I agree with most of your comments, but the bit about being more than 100 miles from the epicenter and not feeling it... there I disagree.
I live in St. Charles, 160 miles from the epicenter of this morning's quakes... as the crow flies. I definitely felt it both times, as did my wife and kids. As did a number of people as most of the neighborhood were up in pretty short order after the quake (I could see a number of TV's on, trying to watch the news). The timing was also too perfect to be coincidence, twice.
The fact is a quake's ability to shake things over distance depends precisely on what the ground is made of. Some materials soak up the shockwaves quickly (like the rocks of California), whereas others will transmit the waves over massive distances with very little dissipation (like the rocks in the Midwest). There are a lot more factors than just distance and even rock consitution, but you get my drift.
At the epicenter, it was a 5.2. On instruments in downtown St. Louis it registered 5.1 at its peak and rumbled for up to two minutes from the initial shock. That's 140 miles as the crow flies and little to no dissipation.
Now, another friend of mine who works at the USGS in Rolla, MO (about another 70 miles) says they picked up barely 4.0, so it's clear it dissipated quickly through Missouri but transmitted nicely through Illinois.
Still, it's all relatively academic at this point. More knowledgeable people than me are looking at the results from todays quake, and I'm sure they're finding more interesting stuff than I can with just two datapoints... and besides, I'm not a geologist:)
As for your final comment though...agreed there. I've had the (mis)fortune to be involved in all kinds of natural disasters in my life, mostly because I traveled a lot in my youth. I've encountered quakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and survived to tell the tale... and wouldn't trade the experience for anything. It means sometimes to my friends I have a rather carefree attitude to these things, but experience has taught me to respect nature... not fear it.
Becuase although on the global scale it's pretty small, on the local scale of Southern Illinois it's a doozy. I live in St. Louis, and for many of my peers (being in my mid 30's) it's the first quake that's been felt in living memory. Sure there have been smaller magnitude 2 or 3 quakes, but the last 5.x quake in the area was in 1968... before I was even born. Granted, I'm not a St. Louis native, either.
I have to admit though, the first one I probably would have slept through had it not been for my wife panicking and connecting her elbow with my face, but the second I felt as I was sitting at my desk at work and watched my monitors wobble back and forth. The second I could've easily mistaken for a large convoy of trucks going past the office if only our office was on a bridge over the highway. The first, once I was standing up (thanks to the expedient of body parts) was enough to shake the entire house and toppled a table lamp. Other than that at first my rather groggy brain started to wonder if it was just something freaky happening with my house until I opened the back door to let my dog out and heard what sounded like a rioting zoo in the woods behind my house. Then I knew it was a quake, and then it was just a matter of going to USGS website and seeing what the magnitude was.
Really quite an odd experience. Although they talk a lot about the New Madrid fault and how an earthquake of 7+ magnitude is overdue, you don't really think about it much until a quake really hits. On the bright side, maybe this mornings tremors will make people think more about earthquakes and the effect they can have.
5.2 is a big quake to those who've never felt one before. My personal high is a 6.8 but that wasn't in St. Louis, either:)
Definitely doable. I put OSX on a PowerCenter 120 with a 500Mhz G3 CPU. Unfortunately, it wasn't usable for much other than just to say I did it. I used XPostFacto... which is a requirement for these old PCI Mac Clones.
The reason? Well, the 33Mhz frontsize bus had a lot to do with it. I had 1/2 Gig of RAM, but every time that fast G3 had to go across the bus to fetch from RAM, it was pitiful. Then add the SCSI drives (even though I later added a PCI IDE Bus to my machine) that were running SCSI 1, and I was not exactly smoking.
Still, the machine was in use periodically up until 2005 when I finally gave in and bought a Macbook Pro. I had it dual-boot to OSX and upgraded to OSX 10.1, but 10.2 would never go because at the time XPostFacto's support for 10.2 was spotty at best.
Still, as I said... go for it. It can't hurt and it's interesting to note that despite one hack required, hardware this old CAN still run OSX. Now whether or not it'll run Leopard... that's another matter:)
... some Led Zeppelin playing on the classic cock station... You know, I can't help but be struck by the irony of someone making a typo while making fun of a typo. Karma's a b**ch, ain't it?:)
How about the electricity that comes from James Bay Hyrdo? Hmm, I think I need to lay off the caffeine in the afternoon. I was jumping around so much after my afternoon cappucino that at first I read "... the electricity that comes from James Browns Hairdo?"
Either that, or my contacts are seriously needing changed.
Prices aren't going down, not significantly. The reason these oil field are even being talked about now is that they're now cost effective at $100 per barrel (or thereabouts), whereas at $50 a barrel they weren't. Sorry, but America has to accept that oil prices will never get down to where gasoline is $1 a gallon again... not ever.
The $1 a gallon gasoline was an aberration that resulted in undervalued gasoline. The massive increases we've seen in the last few years are just the correction in the market for those aritificially low prices.
It's like a drug pusher; the first hit's free (or cheap)...
To which I have to agree. But have you listened to the radio recently? I'd say the signal to noise ratio on the commercial radio waves these days is FAR worse than I find on Podcasts. Plus, I find the semi-professionally or professionally produced podcasts (Hi there, http://twit.tv/) and then often my new subscriptions are "referrals" from those rather than "podcast surfing". I also admit sometimes my choice of podcasts is driven by friends who recommend another podcast... but more often than not they're occasionally amusing and at best get listened to when I have nothing better going on.
Thus, to your point; yes, the majority of podcasts and blogs are drivel... but those good ones that are worth listening to get a listenership, and through them often feed other blogs/podcasts. That's pretty much how the radio works, too... but there's a LOT of crap on the radio. There's also a lot of crap on TV, but that's another story entirely:)
To the GP; no, podcasting didn't fail the Technorati, either. In fact, I consider myself a member of the Technorati and I listen to Podcasts all the time when I'm commuting or when I'm out for a long walk on my own. I even listen to tech podcasts... yes, I'm a geek. Podcasting being a failure is a point of view of the author of the original article. I'm not sure it's really shared by that many people. Everyone I've turned onto podcasts still listens to them... some people stopped listening to the radio (like me). The only people who have "sidelined" podcasting in my opinion are those who've never heard of it, or those who never found a podcast to their taste. Well, I know a lot of people who have "sidelined" the radio and TV (myself included) because there's never anything on to listen to or watch that's worth my valuable time.
I know you're being funny... and yes, you're actually sort of correct in that hardware IS expensive for the 400. However, for doing real work, there's almost nothing that beats it.
