[Tech]iShenanigans

I was going to do a music post, but then I realized that something else was much more important.

Okay, actually it isn't important at all, but it's newer while the music can wait a bit, and I like being on top of news sometimes.

Anyways, Apple released the newest of overpriced shenanigans yesterday, naming it the iPad.

Period jokes aside, I'll take a quick look at the more technical parts and see if it's worthwhile, as well as it's shortcomings.

Problem 1: I think this is the biggest problem of the apple product, and that is NO FLASH SUPPORT. If you make something that is basically an ultra-portable laptop, you're really gimping your experience without being able to play your social networking games on facebook, or scrabble or whatever. I assume that this means it also won't have Java, or at least a very limited amount. For what it's supposed to do, I think this is gimped, especially if you consider that this isn't because flash is hard to implement, but because Apple wants to sell you deliciously cheesy apps for 99 cents. In other-words, it's just to drain money.

Problem 2: It's a large iPhone. It works pretty much exactly like an iPhone, except much more expensive if you want the 3G coverage. Also it becomes much more unwieldy. How are you going to put it in your pocket? Does anyone actually have 9.7 inch pockets? Is Apple going to design apple-designer clothing with pockets specifically built for the iPad? I wouldn't put it past them considering they're practically the new church of Scientology, but short of another way to make money I think it's unnecessarily unwieldy.

Problem 3: Lack of keyboard. When you make a larger screen for internet browsing, you start wanting a keyboard for you know, blogging and such. While Apple does sell a keyboard add-on, why not just buy a laptop instead? It's just like the Wii; you have to buy 7 different peripherals just to play a game. Hidden costs sucks. For a ps3 or 360, all you have to do is buy the game except for DDR and Guitar Hero and you're good to go.

Problem 4: Price. The pricing for this is just ridiculous. It STARTS at $400. Sure it's light, from all reports pretty smooth, has wifi/3G access, and has a 1ghz processor, but should that really cost $500 for an ENTRY level? just for kicks, I will compare it to something else that does exactly the same thing. A netbook.

I will compare the current cheapest netbook on newegg, the MSI Intel Atom 270 vs the latest and greatest of shiny things, the iPad. I'm even going to compare the MSI to ALL iPad, meaning that the best specs of the iPad at ANY level verses the MSI at it's specs.

COST:
MSI - $279 free shipping
iPad - $499 introductory price (I assume free shipping as well)

Pretty simple here. MSI is cheaper all round.

Screen Size:
MSI- 10''
iPad - 9.7''

MSI wins, but the iPad has better resolution from what I hear (1024x768). I'm not too surprised, as this is the cheapest thing out there. If I added another $100 the netbook shopping I could find a better one. And it would be still cheaper.

Weight:
MSI- 2.7 lbs
iPad - 1.5 lbs
A difference, but 2.7 pounds is still incredibly light. Grow stronger if you cant transport it.

Processor:
MSI - 1.60 GhZ
iPAd- 1GhZ
I'd actually expect that the iPad would be faster, but I guess not.

Ram:
MSI - 1GB
iPad - 256? 512?
I'm unsure of what iPads RAM is, but I've heard anywhere from 256-512 so I'm putting those numbers down. Apples site has nothing about it. If anyone knows more let me know.

Hard drive:
MSI - 160GB sata
iPad - 16-64Gb flash
MSI's sata drive holds more and lasts longer. Flash memory cannot overwrite itself as many times without crashing. However, it is much faster and since there are no moving components takes up less space, hence smaller and lighter.

Battery Life:
MSI- "not amazing but good"
iPad - 10 hours
For some reason I can't find MSI's battery life. It is only a 3 cel-lithium battery, but I'm not too surprised about it as they were cutting costs. I'm guessing 5ish hours, give or take.

Wifi:
MSI- Wlan
iPad - Wi-fi and/OR 3g network (3g costs like $150 more)
MSI apparently has some problems with getting decent wi-fi, but it would probably work in buildings so it isn't horrible. iPad's wifi stuff is probably more reliable, but again it's at least twice the cost.

Camera:
MSI - yes - 1.3 megapixels
iPad - no?
I'm pretty sure iPad doesn't have one. Someone let me know if it does.

Sound:
MSI - sound blaster speakers + headphone jack
iPad - essentially the same thing

No big difference there.

OS:
MSI - XP home
iPad - whatever they use

XP home isn't the best, but it's okay. Newer models have windows 7 on them, but cost more. And yes, I have had no problems with windows 7.

I think that's it for comparisons. In other words, you're paying another $250ish + for a gimmick and a pound less wight.

And if you REALLY want a cheap netbook with OsX, get a Dell mini 9 and follow this handy dandy guide to get OsX on your netbook.


That's it for now. I will do a music blog soon as I have it kinda set up, but I want to wait a bit before posting it. Also I'm lazy enough to not bother with writing it yet.

Some other articles about the iPad from gizmoto:
Ipad is Gadget we never knew we needed
iPad just tried to assassinate the computer
8 things that suck about the iPad

Till later then!

The Incident, Gum, and Computers

First of all, None of these topics are at all related. I could probably find a way if I think hard enough, but I'm enjoying not thinking now. Thinking is for people who need to apply their brain power to solve life's fascinating little problems.

