what’s going on? what’s happening? what’s all this?

Posted on April 7th, 2004 in my ramblings.

What else has been happening?

  • We are entering box hell – that time before we move when we try to do as much pre-packing as possible. You can tell it’s getting time to move because photos and pictures start to come off the walls, and then when we talk it sounds like we’re living in a barrel. It’s only three weeks until we take possession of our house.
  • Maptuit (where I work) is plugging along. Check out our new corporate website with lots of juicy press releases and technology demos.
  • Sandy got into York University for teacher’s college, as you may have noticed. This is the news we’ve been waiting for for months now. It’s a huge relief to know that she’s going to school in Ontario.
  • As a result, we’re seriously looking at buying Sandy a notebook computer. Her requirements are “as light as possible and good battery life” for normal Office / Web browsing use. My requirements are “must last at least three years without failing” as I’ve seen so, so many notebooks become doorstops over the years. Also it must be under $2000. So far I’ve looked at the Sony VAIO 505 series, Apple iBooks, and some IBMs that were in their clearance center. Mmmm… IBMs are looking good actually.
 

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3 replies

  1. Jonathan Wise says:

    Added on April 8th, 2004 at 9:40 am

    Well I’ve traditionally been against the ThinkPad, seeing it as the anti-thesis of the PowerBook. But recently I was given an IBM T40 for work purposes, and have found it to be a wonderful machine.
    Mind you the T40 is the high end boxen, and my friend has had horrible experiences with his “iSeries” ThinkPad. Nonetheless, mine has been an incredibly reliable machine, and since I didn’t pay for it, I abuse it horribly. I carry it by the opened screen, drop it frequently, slam the lid closed, swing it back and forth under my arm while the hard drive is spinning, forbid it from going to sleep and leave it running sitting on my couch under a blanket for 18 hours straight… And it hasn’t given me a second of grief.

    That said, the iBook is one sexy ass machine, and… well it doesn’t run Windows.

  2. Jonathan Wise says:

    Added on April 8th, 2004 at 9:41 am

    PS: MapTuit rawks!

  3. Jonathan Wise says:

    Added on April 14th, 2004 at 1:23 pm

    And another thing
    Centrino based laptops (like the ThinkPad T4) actually have quite impressive battery life. Without the CD-ROM spinning, but with the (built-in) wireless NIC connected, I get 3 to 3.5 hours out of it. Watching a DVD, a fully charged battery will get me all the way through a movie with just enough time to check my e-mail afterward before I re-charge.
    I guess that’s pretty lame compared to the 5 hours that the iBook gets (and that’s actually fairly realistic) but still much better than the Dell and Sony boxes I’ve used.