Bear in mind, I haven't admin'd a 400 in about 6 years; I've moved to the UNIX/Windows side of the house a long time ago. However, I still work with AS/400 people all the time in my job.
On a server, you DON'T need a GUI. If you're wanting a machine to really crunch numbers and run intensive apps then 16 colors IS enough. Working with simple text files is all UNIX does, too... and besides, if you want to get real information then what else do you need? You don't need huge honking binary files to represent the data you want to crunch.
And yes, it does take a LONG time to restart the system. But come on, do you know how often you actually need to restart an AS/400? I think the ones we have at work have run for two years or so without an IPL and are only coming up on a restart soon because of some updates to the operating system.
For a corporation that wants uptime and pure number crunching there's almost nothing that compares in price/performance. Yes, they're complex... and yes, they're expensive. But for pure uptime and number crunching capability there isn't a UNIX or Windows-based option that even compares.
Oh, and these days you can have your GUI and eat it. There are loads of Windows-based and X-based applications that use AS/400's as a backend system. The only people who use green-screens are usually the admins. In fact, I'd bet almost every one of our people who use our 400 on a daily basis have no idea that they're using a Windows app that's backended by an AS/400... and they don't care. Mercifully, they don't need to.
And yes, I know about the whole "iSeries / System i" thing and don't really care. I've always referred to them as AS/400's and probably always will.
I have a Macbook Pro and love it to death. You know why? Because I feel I got a damned good deal.
There's a world of difference between the cheapo Dell and HP laptops and a Macbook Pro. Fit, finish, build quality and engineering are places where an MBP excels. You're comparing a consumer-grade laptop with a pro-grade laptop and wondering why the pro-grade laptop is more expensive. Why do you think Dell and HP have multiple product lines? Do you really think their consumer-grade laptop is identical to the pro-grade laptop in all but name? They sure do have the same computing capacity.
When I bought my MBP, I compared prices. I compared the MBP to an equivalent pro-grade laptop from Dell, HP and a couple of others. In every case except the Dell, the alternatives were *more expensive* than the MBP. The Dell was only $100 less (or thereabouts). I bought the MBP because it gave me legal flexibility to run either Windows or OSX... or run them both at the same time in Parallels. I didn't *need* a UNIX workstation at that point, but I have spent enough time with UNIX and/or Linux that I like the command line. Now, I can't imagine being without OSX or some other UNIX variant, and I definitely don't regret my decision to buy the MBP.
I also bought the Mac for the support of the company. So far, every experience I've had with Apple tech support has been a pleasure. Can't say the same for my work laptop (an HP running Vista), where every time I have a problem I go around in circles with up to four vendors pointing fingers at each other; HP, Microsoft, an application vendor and a hardware vendor (drivers). With the Mac, I have one call. Application problems are also a lot less frequent in OSX. Don't know why, they just are. Perhaps because the API is better documented:)
Of course, it depends on your needs... but yes, you can get a 15" laptop from the other vendors cheap. However, the display panel itself may not be as good quality... and build quality may suffer.
I bought my wife a laptop about the same time as I bought my MBP. It also had a 15" screen, was a lot cheaper and ran nicely. However, it didn't last. It's now sitting in a "bits box" in my study because I can't get the damn thing to work and repairing it is more costly than buying a new laptop. She currently uses my Linux desktop (which I primarily use as a file server) to do her work and next month I'm buying her a Macbook. Not a pro... just a Macbook. She likes them, I like them and it's going to be easier for me to support.
This guy is comparing SSD's with hard drives that are several generations old at this point. If you try a more modern hard drive then you'd be surprised at how little noise comes from it. My first gen Macbook Pro came with a 100Mb drive that you could barely tell was doing anything unless you stuck your ear up to it. I recently upgraded it to a 320Gb Western Digital and it's quieter still... not to mention faster. It has slightly reduced my battery life, though.
SSD's are better though, that's true. However, since my hard drive is quieter than the fans in my laptop is that really going to be a compelling reason for me to upgrade? There's been a lot of work on quiet hard drive technology in the last couple of years that's really impressive. Audio is not my reason to upgrade.
OK, I can sort of see his point, given his perspective. Doesn't change the fact that he's wrong.
I have unlimited data on my Windows Mobile device through AT&T. St. Louis has an excellent 3G network, and yes I tether my Mac and my Vista laptop both through the device. You know what? It's not bad... but it's NOTHING compared to a wireless access point at a coffee house, hotel or whatever.
I work on the road occasionally, and if I have a choice I'll go to a coffee shop and work from there if I need Internet access... and I'll use the WiFi. The reasons for this are numerous;
1. Battery life. My phone has a limited battery life which will last a good two days with normal use, but drops to only a few hours if I'm using the data connection with my laptop. Yes, I can do it through Bluetooth but because of the battery issues I have to physically tether the phone to my laptop to keep it charged. Then when I do that, boy does my phone get HOT! Until battery technology in cellphones improves, I can't see this working too well.
2. Latency. If you want a good Internet connection, then you need to get latency lower. That's not really realistic because of the way cellular networks work. The latency's not as bad as, say a satellite connection... but you sure as hell get less latency on a WiFi access point (which is usually attached to a cable Intenet connection or DSL). Hell, I've been in a coffee shop full of people on laptops surfing the web, and despite the occasional slowdown from somebody visiting Windowsupdate, the connection is better than what I get through my cellphone. That's also something that a technical support guy can fix with QoS in the router...
3. Reliability. WiFi is short range, but over its short range it's pretty damned robust. 3G isn't. Particularly if you happen to be sitting near enough to multiple towers, there are often times when you're bouncing between towers. Every time that happens, your DNS times out because your connection dropped and restored (even though you were unaware of it unless you know what you're looking for). There are several of these "Bermuda Triangle" spots near me, and I avoid them because it's irritating. Thankfully, there's coffee shops with WiFi nearby.
4. Cost. Why should I pay for my data connection at all, when I can sit at a coffee shop, get the coffee I was already going to be drinking for a few cents (maybe around a dollar), and sit there and use their WiFi for an hour or so. Why should I be limited? Yes, I'm really paying for my Internet connection too, but to the coffee shop itself it's a loss-leader. A coffee shop that has free WiFi is usually more popular than one without... and people who sit long enough will buy something. Sometimes several somethings.
