If you ever find yourself in West Texas/Southern NM, I could probably give you an insider's tour of a 3.5 meter telescope. If the timing and weather is right, you might get to see an Apollo run when we bounce a laser off the moon. They have some pretty cool computer equipment, including a Dec Alpha running VMS and Lisp to control the telescope motors. I also rather like the 6-8 parallel DAT drives that recorded the streaming take from the SDSS 2.5 meter telescope.
Apache Point Observatory is about 100 miles N of El Paso above Alamogordo, NM. We're next door to White Sands National Monument and near Carlsbad Caverns. The Trinity Site where the first atomic detonations took place is nearby and open for tours the first Saturday of April and October.
I don't remember off-hand, but I think OS-X patches about monthly, it depends on whether they're patching the OS or OS-X apps. They tend to patch the whole, rather than tons of specific components, right now I have an update uninstalled for Safari fonts, I've delayed it because I pretty much don't use Safari and I'll install it the next time I do an OS update. What I really hate with Windows patching is when you go to update a server and it wants to install Office updates! Makes absolutely no sense if you've never installed Office on that box, and why would you? I have a database server that I manage that I have to bend over backwards to make sure that NOTHING except SQL Server is installed on it. People want to install apps on it and I refuse. We're keeping this thing as pure as possible and it's turned out to be a pretty solid server.
Everything will change with OS-X patching as more crimeware kits come out for it as it gains market share and malware, and I'm sure the patches for it will increase in frequency. But for now, I think the patching frequency is acceptable and appropriate to current threats.
I have used many different versions of linux and keep an Ubuntu VM available. For me, ease of use just isn't there. Again, that's for me. I've been using computers for 30 years, I've used and administered every Microsoft desktop and server OS since Dos 1.0 on IBM 4-screw PCs, I used the original IBM AT with the self-destructing (Shuggart?) hard drive. I switched to Mac four years ago because I sick and tired of having to make my computer work instead of just having the computer work. It's trite and cliche, but a Mac just works for me. Among other things I use NeoOffice, I code Perl, PHP, MySQL, and while I greatly respect OSS and Gimp, I'll still end up buying Photoshop because that's the tool that I need. If the tools that you need are linux and entirely OSS, more power to ya! Use the tools -- OS, application, hardware -- that you need to do your job. For me, a MacBook Pro has served my needs exceedingly well for over four years and I have no regrets.
My boss used to give me regular rations of shit for having a MacBook Pro. One lunch hour he was at my desk, while I was trying to work, harassing me. I turned around and ran uptime, turned back to him and said, "Yeah, Don, it's a total piece of garbage. It's only been up 67 days without a reboot."
I switched from Windows to Mac because I was tired of patching (seemingly) every other day and the occasional OS reinstall. The only time I've had to reinstall OS-X was when I had an upgraded replacement hard drive fail. My laptop is just shy of 4 years old and is still a rock and absolutely reliable, and it's used 3-14 hours a day, 7 days a week. No other laptop that I've owned, and I've owned several, would hold up like this.
Was it worth paying more for it? Absolutely. Has it ever failed me? Except for the upgrade hard drive failure and a graphics chip failure due to a defective chip set (which was replaced outside of original warranty for free), no. Will I buy another? Absolutely. It runs XP Pro just fine via Parallels (yes, I tried Sun's and VMWare's offerings) when I remote in to work or run the two MS programs that I need for which there are no Mac equivalents.
Run what does the job for you. For me, a Mac does just fine and is worth the additional bucks.
Except in the case of sealed devices like phones, tablets, MP3 players, etc. Apparently the MacBook Air is sealed and the memory is soldered on to the motherboard, so buy it big when you get it our you're stuck.
I think a lot of this is geared towards people who can't do their own maintenance/upgrades. I've upgraded ram and disk on my laptops and desktops, I've upgraded CPUs in my desktop without motherboard replacement. But forget about getting my dad or wife to do something like that. They are both brilliant people in their own ways and skill sets (master plumber/woodworker and astrophysicist with PhD respectively), but dealing with tech at the hardware level is not in their metier.
Thank you for this info. I used CryptoPad for the Palm that provided an encrypted notepad and was very disappointed to not find a similar program for iOS. I'll definitely be checking this out further.
I've been boycotting Sony electronics for 30 years. I worked audio/video retail sales for a few years, and Sony consistently had a higher return rate than other brands and was priced higher. Not a good value in my book: too much sizzle and not enough steak.
