Many parts of laptops, especially the battery and power supply, seem to be prone to failure, and unlike a normal computer, these parts are not interchangable (part of the reason for this is that many people don't realize that computers parts are interchangable, but think that their computer has a special "Dell" Hard Drive), so if you have a three year old computer with a dead or broken battery, you are going to spend a lot of time on e-Bay and a lot of money to replace it.
As a sysadmin, I've opened up plenty of new & old Dell desktop computers and found proprietary power supplies, CPU sockets, and (obviously) the motherboard. It's not like you can stop by CompUSA or Fry's and pick up replacements. This is also shared among notebook computers and servers.
Things like RAM modules and hard disks are certainly standardized parts and replaceable on all three types of computers.
The key to owning any computer, portable or not, is that if you aren't personally equipped to service the machine yourself, purchase the extended warranty plan. Dell offers 3 year warranties for an extra cost. Apple does the same with AppleCare.
I have fond memories of purchasing video games for my PC, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Genesis, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and PSOne at Software Etc. and Babbages. At the time, there was no consumer Internet mechanism to buy online and outside of Toys R Us, my big-chain department store selection was limited to the mediocre selection of games at the local Zayre/Ames.
Used games could be mail-ordered through Funcoland. Also briefly in their local shops. Live was decent.
Fast forward a few years and all those games-only stores were absorbed into EBGames and Gamestop. PC games & hardware, once maintays of the front of the store, are all consolidated into a single bookshelf of shopworn boxes. Only the current crop of MMORPGs & their expansions live in the front.
Prices for new games were higher than the prices for those same games at Walmart, sometimes by as much as $10-$15. Buyback prices for trade-in games are at all-time lows. Prices for used games are retardedly high, especially for ancient games that are members of still-thriving franchises (example: A scuffed up, magic-marker'd Mega Man I cartidge for the monochrome gameboy can still be found for sale in Gamestop or EB Games for $17.99.
These days, if you want a deal on new games, it's just better to hit Walmart or Target. If you want a deal on used games or specialty items, the plethora of online shops and eBay are the only way to go.
Still, whenever I go to the local mall to watch a movie, I still instinctively wander into the mall's Gamestop/EBGames and lament changed times.
1. Connect your camera or insert your media card into the reader.
2. iPhoto launches. Import your photos.
3. Click the order prints button. (Charge it to the credit card you use with your Apple ID for iTunes)
In a few days, you get nice prints for a reasonable price.
DPI quality hounds can precede the procedure above with opening the pictures in Photoshop or The GIMP and saving them at 200+ DPI, then dragging the files into iPhoto as Step 1.
Despite owning a photo-capable inkjet printer, whenever I want high-quality and/or long lasting prints, I just use iPhoto's service.
I also use iPhoto to create immense 20"x30" posters in 200 DPI quality. Accomplished in mere mouse clicks and something not even Walmart can't do. Kinko's and the like tend to charge greatly for a similar product.
When I was growing up ecyclopedias were banned for citation use for our assorted papers in elemtary and secondary school. In college, they were also banned for citation use.
So I went through the education system without using encyclopedias for anything other than an "Ask Mr. Wizard" source for personal entertainment and enlightenment.
And that's exactly what I use Wikipedia for today.
Granted I'm past the age of writing papers for school, but there's still a lot of interesting things out there that I simply don't know about or can benefit from learning more about.
Blogs are the modern day replacements for the "My Homepages" of the 1995-1998 era...
...except for the looping MIDI file, the obligatory "Page Under Construction" hard hat image, and the animated paper-folding,sliding-into-stamped-envelope,landin g-in-mailbox "e-mail me" GIF.
I've been an owner of a 3rd-Gen 10GB iPod for over 2 years and my iPods screen doesn't have any scratches. Why? because my iPod spends almost every second if its existence in a leather case with a clear vinyl/plastic covering for the screen.
I only remove the iPod from this protection when it is in the dock for syncing/charging. And I remove it slowly.
The back of my iPod's leather case has a sturdy, metal belt clip woven inside, allowing me to hook it into a a pocket (the device outside the pocket) while I walk/do work.
I don't know about others, but when I spend more than $100 on something, I do everything in my power to protect it. I don't ever operate my iPod "naked" and would never consider just dropping the bare device in a pocket knowing that the simple motion of walking can grind your pocket lining against your screen with the pressure of your pant's fit and body heat to exacerbate scratching.
