Sure, you can buy a new PC laptop for under $400, but will you enjoy using it? How about in two years?
You can pick up good quality used macs for the same price as crappy new PCs. And a decent new PC isn't cheaper than a low-end MacBook.
Personally, I'd rather own a three year old MacBook than most of what Best Buy/Future Shop/Stapes are pushing from Acer/Asus/HP/Lenovo. Most of what is in stores is junk. Apple doesn't sell junk.
(Having said this, I'm typing this on a lovely HP 2710p running Ubuntu.)
OK, I accept your challenge: The HP EliteBook line. (Which are never in stock at Best Buy/Future Shop.)
I'm typing this on a three year old HP 2710p which has since become the 2740p. It's an extremely tough 3.6lb machine with a lovely screen and stylus support, trackpad and trackpoint, a light (like the ThinkPad lights). The battery is rated for 5:30, up to 11 with an optional slice. It can take a very slim dock for extra USB, DVD, video, etc. The 2740p has both touch and stylus support and can be configured with Core i5 CPUs or ULV options, depending on your needs. They have the best keyboard I've ever used, they come with three year warranties as standard options, and they are lovely to work on. (I've upgraded HD and RAM on mine.)
I own it and a MacBook. It is by far my preferred laptop. The screen works well outside, it's sturdier, and it runs Linux brilliantly.
However, on balance, I completely agree with your assessment. Almost all PC hardware is junk. Apple doesn't make many types of machines but they are all of very high quality, they run Windows (and usually Linux) very well, they have stellar battery life, and they are the same price as decent PC laptops that can't run Mac OS.
I recommend Macs a lot at work. Why not? Don't like MacOS? No problem. I prefer my HP EliteBook but they're a pain to buy in town. I can send people to a half-dozen different stores in town that sell the full line of Apple laptops. As a bonus, the hardware is well understood and I might not have to support Windows! Easy decision for me. Plus, in Canada, Apple and Dell seem to be the only two companies that haven't switched over to bi-lingual keyboards with odd layouts.
It's a sorry state at the moment. Microsoft as monopolist was bad. Mac OS is a lovely OS and Apple makes nice hardware. Still, as companies go, Apple aren't great to deal with. I'm happy to see that MS has been unseated as the untouchable monopolist but I have to think that it will be worse if Apple finds itself in a similar position.
Here's hoping the competition will improve. Linux does keep improving steadily. If it could emerge as a reasonable competitor and keep things even, that would be my preferred outcome. Time, development, and consumer decisions will tell.
At the time that BeOS was sold to PalmSource, there were two Palm companies: The hardware (called PalmOne at the time - later renamed to Palm) and the software (called PalmSource).
PalmSource (the software behind PalmOne, Sony, Dana, Tapwave, and other PalmOS 5.x devices) bought BeOS assets for $12m, PalmSource eventually was bought by Access Software, a Japanese company. They used Be technology to create PalmOS 6. It never shipped in a device.
Access eventually sold rights to PalmOS 5.x back to PalmOne (the hardware company). PalmOne renamed themselves back to Palm and shipped PalmOS and WinCE devices until the Pre and WebOS. Now Palm is being sold to HP. I'm not sure what Access is doing with the PalmSource software. I know they ship an emulator for Nokia's Maemo devices, such as the N810/N800.
So, HP/Palm/PalmOne own rights to PalmOS 5 (and all of PalmOne/HandSpring's IP), Access owns rights to BeOS and PalmOS 6 (and 5, I think.)
A friend gave me his PRS-505. I find it to be fine. Not great but fine. No doubt the newer ones are nicer. The 505 reads ePub very well, handles PDF, works with the pilot Digital Editions Library service offered in my municipality (borrow eBooks for two weeks at a time.) It works well in Linux and Mac OS. Getting books on and off is a snap, just using drag and drop. Battery life is good. The Sony Reader store has a reasonable collection of books at a decent price. It's generally not cheaper than a print book from Amazon.ca but the format and selection is convenient for me. The old Sony eReader Store used a proprietary locked-down format that nothing else could handle. Thankfully, the new Sony Reader Store now sells books in ePub format.
Now, the ePub books sold at the Sony Store are DRM-encumbered. This, of course, is very bad. (See other comments for good examples of why.) Having said this, if you live in a country with sane fair dealing/fair use laws, you can, with a little work, find reasonably straightforward ways to remove the DRM from the books sold at the Reader Store.
Piracy is bad, so is treating your customers as thieves by default. I won't ever pirate a book; nor will I invest in a locked format that I can't use as I'd like. I buy almost all of my music on-line now because I can finally buy MP3 and AAC files without DRM. I won't buy into digital movies or Blu-Ray because of the DRM. I was very reluctant to buy into electronic books until a I had a good source of DRM-free ePub books.
Thankfully, publishers seem to be getting this faster than the music and movie studios. Pretty much all O'Reilly books are now available as ePub. The Sony Reader Store sells ePub that you can eventually turn in to standard DRM-free books. The situation appears to be getting better. One can now read books purchased through the Sony Reader Store in Linux and with ePub software for phones. The situation with Sony reminds me of iTunes pre-M4A. Yes, you could buy an album electronically but you had to burn it out and rip it back to side-step the DRM. Not terribly user-friendly but not horrible.
To me, the worst thing about eBook readers is that vendors are locking customers in to closed silos. A Nook can't read Kindle books, Kindle can't read the ubiquitous ePub format. All the while, you can walk down to the store and buy the print version without any of these limitations for about the same price. This is madness.
Privacy concerns are also a problem. The thought of a device, with an always-on wired connection, allowing companies to remove books post-purchase scares me. The thought of Amazon knowing what page I am on of every book they sell me also bothers me. In all of this, Sony, of all companies, looks the least bad. Go figure.
No doubt it's early days. I think you'd be nuts to buy anything that can't handle ePub and PDF. I also wouldn't buy anything that locks me to a single supplier of books.
That's a netbook. 12", dual-core, 3+lbs, $500 isn't a netbook, that's a decent 12" laptop without an optical drive.
The thing is, you can pick up much better used 12" 3+lb laptops for $500. Heck, I'm typing this on an HP 2710p tablet I picked up on ebay. It is a 12", dual-core, can take 8GB of RAM, and is a TABLET and it cost me as much as this Asus "netbook" after taxes.
The only reason you need dual-core ION and a big screen on a netbook is because Windows demands it. My HP netbook (linked above) runs like a dog in Windows by the time you add virus scanners and all of the associated baggage. However, Ubuntu 9.10 NBR runs brilliantly. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB and put it back down to 1GB and haven't missed it.
