Light at the end of the tunnel

It's been a really long week and I've been meaning to write a post for a while. Time constraints and a shaped internet connection (yes, I don't know how I managed to use up all my quota either) caused continual delays unfortunately. Figure I might as well put this up now that I have a moment to spare.

The past week has been pretty trying at work and at home. We're severely understaffed at the moment so everyone on the team is putting in extra time to get things done for release dates. On the domestic front I've had my hands full taking care of Alison who has been unwell for over a week now. We rushed her to Wesley Emergency at three in the morning on Tuesday because she felt so bad and they admitted her for a couple of days to keep tabs on her condition. Very little sleep for all involved.

Bringing all this back to me and my hard run of luck with ordering a notebook, I called Dell up on the 20th to check on the status of my Inspiron 9400 which at that point was due on the 21st of March. Surprise, surprise... there is apparently a worldwide shortage of the videocard that I requested in my order (GeForce 7800 Go) and the customer representative could not give me an estimate on when they would be getting new stock.

Suffice to say, by Friday I was feeling pretty darn low. It was time for some retail therapy.



What's that? Could that be a notebook box I see? Surely not.



It certainly looks like a notebook when you unpack it!



Right, all silliness aside. I stomped on down to Harvey Norman with the full intention of walking out of that store either with a new laptop or an XBOX 360 (which has JUST launched in Australia). Mark from work who also had an Inspiron 9400 on order suggested taking a look at the Toshiba Qosmio G30 which was similarly specced so that's exactly what I did. Managed to brow beat the sales person down a few hundred bucks and upgraded the stock kit with another gig of RAM along with a laptop bag. Still ended up being a little more that I was hoping to spend but the bite shouldn't be too bad since I'm salary sacrificing.

So after all that was it worth it? Heck yes. Cancelled my Dell order when I got back home and started setting up my new toy immediately (which I've christened Gemini, you know dual core and all).

First impressions over a day and a bit of playing and configuring are certainly promising. I always knew the new Core Duo laptops would be quick and snappy so that's not a surprise. The extras that I got by going for a top of the line Toshiba however are definitely pleasing. Two lamps mean that the screen is blinding (brighter than my desktop CRT monitor), TWO 100GB SATA hard drives gives me more space than I would have ever expected in a portable and heart thumping Harmon Kardon speakers bring a tear to my eye.



There's also the Synaptics touch pad with virtual scrolling functions and shortcuts. The classy silver volume control dial. Analog TV tuner to use with Media Centre Edition. Finger print scanner for biometric security. Oh, and an in built microphone which is just another thing that the Dell wouldn't have come with. Can't wait to try Skype out with it but Mum doesn't seem to be online. :P

Preordering and cancelling an Apple MacBook Pro due to delays - 6 weeks

Ordering and cancelling a Dell Inspiron 9400 due to delays - 3 weeks

Buying and unwrapping a Toshiba Qosmio G30 - 3 hours

Grinning like a 5 year old with an early birthday present - Priceless

Sauna

The airconditioning in our department sputtered and died unceremoniously at about 10 this morning. Of all the sections in the building that could lose access to cooling, it had to be the only department with PCs and server farms gushing out hot air from over worked CPU fans.

Aparently it's going to take a few days to fix the busted conditioner so they've installed a temporary solution.



Looks like something out of Doctor Who doesn't it? At least it keeps us from melting.

No apple this time

Well that's that. Cancelled my order with Infinite Systems for the MacBook Pro and applied for a custom built Dell Inspiron 9400. Guess my affair with Macintosh just wasn't meant to be this time. Assuming this move doesn't prove fatal for Apple then I might consider getting a second or third generation Macintel when the time comes.

This new Dell should be a real beast.

• Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo Processor T2600 2.16 GHz, 2MB Cache, 667 MHz FSB
• 17" UltraSharp(TM) Wide Screen UXGA Display with Truelife(TM): 1920x1200
• Dell(TM) Wireless 350 Bluetooth Module
• Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945 Dual Band 802.11a/g 54Mbps Wireless Mini Card
• 2048MB (2 X 1024MB) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
• 256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) Go 7800
• 100GB Ultra ATA 7200RPM Performance Hard Drive
• Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities
• Internal 56K Modem
• 9-Cell 80Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery
• Carbon Fiber Color Kit

Dell have provided me with a tracking number and estimate delivery in 10 working days. Hopefully sooner. First order of business would be to try to install OSX or Vista on it.

In other news, a quick finger count would indicate that today marks exactly one year of employment at Michael Hill Jeweller. I've been recently handed a little more responsibility in the team to help Dan out by managing issues as they come through from the users and delegate as necessary. It'll be a bit of an adjustment but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Moment such as this is ample justification in my eyes for blowing cash on a laptop that will be dated in two years. :P

Mope

Really bummed about my MacBook. Read today on the ozzy forums that Apple resellers are probably going to get their first shipment of MacBook Pros about three to four weeks from NOW. Heck knows if I'm even going to get mine then seeing as I placed my order on the 17th of January (a full week after the announcement). At the moment I'm seriously considering cancelling my order and cashing in for a Dell Inspiron 9400 instead.

