I still love my Macbook. It's just a well-sorted little machine -- fast, handy, and it just works right. I upgraded to Leopard, the new MacOS release. Now, they say don't upgrade to a new Windows release until after the first service pack, which usually comes out several months after the release of the new Windows version. Leopard had a couple of annoying bugs when it came out ("X" had an annoying glitch, a couple of applications wouldn't work), but within three weeks they were all fixed either by OS patches or fixes to the applications and everything's back working again just faster (because Leopard is 64-bit) and better-backed-up (due to the built in "Time Machine" backup system in Leopard). If all you do is read EMAIL and browse the Internet, go buy a $400 Compaq laptop at Wal-Mart. If you want a well-sorted laptop for serious music, video, and software development work, the Macbook is a great little machine, and with Parallels virtualization software installed can be used to develop for multiple OS's all at once (I have two different versions of Linux installed in virtual machines on my MacBook for my development pleasure and with Spaces, I just do COMMAND-UP to go to my Mac screen, and COMMAND-DOWN to go down to my Linux screen... with just one lozenge-shaped thingy on my desk rather than multiple computers and a tangle of cables and KVM switches).
I am blessed with sweet cats. Well, Mencken complains a lot and pukes all over the place, but all is forgiven when I give him a belly rub and he writhes with happiness so extreme that his mouth pops open and his tongue lolls out and his eyes roll back in his head as his purr threatens to cause the neighbors to complain about the noise. This morning The Mighty Fang was on his back leaning against the patio door in the sun while licking his belly. So of course I went over there and started rubbing his shoulder and behind his ears (he doesn't like his belly rubbed). And he reached out his paw and grabbed my hand and pulled it to his face. As usual, I just basically went along with him rather than resisting, and as usual, when his "prey" wasn't doing any wriggling or anything, he just, uhm, uhm, uhm... groomed my hand. Alrighty, then!
-- Badtux the Celebrating Late Thanksgiving Penguin
Our two cats, Joey and Mr Bailey, have taken to grooming not only each other, but our Lab Emily as well. Emily doesn't mind Joey, but for some reason views Mr Bailey as that rotten little brother that's always hanging around.
ReplyDeleteI told the lovely yet talented Mrs 618 of your comment regarding the Pink Tongue of Mass Grooming. She almost spit soda all over the place.
Mr Bailey and Emily both dearly love them some belly rubs; Joey can take them or leave them.
Mencken has suddenly developed a liking for the Pink Tongue of Mass Grooming. When he's feeling like getting groomed he will go up to TMF and bump heads with him. At that point, of course, well, you know the rest of that story. Out pops the Pink Tongue of Mass Grooming to clean behind Mencken's ears for him.
ReplyDeleteOf course, when Mencken is trying to sleep and TMF comes up and starts grooming him, he's not quite so happy!
Hmmm...
ReplyDeleteSince you're the computer geek and I'm the borderline Luddite, maybe you can help me.
There's a chance I'm going to have a nice chunk o' change come my way pretty soon. If so, I plan on buying a new laptop. Saw a couple models at Staples for $700 or $800 that looked like they'd satisfy my wants -- I'd like to put some of my own music on my blog someday, but this old clunker* couldn't handle it -- but I really don't know, and I never expect salespeople to be honest when it comes to them earning a living. So...
Blogging, watching the occasional YouTube clip, putting some of my music on the blog, maybe a little Photoshopping for kicks, maybe even some personal video footage (?!) -- that's what I'd like to do with a laptop. What would you recommend I look into?
Oh, I forgot...
ReplyDelete*: This old clunker happens to be a Compaq. Yes, I've been blogging on a Compaq from day one. And I feel fine...
My brother just bought a Compaq for his wife at Best Buy for $450. It had a slow dual-core Intel processor (1.5 megahertz, I think he said), but will do quite nicely for Internet use. I think he said it had an 80 gigabyte hard drive and 1 gigabyte of memory, both of which are plenty for most people. Note that my brother is as geeky (or geekier) than me so ...
ReplyDeleteOne thing I will say about laptops: If you are going to use it on battery power, get one that says "Intel Centrino" on it. They use much less battery power than the AMD ones or the non-Centrino ones. I had a non-Centrino laptop and it would only last about 50 minutes (!!) on battery power -- hardly enough time to board the plane, much less use it on the plane! Also, bigger is *not* better if you intend to use it on a bus, train, or plane. Unfortunately, pretty much everybody has standardized on 15.4" screens, which are just too darned big to open up while on the train or plane, but (shrug). What can you do, unless you're willing to fork over the $1299 for the "sweet spot" Macbook (the one with the DVD/RW drive)?
The main problem you'll have with the Compaq will be if you intend to do music or video. It of course comes with no software to do music or video (unlike the Macbook which comes with iLife), and Windows Vista is not particularly friendly towards music and video, sometimes randomly deciding to stomp on your music or video quality if it decides that your hardware is not "trusted", and the necessary virus scanner and firewall (necessary on Windows) are always stepping in and taking over system locks to do their thing causing glitches in the audio. That said, it's possible to get decent sound out of the thing, it just is irritating to have to do things like disable the virus scanner and firewall before you're able to get reliable hard drive recording. As for video, I don't do video, so can't help you there (shrug). I assume you'd have similar problems there, but that's just an assumption.
But if all you want to do is the Internet, the $450 Compaq is fine for that. The other problems are the same no matter how much you pay for a Windows laptop, because they are problems inherent in Windows, not in the hardware (since the Macbook uses the same general hardware, just a higher-end configuration of it).