Sadly, with the onslaught of Windows 7, it appears as though the nascent netbook market, which began with affordable computers running Linux on small SSDs, is in the process of dying. Such is life. Pick up your 2lb 9" Linux wonder while supplies last.
Sun is an interesting company, Solaris is an interesting OS. There was a time when I would have completely agreed with your above statement. I work for a CS department at a Canadian university. When I started in 2003, the last of the Sun workstations were on their way out, replaced with a mix of Windows and Linux boxes. (Mostly Windows.)
Fast-forward almost six years, most labs are looking for a combination of Windows and Ubuntu. Linux is especially popular for number crunching where 32bit OSs can't go, and suddenly Sun servers and workstations are looking good again. We recently purchased three X2200s. They came with 16GB of RAM and can be easily and cheaply upgraded to 64GB RAM. I cannot get this from clone makers and Sun's prices were spectacular. The three systems will be running Linux, Windows X64 and Solaris X64.
Of the three, I will be using the Solaris server. I consider myself a Linux guy first, but Solaris is an incredibly stable OS and even Ubuntu LTS and RHEL aren't as reliable where I need them to be. I _need_ the NFS server to be perfect. I find every release of a Linux OS, even "enterprise" versions, to be a little strange in this regard. Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS has odd autofs bug that interacts strangely with NIS and NFS and may or may not be realted to udev somewhere. It's an aknowledged bug, the workarounds (one of which I suggested) are just that. Cannonical doesn't seem to be quick to fix the "problem" and why should they? I haven't paid for it, and NIS/NFS/autofs isn't their focus. Fine, but I need it. Sun does this right, every time.
I was rather shocked when I read about Toshiba preloading OpenSolaris 8.11 on some laptops, but I've used OpenSolaris. It's a nice OS. It doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the latest version of Ubuntu, but in typical Sun fashion, what it does, it does well.
I administer servers, some Linux, some Solaris. It is very convenient for me to have a well-supported laptop running the same OS as my servers. I, for one, will be quite interested in a Solaris-based Toshiba laptop. Sun doesn't sell laptops and their customers need something. While this seems a little odd, both Sun and Toshiba have much to gain with this announcement.
In the past, I have been worried about Sun's long-term prospects, but OpenSolaris looks like a huge step in the right direction, they've finally opened Java, they own MySQL, OpenOffice is the only viable MS Office competitor, and now they are on the cusp of having a decent laptop option. And this is just on the software side. On the hardware side they have very competitively priced servers (never thought I'd say that) with great expansion options, their support and build-quality are worth at least the small premium they charge, and if you need SPARC (it still happens) they are the only game in town. On top of this, they run Solaris, Windows and Linux with full driver support, guaranteed.
"At my company the last enterprise Sun box went away almost 18 months ago. We're pushing Linux to supplement our AIX systems now. And Linux excels. It's stable. It's supported. It's cheap. And it's doing what the Sun box did for $50,000 more."
This is great, but you should check out Sun's x86 servers, run Linux if you prefer, have Solaris as an option for free. The website prices are not even close to what they offered us. Much to my surprise, I think that anyone buying anything that will be running as a server should check out Sun's prices. Seriously, we just bought 2xquad-core servers with 16GB of RAM for a quarter of what we paid for a V440 four years ago, and that was a 2-for-1 deal at the time.
Honestly, Sun seems pretty well positioned to me, and this is a very interesting announcement.
My wife needed voice dictation software a year or two ago. She had been a Linux user. I gave her my PowerBook and bought iListen for her. It was terrible. And it was a resource hog. It used the Philips engine and, even with extensive training, was the pits. We even tried several high-quality mics to no avail.
She went from my G4/1.5GHz/1.25GB RAM PowerBook running iListen to Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 on an IBM ThinkPad T23. (P3 1GHz, 768MB RAM, WinXP.) The difference was night and day. Not only did Dragon run much faster on the lowly P3, but the quality of speech recognition was _much_ better. As a result of this, she's now back to being a Windows user with Dragon.
At least it looks like our iListen purchase won't be a complete waste, as we can use it to upgrade to NaturallySpeaking for Mac. I'm glad that MacSpeech has killed iListen. It needed it. It was an embarrassment compared to Dragon.
Speech recognition has been a big hole in the Mac's software line-up. It looks like that is finally coming to an end. Now if only someone would release something that works for Linux.* I know that we'd have paid $200 for something approaching Dragon 8's capabilities.
---- *Yes, I know about IBM ViaVoice. Good luck getting that to work on any recent distribution. I also know about Sphinx. Unfortunately, it seems to be a perpetual research tool rather than an end-user program.
At work, I have a laptop (ThinkPad T60) that dual-boots Ubuntu and Vista. Vista is on there only as a way to force myself to get used to it, as I have to support it. Early after Vista's release, an update _from Microsoft_ caused it to be deactivated, had to call MS. (This was later an acknowledged bug that they patched.)
More recently, I used Ghost to go from a 120GB drive down to an 80GB. This too knocked out the activation and the system went into reduced functionality mode. I had to call MS, eventually got someone in India (who I have to admit was very polite and spoke very well.) I had to read off what seemed like a 40 digit code _twice_. Once to the voice-activated system and then again to the person. (No, they apparently couldn't cache this very annoying and labourious bit of data entry.)
I told him why I was having to call and also warned that, as a SysAdmin, I do this kind of thing all of the time and that I was sure I'd be calling again with this exact same Microsoft-imposed problem on this exact same system. I was politely told that this is how the product works and that there was no way around this.
This from an MSDN-issued Vista Business edition. Ugh.
Thankfully, installing Ubuntu on it didn't knock out activation, though I wouldn't put it past MS in the future. If I didn't have to support it at work, I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole. My hope is that MS eventually tightens the screws enough to push everyone away. So far though, people seem to be much more tolerant of this sort of thing than I would have hoped.
I have a 770 and am waiting impatiently for a new N800 to ship. ($275CDN vs $500 and another month, I'll wait on the N810.)
I have three machines at home: A PC that I almost never use, a dual-boot MacBook and a server for media (and, as it turns out, UPnP music streaming.)
The 770, which is a dated, slow version of the N800 which is now a dated, slower version of the N810 constantly amazes me. I'm not using it as I had intended, but I'm using it a lot.
For starters, because I already had a UPnP server running, I get full access to all of my music on a half pound device. I don't have to sync to it, I can access this from anywhere in the house. For me, this has been very convenient and has cut in on MP3 player usage.
It's also very capable as a browser, and I find myself rarely bothering to go to the basement to grab my 5.5lb laptop. Why bother when all I need to do is look up the weather?
It can also be made to be a decent little PDA. With GPE, I can sync with Evolution and keep my calendar and address book in sync. With this, it has finally killed off my use of a Palm.
Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard, it's a full little computer. With RDesktop, VNC, SSH and an XTerm, I have used it to patch servers at work, write documents etc. This isn't like using a PDA, this is like using a small computer. In fact, being a little Linux box, it's a lot of fun to tinker with this thing. (If that's your cup of tea. it is mine.)
Yes, all of the above could be done with a laptop, which maybe even cheaper, but it wasn't necessary and wasn't as convenient for me.
Now, for $500ish, you might have a hard time justifying the purchase, but I paid $150 for the 770 and the N800 is selling for as little as $220. That's cheap for what is a fully-functional (for me) little Linux box.
Oh, and for me, one of the best parts is that it's _NOT_ a phone. No monthly plans, no extra fees. In fact, the only thing that bugs me about the N810 is the built-in GPS that I don't want (but could be handy when traveling)
Right now, you're correct. The core functionality is browsing. However, the thriving Maemo community is doing all sorts of weird and wonderfully unexpected things with these little machines. It's still not 100% essential for me, and if I needed one machine to do it all, I'd still grab the MacBook, but more and more I reach for the 770 instead.
"I love my T60, too, by the way. Runs great with Ubuntu as well."
I beg to differ. I have a T60 and sleep and resume has been a problem since day one. To be more precise, the ATI X1300 has been a problem since day one.
By contrast, the first-gen MacBook runs Ubuntu brilliantly. Sleep, DRI, brightness, wifi, bluetooth. It all works. The best part: Used MacBooks can be picked up for a song.
"The only reason to buy and use a Mac is the proprietary technologies Apple adds. That's not what I'm saying, it's what Apple is saying."
Actually, as someone currently running Ubuntu on a MacBook, I can think of a few reasons to buy and use a Mac other than the proprietary technologies added by Apple. For starters, it's a reasonably small and light laptop that runs Linux extremely well, has decent battery life, and I can buy it in Canada. (Dell.)
As a frequent user of odd operating systems on odd architectures, I welcome and applaud this move. It will be fantastic to be able to include, use and redistribute the JDK. I look forward to the day that the JDK is as ubiquitous as the GNU Compiler Collection.
Honestly, I can't imagine a better move for Sun and the Open Source community at this time. Java is a fantastic language that is now able to be used for any purpose. While I am not much of a coder these days, I am a sysadmin. Where previously I would have tended to stay away from Java applications in favour of programs written in other languages, I will now be able to consider Java to be as native and free as C and C++ with GCC. There is also a huge library of interesting and innovative Java programs that will now be able to be included in Debian and other Linux distributions.
This is absolutely fantastic news for anyone interested in Open Source and software research and innovation. This may do as much for computing as Firefox/Mozilla has for browsers and web developers. If a stable JVM is ported to most platforms, we may finally be able to experience write once run everywhere.
I've never really understood why Sun doesn't just dual-license the Java VM and libraries like it does with OpenOffice. This would allow Linux distributions to include both the JDK and JRE and wouldn't preclude commercial developments. This wouldn't be that different from what Trolltech does with Qt. With Qt, this limits commercial KDE development, but Java already enjoys strong commercial support. If they GPL'd (not LGPL) the JDK, they would open doors to the Open Source community while still supporting their commercial contracts.
I wouldn't think that forks would be a big problem either, as everyone would likely stick to Sun's JDK by default. I certainly haven't run into IBM's JVM very often and one needs to look no further than Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and Qt for evidence that dual-licensing doesn't necessarily lead to uncontrolled forks.
The truly bizarre thing to me is that this hasn't already happened. It's not like Sun is trying to keep Java sources secret. They've already exposed them to the world with their fairly liberal research license.
Mayber things will change. I'm reminded of Eric Sink's comment on Slashdot years ago regarding open sourcing OOo:
"The only glimmer of hope has been Sun, which seems to have a practice of being smart during the even-numbered years and downright silly during the odd-numbered ones."
Wow. They release the best office suite for Linux/Unix, not to mention the only truly cross-platform office suite, under the LGPL and it still isn't enough. No, they have to set up a foundation.
Come on.
The only reason for the Mozilla Foundation was because AOL/Netscape wanted to stop bleeding money into a project that was giving them nothing. Sure, it's been a good move for Mozilla projects, but Sun's ongoing commitment to OpenOffice/StarOffice just shows how strongly they believe in the project. If OpenOffice was languishing, then it might be time to ask them to step aside and establish a Foundation. This is clearly not the case. Moreover, OpenOffice's license is very cut and dried. You can easily fork the project (as has been done with Workplace and, to a lesser extent, with NeoOffice.) Heck, you can even fork it and setup a foundation. Good luck replacing those Sun engineers, though.
OpenOffice is hugely important to Linux, Unix and Open Source in general. For the most part, I think that Sun has been doing an outstanding job with the code. Why ask them to further distance themselves from the project now? It's not like they're doing it a disservice. (As was arguably the case with Netscape/Mozilla.)
And another thing, people taking potshots at OOo 2's use of Java in Base should realize that this was yet another significant contribution to the project from Sun. Base, even with it's faults, works very well. In fact, it has already allowed me to use MySQL/OOo in place of Access at work. Sure it uses Java, but this was done for legitimate reasons with an eye on compatibility. The proof of this being that Red Hat et al. were so quickly able to port Base to the gjc. I highly doubt that the relative ease of this task was a coincidence.
Really, that this has come up at all is a true shame. I fear that it shows that even if Sun were to open source Java, people would still find some way to complain. Sun certainly does some strange things, but their contributions to OpenOffice have been nothing short of fantastic. They should be commended for Giving Microsoft their first real competition in years.
but Palm still hasn't come up with a PDA to beat Sony's last Clie models. My Tj-37 is two years old and has WiFi, a camera, lots of expansion, a small form-factor and great battery life. And before anyone goes on to say that "a business PDA doesn't need a camera" let me say that I use the crappy camera in my Tj-37 all the time. Sure, it's not a 2MP wonder, but I do have it with me all the time.
If and when my Tj-37 dies, I'll likely replace it with a Clie TH-55. This thing has wifi, 320x480 and absolutely awesome 8+ hour battery life again in 2003. The EU version even had bluetooth. With the camera and small form-factor, Palm still hasn't come up with an equal to this device. Really, Palm 2005 is just now catching up to the Clie from two years ago.
It's a shame, when Sony pulled out of the market, Palm OS and the Palm platform just stagnated.
I've been using NeoOffice/J on my Macs for a couple of years now. (I have a rather dated review here.) Without a doubt, it's my favourite office suite for OSX.