One thing appealed to me about Blackberries: security. They were supposedly very secure. Then when the UAE and China and others threatened them with shutdown in their countries if RIM didn't provide compromised servers and they folded, RIM's credibility with me dropped to zero.
I was never much of a Blackberry fan, mainly because of the form factor. The iPhone has a lot more ergonomic appeal for me, the Android offerings less so.
I was a long time Palm user, the III, a couple of Vx's, the garbage of the TX, and finally a Z22 or something. I think the thing that killed Palm was poor QC of products from China, and the rise of the smartphone. When I wore out my Vx I made the mistake of buying a TX and it was one of the three worst electronic devices that I have ever bought. It was replaced more than once, and the replacements were just as bad. That's bad engineering, implementation, and quality control. I ended up with a Z22 (which I disassembled last week: since I can't do a memory wipe because the touch screen lost all hope of registration, I'm obliterating the chips on it with my dad's grinder the next time I'm at his house) which I must admit did give me a year or so of good service. It was replaced by a POS WinMo Dell, which was quickly replaced with an iPod Touch which has been in heavy use for over 2 years (and now needs a new headphone jack).
The iPod Touch has been a pretty good PDA with three key issues for me. First, the factory calendar program is a little weak, doesn't allow unusual time repeats for appointments, such as every 3 weeks. It also doesn't have a snooze function, which I find quite vexing. The ability to make two reminders for one appointment is helpful, but not a replacement for a good snooze. Second, no encryption. For the Palm I had a program called CryptoPad that used Twofish or Blowfish for one-way encryption and I felt confident to use it for storing server IP addresses, admin passwords, etc. No such program that I've found for the iOS allows encryption like that. And finally, the search feature for the phone doesn't go nearly as deep as I would like. I want it to also search my address book and notes, for example, to find 505 area codes that I need to change to 575. No can do.
Upon reflecting of 15+ years of PDA use, I think inability to evolve and gain market share is what killed Palm. Whether or not HP can make them viable again, we'll see. For myself, I do not yet own a smartphone, I'll probably be getting an iPhone later this year. Palm is dead to me, they'll never get another dime from my pocket.
My wife is an astronomer, two major telescopes at her facility. On her telescope, 100% of the staff is "American". The other telescope, about 50%: three Russians and a Chinese or two. I'm not discussing employee quality as I don't know the other telescope, but they seem to be quite competent based on my interactions with them.
I did not read TFA, but I think they probably over-generalize. Astronomy is a pretty stable field as I see it, granted, I don't work there. There's a mild amount of turnover, the pay is pretty good, and the benefits seem acceptable considering it isn't possible to put in 40 hours a week running a telescope. The problem in astronomy is the number of job openings, people frequently tend to stay in one place for quite a while, which makes upward mobility at one facility sometimes difficult.
Exactly! With the exception of the first two cars that I bought in the 80's, every car that I've owned since has been American-made but not by the American car companies. My concern has been strictly on two criteria: quality and fitting my purpose. My objection to quality has consistently been upheld when I see the problems my dad and others have had with American cars, and fitting my purpose is entirely subjective and there's no point discussing it.
What I'm curious about is how effective this device is against an encrypted Android OS phone, I'm assuming it could suck out the encrypted file volume and it would have to be cracked separately. It looks like it can read all of the supposedly secure Blackberries, but it looks like some of the Microsoft OS phones need IR or Bluetooth: so if you disabled those access ports, would that defeat this thing?
I would say it sucks to live in Michigan, but how long until these things are deployed across the country?
I'd also like to know that if I were to be pulled over and gave the phone to my wife (assuming me driving, she the passenger), could they still take and suck it?
What is this "fast internet speeds" of which you speak? According to speedtest.net, I only get 1.42mb down on a cable modem. I'm not really confident that it's fast enough to reliably stream content. I can play WoW and VPN/RDP to work, but big downloads can take quite a while.
That's a familiar story. My laptop has wider screen resolution than my old 15" monitor at work, it's kind of inconvenient when I go in to the office as I telecommute and my physical workstation has to reconfigure the windows for its limited resolution when I'm there and then I have to redo them again when I'm back home and telecommuting again.
I can believe what TFA is saying, though I've never seen it. I have a constant battle to maintain a certain Access database in 2003 though there are now later versions of Office floating around the office. We have people in the field using the runtime version of Access to use this system and frankly their laptops probably can't run the later versions, so we're kinda stuck. And since these laptops have EDGE modems, they're not cheap to replace.