A good friend of mine owns a coffee shop, and he admits there are a few people who come in, buy the cheapest cup of coffee they can and sit there all day... but even them he doesn't mind. Simply put, if there are people in a coffee shop, people going past are more likely to see people in there and decide to visit. An empty coffee shop tends to remain empty. His Cable Internet connection costs him, what, $20-$30 a month, plus the electricity required to run the WAP and the cable modem. He spends more in a month on paper napkins; to him it's just an additional cost to doing business. Compared to the cost of running the store itself, it's miniscule. Besides, the majority of people who come in and sit all day tend to buy stuff all day. Coffee, soda... hell they even buy lunch which is where he makes pretty decent money. Those who buy a single small coffee and sit all day are in the minority... and he knows who they are since they tend to be "repeat offenders"
Now don't get my wrong; my tethered Internet connection is invaluable to me and I use it several times a week. However, if I have a choice and I know a place with a WAP is nearby, I'd rather use that. I pay for my data connection with my phone, but only because I use it so much. If the cost were zero or near zero, th
Yes, I do agree that it's not for everyone, and not for every trip. For me, however the majority of my business trips tend to be at minimum about a week, and usually to Western countries (Europe, America, Canada, etc.) And you're right about the bean counters but it also depends on how much the data on the laptop is worth.
However, my other advice still stands; encrypt your laptop and carry vital data on a secondary media (also encrypted) so in the event your laptop IS lost then the data you need on said business trip is not also lost.
I've also invested in an EePC, which allows me a really compact carry-on that I can also use at the hotel to check my email and so forth before my laptop arrives. I realize there's the same risk of losing that as the laptop, but it's still nice to be able to cram two weeks worth of clothes AND a computer into a single carry-on:)
My advice? Take the minimum you need for your flight and ship the rest. Yes, that includes your laptop.
Last time I went on an international business trip, I took one carry-on with my clothes packed in vacuum-sealed bags. As far as electronic items, I took my 60Gb iPod and my HTC TyTN... oh, and a set of noise-canceling headphones. Not to mention an eye-mask and ear plugs (so I could sleep). That's it... nothing else.
I had packaged up my laptop and other business-related paraphernalia in a secured box and shipped using an insured carrier the day before I departed. Yes, that meant I was "sans laptop" for a day... but really... with my TyTN able to get my email and web browsing I didn't miss it. The laptop and stuff arrived the day after I did and was quite secure... I didn't have to run the rigmarole of dealing with the TSA or their foreign counterparts with my laptop, and I had the security of knowing all my luggage was in the overhead during the entire flight and wasn't getting lost somewhere in the depths of Newark's baggage handling facility (those who've gone through Newark know this pain).
Sure, the shipping wasn't cheap but I was able to write it off as a business expense since all I was shipping were business items. I treat either carry-on or checked bags as an insecure location to store critical information. Yes, there's a risk that a loss may occur with a carrier like Fedex or UPS as well, but if it's insured then you can claim it back. Oh, and make sure the data on the drive is encrypted if you're really feeling paranoid.
So what if I'd wanted to work the day I arrived? Yes, that would be a catch. However, the first day after you arrive internationally, you're almost never going to be functional. You're going to want to sleep. However, just on the off-chance I had a bug up my butt to actually do some work that day, I put critical information (critical to the project at hand plus a few other minor items) onto the hard drive of the iPod, and a copy on a 2Gb USB stick... both encrypted of course. That way, I'm pretty much covered.
Did the same on the way home and couldn't have been happier. There's little reason to take a laptop onto a trans-oceanic flight these days... most of the airlines do in-flight movies. Even if not you can put movies on your iPod or iPhone or (insert media player of choice here). I have considered in the past getting one of the nice portable media centers to carry on international flights, but to-date I have never needed them. Plus, I make a point of getting red-eyes (overnight flights) so that I'm almost forced into a position where I get a few hours of sleep. That makes the travel much more bearable.
Think about your priorities and make a decision from there what you need to bring... but bear in mind a laptop is LOW priority if you're sensible about your other technologies. Laptops are also a risk, and when I travel the only places I like to carry my laptop are between the hotel and the office... and then ship it to my next port of call. I find travel a LOT less stressful since I started this because it means you have a minimum of stuff to keep a track of, and so long as you make sensible use of encryption your data is as secure as reasonable.
I just have to chime in and say I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. I was in the UK in October last year, and I used two Internet cafes while on my trip. I had a laptop with me, but had difficulty locating WiFi. Anyway, about six weeks after I returned, my Yahoo email account was compromised by a spammer. Thankfully they didn't change my password so I was able to get in and secure the account as soon as I found out about it... but those two IC machines were the only places I had logged into my Yahoo account where I hadn't controlled the machine in a very long time (about two years). As a result, I'm pretty sure that my account was compromised because I used an Internet Cafe machine to check my email.
IC's are all fine and good, but nowadays the only Internet Cafes I'll even touch are those that run Linux or allow me to use my own laptop on Wifi (most of them charge a reasonable fee for wireless and give you a code you can enter in your web browser). Even then, I've gotten to the point that on a wifi connection I use a secure-shell forwarded proxy (that I also control) so when I enter details they can't be sniffed unless somebody's REALLY determined to get my password. Of course, that SSH forwarded proxy is simple when you're a UNIX/Linux geek and your laptop's a Mac:)
Well, I have AT&T. I have an HTC TyTN which is a 3G phone which allows me to "tether" via bluetooth to my Macbook Pro. I must admit that the convenience factor is wonderful. For example, I sat recently on a 4 hour layover at Newark airport. Of course, they have "for charge" wireless which sucks, but I just turned on my Internet sharing, attached to the network from my Mac and I was able to sit there sending and receiving email, chatting with family and friends on IM... all that sort of stuff. However, it was only a GPRS/EDGE connection so the experience when browsing the web was sort of sad and pathetic. I'm just glad I block flash and ads in my Firefox or I would've been livid at the time it took to load pages. Or bored.
However, even at best the 3G connection is only "acceptable". If you're using it for email and/or IM it's probably more than acceptable (IMAP or POP3). Web-based email with lots of ads and flash crap (Yahoo) is going to drive you nuts. Web-based mail with mostly text-based stuff (Gmail) is going to be MUCH more workable, but is still going to be slow. So long as you're not going to be downloading software updates, you'll be fine. I even make a habit of shutting down iTunes before I hook up to my phone network because if there's an updated podcast it's going to try to download it (I subscribe to several) and you'll be wondering what the hell happened to your connection speed for fifteen minutes until you realize what's happening (yes, I've done that).