What's really amazing is that almost all of the coding work is done by Patrick Luby (pluby) with a fairly small group of very dedicated testers and contributors. Despite the complexity of the code and the magnitude of the task, Patrick and the rest of his small team of volutneers has managed to release the only viable alternateive to MS Office for Mac OSX.
I have been installing NeoOffice/J on lab machines at work for over a year now. NO/J 1.1 is a significant improvement over the earlier versions. It now integrates with the menubar, opens and closes like a Mac app, and even uses OSX's keyboard shortcuts. Heck, they even managed to integrate it with SpotLight!
For everyone out there using a Mac, be sure to check it out. Also, if you like the program don't forget to donate. Even $50 is much appreciated. Think of it, an entire office suite on your platform of choice with perfect interoperability with Linux, Windows and Solaris. And it's Open Source. Surely that's worth a donation.
As a previous poster pointed out, pilot-link is how things get done as far as Palm/Linux integration go. Of the GUI front-ends to pilot-link, I have always found JPilot the best. (http://www.jpilot.org/) It even uses GTK2 now.
When they worked at all, I found that both KPilotd and Gnome-pilot/evolution would make duplicate entries and cause some stuff just to disappear. Then there's the fact that, IIRC, Evolution still has no notes function. JPilot is small, fast, simple and just works. You can even use it to sync up with AvantGo with the mal plugin. I even use JPilot without the palm, as it's a nice little PIM program.
And before you ask, there is no working Mozilla/Thunderbird/Sunbird integration that I am aware of. JPilot can integrate with Sylpheed's address book, and I've written scripts to go to and from Thudnerbird, but it's usually a boring, tedious job that I tend not to repeat too often.
I use JPilot with my Sony Clie TJ-37, a great PalmOS device. As a bonus, the drive mounting works quite well with newer 2.6 kernels.
Re:What's the compelling reason to switch?
on
Zeta Goes Gold
·
· Score: 1
You know what? Maybe there isn't one for many of us.
I think the YellowTab people are mostly trying to sell this to people who owned and loved BeOS 5. Oh, and the large group of people who are still stuck using Win98 and hate Windows.
For the Win98 crowd, Zeta will be faster, won't require a hardware upgrade, and will be simple to use and administer. As a bonus, it will handle digital cameras and USB devices at least as well as Win98, probably much better.
Let me tell you, I still run BeOS R5 on a Celeron 400 with 128MB of RAM. The machine is absolutely fast enough for this OS. I keep it around for nostalgic reasons. I loved BeOS. I've been trying to justify the $100 for Zeta. Considering the fact that my main machine is now a PowerBook and that my desktop system runs Linux and XP very well, I really don't have a need for Zeta. However, if BeOS R5 is any indication, Zeta will be a very nice, responsive OS that for the most part will just work.
I still can't really recommend Linux to the people that come to me for help. It's simply too difficult to administer and use for many people. BeOS/Zeta doesn't have this problem. Moreover, the people won't need to upgrade their K6 300/128MB RAM systems.
I had similar worries. However, over the last two years, I've found that they were unfounded. For starters, except for the processor and motherboard, it's all the same hardware. PCI cards, USB2, Firewire, DDR RAM etc. Moreover, if you're considering a laptop or the mini, the PC equivalent is no less proprietary.
I'm now on my second Apple laptop and they are more compatible with each other than any two PC laptops. For example, my Apple AC adaptors are interchangeable. That is, my G3 iBook adapter works with the new PowerBook and vice-versa. Try that with a new IBM and one from two years ago. I use the same laptop case, the same laptop stand and the same peripherals. (The peripherals also work beautifully with my Linux desktop.)
However, more important that hardware lock-in is software lock-in. This one is up to you. See, despite the commercial options, on OSX I tend to use all of the Open Source apps I used in Linux. I use Firefox, Thunderbird, NeoOffice/J, VLC, Eclipse, X11 etc.
As mentioned, hardware lock-in is a complete non-issue, as I can (and do) move easily back and forth between Linux and Windows. I use OSX on my main home machine because it works so well with all of my HW and SW. Let me tell you, Audacity on OSX is much nicer to use and look at than Audacity in Linux. (BTW, is there any explanation as to why wxGTK is still using GTK 1.x? It's 2005!)
As long as the apps that you use are available on more than one platform, your data is safe regardless of your current system. Stick to Open Source and open standards like the OASIS format and you can use whatever computer and OS fits your current needs.
> The only real advantage the 12" PowerBook has over an iBook is the dual screen capabilities. Even that can be hacked into the iBook.
You know, I was thinking that too, but it's just not the case. Here are the diffs:
- Faster (1.2GHz to 1.5GHz on the 12") - Faster buss speed (100MHz vs 167, IIRC) - Faster, bigger HD (iBook's are only 4200RPM) - Better Video (32MB ATI9200 vs 64MB GeForce 5200 on the 12"PB) - Supported split-screen - Audio in - Better keyboard
All told, these differences are worth the ~400CDN difference to me.
Actually, as far as laptops go, I'd take Linux on PPC over x86 any day. The CPU is more efficient, Apple's PMU is _much_ better under Linux than ACPI or APM, and the Apple series of laptops are excellent quality machines with good components at a fair price. In fact, when using Linux on my G3 iBook, the only things I ever miss are Flash and a good, recent JDK from Sun.
Seriously, in my opinion, Apple makes the nicest laptops period. I easily get over 4 hours of battery life under Linux on my iBook. The ThinkPad and Vaio don't come close in Linux or Windows. If Broadcom would relase specs for/make drivers for the Airport Extreme, I'd be inclined to get a new PowerBook.
For desktops though, you're bang on. I can throw together a good Linux box for under $500CDN.
I just purchased one on ebay for $250 with a 256MB MS Pro stick.
The TJ37 is small, has built-in Wifi and a camera, runs PalmOS 5.2.1, has 32MB of RAM and a 200MHz processor.
Now that Sony's bailing out of the PDA market, these things are very hard for retailers to sell, making them quite affordable!
Oh, and they work well in Linux. (Also in OSX with MisssingSync. In OSX the MS works with iTunes. Very cool.)
It really is a shame that Sony pulled out of PDAs. Really, they were the only ones pushing Palm HW and SW for years. It's good to see PalmOne finally making decent hardware, but they're only now catching up to what Sony has been doing for years. Anyway, if you're not too concerned about owning a dead-end product, the TJ37 offers quite a bit for a good price.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, you can buy a new PC laptop for under $400, but will you enjoy using it? How about in two years?
You can pick up good quality used macs for the same price as crappy new PCs. And a decent new PC isn't cheaper than a low-end MacBook.
Personally, I'd rather own a three year old MacBook than most of what Best Buy/Future Shop/Stapes are pushing from Acer/Asus/HP/Lenovo. Most of what is in stores is junk. Apple doesn't sell junk.