Blame Apple for the "1,000 Songs in your Pocket" slogan. Blame Steve Jobs for pulling an iPod nano out of his pocket. Blame Apple for not having nano tubes ready on launch day. But blame yourself if you don't make every effort of prevention.
Nintendo has stated several times that the Nintendo DS is a third system pillar. The other two pillars are the Gameboy and the home console (currently the GCN, soon to be the Revolution).
The inclusion of the GBA cartidge slot in the DS was simply a way of adding value and removing some risk in investing in a DS.
Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to resume my game of monochrome-GB Tetris on my NES Classic model GBA SP while I await FF4's release...
While I disagree with any price-raising for iTunes tracks, if they do proceed to to raise the price, they should at least upgrade the file encoding from 128kbps to 192kbps or more.
If I have to carry a laptop to which I don't have admin rights to, I'd quit.
...and be replaced with someone who'd deal.
I'm a sysadmin. All Mac OS X and Windows notebooks I deploy are preconfigured, tested, verified, and locked down. Even Classic.
If any special apps or hardware is needed, it has to be dropped off during the "preconfigured" part of the process.
The truth here is you are being furnished with a portable workstation, not a personal surfboard.
Nine times out of ten, when some one pages/calls their IT department at 2am because their laptop broke, it's because they were doing something they weren't supposed to do, like install personal software and hardware.
I'm sorry, but if you call me at 2am because installing Flight Simulator broke your machine, and now you can't do your PowerPoint presentation (the work task at hand) I'm going to laugh at you, hang up, and report you to my boss.
1. Instant Calculator. I don't want to add the Calculator to my dock. I can simply hit F12.
2. I hate auto-spell checkers. So I usually have them off. Thus, when I want to check the spelling of a word, I love popping open the Dictionary widget. Quick. Easy. And faster than opening up Word or enabling spell check.
3. I regularly work with a distributor in another time zone. I keep my world clock set to their time zone. For me, it's faster to press F12 than to make the appropriate GMT +/- adjustment in my head.
4. Doppler radar. I am a weather nut and a sysadmin. When severe weather is in my area, I enjoy having instant access to the local doppler radar at the press of a button. Sure beats opening up a browser/tab and hitting a bookmark.
Since using Tiger, when I'm using a machine running Panther or Windows, I'm often taken aback when I naturally press F12 and nothing happens.
I had many fond memories of playing Oregon Trail on Apple//e computers in elementary school and Maelstrom in college.
Thankfully, Apple//e emulators are available today and the makers of Maelstrom have a free OS X version of Maelstrom as a free download from their site.
Seems to me that Microsoft would prefer that you refresh your X-Box 360 each year with a new $200 purchase to get the latest technology.
I wonder if they'll have lifecycles on the older X-Box 360s and, over the next 2-3 years, kill Live support for the earlier generations of X-Box 360s that lack hardware of the most recent ones.
When I went to college, there were two book stores: the Official campus book store in the student union and the off-campus book store with much lower prices and a larger selection of used editions.
(Arguably, the Internet was a third store for finding people willing to sell their old books.)
These new digital editions allow the campus's official bookstore to have a monopoly on the sale of the digital edition and also allows them to not feeding the resale/Internet competition.
Apple or not, maybe this will expose the stupidity behind the generic techno patent craze that's been going on the past 4-5 years.
Full-disclosure: I own an iPod, a PowerMac G5, and a 17" PowerBook. I love OS X. I occasionally drink the special Kool-Aid while sitting in range of the reality distortion field.
From TFA: "The tubes can even be removed from their fixture and carried around as portable light sources."
Now this is impressive. Unscrew the bulb/tube and walk with it to safety. Very nice idea.
"Even if the tubes are shattered by an explosion, the shards will still provide light"
A smart idea. Also can serve as a sort of "bread crumbs" way for people to explore in dark passageways and find their way back out. Kind of hard to clean up shattered glass tubing.
I hope Apple incorporates Mighty Mouse technology into the trackpads of their iBooks and PowerBooks.
While the new two-finger scrolling feature and third-party trackpad drivers can lend much of the mighty mouse's features, it would be nice for a full, first-party solution.
Quicktime's nice and all but most content worth watching are for Xvid or Divx.
DivX codecs are available for the Quicktime Player, too. Since iTunes uses QuickTime Player's srevices to render videos, porn on iPods can happen if they allow codecs to sync with iPods.
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I'll let The Joy of Tech summarize this article's comments.