The Incident is not some embarrassingly private story that someone might laugh at, but actually the latest contribution to musical awesomeness I have listened to. I have listened to this album by Porcupine Tree 6 times in the last for days, i.e. I found a leak and listened to it. Four times. In a row. Then I bought the album and listened to it another two times. For $10 (if your cheap online bum like me) you get two hours of delicious awesome music, or for a bit more you can get the special addition which has all sorts of cool stuff. Look on their site if you want know more at www.porcupinetree.com

The first track, Occam's Razor, is a 55-minute awesome fest of various themes and so on. The totally awesome stuff is how they incorporate this track into various other tracks (I can't name them at the top of my head...yet). Some people might consider it lazy, but if you see it as a theme/variations idea it's much cooler. I think they probably could've split the track into maybe 2 or 3 different tracks due to some points where you'd expect a separate track such as when they have silence but he didn't. I don't mind in the least, because all the various themes used in the track are so gorgeous that it's worth listening to the track several times.

I think Porcupine Tree is one of the few bands that can be labeled as 'progressive' and still be considered progressive. they actually actively change the sound from album to album. Some are highly psychedelic, while others are much darker. This album definitely has a more "metal" sound than some of their previous works, but at the same time it is much more acoustic than others. I think it's more direct in it's presentation, rather than requiring some thinking, as the themes and message in the music is much more barefaced than some of their albums.

In short: Get this album; be happy. I just used a colon! ^.^


Gum lately has been disappointing me. It used to be for about 50-75 cents you could get a nice 20-something pack of gum. Nowadays, it's $1.50 for like 12 pieces! I don't care about you're "Extra lasting flavor" or "increases sex appeal" or whatever selling points of your gum is. I just want my old gum back! Who honestly wants to CHEW gum for 2 hours before it loses it's flavor? Half the fun is putting in a fresh piece anyways! Selectionist gum is stupid; I'll go for quantity over quality any day when it comes to gum. I have to spit it out to do anything beyond talking anyways, so why make it that it's less for more when you spit it out more?

I think I just discovered their ridiculous business practices. They make us pay more for less in compensation for "longer flavor" because they sell more since they put less in a package! This evil practice must stop. I petition to bring back old gum!


I am going to get a new computer soon. It is a laptop. It's $799. It has 4gb Ram, 1GB vCard, 2.20GHz dual core processing, 15.6'' screen, 320GB hard drive, and (possibly most importantly) free windows 7 64-bit upgrade.

That's right, I'm getting a Windows PC, be amazed. For fun, I compared it to a 15'' Macbook Pro. It used to be that comparing Windows with Apple was like comparing ninjas and potatoes together, but now since Mac switched to Intel processors (to be more like Windows) it's much easier to compare.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157020 HP
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MC118LL/A?mco=Nzk2MDg0NQ Mac

First: Price

$800 (with free shipping and no sales tax) vs $1699 MINIMUM. I even rounded up. PC wins

Processor:
2.20GHz vs minimum 2.53GHz (assuming minimum price again)

Mac wins. However, the cost increase as well as the video card will come in later and balance things out.

RAM:
4GB DDR2 v 4GB DDR3. Both support up to 8GB

Mac wins again. However, again at a huge cost. DDR3 is new and fast, but it's hellishly expensive, and the applications to utilize it's speed aren't out yet. While this means it'll last longer, it also means that when DDR3 get's cheaper, I can upgrade easily and cheaply (if I want to) while you're stuck with what you have. I can install without sending it to the manufacturer (though I risk voiding warranty) while you have to pay to install more ram as well as probably needing a higher cost. Overall I'd say it's a tie, comparing costs.

HardDrive:

320-SATA vs 250-SATA. both run at 5400 RPM.

HP wins. I can also upgrade to 7200 rpm if I want (faster loading times) and use my old HD as an external. Yay =]

Display: 15.6'' to 15''
Winner: Tie. really the .6 inches don't make enough difference to say OMG THIS IS BETTER.

After that, Mac has nothing on the other stuff, except programs. While macs won't have bloatware, I'm planning on installing windows 7 as soon as it comes out and reformatting the hard-drive anyways, so it comes out even.

Interestingly enough, one of the most important parts of a computer for running applications isn't even mentioned. That's right, the lowly video card.

A list of video cards can be found here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html as well as benchmarks and so on.

For Mac, we see the GForce 9600M. When you look at it, you notice it's 56th ranking in video card power.
For the HP we have a Mobility Radeon HD 4650 In other words, it beats the Gforce into a pulp.

This is also why the HP can get a cheaper processor, as it requires it to do less work since this bugger is pretty fast. Not only that, but it means I don't need to use up RAM to render images, so HP can get away with using cheaper ram.

I like Nvidia more than Radeon, but in this case Radeon is the better card.

In short: price compare, and then buy a PC.

Over and out.

note: The HP has an AMD processor instead of Intel. Intel processors have larger caches but AMD processors can be clocked faster.

Another note: My computer at home has the 19th most powerful video card on the market. wee!

Okay I'm done ranting and need to practice.