My friend with ALS said they've found sometimes a bacterial/amoebic/parasitic link in some locations. In our case, we grew up in Phoenix next to the canals, and every winter they drain the canals for maintenance. We played in them every year as kids, and apparently this is very similar to the conditions where ALS clusters have been found in the past. There's no such cluster in Phoenix or this area, so we don't know if this could be the source of his problem.
Thank you for the suggestions, I'll check in to the links you've posted. I have a pretty good vitamin regimen and monitor my metabolic levels pretty closely due to a parathyroid problem a few years ago. My friend is pretty far gone, I'm sure they've checked in to things like this. He was on an experimental drug trial where they tested a drug used for Alzheimer's, the trial was successful, but in this case success just delays the inevitable. I don't remember what they monitor to determine the advancement of the condition, T levels or something, and the Alzheimer's drug did improve the levels but it isn't a cure.
In my case, while I maintain treatment I have reasonable immune response to infection after having pneumonia 4 or 5 times over a six month period 2+ years ago. CVID is not rapidly degenerative, but it's likely to knock a decade or so off my life, and as I'm in an NIH study program, I'm monitored pretty closely. The main problem for me aside from the discomfort and inconvenience of the treatment is the cost: if we didn't have health insurance, the treatment would run more than $5,000 a month and would obviously be unaffordable.
ALS truly sucks. A friend of mine who's less than a year older than me, we grew up on the same street and have known each other for 50 years now, is dying of it. He was a very vital person, frequently went hunting, avid firearms enthusiast, excellent computer and networking tech, and now he's in a powered chair and almost unable to cough. It's heart wrenching to go to see him, but he appreciates the visit and my wife plays harp for him which he and his wife really enjoy. As we live 500 miles away, we can only visit every 2-3 months.
I've seen a lot of death over the years and lost friends and family to: cancer, strokes, Alzheimers, murder, suicide, vehicular accidents, and now this gets added to the list and it rates pretty high on how I do not wish to go. Your brain is totally unimpaired, but your body is shutting down around you. I thought my life sucked with not having much of an immune system and having to stick four needles in my abdomen for 90 minutes twice a week to get reasonable immunity support, but there's always someone with something worse and it's quite humbling to see it.
Stephen Hawking is perhaps the best known ALS patient (or has something related to ALS), it's amazing that he's lived as long as he has but he's definitely been the statistical outlier. They're now questioning whether or not Lou Gehrig actually had the disease that was named after him.
A few years back I bought Creative Suite CS3, mainly for Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Later I need to install InDesign, and the DVD has a bad sector and won't install. Adobe won't sell or give me a replacement disc because they're (then) selling CS4 and they want me to upgrade.
A few weeks ago I buy a new Canon T2i Digital Rebel, they change the RAW format and CS3 won't read it. I finally find a workaround with getting a trial version of Photoshop Elements which will let me save the CR2s in the older RAW format. So at least I can convert. Inconvenient, but it works. It doesn't fix my problem with InDesign not working. Oh, well. I'm definitely not a fan of Adobe's business practices.
What I don't get is why he didn't just install any variety of *nixes via VM. I've had no prob running Ubuntu under Parallels on my MacBook Pro, and the new version of Parallels runs Win7 no problem.
Or Fry's Electronics. Go to their components section where you buy memory and bare drives. You technically might have to buy a component to make it a system purchase, just buy the cheapest HD that they have and you'll still save a bucket. I've also seen "For New PC's" copies of Windows software on eBay.
If you're dead set on buying a new laptop, I've had good luck with Toshiba and Lexmark, but I know people who have not and YMMV. But seriously, give her your 2008 and my sympathy, I love my MBP that'll be 4 years old in August. It's the most reliable and robust laptop that I've ever owned and I practically live off of laptops.
This assumes that no one has a CD/DVD burner. But then you also need to disable printing, so I can't take a sheet of paper out, scan it into my multifunction Canon. And also disable my monitor so I can't photograph my screen with my cell phone camera.
Total security is a myth and a mindset, all you can do is work towards it, you'll never fully achieve it short of being Fort Mead.
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If you ever find yourself in West Texas/Southern NM, I could probably give you an insider's tour of a 3.5 meter telescope. If the timing and weather is right, you might get to see an Apollo run when we bounce a laser off the moon. They have some pretty cool computer equipment, including a Dec Alpha running VMS and Lisp to control the telescope motors. I also rather like the 6-8 parallel DAT drives that recorded the streaming take from the SDSS 2.5 meter telescope.
