sundries

[rm]

- The historical ball gender thingy transpired without incident. Various people saw me and said "George Sand," and I smiled and nodded as this makes my existence historically acceptable.

I was glad that we could attend the event and also feel, at this point at least, that we could against next year. I remain internally deeply ambivalent about the gender/queer thing situation for reasons that are alternately too complicated and too boring to get into.

- In fact, being away this weekend was an absolute godsend and something we both totally needed.

- Too bad the return home has involved a clogged toilet, the previously posted about leak, and a good deal of cat puke. All of thise situations seem to have subsided for the moment. Real life is hard, and it has made me innordinately stressed out.

- To update on the leak sitaution, the boiler has cycled on again, but no more leaking for several hours. It just started again, now as the boiler is cycling off it seems.

- OMG, why does iTunes have none of hte music I want right now?

- Firefly! So that thing where Mal gets a wife? wow, that could have gone in a lot of different directions. Probably the most satisfying episode so far, and with a lot of odd character reveals. This goes on my list of "watch this show to learn how to structure/characterize."

- So I am thinking of buying a laptop sometime between now and mid-January. I need your input.

I am trying to decide between getting a Mac (anyone with info on timing because of impending new releases, let me know), a random PC netbook, and an actual proper PC laptop. There are pros and cons to all for me. My main needs are the Internet and word processing. Secondary needs are Excel, possibly Access. I use photoshop a lot, but realize that's a problem on Macs and will probably just continue with that on my old desktop. Ideally my budget is 1K or less. Obviously if I go with a net book type thing I want to spend a lot less, and I might conceivably push my budget for $1,400 for a Mac.

Thoughts?

Comments

[hllangel]

Photoshop for mac is NOT a problem. The Adobe software is actually designed for mac, and has been adapted for PC use. I have a 17-inc macbook pro, and run photoshop on it very nicely.

I'd recommend Mac, but have no information about new releases. I think you're safe, since they just released new products a month or so ago.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

Have you looked at Asus's new (160GB) eeePC? It is way less than your budget, and is also appealing to me (I'm considering selling my laptop to my brother) because of its small size. Riley has it and really, really likes it.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Oo. Is that the new 1000? I'm just on the 901, but mainly because the battery life is reputedly better.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

I have the 900 (20G) and really enjoy it. I don't try to run graphics software on it, though.

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

I'm saving up for an Eee myself. I know three people who have them and love them. Amazon has the 900HA for about $325 and the 1000HA for about $425.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

- Firefly! So that thing where Mal gets a wife? wow, that could have gone in a lot of different directions. Probably the most satisfying episode so far, and with a lot of odd character reveals. This goes on my list of "watch this show to learn how to structure/characterize."


I'm watching through the boxset myself, and totally agree (and haven't even watched that ep yet).

FWIW, I'm posting from an Asus Eee PC model 901 as I speak, which can cope with Internet, word processing, and spreadsheets for a mere $500 or thereabouts, but it's probably not what you're after as a primary machine. (Though, mine is Linux rather than Mac or PC.)

[dabhug.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that things went well and you had a nice weekend save for real life drama.

Are you watching Firefly for the first time? Enjoy!

I am also laptop shopping to purchase within the next few months. I will be watching this space.

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

I've been using nothing but Macs for years. My five year old desk top and my three year old iBook are both going strong. We bought a LaCie backup drive. I use word and photoshop with zero problems. I know not everyone loves mac they way we do, but I've had no real problems. My power cord stopped connecting properly and it was a $60 replacement. I bought my iBook used--but brand new for $500 on eBay.

[mobobocita.livejournal.com]

I can't wait till you hit "Out of Gas" and "Heart of Gold". *grin*

As for the Laptop thing, I'm hopeless and useless, my current beast is giving me issues.

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

Seconding the reassurance that Photoshop is *not* a problem for Macs. I've used it for years and years on a variety of Macs. Works like a dream.

