Monday, January 25, 2010

Desktop demise, the senate and quick-draw

- Do you own a desktop computer? Do me a favor, please do not upgrade it.  Do not buy a new desktop when your old one goes dead.  Please do not spend a dime on your desktop ever again!  "He's dead, Jim."  Nowadays laptops can do everything a desktop can do.  Laptops are roughly the same price as desktops and since they are obviously more portable than a desktop, they are much more convenient.  I cannot imagine I will ever buy a desktop computer again.


If you believe my initial hypothesis, then you must be thinking "If desktops are dead, then what kind of laptop do I buy?" Ah ha!  That's the 21st century rub.  There are several categories of laptops and the most popular way to categorize them is by diagonal screen size:


15 inch to 17 inch: These laptops are typically just as fast a desktop computer.  They can be a bit bulky and heavy.  If you are seriously into gaming on the go, are far-sighted, or love watching movies on your laptop then a larger laptop may be for you.  I shy away from larger laptops because I find them inconvenient to carry.


13 or 14 inch: A few of these laptops are just as powerful as their bigger brothers, but the souped-up 13 or 14 inch laptops often have problems dissipating heat. I can't tell you the amount of time I have spent trying to find the perfect 13 inch gaming laptop.


10 to 12 inch: These laptops are frequently referred to as "netbooks."  They are the hottest-selling kind of laptop on the market right now.  You can't play games on these (at least, not the newest games), you can't run 30 programs at once and obviously the screen sizes are tiny, but boy are they convenient.  I currently own the Lenovo S12 ION netbook.  It's a hybrid between a regular laptop and a netbook.  It has a gaming video card inside of it, thus giving it cross-over appeal.


So we have mentioned desktops, laptops and notebooks, but let's add another category to the list...smartbooks!  What is a smartbook?  It's a brand-new computer term.  A smartbook is a combination of a netbook and a smartphone.  It's as small or smaller than a netbook, and it has constant 3G internet connectivity, just like a smartphone.  Could smartbooks be the next wave of PC technology?  Smartbooks do not (and likely will never) run a version of windows.  Smartbooks don't even have "intel-inside."  You can read more about smartbooks and the categories I describe above at the following link:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10251841-64.html



- A map showing the state of each senate race for the 2010 elections.  Thanks Mr. Rove!


Owly Images




- Want to know if a plant is edible?  Try the universal edibility test:
http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/universal-edibility-test.htm


- I was watching Blazing Saddles last night.  Gene Wilder is my favorite part of that movie and it got me thinking...who are the fastest quick-draw movie characters?  Here's my top five, once again in no particular order:


1. The Waco Kid (Blazing Saddles)
2. Doc Holliday (Tombstone)
3. Sundance Kid (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
4. Joe (A Fistful of Dollars. Clint Eastwood)
5. ....


I will let you decide who #5 should be.  Please use the comments section to give us your opinion.

2 comments:

Randal said...

"Sharing is sexy?" Okaaaayyy...

The answer to your question is Cort from The Quick and the Dead, a movie that if made now would be in the top five grossing movies of the year, I firmly believe.

Finally, honest question, is it practical to leave a laptop on continuously? I never, ever turn my computer(s) off...they're constantly downloading things.

I doubt I'll ever buy a new laptop, since it would be worthless at my school (not having the proper compatability hardware and software), and I would never take it anywhere else. I never play games, but I do a lot of video work on it (burning from one CD to another, for example). I also use about four USB ports at a time.

Anonymous said...

It's perfectly OK to leave a laptop on all the time, if you have set it to go into sleep mode after it hasnt been used for a while or if you close the lid.

- Greymarch