Apache Point Observatory is about 100 miles N of El Paso above Alamogordo, NM. We're next door to White Sands National Monument and near Carlsbad Caverns. The Trinity Site where the first atomic detonations took place is nearby and open for tours the first Saturday of April and October.
I love being married to an astrophysicist!
I don't remember off-hand, but I think OS-X patches about monthly, it depends on whether they're patching the OS or OS-X apps. They tend to patch the whole, rather than tons of specific components, right now I have an update uninstalled for Safari fonts, I've delayed it because I pretty much don't use Safari and I'll install it the next time I do an OS update. What I really hate with Windows patching is when you go to update a server and it wants to install Office updates! Makes absolutely no sense if you've never installed Office on that box, and why would you? I have a database server that I manage that I have to bend over backwards to make sure that NOTHING except SQL Server is installed on it. People want to install apps on it and I refuse. We're keeping this thing as pure as possible and it's turned out to be a pretty solid server.
Everything will change with OS-X patching as more crimeware kits come out for it as it gains market share and malware, and I'm sure the patches for it will increase in frequency. But for now, I think the patching frequency is acceptable and appropriate to current threats.
I have used many different versions of linux and keep an Ubuntu VM available. For me, ease of use just isn't there. Again, that's for me. I've been using computers for 30 years, I've used and administered every Microsoft desktop and server OS since Dos 1.0 on IBM 4-screw PCs, I used the original IBM AT with the self-destructing (Shuggart?) hard drive. I switched to Mac four years ago because I sick and tired of having to make my computer work instead of just having the computer work. It's trite and cliche, but a Mac just works for me. Among other things I use NeoOffice, I code Perl, PHP, MySQL, and while I greatly respect OSS and Gimp, I'll still end up buying Photoshop because that's the tool that I need. If the tools that you need are linux and entirely OSS, more power to ya! Use the tools -- OS, application, hardware -- that you need to do your job. For me, a MacBook Pro has served my needs exceedingly well for over four years and I have no regrets.
My boss used to give me regular rations of shit for having a MacBook Pro. One lunch hour he was at my desk, while I was trying to work, harassing me. I turned around and ran uptime, turned back to him and said, "Yeah, Don, it's a total piece of garbage. It's only been up 67 days without a reboot."
I switched from Windows to Mac because I was tired of patching (seemingly) every other day and the occasional OS reinstall. The only time I've had to reinstall OS-X was when I had an upgraded replacement hard drive fail. My laptop is just shy of 4 years old and is still a rock and absolutely reliable, and it's used 3-14 hours a day, 7 days a week. No other laptop that I've owned, and I've owned several, would hold up like this.
Was it worth paying more for it? Absolutely. Has it ever failed me? Except for the upgrade hard drive failure and a graphics chip failure due to a defective chip set (which was replaced outside of original warranty for free), no. Will I buy another? Absolutely. It runs XP Pro just fine via Parallels (yes, I tried Sun's and VMWare's offerings) when I remote in to work or run the two MS programs that I need for which there are no Mac equivalents.
Run what does the job for you. For me, a Mac does just fine and is worth the additional bucks.
Except in the case of sealed devices like phones, tablets, MP3 players, etc. Apparently the MacBook Air is sealed and the memory is soldered on to the motherboard, so buy it big when you get it our you're stuck.
I think a lot of this is geared towards people who can't do their own maintenance/upgrades. I've upgraded ram and disk on my laptops and desktops, I've upgraded CPUs in my desktop without motherboard replacement. But forget about getting my dad or wife to do something like that. They are both brilliant people in their own ways and skill sets (master plumber/woodworker and astrophysicist with PhD respectively), but dealing with tech at the hardware level is not in their metier.
A friend of mine recently sent me a good joke: what do you call the person who graduated at the bottom of his class at medical school? Doctor.
Assuming he passes his boards. Half of all people are below average, and this included doctors.
I think a helicopter would be pretty awesome to attach it to, preferably a military or medevac.
But sadly, I wouldn't want to tamper with someone else's vehicle. I'd probably build a small raft and float it down the Rio Grande river.
Thank you for this info. I used CryptoPad for the Palm that provided an encrypted notepad and was very disappointed to not find a similar program for iOS. I'll definitely be checking this out further.
I have to ask the obvious: is Joomla equally disliked, and for the same or different reasons?
