Posts Tagged ‘macbook’
friday free for all »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
… My youngest sister will be back up in MSP next week. She will have two jobs, an internship and gets back to school in the fall. She’s already mocking me. (Sibling rivalry becomes all too real when you’re not getting paid.)
… To stave off a neuron puddle, I’ll be reading more. This includes blogs, non-fiction, magazines, subtitles, you name it. Hopefully I can keep myself mentally ready for any 9to5 that comes my way. (The literary urge may or may not have been sparked by receiving more books from the library than expected due to bad queue management.)
… Girlfriend and I had to make an emergency trip to the MOA Apple Store because her cool-kid-computer tweaked. A terrible idea, this. Not because we didn’t need to go, but I had time to play with the Macbook on display. Ugh.
Someone, (anyone!) let me know if your company is looking for someone to show them the ways of the internets. Hell, need a web designer that can maintain a brand message across dozens of social tools? Need a blogger with a flair for parenthetical thoughts? (No? Are you sure?)
Tell your friends, your parents, your toddlers, whoever. I’d love experience, something to do with my afternoons save for reading (which is too nerd chic for my tastes anyway) and financial stability.
microsoft saved me $2k? »
Monday, March 30th, 2009
That’s misleading. Sort of. They just may have given me a reason to avoid a finance option, allowing me the patience to save up for a MacBook instead. (Man, why do I lie like that in the title? Bush league.)
Over the weekend, and I do mean the entire effin’ weekend, I installed a Windows7 tester to my machine. Let me first describe the install…
I started with a backup, which took (this may tell you how much shiz I’ve accumulated) about twelve hours. Then I tried to upgrade to save myself the trouble of reinstalling all of my programs.
I left it to run at 2.30p and returned at 10p with a message (similar to): “Preparing for first use; setup will continue after restart.” What timing! Instead, this message came up every three minutes between restarts. Continuously.
I finally wiped the drive, starting from scratch. After about thirty hours, I installed essential programs (browsers, CS3, TweetDeck, etc.) and started playing around with it.
So far, so good. I’ll give it a week before it slows my Macbook-purchasing momentum but there are some marked improvements:
- Entire machine runs smoother (OS isn’t Exxon-like resource consumer).
- Launching Chrome is almost instantaneous.
- IE8 fixed a bug IE7 and IE6 were both showing. (Maybe a better browser?)
- Media player is different (video popped out) and buggy but looks better.
- Taskbar is very Mac-dock-esque but useful.
- Seems to have fixed a bug in my DVD drive that was causing halted audio playback.
Take it for what you will (a new OS always runs like honey) but anyone running Vista on less than 3gb RAM should think about moving over once it’s released later this year. (Netbooks, I’m looking at you.)
Note: I’m still getting a Macbook for portability, durability and reliability. Just not in the market for 17″ of carry-around anymore.
how to beat a depre— uh, recession… »
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Image via Wikipedia
… ignore the hell out of it. A close friend was laid off recently. Credit interest, unemployment and foreclosure rates are all on the rise. Yet, I can’t stop looking up different ways to configure a Macbook. (Go figure.)
Likely configuration:
- 13″ unibody
- 2.4ghz processor (core duo)
- 4gb RAM
- SSD of unknown size
- OS X snow leopard
The portability and flexibility… mmm… it’s all so intoxicating. It’s a slight boost in processor (plus, the ability to use virtual PC), double the memory and space and a light, compact and durable machine. (And how hipster chic is the Genius Bar, right?)
When I bought my current machine, I rarely carried it around and was looking for a multimedia desktop replacement. Soon after, I started traveling and working on multiple things in multiple places. Unfortunate.
Apple has slowly eroded all my arguments against with each release. The price of a Macbook is more reasonable than the Pro offerings, the unibody is cooler in the lap, the core duos can run Windows better than PCs, etc. At this point, it’s not even a fair fight.
The world may be going to shit but I’ll be riding the Apocalyptic horses with all the cool kid snobs. Now I just have to wait for Snow Leopard to be released sometime this summer… (impatient!)