For home, though I have to say I like having my cable-modem connection with my G-wireless (and a wired connection when I want to backup to my server). Although St. Louis (where I live) has excellent 3G coverage, it's still not a patch on having a 5Mb/s connection at home to download my software updates and stuff. Besides, even on the best 3G connection sometimes the "DNS Lookup Delay" can be annoying... and even worse is the latency when you're hitting websites.
So the answer? It depends what you want to do with it. If you have a system you control EVERY aspect (like when it downloads updates and such) then give it a shot... but use it as an augmentation of a high-speed connection at home, not a replacement. If you don't know when a system will be downloading updates (Mac, Windows) then you might find yourself blaming a connection for slow response when it's actually your OS silently downloading something in the background. I know enough about Mac OS to be able to jump around and know when it's doing something I don't want... but most users don't.
I'm the same age... and I love learning new stuff all the time. It keeps me active.
Plus, by doing "obsolete" things I learned the basics early on... I learned the principles on which IT works. As a result, the only thing new I learn are semantics, and I can keep ahead of that easily. New concepts are rare in IT. For example, I learned 68K assembly language in my teens (I was a demo coder) and though I haven't seen 68K code in years (except on Wikipedia) I still use the principles and concepts behind that assembly language to understand better the flow of applications and how a stack overflow actually occurs... not to mention speak intelligently with coders where I work and surprise them with the fact that an infrastructure guy can talk "code"
Really, I mean what do I deal with on a daily basis? Windows servers, ethernet, routers, TCP/IP... all stuff that's relatively unchanged in decades (in the latter) or just a few years (Windows servers). Even then, concepts remain the same and I apply my knowledge of Windows servers to Novell, UNIX, Linux, BSD, MacOS etc... because they all do the same thing. Only the specifics vary and they're easy to learn.
But if you're suffering real learning fatigue... go for it. If you're not happy learning new stuff, then you will never be happy in this field. I question whether you've done it all right given what you said, but only you know what's right for you.
Navigating by compass is certainly NOT obsolete. I'm a private pilot as a hobby, and in my flight bag I have a few items I might need in the event I end up on the ground somewhere I don't know. Things like maps, a small first aid kit and a COMPASS. Sure, in most of the midwest if I set down I'm usually not too far from a road... but having had one forced landing in my life I can tell you that it's easy to get disoriented when you're on unfamiliar ground. Where I set down, there was a main road just a couple of miles to the Northwest (I could see it as I descended and made a note of it). After the plane landed and flipped, I got out and had no idea which way was Northwest... until I whipped out my compass and then took a sort of limping hike.
Hell, I've even used my compass in-flight in a plane that had no compass on the dash (unusual) and the gyro decided it was going to spin incessantly when I tried to cage it and pointed in the right direction for maybe two seconds every minute.
I disagree with just about everything on this list. The skills may be unpopular... but most of them aren't obsolete. Not yet... and some never will be.
Well, I would say Toshiba DID produce good machines about 9 years ago. I had one; a Portege 3490CT which I only stopped using because running even a pared down Linux install was getting kind of sad. I used that machine up until I bought my Macbook Pro two years ago and loved it to death. Wish I hadn't sold it now, actually.
I've found the best of both worlds; I have a Macbook Pro which gives me all the stuff I need to get my work done (office apps, Scrivener and so on), and I recently installed Gentoo for OSX. It takes a bit of work, but doesn't Gentoo normally? Anyway, it uses OSX as it's kernel, and runs just as extra UNIX tools on your system. You have all the flexibility of EMERGE, Gentoo and so on, but you've still got your working OS to get your work done while your compiles are running.
I use a prefixed install, which means everything's under a/gentoo folder. This works great as it means if I ever want to remove it, I can just drag it to the trash. Of course, I likes me some Gentoo action:)
I dunno... people said the same thing about my Portege when I bought it. It certainly seemed pretty flimsy. 7 years later I finally replaced it with a Macbook Pro because the 733Mhz CPU was cramping my style a bit. It still had a 5-6 hour battery life (with the external battery pack), and still appeared flimsy. However, it lasted.
I agree in one respect though; the proof of the MBA will be in the pudding. I can't wait to see reports on how these things last from people who DO fly commercially a lot.
I still fly... I just think that playing with a laptop is probably not a good thing when you're the one with your hands on the controls;)
Yeah, the X-series is a good laptop... but I never once claimed that the Macbook Air was revolutionary. It's another competitor in the same space as the X-Series with the advantage that it can run a certified UNIX platform (Leopard) and in fact defaults to that state. It also has some really nice productivity tools that either don't exist on the Windows platform, or have half-hearted attempts. I've yet to find a better writing environment than Scrivener... and if there's an alternative for PC I've not found one, yet. Granted, I haven't looked much lately; I'm quite happy with the Mac platform.
So, the Macbook Air isn't for the Windows guy. Never was. It's a Mac... and as such is targeted at the road warrior who wants to run a Mac. There's a lot of those around these days.
And let's see... in your list of extras I have to say the only thing I miss from that is the extra USB port... but even then that's a relatively minor thing. External drives? Well, the Time Capsule is effectively that without wires... I'd go on but you get the point I think. Although I agree with you in principle that the X-Series is "better", it's only better for some people. For me, since I've now made the transition to the Mac platform as my daily computer of choice the X-series is in fact no longer in the running. It can't run OSX or some of the applications I like to use. While you can happily put Windows on the MBA and make it compete on a level playing field with the X-Series, why would you?
There's an airline adapter on Apple's webpage. I have one for my MBP. Don't use it as much as I expected to... but I also don't change the battery... ever. And if you're a road-warrior in the car... well, I've never had a problem finding either (a) a coffee shop or (b) the outlet in my car to charge my laptop.
If you can't get done in 5 hours what you need to get done on a plane, then you're not working very efficiently. If I am on a flight more than 5 hours, sitting in that seat for that time with my laptop is going to get old quick... and on a shorter flight the non-removable battery is a complete non-issue.
Maybe a problem with when you fly to a destination? Well, again, most rental cars have outlets... all it takes is a very small adapter these days.
My Macbook Pro gets ~3 hours on the battery. To-date I've never needed to swap it out... I don't even own a second battery. It's not that I don't do work; I just work efficiently. I can also raise my battery life by dimming the screen, turning off the wireless and Bluetooth, etc.... that helps.
Ah, but therein lies the other catch; the reality distortion field means you're actually sitting on a milk crate... the RDF just makes you THINK you're in first class.
