The Shape of Things to Come
by tdaxp ~ November 23rd, 2008
This weekend I saw a demonstration of Windows 7 (the next version of Windows after Vista) on a super-economy $300 Taiwanese netbook. I was seriously impressed. Windows 7 was snappy — certainly better than Vista — and the worst of Vista’s “features” had been removed. I don’t know if Windows 7 will be better than XP, but it certainly did not appear to be a resource hog.
The New York Times uses top 1% of income, not wealth. From the legend:...
November 24th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
i HATE my vista. would “downgrade” to XP if i didn’t have to suffer the insult on top of injury of having to pay for it. i swore my next machine would be a mac. hopefully the economic Opacalypse will bring down the price of apple products.
November 25th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Agreed on Vista.
I’ve offered to downupgrade my wife to XP several times, and feel bad that anyone has to be stuck with Vista.
Unfortunately, the Mac tax is more annoying (hundreds of dollars per machine) than even the licensing fee for Windows, so those looking for an economy laptop are stuck with Windows (or linux, if they are masochists).
Still, Windows 7 was impressive. Control Panel, which always takes time to load in Vista, for instance, popped right up on 7.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Did the netbook use the Intel Atom processor? If so, that makes it even more impressive.
As far as the “Mac tax” is concerned, at http://www.macmall.com you can get a last generation Macbook with a superdrive for 899, and if you throw in 147 dollars you can go over to newegg to max out the RAM at 4 GB and get a 500 GB HDD. Better yet, you have a choice of XP or Vista if one wishes to partition the HDD through Bootcamp!
Still, that doesn’t make for a low budget laptop setup, but between the better management of RAM and next to no virus vulnerability that is still a good deal to many.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:06 am
Yup, it was Windows 7 on Atom. I was very impressed.
It came with a third unused partition out-of-the-box (beyond the restore and system partitions), so setting up a dual-boot was a snap.
The PC (with Windows XP Home) cost about $320, so less than half the last generation laptop you mention
November 26th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
And I wonder how many more you will have to buy if they end up crapping out like Apex DVD players. :p
November 26th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Sister of tdaxp recently had to purchase a $2000 laptop from a specific vendor as part of her college program… only to see that company go bankrupt, and the warranty become worthless.
Having only $320 sunk into a machine ain’t all bad, by comparison.
November 26th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Yikes! Is that her college’s only screwup, or is she considering a transfer?
November 26th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Oh, I thought you meant 32 bucks, since that is what you originally wrote, but that sounds like the right price for a decent netbook.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Michael,
The statewide laptop fiasco was the lead front page story in the largest paper in the state. [1]
Our currently governor is pretty good, but his worst decision had been to leave the state tech department as the previous government had left it. This is the second largescale disaster from the department, the other being a blown project done for the DMV and released early.
Jeffrey,
Typo? What typo?
[1] http://www.argusleader.com/article/20081123/NEWS/811230317
November 28th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
So it’s the entire state’s screwup. Have they looked at hiring some of Gateway’s old techs to allow the State to do self-repair on those computers?
November 29th, 2008 at 2:25 am
tdaxp
I should point out that I am not denying the validity of your points, but doug was considering Mac OS X and I figured that I should point out what I think is the most cost effective method of getting the most for your money if one must have OS X.
That is all.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Michael,
Well, considering the hiring freeze… [1]
The state tech department was decapitated by Janklow.. he defined the top-tier employees out of existence, which meant not only a loss of technical expertise, but a loss of mentors for the next group up. We still have not recovered. They are unable to make wise decisions, and unable to identify that their decisions are not wise.
Rounds has done nothing to correct this that I know about. It is not fair to the department, the government, or the people of the state.
Jeffrey,
Thanks for the tip!
[1] http://www.argusleader.com/article/20081126/NEWS/811260327/1001/news