Epic Photo of the Week
Goes to our boy Alex Carter. This low-light high shutter colorblend (Yes I’m making terms up) picture was taken a few weeks ago at Lake Monroe here in Bloomington. At the time a few of us were dogpiling him (NOT what you sickos might be thinking, its where you sit on him), and he was covered in like 20 floaties as well.
He was yelling “MY FACE, MY BEAUTIFUL FACE!!” repeatedly at the time this picture was taken.
Other than that, no other words can do it justice. Enjoy.
The Laptop Buyers Guide For the Masses
Let me preface this article by saying that there will be multitudes of other resources that are more in-depth and more comprehensive than what I am going to suggest. Google them.
The past week alone, three of my good friends have approached me and said something along the lines of “Pete, you know everything and are the guru of knowledge. Please share some of your insight about laptops with me and allow me to soak up your expertise like a sponge.”
I obliged, albeit it at my leisure. As a courtesy to all three of my subscribers, I will pass along what I told them to you.
95% of people looking for a laptop don’t know what they want. They just know that they want a laptop. The first thing I asked my friends looking for one was “What do you want it for?”, with responses along the lines of “F*ck if I know”.
So I told them what they want. These same 95% of people are going to use them for simple tasks - email, web browsing, mp3s, and basic storage. Maybe a game of Kitten Cannon or two. Truth is, a laptop from 5 years ago would probably suffice for the masses. Ok that’s a lie, but you catch my drift.
Here’s what you 95% what - A solid laptop for cheap. Like, under $500 cheap. So yes, all you iPod / iTunes / iPhone fanboys may look elsewhere for advice on which $1500 Apple laptop to buy. So go be smug on your fanboy forums, or better yet, make a podcast about it.
Here’s my advice, take it or leave it:
- At least 2 gigs of RAM. This is key, especially with everything having Vista pre-installed on it these days. If I were you, I would re-install XP with SP3 and avoid the headache. Make sure its DDR2 ram and not DDR.
- A solid processor. AMD Turion 64, AMD Turion 64 X2, Intel Core Duo, or Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Celeron, etc. I’d go with Intel, but that’s a personal preference. I would go for something ~2 GHz. At that speed, even with Vista, should you choose to accept it, should be fast enough to wet your whistle.
- Hard drive space. This is where you should really know what you want in your laptop. If you want tons of music, movies, games, and the like, get a hard drive with at least 100 gigs. My laptop has 40 gigs, and I am nowhere close to filling it up. *Tip of the day* Use Pandora Radio for your music, its great.
- Battery life. If you aren’t going to be using this on planes or traveling or be THAT guy at Starbucks with your orange mocha frappucino, you really don’t need to worry about it. If you are going to use your laptop and not have it be plugged in the majority of the time, I would go with the higher celled battery, it is worth it. Consider this though, my Dell laptop is two years old, I got the best battery on the market at the time (5-cell I believe), and now it lasts less than 5 minutes without AC power.
- Widescreen. Splurge for the nice WXGA widescreen monitor with the glossy surface. It is so much nicer, and is worth the extra 50-70 bucks. I didn’t get the glossy and it still grinds my gears. Screen size is a real personal preference.
- Going along with screen size is weight. Lighter = better. Better = $$$. $$$ = ballin’. You do the math.
Brands that I like - Asus, Lenovo (IBM), Sony. Brand that I own - Dell. Look for solid warranties and check out some real reviews, I would mess around with them at a Best Buy. A big part about laptops is the ‘feel’. If you like the feel and look, and it has the hardware to run well enough for what you want it to do, then you’re all set. You 95% remember, anything over ~$500-600 bucks and you’re just spending money that could be spent on 360 games.
And there we have it folks, the most comprehensive, in-depth laptop buying guide on all of the interwebs.
Guidebooks for Facebook? Whaaaaaaaaat??
So a part of my GA over at Swain Hall is to check in new books that we have acquired for people to check out. As I am checking these books in, I come across this monstrosity:
Yes ... Manuals for Facebook
Yes, it is a guidebook, how-to, DIY, and a whathaveyou, all in one. A guidebook for Facebook! I can now die a happy man (*sarcasm*).
A few thoughts:
- Who needs a 268 page book to learn Facebook? Really? Does 90 year old Grandma need some advice on which profile picture to use, the one of her in her Sunday dress, or the one a little more revealing, the polyester blouse she bought from Macy’s in 1973?
- Hmmm … Well, this book will be outdated in approximately one week. Facebook changes their layout more often than I do my laundry (*perhaps sarcasm*). I guess this way they can have the 33rd edition out by 2010.
- Allow me to give you an excerpt from this fine publication. I opened it up to a random page, no selection or rhyme and reason. “Sure, you could show up to an event without RSVPing first, but that would be rude!” Truly epic, I must confess.
- Many more thoughts come into my head, but here’s the gist: Check this book out for some instant humor on the state of ’social networking’ in this day and age. It reminds me of the classic Mike Judge movie Idiocracy. Stellar in all regards.
That being said, OMG ROFL LOL G2G TTYL!
Mozilla Ubiquity = Awesome-O
This looks really promising. Mozilla, the makers of Firefox (What are you waiting for?) are at it again - This time, with some new software that may just change the way we assemble information. The gist of Ubiquity is the ability for a user to create whatever information they may need (maps, reviews, links, pictures, etc) by simply clicking a button and entering in some data. Here’s the kicker - Ubiquity is designed for natural language, meaning you don’t have to memorize any mumbo jumbo hibbity bibbity nonsense terminology, instead typing it out naturally. The video below does a much better job of explaining this. I think this could be incredible and I really look forward to giving Ubiquity a shot.
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