(Having said this, I'm typing this on a lovely HP 2710p running Ubuntu.)
OK, I accept your challenge: The HP EliteBook line. (Which are never in stock at Best Buy/Future Shop.)
I'm typing this on a three year old HP 2710p which has since become the 2740p. It's an extremely tough 3.6lb machine with a lovely screen and stylus support, trackpad and trackpoint, a light (like the ThinkPad lights). The battery is rated for 5:30, up to 11 with an optional slice. It can take a very slim dock for extra USB, DVD, video, etc. The 2740p has both touch and stylus support and can be configured with Core i5 CPUs or ULV options, depending on your needs. They have the best keyboard I've ever used, they come with three year warranties as standard options, and they are lovely to work on. (I've upgraded HD and RAM on mine.)
I own it and a MacBook. It is by far my preferred laptop. The screen works well outside, it's sturdier, and it runs Linux brilliantly.
However, on balance, I completely agree with your assessment. Almost all PC hardware is junk. Apple doesn't make many types of machines but they are all of very high quality, they run Windows (and usually Linux) very well, they have stellar battery life, and they are the same price as decent PC laptops that can't run Mac OS.
I recommend Macs a lot at work. Why not? Don't like MacOS? No problem. I prefer my HP EliteBook but they're a pain to buy in town. I can send people to a half-dozen different stores in town that sell the full line of Apple laptops. As a bonus, the hardware is well understood and I might not have to support Windows! Easy decision for me. Plus, in Canada, Apple and Dell seem to be the only two companies that haven't switched over to bi-lingual keyboards with odd layouts.
It's a sorry state at the moment. Microsoft as monopolist was bad. Mac OS is a lovely OS and Apple makes nice hardware. Still, as companies go, Apple aren't great to deal with. I'm happy to see that MS has been unseated as the untouchable monopolist but I have to think that it will be worse if Apple finds itself in a similar position.
Here's hoping the competition will improve. Linux does keep improving steadily. If it could emerge as a reasonable competitor and keep things even, that would be my preferred outcome. Time, development, and consumer decisions will tell.
On Palm/BeOS: No, Palm/HP doesn't own BeOS.
At the time that BeOS was sold to PalmSource, there were two Palm companies: The hardware (called PalmOne at the time - later renamed to Palm) and the software (called PalmSource).
PalmSource (the software behind PalmOne, Sony, Dana, Tapwave, and other PalmOS 5.x devices) bought BeOS assets for $12m, PalmSource eventually was bought by Access Software, a Japanese company. They used Be technology to create PalmOS 6. It never shipped in a device.
Access eventually sold rights to PalmOS 5.x back to PalmOne (the hardware company). PalmOne renamed themselves back to Palm and shipped PalmOS and WinCE devices until the Pre and WebOS. Now Palm is being sold to HP. I'm not sure what Access is doing with the PalmSource software. I know they ship an emulator for Nokia's Maemo devices, such as the N810/N800.
So, HP/Palm/PalmOne own rights to PalmOS 5 (and all of PalmOne/HandSpring's IP), Access owns rights to BeOS and PalmOS 6 (and 5, I think.)
What a tangled web this is.
I'd also opt for the Sony.
A friend gave me his PRS-505. I find it to be fine. Not great but fine. No doubt the newer ones are nicer. The 505 reads ePub very well, handles PDF, works with the pilot Digital Editions Library service offered in my municipality (borrow eBooks for two weeks at a time.) It works well in Linux and Mac OS. Getting books on and off is a snap, just using drag and drop. Battery life is good. The Sony Reader store has a reasonable collection of books at a decent price. It's generally not cheaper than a print book from Amazon.ca but the format and selection is convenient for me. The old Sony eReader Store used a proprietary locked-down format that nothing else could handle. Thankfully, the new Sony Reader Store now sells books in ePub format.
Now, the ePub books sold at the Sony Store are DRM-encumbered. This, of course, is very bad. (See other comments for good examples of why.) Having said this, if you live in a country with sane fair dealing/fair use laws, you can, with a little work, find reasonably straightforward ways to remove the DRM from the books sold at the Reader Store.
Piracy is bad, so is treating your customers as thieves by default. I won't ever pirate a book; nor will I invest in a locked format that I can't use as I'd like. I buy almost all of my music on-line now because I can finally buy MP3 and AAC files without DRM. I won't buy into digital movies or Blu-Ray because of the DRM. I was very reluctant to buy into electronic books until a I had a good source of DRM-free ePub books.
Thankfully, publishers seem to be getting this faster than the music and movie studios. Pretty much all O'Reilly books are now available as ePub. The Sony Reader Store sells ePub that you can eventually turn in to standard DRM-free books. The situation appears to be getting better. One can now read books purchased through the Sony Reader Store in Linux and with ePub software for phones. The situation with Sony reminds me of iTunes pre-M4A. Yes, you could buy an album electronically but you had to burn it out and rip it back to side-step the DRM. Not terribly user-friendly but not horrible.
To me, the worst thing about eBook readers is that vendors are locking customers in to closed silos. A Nook can't read Kindle books, Kindle can't read the ubiquitous ePub format. All the while, you can walk down to the store and buy the print version without any of these limitations for about the same price. This is madness.
Privacy concerns are also a problem. The thought of a device, with an always-on wired connection, allowing companies to remove books post-purchase scares me. The thought of Amazon knowing what page I am on of every book they sell me also bothers me. In all of this, Sony, of all companies, looks the least bad. Go figure.
No doubt it's early days. I think you'd be nuts to buy anything that can't handle ePub and PDF. I also wouldn't buy anything that locks me to a single supplier of books.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the pinnacle of netbooks:
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10128254&catid=27003&logon=&langid=EN&dm=DEBUG
Intel Atom, 9" 1024x600 matte screen, 2lbs, thin, runs Linux perfectly, decent battery life, perfect keyboard, $200.
That's a netbook. 12", dual-core, 3+lbs, $500 isn't a netbook, that's a decent 12" laptop without an optical drive.
The thing is, you can pick up much better used 12" 3+lb laptops for $500. Heck, I'm typing this on an HP 2710p tablet I picked up on ebay. It is a 12", dual-core, can take 8GB of RAM, and is a TABLET and it cost me as much as this Asus "netbook" after taxes.
The only reason you need dual-core ION and a big screen on a netbook is because Windows demands it. My HP netbook (linked above) runs like a dog in Windows by the time you add virus scanners and all of the associated baggage. However, Ubuntu 9.10 NBR runs brilliantly. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB and put it back down to 1GB and haven't missed it.