Granted there are trade offs but for a better screen I get lots of bonuses too. Here's what I can list off if I spec up a Dell to spend about the same amount as I had set aside for the MBP.

+ 17" Screen over 15"
+ 5 in 1 media card readers which I would find really useful with my digital camera
+ Double the RAM (2Gig over 1Gig)
+ 1920x1200 resolution compared to 1440x900
+ I don't have to hack the darn thing to put Windows on it to play games :)
+ Internal Modem
+ S-video out for TV watching
+ More USB ports (6 compared to 2)
+ Dual layer DVD burner (MBP only has single layer burning)
+++ I can probably get it before Christmas...

There are some down points of course though if I really think about it these are merely "nice to haves".

- No inbuilt webcam
- No inbuilt microphone
- No backlit keyboard
- No apple remote
- Close to a kilo heavier than the MBP and it's much bigger too (duh)
- I need to hack it to get OSX on it so I can use iLife
--- IT'S STILL NOT HERE!!!

Installing OSX on Wintel machines seems to be trivial these days from what I can see. Not to mention Vista won't be long away and I can quite happily live with that on my laptop. Guess I'll just have to sleep on it.

Just incase I do decide to get the Inspiron I figured I should queue up a torrent for OSX to get ready. Glad I did because now I've raised my personal best for download speed on a single torrent (fear my geekiness)

Speed Demon

Oooooh maaaaan. Telstra has been increasing our line rental cost quite a bit as of late and we're tired of paying two bills for our phone and internet connection. Today we called up our ISP iiNet to bundle our fixed line service with them and to upgrade our internet plan. The guy on the phone told us that it would probably take up to a week for the new speeds and configuration to kick in.

Seems like Christmas came early...



Previously we were on a 512k download plan with 24GB of quota per month. Now we have 40GB of download quota and a theoretical maximum speed of 24m. Just look at that download speed on Daria! I'd be lucky to get that much for ALL my torrents on the previous plan.

I also sneaked in a little example of the thumbnail previews you get of windows when you mouse over the task bar in Vista. Those update in real time too so it's real handy for keeping tabs on multiple applications.

At least it looks like I won't have to worry about bandwidth for downloading OSX software updates when my MacBook Pro arrives.

Edit:

YOWZAS! I feel like the kid who just moved from dialup to ISDN again...



Edit again:

Trumped yet once more

Bored Computer Boy

I've been looking for unhealthy things to do to my PC while I pass the time waiting for the "package" to arrive. Over the course of the week I've managed to accomplish (I use that term very loosely here) the following

• Download and install the latest build of Windows Vista (3058)


• Remove Windows Vista


• Download Ubuntu Linux


• Format a partition with 60 gigs worth of torrent downloads, movies, pictures and heck knows what while attempting to install Ubuntu Linux


• Bugger up said install of Ubuntu beyond bootability


• Install Windows Vista again

Ahhh you can taste the productivity...

User Stupidity aside however, I'm really liking bits of what I see from Microsoft's latest OS. Of course the first thing is that it looks MUCH prettier compared to XP (not especially difficult). The new windowing system finally takes advantage of 3D accelleration so we have a bucket of eye candy that OSX users have enjoyed for years now (transparencies, drop shadows, morphing, etc).



The guts of the OS are impressive too. Security wise pretty much any action that requires administrator privelages now pops up a confirmation box for you to click. Explorer has new filtering, sorting and stacking functionality for files. The Windows Sidebar could potentially rival OSX dashboard with useful gadgets. Performance analyser to let you know how crap your machine is and that it's time for an upgrade. Overall things feel rather solid for a beta.

The in built applications that come with the beta are impressive too. For the first time in years I find myself using Internet Explorer again. At least now they have tabs, popup blockers, expose like previews, RSS readers and a nice simple interface. I've also been clocking quite a bit of time with the in built games, particularly Microsoft's new generic pretty chess game Chess Titans. All the old faithfuls we're used to (Hearts, Solitaire, Mindsweeper) have all been given a facelift which is a bonus.

Some things that irritate me however are the way the system indexes your files for the new ubiquitous search engine. When this thing is running my system absolutely CRAWLS. I've taken to approaching the problem bit by bit and index a few folders at night when I'm not using the machine for fear that I'll commit unrecoverable acts of violence from the lack of response. Indexing also doesn't work on FAT32 partitions so I had to shuffle my files around while I formatted all my drives to NTFS. The other small annoyance I've found is that Java based apps which use Swing/AWT such as Azureus seem to throw off the new windowing system so in order to run these apps your windows have to go ugly again.

Hopefully these'll get ironed out before release. At this rate I'm definitely going to be upgrading to the retail version when it comes out. Thumbs up to Microsoft.