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

As a born and bred Mac girl, my opinion is a bit biased. But for all the things you say you need the machine to do, a Mac would work just fine.

In fact, if you don't mind an older machine that's been refurbished, I have a 13" iBook that's fully loaded and running the latest OS (or will be after I get back from Christmas) and I could let you have it for 4 or 500, or so. It's a good computer, and was $1200 new, so just let me know. ^_^

[therealycats.livejournal.com]

Re: Computers: I personally have a Mac, but I use a PC daily at work. Although I'm a Mac loyalist, I've been toying with the idea of, when I have the money, getting a PC again (my first and only was my freshman year of college before it got destroyed by a dreaded worm), because as much as I hate it, I do realize the practicality of it. I'm not sure how using Photoshop is a problem on Macs, since that's what I have and that's what I use, but then I'm not familiar with the Windows versions of that program, nor do I know what you do with it. You can get Microsoft Office for Mac, and it does include Excel and Word, but there is currently no version of Access for Mac (which is the sole reason I'm really considering getting a PC, in the event that I might one day be able to do some work at home and not have to drag myself into the office on cold winter days). As for releases, a new notebook was just released, possibly a desktop as well, and it seems that Apple releases new computers every year or so, so no matter what kind of Mac you get or when you get it, it won't be too long before something newer and shinier comes along. Also, as much as I love the brand, I will acknowledge that with the notebooks at least (those are what I'm familiar with in recent years), there have been some problems. My last one, the iBook, had a logic board problem and I had to take it in three times. I've now given up on it. The current one (a MacBook I bought in early 2007), as far as performance goes, I haven't had any problems with, but there is a defect where the plastic gets breaks in it. This is covered under the warranty, however the 3 year extended warranty has to be purchased separately, and you have to call to activate it, and since I'm inherently lazy, even though I bought it, I have not done this step, as we found out was necessary last time, at which point I let my step-mother handle it by yelling at the phone operators at the help line.

Of course the upside of a Mac, that everyone mentions, there aren't nearly as many viruses as there are for PCs, and Macs are preferred for people doing graphics and music over PCs.

Re: Firefly: Are you just now becoming familiar with it? Christina Hendricks was great in that episode, and if you don't watch it already, I recommend Mad Men for more from her.

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

I have photoshop CS3 open right now and I'm running the a powerpc iMac G5 with a gig of ram. I never had any problems until I got my new scanner and started working on 150+ meg files. Waiting on a 2 gig stick of ram which should solve that problem. If you're just doing photo editing I'd even suggest ditching Photoshop and going for Lightroom which is 100% directed towards photography.

They are however very spendy. On the upside I no longer worry about graphics cards, peripherals, or what new games to buy because they ain't gonna work with my iMac. Once you go apple, you lock out 90% of what's out there and generally only consume what's available at the apple store. It does cut out a lot of options but personally I find it much easier to deal with.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

L. follows all the new Apple releases and can keep you informed. If you time it right you can get a refurb or even something about to be phased out. All the programs you mentioned are fine on a Mac, and though I don't use Photoshop I think L. has.

[demotu.livejournal.com]

I ADORE that episode of Firefly. The conversations between various people in it are just so awesome, funny but in character and as you say, oddly revealing. Zoe and Wash's reactions to the new wife are especially priceless, as is Jayne trying to trade her for Vera. Also, my favourite Firefly quote is from it.

If you take sexual advantage of her, you're going to burn in a very special level of hell-a level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre.

I love my macbook with a passion, and I only switched two and a half years ago. I could not be happier about it.

[justpat.livejournal.com]

Must it be specifically Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Access? There's an open source suite called OpenOffice.org that works just as well. I've been using it for close to three years and haven't had any problems with it, or with exchanging files between it and Microsoft Office, whether for Mac or PC.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

There will be vast post-Christmas sales on hardware; there are even in less lean years, and this year they will be desperate to unload.