Sadly, with the onslaught of Windows 7, it appears as though the nascent netbook market, which began with affordable computers running Linux on small SSDs, is in the process of dying. Such is life. Pick up your 2lb 9" Linux wonder while supplies last.
The announced MS/Nokia deal was just for S60.
Sun is an interesting company, Solaris is an interesting OS. There was a time when I would have completely agreed with your above statement. I work for a CS department at a Canadian university. When I started in 2003, the last of the Sun workstations were on their way out, replaced with a mix of Windows and Linux boxes. (Mostly Windows.)
Fast-forward almost six years, most labs are looking for a combination of Windows and Ubuntu. Linux is especially popular for number crunching where 32bit OSs can't go, and suddenly Sun servers and workstations are looking good again. We recently purchased three X2200s. They came with 16GB of RAM and can be easily and cheaply upgraded to 64GB RAM. I cannot get this from clone makers and Sun's prices were spectacular. The three systems will be running Linux, Windows X64 and Solaris X64.
Of the three, I will be using the Solaris server. I consider myself a Linux guy first, but Solaris is an incredibly stable OS and even Ubuntu LTS and RHEL aren't as reliable where I need them to be. I _need_ the NFS server to be perfect. I find every release of a Linux OS, even "enterprise" versions, to be a little strange in this regard. Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS has odd autofs bug that interacts strangely with NIS and NFS and may or may not be realted to udev somewhere. It's an aknowledged bug, the workarounds (one of which I suggested) are just that. Cannonical doesn't seem to be quick to fix the "problem" and why should they? I haven't paid for it, and NIS/NFS/autofs isn't their focus. Fine, but I need it. Sun does this right, every time.
I was rather shocked when I read about Toshiba preloading OpenSolaris 8.11 on some laptops, but I've used OpenSolaris. It's a nice OS. It doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the latest version of Ubuntu, but in typical Sun fashion, what it does, it does well.
I administer servers, some Linux, some Solaris. It is very convenient for me to have a well-supported laptop running the same OS as my servers. I, for one, will be quite interested in a Solaris-based Toshiba laptop. Sun doesn't sell laptops and their customers need something. While this seems a little odd, both Sun and Toshiba have much to gain with this announcement.
In the past, I have been worried about Sun's long-term prospects, but OpenSolaris looks like a huge step in the right direction, they've finally opened Java, they own MySQL, OpenOffice is the only viable MS Office competitor, and now they are on the cusp of having a decent laptop option. And this is just on the software side. On the hardware side they have very competitively priced servers (never thought I'd say that) with great expansion options, their support and build-quality are worth at least the small premium they charge, and if you need SPARC (it still happens) they are the only game in town. On top of this, they run Solaris, Windows and Linux with full driver support, guaranteed.
"At my company the last enterprise Sun box went away almost 18 months ago. We're pushing Linux to supplement our AIX systems now. And Linux excels. It's stable. It's supported. It's cheap. And it's doing what the Sun box did for $50,000 more."
This is great, but you should check out Sun's x86 servers, run Linux if you prefer, have Solaris as an option for free. The website prices are not even close to what they offered us. Much to my surprise, I think that anyone buying anything that will be running as a server should check out Sun's prices. Seriously, we just bought 2xquad-core servers with 16GB of RAM for a quarter of what we paid for a V440 four years ago, and that was a 2-for-1 deal at the time.
Honestly, Sun seems pretty well positioned to me, and this is a very interesting announcement.
My wife needed voice dictation software a year or two ago. She had been a Linux user. I gave her my PowerBook and bought iListen for her. It was terrible. And it was a resource hog. It used the Philips engine and, even with extensive training, was the pits. We even tried several high-quality mics to no avail.
She went from my G4/1.5GHz/1.25GB RAM PowerBook running iListen to Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 on an IBM ThinkPad T23. (P3 1GHz, 768MB RAM, WinXP.) The difference was night and day. Not only did Dragon run much faster on the lowly P3, but the quality of speech recognition was _much_ better. As a result of this, she's now back to being a Windows user with Dragon.
At least it looks like our iListen purchase won't be a complete waste, as we can use it to upgrade to NaturallySpeaking for Mac. I'm glad that MacSpeech has killed iListen. It needed it. It was an embarrassment compared to Dragon.
Speech recognition has been a big hole in the Mac's software line-up. It looks like that is finally coming to an end. Now if only someone would release something that works for Linux.* I know that we'd have paid $200 for something approaching Dragon 8's capabilities.
----
*Yes, I know about IBM ViaVoice. Good luck getting that to work on any recent distribution. I also know about Sphinx. Unfortunately, it seems to be a perpetual research tool rather than an end-user program.
Or at least is seems like that some times.
At work, I have a laptop (ThinkPad T60) that dual-boots Ubuntu and Vista. Vista is on there only as a way to force myself to get used to it, as I have to support it. Early after Vista's release, an update _from Microsoft_ caused it to be deactivated, had to call MS. (This was later an acknowledged bug that they patched.)
More recently, I used Ghost to go from a 120GB drive down to an 80GB. This too knocked out the activation and the system went into reduced functionality mode. I had to call MS, eventually got someone in India (who I have to admit was very polite and spoke very well.) I had to read off what seemed like a 40 digit code _twice_. Once to the voice-activated system and then again to the person. (No, they apparently couldn't cache this very annoying and labourious bit of data entry.)
I told him why I was having to call and also warned that, as a SysAdmin, I do this kind of thing all of the time and that I was sure I'd be calling again with this exact same Microsoft-imposed problem on this exact same system. I was politely told that this is how the product works and that there was no way around this.
This from an MSDN-issued Vista Business edition. Ugh.
Thankfully, installing Ubuntu on it didn't knock out activation, though I wouldn't put it past MS in the future. If I didn't have to support it at work, I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole. My hope is that MS eventually tightens the screws enough to push everyone away. So far though, people seem to be much more tolerant of this sort of thing than I would have hoped.
I have a 770 and am waiting impatiently for a new N800 to ship. ($275CDN vs $500 and another month, I'll wait on the N810.)
I have three machines at home: A PC that I almost never use, a dual-boot MacBook and a server for media (and, as it turns out, UPnP music streaming.)
The 770, which is a dated, slow version of the N800 which is now a dated, slower version of the N810 constantly amazes me. I'm not using it as I had intended, but I'm using it a lot.
For starters, because I already had a UPnP server running, I get full access to all of my music on a half pound device. I don't have to sync to it, I can access this from anywhere in the house. For me, this has been very convenient and has cut in on MP3 player usage.
It's also very capable as a browser, and I find myself rarely bothering to go to the basement to grab my 5.5lb laptop. Why bother when all I need to do is look up the weather?