Things like RAM modules and hard disks are certainly standardized parts and replaceable on all three types of computers.
The key to owning any computer, portable or not, is that if you aren't personally equipped to service the machine yourself, purchase the extended warranty plan. Dell offers 3 year warranties for an extra cost. Apple does the same with AppleCare.
I have fond memories of purchasing video games for my PC, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Genesis, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and PSOne at Software Etc. and Babbages. At the time, there was no consumer Internet mechanism to buy online and outside of Toys R Us, my big-chain department store selection was limited to the mediocre selection of games at the local Zayre/Ames.
Used games could be mail-ordered through Funcoland. Also briefly in their local shops. Live was decent.
Fast forward a few years and all those games-only stores were absorbed into EBGames and Gamestop. PC games & hardware, once maintays of the front of the store, are all consolidated into a single bookshelf of shopworn boxes. Only the current crop of MMORPGs & their expansions live in the front.
Prices for new games were higher than the prices for those same games at Walmart, sometimes by as much as $10-$15. Buyback prices for trade-in games are at all-time lows. Prices for used games are retardedly high, especially for ancient games that are members of still-thriving franchises (example: A scuffed up, magic-marker'd Mega Man I cartidge for the monochrome gameboy can still be found for sale in Gamestop or EB Games for $17.99.
These days, if you want a deal on new games, it's just better to hit Walmart or Target. If you want a deal on used games or specialty items, the plethora of online shops and eBay are the only way to go.
Still, whenever I go to the local mall to watch a movie, I still instinctively wander into the mall's Gamestop/EBGames and lament changed times.
1. Connect your camera or insert your media card into the reader.
2. iPhoto launches. Import your photos.
3. Click the order prints button. (Charge it to the credit card you use with your Apple ID for iTunes)
In a few days, you get nice prints for a reasonable price.
DPI quality hounds can precede the procedure above with opening the pictures in Photoshop or The GIMP and saving them at 200+ DPI, then dragging the files into iPhoto as Step 1.
Despite owning a photo-capable inkjet printer, whenever I want high-quality and/or long lasting prints, I just use iPhoto's service.
I also use iPhoto to create immense 20"x30" posters in 200 DPI quality. Accomplished in mere mouse clicks and something not even Walmart can't do. Kinko's and the like tend to charge greatly for a similar product.
When I was growing up ecyclopedias were banned for citation use for our assorted papers in elemtary and secondary school. In college, they were also banned for citation use.
So I went through the education system without using encyclopedias for anything other than an "Ask Mr. Wizard" source for personal entertainment and enlightenment.
And that's exactly what I use Wikipedia for today.
Granted I'm past the age of writing papers for school, but there's still a lot of interesting things out there that I simply don't know about or can benefit from learning more about.
nt
1. Open up the Security Center applet in the Control Panel.
2. In the left margin of the Security Center window, click the "Change the way Security Center alerts me" link.
3. In the window that appears, uncheck the alerts you don't want to see (Firewall, Automatic Updates, Anti-Virus) and click OK.
Blogs are the modern day replacements for the "My Homepages" of the 1995-1998 era...
...except for the looping MIDI file, the obligatory "Page Under Construction" hard hat image, and the animated paper-folding,sliding-into-stamped-envelope,landin g-in-mailbox "e-mail me" GIF.
I've been an owner of a 3rd-Gen 10GB iPod for over 2 years and my iPods screen doesn't have any scratches. Why? because my iPod spends almost every second if its existence in a leather case with a clear vinyl/plastic covering for the screen.
I only remove the iPod from this protection when it is in the dock for syncing/charging. And I remove it slowly.
The back of my iPod's leather case has a sturdy, metal belt clip woven inside, allowing me to hook it into a a pocket (the device outside the pocket) while I walk/do work.
I don't know about others, but when I spend more than $100 on something, I do everything in my power to protect it. I don't ever operate my iPod "naked" and would never consider just dropping the bare device in a pocket knowing that the simple motion of walking can grind your pocket lining against your screen with the pressure of your pant's fit and body heat to exacerbate scratching.
Blame Apple for the "1,000 Songs in your Pocket" slogan. Blame Steve Jobs for pulling an iPod nano out of his pocket. Blame Apple for not having nano tubes ready on launch day. But blame yourself if you don't make every effort of prevention.
Nintendo has stated several times that the Nintendo DS is a third system pillar. The other two pillars are the Gameboy and the home console (currently the GCN, soon to be the Revolution).
