the big ones make us feel how small we are in comparison to the small planet we live on.
Roberto
To keep the math majors occupied, you could give them a pie (round of course), and ask them to square it. Roberto
No, he was right. In germany there is a "Kirchensteuer", a church tax. If you are registered as Catholic or Protestant you have to pay some additional taxes to the Catholic or to the Lutheran church. You can change your mind, and go to an office of the city court and unregister. I had to do that because they asked me if I was Catholic or Protestant on immigration. I said Protestant - because I am free evangelical and knew nothing about this german tax. Years after, when I got my Ph.D., no longer got scholarships, but instead a real (still academic) job, I discovered that they were giving a part of my income to the Lutheran church. But that was NOT my church (in fact I already gave money to my church, that decided NOT~ to have this kind of agreement with the State). So I went to the tribunal to "quit" a church I never attended...
Double ripoff! This year they are also doing Bender's Game!
Well, the xps is the "thin" one. And it costs more than the similarly-specced apple notebook. The inspiron is the bulky, heavy, thick cheap-plastic one. Read the reviews on dell's site, people broke the motherboard just by normally pressing the power button. Wow.
BTW, the inspiron is cheaper. It has no camera, inferior wireless connectivity, less software, you need an antivirus (not included in the package), which is not necessary on the mac, and the OS is the crippled Home Basic version of Vista (with OS X the only thing you do not get are the server specific tools - but for the rest you get the top version of the operating system). And, yes, on the dell site I found an Inspiron 1420 for about the price you mentioned but with a 1.6 Ghz CPU, not a 2.2 Ghz one.
rmav
Im sure the asus has at least some of those. But I doubt it has most of them. And if you add it all up, there is a good chunk of value in there, easily enough to justify the extra 400-500 for a lot of people.
Well said. And when I point out these things, the USUAL reply I get is "but mac laptops do not have built in camera card readers".
In my opinion, there is no worse waste of money in having a card reader in a laptop. Which card? SD? CF? XD? micro/mini variants of the above?
I shot with a DSLR that supports only CF cards. Most laptops have only a builtin SD card reader, and not up to date, by the way, to the latest SDHD specifications. So the slot is pretty much useless for most users, and most pro or advanced amateur photographers. Just one more hole for dust. Apple keeps the interfaces that are stable and more or less guaranteed to be used for some time span. Memory cards are not in this category. And, frankly, I would feel uneasy if I had to carry something that is just there to have one more "feature" and make happy the marketeers, instead of a "key feature" that is going to be used.
My main gripe: If only apple notebooks had more usb ports. 2 (and 3 on the 17" MBP) is not much. I use an external USB CF reader, and to plug it, sometimes I must unmount and detach the small portable USB HD, that needs to be connected to two USB ports to get enough energy. That's very inconvenient.
rmav
I guess Apple's strategy of marketing to younger people is finally paying off. Also, does this prove the iPod's halo effect is Real?
It is not only that. If you go to academic conferences in sciences, you see now sometimes that nearly a half of the laptops open at a given time are Apples.
Some of the reasons for their widespread adoption in academia are that they are no longer significantly more expensive than non-apple laptops, they are the closest thing to a Turing machine you can get (you can basically run ANYTHING on them, natively or via emulation/virtualization), they also are robust and - why not - nice looking.
People going to conferences around the world (this year I have been to Polynesia, Western Canada, then I will go to Chile... all flights from central Europe, not counting flights within the E.U.) also favor light laptops. In their size categories, Apple laptops tend to be among the lightest ones that also provide an optical drive.
There are similarly equipped PC laptops around the same size and weight, but often they tend to cost more -to offer the same functionality and look ugly. This is also a bonus, esp. if you have to fly through legalised torture institutions like british airports. Apart from Apple laptops you still see nice Sony Vaio subnotebooks, and a few other random laptops, evenly shared by the other manifacturers. Most participants from the Far East have tiny laptops. Sometimes I think Apple is not producing a subnotebook right now because they would simply unable to cope up with the demand.
Add to this that a lot of people in the academia have been scorched by Dell dumping on them second choice laptops with faulty screens (maybe in the U.S. it is different, but most Dell laptops bought by my university came with white blotches on the LCD screen, and the repair program almost "required" you to stay without a computer for one month, of course to discourage you), and now you see it coming.
Our administration in theory forces us to buy laptops that they have chosen and for which they agreed on a special price (in practice, we get older models for a price that is better than their original list price, but that could be bought now for much less...). But they will allow you to buy anything if you need to run a specific operating system. There are professors here that bought Macbooks because they "need" to run OS X, then the first thing they do is to install Vista on them (some kept an OS X partition just for fun and ended up switching, but this is rare among german professors. OTOH the students, including mine, are starting to play with OS X a lot).
rmav