It can also be made to be a decent little PDA. With GPE, I can sync with Evolution and keep my calendar and address book in sync. With this, it has finally killed off my use of a Palm.
Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard, it's a full little computer. With RDesktop, VNC, SSH and an XTerm, I have used it to patch servers at work, write documents etc. This isn't like using a PDA, this is like using a small computer. In fact, being a little Linux box, it's a lot of fun to tinker with this thing. (If that's your cup of tea. it is mine.)
Yes, all of the above could be done with a laptop, which maybe even cheaper, but it wasn't necessary and wasn't as convenient for me.
Now, for $500ish, you might have a hard time justifying the purchase, but I paid $150 for the 770 and the N800 is selling for as little as $220. That's cheap for what is a fully-functional (for me) little Linux box.
Oh, and for me, one of the best parts is that it's _NOT_ a phone. No monthly plans, no extra fees. In fact, the only thing that bugs me about the N810 is the built-in GPS that I don't want (but could be handy when traveling)
Right now, you're correct. The core functionality is browsing. However, the thriving Maemo community is doing all sorts of weird and wonderfully unexpected things with these little machines. It's still not 100% essential for me, and if I needed one machine to do it all, I'd still grab the MacBook, but more and more I reach for the 770 instead.
"I love my T60, too, by the way. Runs great with Ubuntu as well."
I beg to differ. I have a T60 and sleep and resume has been a problem since day one. To be more precise, the ATI X1300 has been a problem since day one.
By contrast, the first-gen MacBook runs Ubuntu brilliantly. Sleep, DRI, brightness, wifi, bluetooth. It all works. The best part: Used MacBooks can be picked up for a song.
"The only reason to buy and use a Mac is the proprietary technologies Apple adds. That's not what I'm saying, it's what Apple is saying."
Actually, as someone currently running Ubuntu on a MacBook, I can think of a few reasons to buy and use a Mac other than the proprietary technologies added by Apple. For starters, it's a reasonably small and light laptop that runs Linux extremely well, has decent battery life, and I can buy it in Canada. (Dell.)
Well done Sun! This has been a long time coming.
As a frequent user of odd operating systems on odd architectures, I welcome and applaud this move. It will be fantastic to be able to include, use and redistribute the JDK. I look forward to the day that the JDK is as ubiquitous as the GNU Compiler Collection.
Honestly, I can't imagine a better move for Sun and the Open Source community at this time. Java is a fantastic language that is now able to be used for any purpose. While I am not much of a coder these days, I am a sysadmin. Where previously I would have tended to stay away from Java applications in favour of programs written in other languages, I will now be able to consider Java to be as native and free as C and C++ with GCC. There is also a huge library of interesting and innovative Java programs that will now be able to be included in Debian and other Linux distributions.
This is absolutely fantastic news for anyone interested in Open Source and software research and innovation. This may do as much for computing as Firefox/Mozilla has for browsers and web developers. If a stable JVM is ported to most platforms, we may finally be able to experience write once run everywhere.
Thank you Sun.
I've never really understood why Sun doesn't just dual-license the Java VM and libraries like it does with OpenOffice. This would allow Linux distributions to include both the JDK and JRE and wouldn't preclude commercial developments. This wouldn't be that different from what Trolltech does with Qt. With Qt, this limits commercial KDE development, but Java already enjoys strong commercial support. If they GPL'd (not LGPL) the JDK, they would open doors to the Open Source community while still supporting their commercial contracts.
I wouldn't think that forks would be a big problem either, as everyone would likely stick to Sun's JDK by default. I certainly haven't run into IBM's JVM very often and one needs to look no further than Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and Qt for evidence that dual-licensing doesn't necessarily lead to uncontrolled forks.
The truly bizarre thing to me is that this hasn't already happened. It's not like Sun is trying to keep Java sources secret. They've already exposed them to the world with their fairly liberal research license.
Mayber things will change. I'm reminded of Eric Sink's comment on Slashdot years ago regarding open sourcing OOo:
"The only glimmer of hope has been Sun, which seems to have a practice of being smart during the even-numbered years and downright silly during the odd-numbered ones."
Wow. They release the best office suite for Linux/Unix, not to mention the only truly cross-platform office suite, under the LGPL and it still isn't enough. No, they have to set up a foundation.
Come on.
The only reason for the Mozilla Foundation was because AOL/Netscape wanted to stop bleeding money into a project that was giving them nothing. Sure, it's been a good move for Mozilla projects, but Sun's ongoing commitment to OpenOffice/StarOffice just shows how strongly they believe in the project. If OpenOffice was languishing, then it might be time to ask them to step aside and establish a Foundation. This is clearly not the case. Moreover, OpenOffice's license is very cut and dried. You can easily fork the project (as has been done with Workplace and, to a lesser extent, with NeoOffice.) Heck, you can even fork it and setup a foundation. Good luck replacing those Sun engineers, though.
OpenOffice is hugely important to Linux, Unix and Open Source in general. For the most part, I think that Sun has been doing an outstanding job with the code. Why ask them to further distance themselves from the project now? It's not like they're doing it a disservice. (As was arguably the case with Netscape/Mozilla.)
And another thing, people taking potshots at OOo 2's use of Java in Base should realize that this was yet another significant contribution to the project from Sun. Base, even with it's faults, works very well. In fact, it has already allowed me to use MySQL/OOo in place of Access at work. Sure it uses Java, but this was done for legitimate reasons with an eye on compatibility. The proof of this being that Red Hat et al. were so quickly able to port Base to the gjc. I highly doubt that the relative ease of this task was a coincidence.
Really, that this has come up at all is a true shame. I fear that it shows that even if Sun were to open source Java, people would still find some way to complain. Sun certainly does some strange things, but their contributions to OpenOffice have been nothing short of fantastic. They should be commended for Giving Microsoft their first real competition in years.
but Palm still hasn't come up with a PDA to beat Sony's last Clie models. My Tj-37 is two years old and has WiFi, a camera, lots of expansion, a small form-factor and great battery life. And before anyone goes on to say that "a business PDA doesn't need a camera" let me say that I use the crappy camera in my Tj-37 all the time. Sure, it's not a 2MP wonder, but I do have it with me all the time.
If and when my Tj-37 dies, I'll likely replace it with a Clie TH-55. This thing has wifi, 320x480 and absolutely awesome 8+ hour battery life again in 2003. The EU version even had bluetooth. With the camera and small form-factor, Palm still hasn't come up with an equal to this device. Really, Palm 2005 is just now catching up to the Clie from two years ago.
It's a shame, when Sony pulled out of the market, Palm OS and the Palm platform just stagnated.
I've been using NeoOffice/J on my Macs for a couple of years now. (I have a rather dated review here.) Without a doubt, it's my favourite office suite for OSX.