The inclusion of the GBA cartidge slot in the DS was simply a way of adding value and removing some risk in investing in a DS.
Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to resume my game of monochrome-GB Tetris on my NES Classic model GBA SP while I await FF4's release...
While I disagree with any price-raising for iTunes tracks, if they do proceed to to raise the price, they should at least upgrade the file encoding from 128kbps to 192kbps or more.
I'm a sysadmin. All Mac OS X and Windows notebooks I deploy are preconfigured, tested, verified, and locked down. Even Classic.
If any special apps or hardware is needed, it has to be dropped off during the "preconfigured" part of the process.
The truth here is you are being furnished with a portable workstation, not a personal surfboard.
Nine times out of ten, when some one pages/calls their IT department at 2am because their laptop broke, it's because they were doing something they weren't supposed to do, like install personal software and hardware.
I'm sorry, but if you call me at 2am because installing Flight Simulator broke your machine, and now you can't do your PowerPoint presentation (the work task at hand) I'm going to laugh at you, hang up, and report you to my boss.
Well, with regard to Microsoft's "Plays For Sure" logo campaign, I suppose this also includes viruses.
I use Dashboard for 4 important (to me) uses:
1. Instant Calculator. I don't want to add the Calculator to my dock. I can simply hit F12.
2. I hate auto-spell checkers. So I usually have them off. Thus, when I want to check the spelling of a word, I love popping open the Dictionary widget. Quick. Easy. And faster than opening up Word or enabling spell check.
3. I regularly work with a distributor in another time zone. I keep my world clock set to their time zone. For me, it's faster to press F12 than to make the appropriate GMT +/- adjustment in my head.
4. Doppler radar. I am a weather nut and a sysadmin. When severe weather is in my area, I enjoy having instant access to the local doppler radar at the press of a button. Sure beats opening up a browser/tab and hitting a bookmark.
Since using Tiger, when I'm using a machine running Panther or Windows, I'm often taken aback when I naturally press F12 and nothing happens.
Looks like this will give us Vista's sidebar and WinFS-like searching a year or more before Vista comes out. Pretty cool.
I had many fond memories of playing Oregon Trail on Apple //e computers in elementary school and Maelstrom in college.
//e emulators are available today and the makers of Maelstrom have a free OS X version of Maelstrom as a free download from their site.
Thankfully, Apple
This site has a few goodies to try out.
Seems to me that Microsoft would prefer that you refresh your X-Box 360 each year with a new $200 purchase to get the latest technology.
I wonder if they'll have lifecycles on the older X-Box 360s and, over the next 2-3 years, kill Live support for the earlier generations of X-Box 360s that lack hardware of the most recent ones.
When I went to college, there were two book stores: the Official campus book store in the student union and the off-campus book store with much lower prices and a larger selection of used editions.
(Arguably, the Internet was a third store for finding people willing to sell their old books.)
These new digital editions allow the campus's official bookstore to have a monopoly on the sale of the digital edition and also allows them to not feeding the resale/Internet competition.
Apple or not, maybe this will expose the stupidity behind the generic techno patent craze that's been going on the past 4-5 years.
Full-disclosure: I own an iPod, a PowerMac G5, and a 17" PowerBook. I love OS X. I occasionally drink the special Kool-Aid while sitting in range of the reality distortion field.
From TFA: "The tubes can even be removed from their fixture and carried around as portable light sources."
Now this is impressive. Unscrew the bulb/tube and walk with it to safety. Very nice idea.
"Even if the tubes are shattered by an explosion, the shards will still provide light"
A smart idea. Also can serve as a sort of "bread crumbs" way for people to explore in dark passageways and find their way back out. Kind of hard to clean up shattered glass tubing.
..cause I *have* to be concerned about my workplace 24/7/365 and available to immediately respond to a systems emergency.
Indeed.
Back in the day, many high-profile SNES carts that used tons of ROM chips were in the USD$60-$80 range.
For example:
- Chrono Trigger retailed for USD$79.99.
- Street Fighter II Turbo retailed for USD$69.99.
And you know what? Those two games alone sold heavily. Something tells me high-profile Xbox360 games will too.
I hope Apple incorporates Mighty Mouse technology into the trackpads of their iBooks and PowerBooks.
While the new two-finger scrolling feature and third-party trackpad drivers can lend much of the mighty mouse's features, it would be nice for a full, first-party solution.