You can absolutely get a cheap, workable PC for under that price. Be aware that Vista is likely to get orphaned and replaced with a new OS as soon as possible, because it isn't doing well. There is less software available for it htan there should be as a result. However, you may be able to get a Vista-loaded machine for cheap and upgrade the software later. If you get a Windows PC it will either come with or offer a deal on Office as a bundle; less likely with Macs.

Photoshop is such a memory hog that it can be a pain to run on a laptop, but it can work.

(I am not compatible with the Mac OS personally, and their hardware tends to break rather than let me use it, so it's mutual. I can ask ex-Mac friends if you want, tough.)

It may be worth checking the various manufacturers' Web sites (again, for PC, dunno from Macs although I would caution against used Macs due to their hardware issues being more of a pain to repair; I would advise against a Mac not under warranty) to see if you can score a deal on a remanufactured or remaindered model, or a formerly corporate model off lease. I got my last laptop from Dell that way and got a good deal on a good machine.

Think about what's going to be best for you in terms of weight and usability, and if keyboard layouts bother you, try them all out first.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

In re: iTunes: Have you looked at Amazon's MP3 downloads? I don't buy stuff from iTunes 'cos I hate DRM, and Amazon has lots of stuff for the same price, DRM free.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

On Firefly" Oddly, that's one of the only issues I've seen, and it both impressed the heck out of me in terms fo "wow, somebody actually did that and got away with it" and annoyed me in a few ways, as I am not sure if the audience got any clues at all on things they should have had a chance to guess - or at least, to be able to look back on afterwards and say "Aha, there was a faint clue!" While I adored the concept (and have had similar characters in LARPs and things for years now), I also felt that there were some points in there were the audience was subject to a certain amount of gotcha-games, not letting us see crucial details that the characters already had, or otherwise pulling hat=tricks that the audience doesn't get a tipoff on. It's okay if we don't see it coming - that's brilliant. But there needs to be a clue, a hair of suspicion, something so that the audience doesn't feel seriously jerked around. You don't want the audience to *feel* manipulated, and certainly not to resent the fact that they have been.

Mind you, I have other huge issues with Firefly's entire cultural construct and the ways in which it fails, and its over-reliance on some cliches. While the characters and dialogue were snappy and cute, it didn't make me fall in love. And I'm sad about this, because really, cowboys in space is one of my favorite things ever.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm not at the point of having issues with the cultural construct, but I'm at the point where I have a list of things I feel like they have to address. And I feel like they won't. It's a really odd show, that skirts on the edge of stuff in a pretty ugly/dark way, and I feel like that's awesome from the standpoint of heroes often suck and villains always have reasons, but I know that and you know that and story tellers know that, but who watching knows that.

And, to be honest, I was actually a bit bummed in that ep that the girl wasn't who sh said she was. I thougth the ethical issues of the obvious problem were interesting and they were doing an interesting job with it.

Also, character I did not expect to identify with: Wash

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that Whedon in general relies on cliches and on manipulating the audience, which is why I usually hate this work. He prefers cute and snappy dialogue to substance, which annoys me. I found Firefly to be the least trite of all his work, and it also happened to touch on ideas I an fond of (the Confederacy, science fiction standards, Westerns in space, etc). And so I enjoyed it a lot, for the most part, but even it grated on me often... I had at least one or two eye rolls per ep.

[kurometarikku.livejournal.com]

I'm glad your weekend was fun. Hope you liked your hotel room, I put you in one of my favorites!

[mme-furiosa.livejournal.com]

I don't know what you use photoshop for, but after switched to Mac I never looked back, not once. I won't touch Microsoft on my own computer (plenty of open office and easily acquired Apple equivalents that are cross-platform) now, and cringe when I have to work on PCs for jobs.

I assure you that the Adobe interface is 1 kabillion times better on a Mac.

You should check out the "refurbished" option on the Mac site, they can be quite reasonable.