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I agree with most of your comments, but the bit about being more than 100 miles from the epicenter and not feeling it... there I disagree.
:)
I live in St. Charles, 160 miles from the epicenter of this morning's quakes... as the crow flies. I definitely felt it both times, as did my wife and kids. As did a number of people as most of the neighborhood were up in pretty short order after the quake (I could see a number of TV's on, trying to watch the news). The timing was also too perfect to be coincidence, twice.
The fact is a quake's ability to shake things over distance depends precisely on what the ground is made of. Some materials soak up the shockwaves quickly (like the rocks of California), whereas others will transmit the waves over massive distances with very little dissipation (like the rocks in the Midwest). There are a lot more factors than just distance and even rock consitution, but you get my drift.
At the epicenter, it was a 5.2. On instruments in downtown St. Louis it registered 5.1 at its peak and rumbled for up to two minutes from the initial shock. That's 140 miles as the crow flies and little to no dissipation.
Now, another friend of mine who works at the USGS in Rolla, MO (about another 70 miles) says they picked up barely 4.0, so it's clear it dissipated quickly through Missouri but transmitted nicely through Illinois.
Still, it's all relatively academic at this point. More knowledgeable people than me are looking at the results from todays quake, and I'm sure they're finding more interesting stuff than I can with just two datapoints... and besides, I'm not a geologist
As for your final comment though...agreed there. I've had the (mis)fortune to be involved in all kinds of natural disasters in my life, mostly because I traveled a lot in my youth. I've encountered quakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and survived to tell the tale... and wouldn't trade the experience for anything. It means sometimes to my friends I have a rather carefree attitude to these things, but experience has taught me to respect nature... not fear it.
Becuase although on the global scale it's pretty small, on the local scale of Southern Illinois it's a doozy. I live in St. Louis, and for many of my peers (being in my mid 30's) it's the first quake that's been felt in living memory. Sure there have been smaller magnitude 2 or 3 quakes, but the last 5.x quake in the area was in 1968... before I was even born. Granted, I'm not a St. Louis native, either.
:)
I have to admit though, the first one I probably would have slept through had it not been for my wife panicking and connecting her elbow with my face, but the second I felt as I was sitting at my desk at work and watched my monitors wobble back and forth. The second I could've easily mistaken for a large convoy of trucks going past the office if only our office was on a bridge over the highway. The first, once I was standing up (thanks to the expedient of body parts) was enough to shake the entire house and toppled a table lamp. Other than that at first my rather groggy brain started to wonder if it was just something freaky happening with my house until I opened the back door to let my dog out and heard what sounded like a rioting zoo in the woods behind my house. Then I knew it was a quake, and then it was just a matter of going to USGS website and seeing what the magnitude was.
Really quite an odd experience. Although they talk a lot about the New Madrid fault and how an earthquake of 7+ magnitude is overdue, you don't really think about it much until a quake really hits. On the bright side, maybe this mornings tremors will make people think more about earthquakes and the effect they can have.
5.2 is a big quake to those who've never felt one before. My personal high is a 6.8 but that wasn't in St. Louis, either
Definitely doable. I put OSX on a PowerCenter 120 with a 500Mhz G3 CPU. Unfortunately, it wasn't usable for much other than just to say I did it. I used XPostFacto... which is a requirement for these old PCI Mac Clones.
:)
The reason? Well, the 33Mhz frontsize bus had a lot to do with it. I had 1/2 Gig of RAM, but every time that fast G3 had to go across the bus to fetch from RAM, it was pitiful. Then add the SCSI drives (even though I later added a PCI IDE Bus to my machine) that were running SCSI 1, and I was not exactly smoking.
Still, the machine was in use periodically up until 2005 when I finally gave in and bought a Macbook Pro. I had it dual-boot to OSX and upgraded to OSX 10.1, but 10.2 would never go because at the time XPostFacto's support for 10.2 was spotty at best.
Still, as I said... go for it. It can't hurt and it's interesting to note that despite one hack required, hardware this old CAN still run OSX. Now whether or not it'll run Leopard... that's another matter
ONE horrible movie? Oh, I beg to differ.
Which one? Pick one!
... some Led Zeppelin playing on the classic cock station... You know, I can't help but be struck by the irony of someone making a typo while making fun of a typo. Karma's a b**ch, ain't it?
...what would we do with the giant hole left after extracting that petroleum? Where's a link to Goatse when you need one?Either that, or my contacts are seriously needing changed.
Prices aren't going down, not significantly. The reason these oil field are even being talked about now is that they're now cost effective at $100 per barrel (or thereabouts), whereas at $50 a barrel they weren't. Sorry, but America has to accept that oil prices will never get down to where gasoline is $1 a gallon again... not ever.
The $1 a gallon gasoline was an aberration that resulted in undervalued gasoline. The massive increases we've seen in the last few years are just the correction in the market for those aritificially low prices.
It's like a drug pusher; the first hit's free (or cheap)...
To which I have to agree. But have you listened to the radio recently? I'd say the signal to noise ratio on the commercial radio waves these days is FAR worse than I find on Podcasts. Plus, I find the semi-professionally or professionally produced podcasts (Hi there, http://twit.tv/) and then often my new subscriptions are "referrals" from those rather than "podcast surfing". I also admit sometimes my choice of podcasts is driven by friends who recommend another podcast... but more often than not they're occasionally amusing and at best get listened to when I have nothing better going on.
:)
Thus, to your point; yes, the majority of podcasts and blogs are drivel... but those good ones that are worth listening to get a listenership, and through them often feed other blogs/podcasts. That's pretty much how the radio works, too... but there's a LOT of crap on the radio. There's also a lot of crap on TV, but that's another story entirely
To the GP; no, podcasting didn't fail the Technorati, either. In fact, I consider myself a member of the Technorati and I listen to Podcasts all the time when I'm commuting or when I'm out for a long walk on my own. I even listen to tech podcasts... yes, I'm a geek. Podcasting being a failure is a point of view of the author of the original article. I'm not sure it's really shared by that many people. Everyone I've turned onto podcasts still listens to them... some people stopped listening to the radio (like me). The only people who have "sidelined" podcasting in my opinion are those who've never heard of it, or those who never found a podcast to their taste. Well, I know a lot of people who have "sidelined" the radio and TV (myself included) because there's never anything on to listen to or watch that's worth my valuable time.
YMMV.
I know you're being funny... and yes, you're actually sort of correct in that hardware IS expensive for the 400. However, for doing real work, there's almost nothing that beats it.
