Like someone mentioned previously, the Apple Store in SoHo will happily sell you a brand new PowerBook or iBook G4 and let you walk out with it that day (assuming, of course, they're in stock which they should be).
Not only that but I know for a fact that Apple's portable power supplies for their laptops are auto-switching for both US and UK (and other) power standards -- the only thing that needs to be adapted is the physical plug itself and you can get those adapters either in the store or at any major electronics store or travel agent.
Are you kidding? A "gaming" laptop? Last I checked those laptops were lucky to have an hour of battery life and weigh a substantial amount -- they're designed to be portable desktop systems, not powerful laptops.
I firmly believe that the 12" iBook G4 and PowerBook G4, and the 15" PowerBook G4 are some of the finest laptops on the market today and can fit most laptop budgets once you factor in Apple's educational pricing, but Dell isn't too bad either.
As I recall this is a property of Open Firmware (which means a CHRP-compliant Sun should be able to to it too), but I believe it does rely on part of the Open Firmware chip being on all the time.
No idea why they waited until now to implement the UI portion of the equation...
From what I've heard, from several sources, Mr. J.C. Penney (yes, that J.C. Penney, who started the American department store) is responsible for this. He was selling things for even values and his employees were pocketing some of the money after the customer walked away. Changing his prices so that the customers had to get change (back when $0.01 was actually usable to buy something) made it so the employees had to open the cash drawer and they were less likely to have thoughts of theft. The marketing aspect ("Under $1.00!") probably had some play into his price changes, as well.
That's all hearsay, however, so take it with a grain of salt. But it sounds pretty logical to me.
I used REALbasic for a short time in Mac OS 9, and I found it to be a fantastic solution for application design. The language is simple and very easy to learn and the UI design tools work very well. It also lets you build apps for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows all from one project; while I never tried this myself, I've never heard any complaints about it. REALsoftware also has a bunch of moderate- to high-traffic mailing lists for discussion of various aspects of REALbasic coding, and they're frequented very often by REALsoftware people, including the CEO Geoff Pearlman. You couldn't ask for better support for your money from them.
The only major drawback is that it costs money, but you can grab the demo and start toying with it to see how well it works. To echo the other posters, it's not for low-level or realtime performance.
Again, I agree with both posters here: You may be missing out on the right solution if you overlook it.
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Like someone mentioned previously, the Apple Store in SoHo will happily sell you a brand new PowerBook or iBook G4 and let you walk out with it that day (assuming, of course, they're in stock which they should be).
Not only that but I know for a fact that Apple's portable power supplies for their laptops are auto-switching for both US and UK (and other) power standards -- the only thing that needs to be adapted is the physical plug itself and you can get those adapters either in the store or at any major electronics store or travel agent.
Also, Apple's laptops rule.
Are you kidding? A "gaming" laptop? Last I checked those laptops were lucky to have an hour of battery life and weigh a substantial amount -- they're designed to be portable desktop systems, not powerful laptops.
I firmly believe that the 12" iBook G4 and PowerBook G4, and the 15" PowerBook G4 are some of the finest laptops on the market today and can fit most laptop budgets once you factor in Apple's educational pricing, but Dell isn't too bad either.
You can rip to any bitrate as set in the preferences, and there are no restrictions on it regardless of whether you've set it to rip to MP3 or AAC.
`bug.
As I recall this is a property of Open Firmware (which means a CHRP-compliant Sun should be able to to it too), but I believe it does rely on part of the Open Firmware chip being on all the time.
No idea why they waited until now to implement the UI portion of the equation...
`bug.
From what I've heard, from several sources, Mr. J.C. Penney (yes, that J.C. Penney, who started the American department store) is responsible for this. He was selling things for even values and his employees were pocketing some of the money after the customer walked away. Changing his prices so that the customers had to get change (back when $0.01 was actually usable to buy something) made it so the employees had to open the cash drawer and they were less likely to have thoughts of theft. The marketing aspect ("Under $1.00!") probably had some play into his price changes, as well. That's all hearsay, however, so take it with a grain of salt. But it sounds pretty logical to me.
I used REALbasic for a short time in Mac OS 9, and I found it to be a fantastic solution for application design. The language is simple and very easy to learn and the UI design tools work very well. It also lets you build apps for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows all from one project; while I never tried this myself, I've never heard any complaints about it. REALsoftware also has a bunch of moderate- to high-traffic mailing lists for discussion of various aspects of REALbasic coding, and they're frequented very often by REALsoftware people, including the CEO Geoff Pearlman. You couldn't ask for better support for your money from them.
The only major drawback is that it costs money, but you can grab the demo and start toying with it to see how well it works. To echo the other posters, it's not for low-level or realtime performance.
Again, I agree with both posters here: You may be missing out on the right solution if you overlook it.