I've been boycotting Sony electronics for 30 years. I worked audio/video retail sales for a few years, and Sony consistently had a higher return rate than other brands and was priced higher. Not a good value in my book: too much sizzle and not enough steak.
One thing appealed to me about Blackberries: security. They were supposedly very secure. Then when the UAE and China and others threatened them with shutdown in their countries if RIM didn't provide compromised servers and they folded, RIM's credibility with me dropped to zero.
I was never much of a Blackberry fan, mainly because of the form factor. The iPhone has a lot more ergonomic appeal for me, the Android offerings less so.
I was a long time Palm user, the III, a couple of Vx's, the garbage of the TX, and finally a Z22 or something. I think the thing that killed Palm was poor QC of products from China, and the rise of the smartphone. When I wore out my Vx I made the mistake of buying a TX and it was one of the three worst electronic devices that I have ever bought. It was replaced more than once, and the replacements were just as bad. That's bad engineering, implementation, and quality control. I ended up with a Z22 (which I disassembled last week: since I can't do a memory wipe because the touch screen lost all hope of registration, I'm obliterating the chips on it with my dad's grinder the next time I'm at his house) which I must admit did give me a year or so of good service. It was replaced by a POS WinMo Dell, which was quickly replaced with an iPod Touch which has been in heavy use for over 2 years (and now needs a new headphone jack).
The iPod Touch has been a pretty good PDA with three key issues for me. First, the factory calendar program is a little weak, doesn't allow unusual time repeats for appointments, such as every 3 weeks. It also doesn't have a snooze function, which I find quite vexing. The ability to make two reminders for one appointment is helpful, but not a replacement for a good snooze. Second, no encryption. For the Palm I had a program called CryptoPad that used Twofish or Blowfish for one-way encryption and I felt confident to use it for storing server IP addresses, admin passwords, etc. No such program that I've found for the iOS allows encryption like that. And finally, the search feature for the phone doesn't go nearly as deep as I would like. I want it to also search my address book and notes, for example, to find 505 area codes that I need to change to 575. No can do.
Upon reflecting of 15+ years of PDA use, I think inability to evolve and gain market share is what killed Palm. Whether or not HP can make them viable again, we'll see. For myself, I do not yet own a smartphone, I'll probably be getting an iPhone later this year. Palm is dead to me, they'll never get another dime from my pocket.
My wife is an astronomer, two major telescopes at her facility. On her telescope, 100% of the staff is "American". The other telescope, about 50%: three Russians and a Chinese or two. I'm not discussing employee quality as I don't know the other telescope, but they seem to be quite competent based on my interactions with them.
I did not read TFA, but I think they probably over-generalize. Astronomy is a pretty stable field as I see it, granted, I don't work there. There's a mild amount of turnover, the pay is pretty good, and the benefits seem acceptable considering it isn't possible to put in 40 hours a week running a telescope. The problem in astronomy is the number of job openings, people frequently tend to stay in one place for quite a while, which makes upward mobility at one facility sometimes difficult.
Exactly! With the exception of the first two cars that I bought in the 80's, every car that I've owned since has been American-made but not by the American car companies. My concern has been strictly on two criteria: quality and fitting my purpose. My objection to quality has consistently been upheld when I see the problems my dad and others have had with American cars, and fitting my purpose is entirely subjective and there's no point discussing it.
What I'm curious about is how effective this device is against an encrypted Android OS phone, I'm assuming it could suck out the encrypted file volume and it would have to be cracked separately. It looks like it can read all of the supposedly secure Blackberries, but it looks like some of the Microsoft OS phones need IR or Bluetooth: so if you disabled those access ports, would that defeat this thing?
I would say it sucks to live in Michigan, but how long until these things are deployed across the country?
I'd also like to know that if I were to be pulled over and gave the phone to my wife (assuming me driving, she the passenger), could they still take and suck it?
What is this "fast internet speeds" of which you speak? According to speedtest.net, I only get 1.42mb down on a cable modem. I'm not really confident that it's fast enough to reliably stream content. I can play WoW and VPN/RDP to work, but big downloads can take quite a while.
Eagerly hoping to hear something!
73, KB7UJR
That's a familiar story. My laptop has wider screen resolution than my old 15" monitor at work, it's kind of inconvenient when I go in to the office as I telecommute and my physical workstation has to reconfigure the windows for its limited resolution when I'm there and then I have to redo them again when I'm back home and telecommuting again.