Bear in mind, I haven't admin'd a 400 in about 6 years; I've moved to the UNIX/Windows side of the house a long time ago. However, I still work with AS/400 people all the time in my job.
On a server, you DON'T need a GUI. If you're wanting a machine to really crunch numbers and run intensive apps then 16 colors IS enough. Working with simple text files is all UNIX does, too... and besides, if you want to get real information then what else do you need? You don't need huge honking binary files to represent the data you want to crunch.
And yes, it does take a LONG time to restart the system. But come on, do you know how often you actually need to restart an AS/400? I think the ones we have at work have run for two years or so without an IPL and are only coming up on a restart soon because of some updates to the operating system.
For a corporation that wants uptime and pure number crunching there's almost nothing that compares in price/performance. Yes, they're complex... and yes, they're expensive. But for pure uptime and number crunching capability there isn't a UNIX or Windows-based option that even compares.
Oh, and these days you can have your GUI and eat it. There are loads of Windows-based and X-based applications that use AS/400's as a backend system. The only people who use green-screens are usually the admins. In fact, I'd bet almost every one of our people who use our 400 on a daily basis have no idea that they're using a Windows app that's backended by an AS/400... and they don't care. Mercifully, they don't need to.
And yes, I know about the whole "iSeries / System i" thing and don't really care. I've always referred to them as AS/400's and probably always will.
Depends on your needs, doesn't it?
:)
I have a Macbook Pro and love it to death. You know why? Because I feel I got a damned good deal.
There's a world of difference between the cheapo Dell and HP laptops and a Macbook Pro. Fit, finish, build quality and engineering are places where an MBP excels. You're comparing a consumer-grade laptop with a pro-grade laptop and wondering why the pro-grade laptop is more expensive. Why do you think Dell and HP have multiple product lines? Do you really think their consumer-grade laptop is identical to the pro-grade laptop in all but name? They sure do have the same computing capacity.
When I bought my MBP, I compared prices. I compared the MBP to an equivalent pro-grade laptop from Dell, HP and a couple of others. In every case except the Dell, the alternatives were *more expensive* than the MBP. The Dell was only $100 less (or thereabouts). I bought the MBP because it gave me legal flexibility to run either Windows or OSX... or run them both at the same time in Parallels. I didn't *need* a UNIX workstation at that point, but I have spent enough time with UNIX and/or Linux that I like the command line. Now, I can't imagine being without OSX or some other UNIX variant, and I definitely don't regret my decision to buy the MBP.
I also bought the Mac for the support of the company. So far, every experience I've had with Apple tech support has been a pleasure. Can't say the same for my work laptop (an HP running Vista), where every time I have a problem I go around in circles with up to four vendors pointing fingers at each other; HP, Microsoft, an application vendor and a hardware vendor (drivers). With the Mac, I have one call. Application problems are also a lot less frequent in OSX. Don't know why, they just are. Perhaps because the API is better documented
Of course, it depends on your needs... but yes, you can get a 15" laptop from the other vendors cheap. However, the display panel itself may not be as good quality... and build quality may suffer.
I bought my wife a laptop about the same time as I bought my MBP. It also had a 15" screen, was a lot cheaper and ran nicely. However, it didn't last. It's now sitting in a "bits box" in my study because I can't get the damn thing to work and repairing it is more costly than buying a new laptop. She currently uses my Linux desktop (which I primarily use as a file server) to do her work and next month I'm buying her a Macbook. Not a pro... just a Macbook. She likes them, I like them and it's going to be easier for me to support.
This guy is comparing SSD's with hard drives that are several generations old at this point. If you try a more modern hard drive then you'd be surprised at how little noise comes from it. My first gen Macbook Pro came with a 100Mb drive that you could barely tell was doing anything unless you stuck your ear up to it. I recently upgraded it to a 320Gb Western Digital and it's quieter still... not to mention faster. It has slightly reduced my battery life, though.
SSD's are better though, that's true. However, since my hard drive is quieter than the fans in my laptop is that really going to be a compelling reason for me to upgrade? There's been a lot of work on quiet hard drive technology in the last couple of years that's really impressive. Audio is not my reason to upgrade.
OK, I can sort of see his point, given his perspective. Doesn't change the fact that he's wrong.
I have unlimited data on my Windows Mobile device through AT&T. St. Louis has an excellent 3G network, and yes I tether my Mac and my Vista laptop both through the device. You know what? It's not bad... but it's NOTHING compared to a wireless access point at a coffee house, hotel or whatever.
I work on the road occasionally, and if I have a choice I'll go to a coffee shop and work from there if I need Internet access... and I'll use the WiFi. The reasons for this are numerous;
1. Battery life. My phone has a limited battery life which will last a good two days with normal use, but drops to only a few hours if I'm using the data connection with my laptop. Yes, I can do it through Bluetooth but because of the battery issues I have to physically tether the phone to my laptop to keep it charged. Then when I do that, boy does my phone get HOT! Until battery technology in cellphones improves, I can't see this working too well.
2. Latency. If you want a good Internet connection, then you need to get latency lower. That's not really realistic because of the way cellular networks work. The latency's not as bad as, say a satellite connection... but you sure as hell get less latency on a WiFi access point (which is usually attached to a cable Intenet connection or DSL). Hell, I've been in a coffee shop full of people on laptops surfing the web, and despite the occasional slowdown from somebody visiting Windowsupdate, the connection is better than what I get through my cellphone. That's also something that a technical support guy can fix with QoS in the router...
3. Reliability. WiFi is short range, but over its short range it's pretty damned robust. 3G isn't. Particularly if you happen to be sitting near enough to multiple towers, there are often times when you're bouncing between towers. Every time that happens, your DNS times out because your connection dropped and restored (even though you were unaware of it unless you know what you're looking for). There are several of these "Bermuda Triangle" spots near me, and I avoid them because it's irritating. Thankfully, there's coffee shops with WiFi nearby.
4. Cost. Why should I pay for my data connection at all, when I can sit at a coffee shop, get the coffee I was already going to be drinking for a few cents (maybe around a dollar), and sit there and use their WiFi for an hour or so. Why should I be limited? Yes, I'm really paying for my Internet connection too, but to the coffee shop itself it's a loss-leader. A coffee shop that has free WiFi is usually more popular than one without... and people who sit long enough will buy something. Sometimes several somethings.