What's really amazing is that almost all of the coding work is done by Patrick Luby (pluby) with a fairly small group of very dedicated testers and contributors. Despite the complexity of the code and the magnitude of the task, Patrick and the rest of his small team of volutneers has managed to release the only viable alternateive to MS Office for Mac OSX.
I have been installing NeoOffice/J on lab machines at work for over a year now. NO/J 1.1 is a significant improvement over the earlier versions. It now integrates with the menubar, opens and closes like a Mac app, and even uses OSX's keyboard shortcuts. Heck, they even managed to integrate it with SpotLight!
For everyone out there using a Mac, be sure to check it out. Also, if you like the program don't forget to donate. Even $50 is much appreciated. Think of it, an entire office suite on your platform of choice with perfect interoperability with Linux, Windows and Solaris. And it's Open Source. Surely that's worth a donation.
As a previous poster pointed out, pilot-link is how things get done as far as Palm/Linux integration go. Of the GUI front-ends to pilot-link, I have always found JPilot the best. (http://www.jpilot.org/) It even uses GTK2 now.
When they worked at all, I found that both KPilotd and Gnome-pilot/evolution would make duplicate entries and cause some stuff just to disappear. Then there's the fact that, IIRC, Evolution still has no notes function. JPilot is small, fast, simple and just works. You can even use it to sync up with AvantGo with the mal plugin. I even use JPilot without the palm, as it's a nice little PIM program.
And before you ask, there is no working Mozilla/Thunderbird/Sunbird integration that I am aware of. JPilot can integrate with Sylpheed's address book, and I've written scripts to go to and from Thudnerbird, but it's usually a boring, tedious job that I tend not to repeat too often.
I use JPilot with my Sony Clie TJ-37, a great PalmOS device. As a bonus, the drive mounting works quite well with newer 2.6 kernels.
If you're planning to use Ubuntu, check this out too: http://ubuntuguide.org/#configurepalmosdevices
You know what? Maybe there isn't one for many of us.
I think the YellowTab people are mostly trying to sell this to people who owned and loved BeOS 5. Oh, and the large group of people who are still stuck using Win98 and hate Windows.
For the Win98 crowd, Zeta will be faster, won't require a hardware upgrade, and will be simple to use and administer. As a bonus, it will handle digital cameras and USB devices at least as well as Win98, probably much better.
Let me tell you, I still run BeOS R5 on a Celeron 400 with 128MB of RAM. The machine is absolutely fast enough for this OS. I keep it around for nostalgic reasons. I loved BeOS. I've been trying to justify the $100 for Zeta. Considering the fact that my main machine is now a PowerBook and that my desktop system runs Linux and XP very well, I really don't have a need for Zeta. However, if BeOS R5 is any indication, Zeta will be a very nice, responsive OS that for the most part will just work.
I still can't really recommend Linux to the people that come to me for help. It's simply too difficult to administer and use for many people. BeOS/Zeta doesn't have this problem. Moreover, the people won't need to upgrade their K6 300/128MB RAM systems.
Fair enough. The IBMs (and Toshibas, and Compaqs, and Dells) I've used have all had different adapters. Good to know that this isn't always the case.
I had similar worries. However, over the last two years, I've found that they were unfounded. For starters, except for the processor and motherboard, it's all the same hardware. PCI cards, USB2, Firewire, DDR RAM etc. Moreover, if you're considering a laptop or the mini, the PC equivalent is no less proprietary.
I'm now on my second Apple laptop and they are more compatible with each other than any two PC laptops. For example, my Apple AC adaptors are interchangeable. That is, my G3 iBook adapter works with the new PowerBook and vice-versa. Try that with a new IBM and one from two years ago. I use the same laptop case, the same laptop stand and the same peripherals. (The peripherals also work beautifully with my Linux desktop.)
However, more important that hardware lock-in is software lock-in. This one is up to you. See, despite the commercial options, on OSX I tend to use all of the Open Source apps I used in Linux. I use Firefox, Thunderbird, NeoOffice/J, VLC, Eclipse, X11 etc.
As mentioned, hardware lock-in is a complete non-issue, as I can (and do) move easily back and forth between Linux and Windows. I use OSX on my main home machine because it works so well with all of my HW and SW. Let me tell you, Audacity on OSX is much nicer to use and look at than Audacity in Linux. (BTW, is there any explanation as to why wxGTK is still using GTK 1.x? It's 2005!)
As long as the apps that you use are available on more than one platform, your data is safe regardless of your current system. Stick to Open Source and open standards like the OASIS format and you can use whatever computer and OS fits your current needs.
That _is_ the best video ever.
> The only real advantage the 12" PowerBook has over an iBook is the dual screen capabilities. Even that can be hacked into the iBook.
You know, I was thinking that too, but it's just not the case. Here are the diffs:
- Faster (1.2GHz to 1.5GHz on the 12")
- Faster buss speed (100MHz vs 167, IIRC)
- Faster, bigger HD (iBook's are only 4200RPM)
- Better Video (32MB ATI9200 vs 64MB GeForce 5200 on the 12"PB)
- Supported split-screen
- Audio in
- Better keyboard
All told, these differences are worth the ~400CDN difference to me.
Actually, as far as laptops go, I'd take Linux on PPC over x86 any day. The CPU is more efficient, Apple's PMU is _much_ better under Linux than ACPI or APM, and the Apple series of laptops are excellent quality machines with good components at a fair price. In fact, when using Linux on my G3 iBook, the only things I ever miss are Flash and a good, recent JDK from Sun.
Seriously, in my opinion, Apple makes the nicest laptops period. I easily get over 4 hours of battery life under Linux on my iBook. The ThinkPad and Vaio don't come close in Linux or Windows. If Broadcom would relase specs for/make drivers for the Airport Extreme, I'd be inclined to get a new PowerBook.
For desktops though, you're bang on. I can throw together a good Linux box for under $500CDN.
I just purchased one on ebay for $250 with a 256MB MS Pro stick.
The TJ37 is small, has built-in Wifi and a camera, runs PalmOS 5.2.1, has 32MB of RAM and a 200MHz processor.
Now that Sony's bailing out of the PDA market, these things are very hard for retailers to sell, making them quite affordable!
Oh, and they work well in Linux. (Also in OSX with MisssingSync. In OSX the MS works with iTunes. Very cool.)
It really is a shame that Sony pulled out of PDAs. Really, they were the only ones pushing Palm HW and SW for years. It's good to see PalmOne finally making decent hardware, but they're only now catching up to what Sony has been doing for years. Anyway, if you're not too concerned about owning a dead-end product, the TJ37 offers quite a bit for a good price.