[mme-furiosa.livejournal.com]

Like this: http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB403?mco=MTIzMzg

awesome deal, sweet-ass machine, and you can even run Windows on it if you like.

[afterthree.livejournal.com]

The new Mac laptop just came out, so it'll be 18 months or so before the new ones hit (they're predictable that way). As people have said, Macs run Photoshop fine (the Adobe Suite was designed for them originally). The lowest-end brand new Mac model you can pick up right now starts at $1299, and you'd still have to fork over the cost of the software you want. You can pirate the software, but it's a bit more difficult to find.

Can't help with the PC. I've been a Mac girl since the day I was conceived. (My family practically owns shares with the number of Macs we've owned since the early 90s.)

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

Re: Laptops.

I bought a laptop last January, and the main issue was the screen. I do a lot of writing and reading in all kinds of lighting conditions and want to see more than half a print page at a time. Which meant I wanted a matte (is that the right word? non-shiny/reflective, basically) screen, 4:3 instead of 16:9, and SXGA+.

There were only three PC types that provided that. I chose a Dell Latitude, because my previous laptop which had worked very well for 6 years until I tried to convince it to accept USB drives had been one. The new one isn't quite as satisfactory as the old one was, though: screen lighting is bad (especially on battery), text is slightly blurry (maybe I have not yet found the perfect setting), and keyboard is flimsy and tends to block.

At work I have a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook which is brilliant -- great screen, perfectly readable text, really tough, battery run time twice that of the Dell -- but it's two years old and last year they didn't offer any model within my parameters.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

I really like my Lenovo ThinkPad SL400, which I bought at J&R Music World for $899. I had an IBM ThinkPad for several years before, and was impressed by its durability and reliability, and the Lenovo seems to be just as sturdy. Another nice thing is that J&R are selling the SL400s with an option of XP Pro or Vista, and if you're annoyed by the idea of having to run Vista (two of the last three programs I tried to install on K.'s computer don't run, even though they work perfectly on mine), that might be a good option. It's got a nice clean screen, built-in webcam and mic, native wireless and Bluetooth, biometric fingerprint authentication, pleasant semiclacky keyboard, and an option of either touchpad mouse or clit mouse, with a scroll bar for each.

Hm. I now see that J&R are only selling the SL500, for the same price, but with Vista only: http://www.jr.com/lenovo/pe/LEN_27463SU/ .

Still, Thinkpads are good machines in general. If you're going to be carrying it around a lot (mine is on my back every day), it's a good choice. It's got a spillproof keyboard, roll bars, shock protection -- all that good stuff. I'm quite pleased with it.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Why would Photoshop be a problem on a Mac? It's Mac-native, and runs very well--most professional graphic designers use Macs.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Er, people keep telling me there's no such thing as Photoshop for a Mac, but clearly this is crossed wires.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Definitely. You can get all the Adobe products for Mac, and they tend to be better.

That said, I'm not evangelistic about Macs--there are pros and cons (the big cons being price and the price of replacement parts being higher due to lack of competition).

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

I've got a Sony Vaio I've had for five years - it's got Windows XP on it, and runs Photshop and things nicely. It's my main laptop. (My husband has a Dell PC that is the hub of our network.)

I also have an Asus eee PC 2G that I got off eBay for $200 - there tend to be a lot of slightly used ones sold by people who can't adjus t to the tiny keys (however, Stephen Fry has one, so clearly one doesn't have to have little dainty hands). It runs sort of a baby Linux, and has its own word processing, etc that's compatible with Word, I think. I've only ever used it for reading and posting online, but it's lovely for that. It weighs something like a pound and a half.

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

Mac is pretty much the standard for any kind of graphic arts work. I just finished a digital art class using PS on the Mac and really fell in love with it, but I don't really see any difference between PS on a Mac and PS on a PC, except for minor accessory things and the age of my own ancient PC.

I loved using a Mac for PS but I really didn't like doing anything else with it. So I'll probably not get one.