A good friend of mine owns a coffee shop, and he admits there are a few people who come in, buy the cheapest cup of coffee they can and sit there all day... but even them he doesn't mind. Simply put, if there are people in a coffee shop, people going past are more likely to see people in there and decide to visit. An empty coffee shop tends to remain empty. His Cable Internet connection costs him, what, $20-$30 a month, plus the electricity required to run the WAP and the cable modem. He spends more in a month on paper napkins; to him it's just an additional cost to doing business. Compared to the cost of running the store itself, it's miniscule. Besides, the majority of people who come in and sit all day tend to buy stuff all day. Coffee, soda... hell they even buy lunch which is where he makes pretty decent money. Those who buy a single small coffee and sit all day are in the minority... and he knows who they are since they tend to be "repeat offenders"
Now don't get my wrong; my tethered Internet connection is invaluable to me and I use it several times a week. However, if I have a choice and I know a place with a WAP is nearby, I'd rather use that. I pay for my data connection with my phone, but only because I use it so much. If the cost were zero or near zero, th
Yes, I do agree that it's not for everyone, and not for every trip. For me, however the majority of my business trips tend to be at minimum about a week, and usually to Western countries (Europe, America, Canada, etc.) And you're right about the bean counters but it also depends on how much the data on the laptop is worth.
:)
However, my other advice still stands; encrypt your laptop and carry vital data on a secondary media (also encrypted) so in the event your laptop IS lost then the data you need on said business trip is not also lost.
I've also invested in an EePC, which allows me a really compact carry-on that I can also use at the hotel to check my email and so forth before my laptop arrives. I realize there's the same risk of losing that as the laptop, but it's still nice to be able to cram two weeks worth of clothes AND a computer into a single carry-on
My advice? Take the minimum you need for your flight and ship the rest. Yes, that includes your laptop.
Last time I went on an international business trip, I took one carry-on with my clothes packed in vacuum-sealed bags. As far as electronic items, I took my 60Gb iPod and my HTC TyTN... oh, and a set of noise-canceling headphones. Not to mention an eye-mask and ear plugs (so I could sleep). That's it... nothing else.
I had packaged up my laptop and other business-related paraphernalia in a secured box and shipped using an insured carrier the day before I departed. Yes, that meant I was "sans laptop" for a day... but really... with my TyTN able to get my email and web browsing I didn't miss it. The laptop and stuff arrived the day after I did and was quite secure... I didn't have to run the rigmarole of dealing with the TSA or their foreign counterparts with my laptop, and I had the security of knowing all my luggage was in the overhead during the entire flight and wasn't getting lost somewhere in the depths of Newark's baggage handling facility (those who've gone through Newark know this pain).
Sure, the shipping wasn't cheap but I was able to write it off as a business expense since all I was shipping were business items. I treat either carry-on or checked bags as an insecure location to store critical information. Yes, there's a risk that a loss may occur with a carrier like Fedex or UPS as well, but if it's insured then you can claim it back. Oh, and make sure the data on the drive is encrypted if you're really feeling paranoid.
So what if I'd wanted to work the day I arrived? Yes, that would be a catch. However, the first day after you arrive internationally, you're almost never going to be functional. You're going to want to sleep. However, just on the off-chance I had a bug up my butt to actually do some work that day, I put critical information (critical to the project at hand plus a few other minor items) onto the hard drive of the iPod, and a copy on a 2Gb USB stick... both encrypted of course. That way, I'm pretty much covered.
Did the same on the way home and couldn't have been happier. There's little reason to take a laptop onto a trans-oceanic flight these days... most of the airlines do in-flight movies. Even if not you can put movies on your iPod or iPhone or (insert media player of choice here). I have considered in the past getting one of the nice portable media centers to carry on international flights, but to-date I have never needed them. Plus, I make a point of getting red-eyes (overnight flights) so that I'm almost forced into a position where I get a few hours of sleep. That makes the travel much more bearable.
Think about your priorities and make a decision from there what you need to bring... but bear in mind a laptop is LOW priority if you're sensible about your other technologies. Laptops are also a risk, and when I travel the only places I like to carry my laptop are between the hotel and the office... and then ship it to my next port of call. I find travel a LOT less stressful since I started this because it means you have a minimum of stuff to keep a track of, and so long as you make sensible use of encryption your data is as secure as reasonable.
I just have to chime in and say I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. I was in the UK in October last year, and I used two Internet cafes while on my trip. I had a laptop with me, but had difficulty locating WiFi. Anyway, about six weeks after I returned, my Yahoo email account was compromised by a spammer. Thankfully they didn't change my password so I was able to get in and secure the account as soon as I found out about it... but those two IC machines were the only places I had logged into my Yahoo account where I hadn't controlled the machine in a very long time (about two years). As a result, I'm pretty sure that my account was compromised because I used an Internet Cafe machine to check my email.
:)
IC's are all fine and good, but nowadays the only Internet Cafes I'll even touch are those that run Linux or allow me to use my own laptop on Wifi (most of them charge a reasonable fee for wireless and give you a code you can enter in your web browser). Even then, I've gotten to the point that on a wifi connection I use a secure-shell forwarded proxy (that I also control) so when I enter details they can't be sniffed unless somebody's REALLY determined to get my password. Of course, that SSH forwarded proxy is simple when you're a UNIX/Linux geek and your laptop's a Mac
Well, I have AT&T. I have an HTC TyTN which is a 3G phone which allows me to "tether" via bluetooth to my Macbook Pro. I must admit that the convenience factor is wonderful. For example, I sat recently on a 4 hour layover at Newark airport. Of course, they have "for charge" wireless which sucks, but I just turned on my Internet sharing, attached to the network from my Mac and I was able to sit there sending and receiving email, chatting with family and friends on IM... all that sort of stuff. However, it was only a GPRS/EDGE connection so the experience when browsing the web was sort of sad and pathetic. I'm just glad I block flash and ads in my Firefox or I would've been livid at the time it took to load pages. Or bored.
However, even at best the 3G connection is only "acceptable". If you're using it for email and/or IM it's probably more than acceptable (IMAP or POP3). Web-based email with lots of ads and flash crap (Yahoo) is going to drive you nuts. Web-based mail with mostly text-based stuff (Gmail) is going to be MUCH more workable, but is still going to be slow. So long as you're not going to be downloading software updates, you'll be fine. I even make a habit of shutting down iTunes before I hook up to my phone network because if there's an updated podcast it's going to try to download it (I subscribe to several) and you'll be wondering what the hell happened to your connection speed for fifteen minutes until you realize what's happening (yes, I've done that).
