Month: April 2005

Just one more reason to go to LinuxFest…

Barbeque Lunch - $8.00 Fresh Grilled Salmon with Ginger-Barbeque Rub Vegetable Slaw with Sesame Dressing Corn on the Cob Pop

This Saturday is LinuxFest 2005. Nick and I are going.

My dad just got an IBM ThinkPad R51. I originally wanted the ThinkPad over the Dell, but the Dell was much cheaper.

The IBM definitely feels much better. Where my Dell feels like, well, a laptop, the IBM feels like my Compaq laptop I have that was made about seven years ago: It feels like I could throw it out a window (as they have videos doing on IBM’s website) and it would be fine.

The keyboard and buttons feel much better on the IBM (they aren’t as dainty) but the trackpad feels too small.

This might be because it isn’t a wide screen, but the keyboard also feels a bit small. My hands are too close together when I’m typing. Speaking of the keyboard: there isn’t a windows key! I hate computers that don’t have a windows key.

The whole thing is butt-ugly. It’s obvious that IBM is catering toward the corporate crowd rather than the younger crowd that Dell, Apple, Gateway, and everybody else pays attention too.

The first thing the ThinkPad does when you boot it up is format. Even though formatting and installing Linux is obviously the first thing I’d be doing if it was mine, it still makes me very happy that they’re doing this for the normals. It means when you buy a new computer, it’s actually clean! None of that free AOL crap that Dell-and-the-like submerge your computer in.

All in all, it’s a great little box. It’s a tough call, but I don’t think I prefer it over mine (yet…we’ll see how long it takes me to break mine), but I wish Dell would take a few cues from IBM (i.e. make these things a little sturdier).

I went into Pearle Vision today. When I was walking around the store, I accidentally bumped one of the computers. And what did I see? The XScreenSaver password prompt! Yes, Pearle Vision is running Linux. And not just in the backroom, these were the actual workstations out in the showroom. Cool stuff.

8: Pedestrians are a) irrelevant. b) communists. c) a nuisance. d) difficult to clean off the front grille. The correct answer is a. Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are totally irrelevant to driving, and you should ignore them completely.

(I love Fortune)