another sam chan: the student blogger

While commenting on other forums and blogs, I often notice that the blog writer always has some witty picture of himself and I am always a faded silhouette. Well, no more! Here’s how you get your own 5×7 when you comment on blogs. All you do is go to a site called Gravatar and sign up for an account with your primary email. Gravatar calls itself the Globally Recognized Avatar, and rightfully so. Once you’ve signed up, all that’s left is for you to upload a picture and sync it with your email. Simple and pain free. Have you ever wondered why it was such a pain to comment on people’s blogs, asking for my name and every single time? This is why. From my experience, my picture now shows up on every single post I make on others’ blogs. What’s even neater is that if you decide to change that picture, it automatically changes all your past pictures to your updated ones as well, and if you have more than one email, Gravatar accommodates for that as well. Show off your picture by leaving a comment here!

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I decided to pick up (perhaps mortgage would be a better word) a Apple Macbook last week at Future Shop. I went for the lower aluminum model, with 2.0ghz core 2 dual and a 160gb hard drive. In some ways it was a tough choice over the more powerful 2.4ghz Macbook, which would have been an obvious replacement for my 12″ Powerbook G4. What it essentially came down to…

- Cost
- 2.4ghz wasn’t worth the extra 400 dollars I would have had to add on
- I’ve been typing QWERTY since All the Right Type, I think I can do without the backlit light
- I have my data backed up on a 500gb external hard drive so the extra space is meaningless.

With that, I went the economical (although going mac never really is economical. Asus would be economical) route and am glad of it. Some pictures of the unboxing:

The Macbook Box beside the Powerbook Box

There it is!

Not quite as thin as the Curve

Comparing the Powerbook 12″ and the Macbook 13″ side by side. Check out the glare

A video of it’s first startup

The rest of the pictures can be found on my flickr

Some initial thoughts:
- The new glass trackpad is cool, not ‘throw my mouse away’ cool though. Three Finger Swipe is nice on Adium
- The glossy glare can be annoying, but I’ve been using a NEC 17″ glossy LCD for years, so I’m used to it. What is annoying though is how noticeable fingerprints and dust are on the screen.
- Lack of firewire is a non-issue. USB 2.0 is fast.
- The keyboard has a strange give to it, with the space bar having a minor squeak and loud clicking noise.
- The brightness is unbelievable, especially in comparison to my old Powerbook.
- 1080p video produces a little lag, but 720p works perfectly.

As briefly mentioned in my previous post, this is going to be my only machine from now on. So far, it has not disappointed, with no signs of any lag anywhere except for when running video on 1080p, which shouldn’t be run on a 13″ screen anyways. Setup, with wifi, audio, video, and Chess running at full throttle took 10 minutes. Sam was pleased.

ps – I don’t usually talk in 3rd person, but I was that pleased.

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I have been using a PC since the Windows 3.1 days and bought an Apple Powerbook G4 12′ Laptop to start my college “career” almost 4 years ago. I loved the mac experience and even sort of became a bit of a fanboy, promoting Apple to all my friends. You could even call me Eve. But as much as I loved the mac OS, I always figured I would maintain a PC desktop while running Mac with my laptops, just for those ‘PC only’ apps, and keep myself in line by using the same OS as the majority of the rest of the world. So when my PC desktop died, it was natural for me to pick up another PC. My friend graciously gave me his for a below market price and after playing around with it for a while, it looked good. Now all I had to do was reformat it to erase his things and start putting in my own.

Simple enough, or so I thought.

I was 20 minutes in when I did my first ctrl, alt, delete. It was followed briefly by the second, third, and fourth of which rebooted the computer. By the time I finally got into the familiar Windows screen, I was greeted with jagged motion and a lack of an internet connection. I didn’t get it. I plugged in the ethernet in the right slot. A quick call to my friend and I was reminded that I needed to install the internet and video card drivers. It’s in the box, I was told. I then flipped opened the box and was welcomed to 20 different CDs. “Sorry, but when can you pick it back up?”

And that was the dramatic end of Sam the PC User. Sorry Bill. I’m not a PC but I wear glasses too. I’m not trying to bash Windows – it’s customizability is second to none and its hard to argue with 2.0 ghz dual core and 4gb of ram for less than 500 while a measly Mac Mini with 1.6 ghz and 1 gb of ram will run you well over 650.

But it’s not for me. It’s ironic because the computer world has done a complete 180 on me. It wasn’t so long ago in Elementary School that the teacher threw us in a room with a bunch of molding ‘Apple Macintoshs’. Those things only had two uses: All the Right Type and Oregon Trail, and they only worked (sometimes) when you put in a napkin sized floppy disk. Back then, we longed to go to the high-tech PC lab, having heard all these stories about Solitaire and Minesweeper. ‘All those PC only’ apps no longer exist anymore (and I can run Bootcamp if I really needed to) and as for the rest of the world? Well, I can deal with being a minority.

ps – Here’s Mac Solitaire.

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