For home, though I have to say I like having my cable-modem connection with my G-wireless (and a wired connection when I want to backup to my server). Although St. Louis (where I live) has excellent 3G coverage, it's still not a patch on having a 5Mb/s connection at home to download my software updates and stuff. Besides, even on the best 3G connection sometimes the "DNS Lookup Delay" can be annoying... and even worse is the latency when you're hitting websites.
So the answer? It depends what you want to do with it. If you have a system you control EVERY aspect (like when it downloads updates and such) then give it a shot... but use it as an augmentation of a high-speed connection at home, not a replacement. If you don't know when a system will be downloading updates (Mac, Windows) then you might find yourself blaming a connection for slow response when it's actually your OS silently downloading something in the background. I know enough about Mac OS to be able to jump around and know when it's doing something I don't want... but most users don't.
YMMV.
I'm the same age... and I love learning new stuff all the time. It keeps me active.
Plus, by doing "obsolete" things I learned the basics early on... I learned the principles on which IT works. As a result, the only thing new I learn are semantics, and I can keep ahead of that easily. New concepts are rare in IT. For example, I learned 68K assembly language in my teens (I was a demo coder) and though I haven't seen 68K code in years (except on Wikipedia) I still use the principles and concepts behind that assembly language to understand better the flow of applications and how a stack overflow actually occurs... not to mention speak intelligently with coders where I work and surprise them with the fact that an infrastructure guy can talk "code"
Really, I mean what do I deal with on a daily basis? Windows servers, ethernet, routers, TCP/IP... all stuff that's relatively unchanged in decades (in the latter) or just a few years (Windows servers). Even then, concepts remain the same and I apply my knowledge of Windows servers to Novell, UNIX, Linux, BSD, MacOS etc... because they all do the same thing. Only the specifics vary and they're easy to learn.
But if you're suffering real learning fatigue... go for it. If you're not happy learning new stuff, then you will never be happy in this field. I question whether you've done it all right given what you said, but only you know what's right for you.
Navigating by compass is certainly NOT obsolete. I'm a private pilot as a hobby, and in my flight bag I have a few items I might need in the event I end up on the ground somewhere I don't know. Things like maps, a small first aid kit and a COMPASS. Sure, in most of the midwest if I set down I'm usually not too far from a road... but having had one forced landing in my life I can tell you that it's easy to get disoriented when you're on unfamiliar ground. Where I set down, there was a main road just a couple of miles to the Northwest (I could see it as I descended and made a note of it). After the plane landed and flipped, I got out and had no idea which way was Northwest... until I whipped out my compass and then took a sort of limping hike.
Hell, I've even used my compass in-flight in a plane that had no compass on the dash (unusual) and the gyro decided it was going to spin incessantly when I tried to cage it and pointed in the right direction for maybe two seconds every minute.
I disagree with just about everything on this list. The skills may be unpopular... but most of them aren't obsolete. Not yet... and some never will be.
Well, I would say Toshiba DID produce good machines about 9 years ago. I had one; a Portege 3490CT which I only stopped using because running even a pared down Linux install was getting kind of sad. I used that machine up until I bought my Macbook Pro two years ago and loved it to death. Wish I hadn't sold it now, actually.
I've found the best of both worlds; I have a Macbook Pro which gives me all the stuff I need to get my work done (office apps, Scrivener and so on), and I recently installed Gentoo for OSX. It takes a bit of work, but doesn't Gentoo normally? Anyway, it uses OSX as it's kernel, and runs just as extra UNIX tools on your system. You have all the flexibility of EMERGE, Gentoo and so on, but you've still got your working OS to get your work done while your compiles are running.
/gentoo folder. This works great as it means if I ever want to remove it, I can just drag it to the trash. Of course, I likes me some Gentoo action :)
I use a prefixed install, which means everything's under a
I dunno... people said the same thing about my Portege when I bought it. It certainly seemed pretty flimsy. 7 years later I finally replaced it with a Macbook Pro because the 733Mhz CPU was cramping my style a bit. It still had a 5-6 hour battery life (with the external battery pack), and still appeared flimsy. However, it lasted.
;)
I agree in one respect though; the proof of the MBA will be in the pudding. I can't wait to see reports on how these things last from people who DO fly commercially a lot.
I still fly... I just think that playing with a laptop is probably not a good thing when you're the one with your hands on the controls
Yeah, the X-series is a good laptop... but I never once claimed that the Macbook Air was revolutionary. It's another competitor in the same space as the X-Series with the advantage that it can run a certified UNIX platform (Leopard) and in fact defaults to that state. It also has some really nice productivity tools that either don't exist on the Windows platform, or have half-hearted attempts. I've yet to find a better writing environment than Scrivener... and if there's an alternative for PC I've not found one, yet. Granted, I haven't looked much lately; I'm quite happy with the Mac platform.
So, the Macbook Air isn't for the Windows guy. Never was. It's a Mac... and as such is targeted at the road warrior who wants to run a Mac. There's a lot of those around these days.
And let's see... in your list of extras I have to say the only thing I miss from that is the extra USB port... but even then that's a relatively minor thing. External drives? Well, the Time Capsule is effectively that without wires... I'd go on but you get the point I think. Although I agree with you in principle that the X-Series is "better", it's only better for some people. For me, since I've now made the transition to the Mac platform as my daily computer of choice the X-series is in fact no longer in the running. It can't run OSX or some of the applications I like to use. While you can happily put Windows on the MBA and make it compete on a level playing field with the X-Series, why would you?
There's an airline adapter on Apple's webpage. I have one for my MBP. Don't use it as much as I expected to... but I also don't change the battery... ever. And if you're a road-warrior in the car... well, I've never had a problem finding either (a) a coffee shop or (b) the outlet in my car to charge my laptop.
If you can't get done in 5 hours what you need to get done on a plane, then you're not working very efficiently. If I am on a flight more than 5 hours, sitting in that seat for that time with my laptop is going to get old quick... and on a shorter flight the non-removable battery is a complete non-issue.
Maybe a problem with when you fly to a destination? Well, again, most rental cars have outlets... all it takes is a very small adapter these days.
My Macbook Pro gets ~3 hours on the battery. To-date I've never needed to swap it out... I don't even own a second battery. It's not that I don't do work; I just work efficiently. I can also raise my battery life by dimming the screen, turning off the wireless and Bluetooth, etc.... that helps.
Ah, but therein lies the other catch; the reality distortion field means you're actually sitting on a milk crate... the RDF just makes you THINK you're in first class.