I can believe what TFA is saying, though I've never seen it. I have a constant battle to maintain a certain Access database in 2003 though there are now later versions of Office floating around the office. We have people in the field using the runtime version of Access to use this system and frankly their laptops probably can't run the later versions, so we're kinda stuck. And since these laptops have EDGE modems, they're not cheap to replace.
"A polar bear is a rectangular bear after undergoing a coordinate transformation."
My wife, PhD in physics/astrophysics, almost bust a gut when I told her that one.
My friend with ALS said they've found sometimes a bacterial/amoebic/parasitic link in some locations. In our case, we grew up in Phoenix next to the canals, and every winter they drain the canals for maintenance. We played in them every year as kids, and apparently this is very similar to the conditions where ALS clusters have been found in the past. There's no such cluster in Phoenix or this area, so we don't know if this could be the source of his problem.
Thank you for the suggestions, I'll check in to the links you've posted. I have a pretty good vitamin regimen and monitor my metabolic levels pretty closely due to a parathyroid problem a few years ago. My friend is pretty far gone, I'm sure they've checked in to things like this. He was on an experimental drug trial where they tested a drug used for Alzheimer's, the trial was successful, but in this case success just delays the inevitable. I don't remember what they monitor to determine the advancement of the condition, T levels or something, and the Alzheimer's drug did improve the levels but it isn't a cure.
In my case, while I maintain treatment I have reasonable immune response to infection after having pneumonia 4 or 5 times over a six month period 2+ years ago. CVID is not rapidly degenerative, but it's likely to knock a decade or so off my life, and as I'm in an NIH study program, I'm monitored pretty closely. The main problem for me aside from the discomfort and inconvenience of the treatment is the cost: if we didn't have health insurance, the treatment would run more than $5,000 a month and would obviously be unaffordable.
ALS truly sucks. A friend of mine who's less than a year older than me, we grew up on the same street and have known each other for 50 years now, is dying of it. He was a very vital person, frequently went hunting, avid firearms enthusiast, excellent computer and networking tech, and now he's in a powered chair and almost unable to cough. It's heart wrenching to go to see him, but he appreciates the visit and my wife plays harp for him which he and his wife really enjoy. As we live 500 miles away, we can only visit every 2-3 months.
I've seen a lot of death over the years and lost friends and family to: cancer, strokes, Alzheimers, murder, suicide, vehicular accidents, and now this gets added to the list and it rates pretty high on how I do not wish to go. Your brain is totally unimpaired, but your body is shutting down around you. I thought my life sucked with not having much of an immune system and having to stick four needles in my abdomen for 90 minutes twice a week to get reasonable immunity support, but there's always someone with something worse and it's quite humbling to see it.
Stephen Hawking is perhaps the best known ALS patient (or has something related to ALS), it's amazing that he's lived as long as he has but he's definitely been the statistical outlier. They're now questioning whether or not Lou Gehrig actually had the disease that was named after him.
A few years back I bought Creative Suite CS3, mainly for Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Later I need to install InDesign, and the DVD has a bad sector and won't install. Adobe won't sell or give me a replacement disc because they're (then) selling CS4 and they want me to upgrade.
A few weeks ago I buy a new Canon T2i Digital Rebel, they change the RAW format and CS3 won't read it. I finally find a workaround with getting a trial version of Photoshop Elements which will let me save the CR2s in the older RAW format. So at least I can convert. Inconvenient, but it works. It doesn't fix my problem with InDesign not working. Oh, well. I'm definitely not a fan of Adobe's business practices.
What I don't get is why he didn't just install any variety of *nixes via VM. I've had no prob running Ubuntu under Parallels on my MacBook Pro, and the new version of Parallels runs Win7 no problem.
Or Fry's Electronics. Go to their components section where you buy memory and bare drives. You technically might have to buy a component to make it a system purchase, just buy the cheapest HD that they have and you'll still save a bucket. I've also seen "For New PC's" copies of Windows software on eBay.
If you're dead set on buying a new laptop, I've had good luck with Toshiba and Lexmark, but I know people who have not and YMMV. But seriously, give her your 2008 and my sympathy, I love my MBP that'll be 4 years old in August. It's the most reliable and robust laptop that I've ever owned and I practically live off of laptops.
This assumes that no one has a CD/DVD burner. But then you also need to disable printing, so I can't take a sheet of paper out, scan it into my multifunction Canon. And also disable my monitor so I can't photograph my screen with my cell phone camera.
Total security is a myth and a mindset, all you can do is work towards it, you'll never fully achieve it short of being Fort Mead.