It’s strange, but after all that SoFoBoMo, I still judge days by the number of “usable” images 🙂
Today I have made not so many, because most of the time I was very busy, first buying a new laptop, then installing my software on it.
Well, I had planned to buy it this year, because the old one is heavy, slow, and its display is so bad, that I frequently have to re-edit the images that I make on the train. Still, originally I wanted to make the purchase later in autumn, after Windows 7 has been released. Other than that, I was agonizing for months about what exactly to buy. 
I didn’t want to spend too much money. The logic was, that I have walked around with a heavy laptop for years, so obviously this was no problem. You know, size and weight, these are the two factors that determine the price of a laptop.
Or are they? Yesterday I spent half an hour in an electronics supermarket, comparing laptops, and I was pretty shocked. Most of them have very bad displays with low contrast, small viewing angles and small gamut. Most, but not the Macs.
Hmm … one day I’ll buy a Mac or two, but at the moment I am pretty tied to Windows, and of all the Windows laptops, only two had a decent display: a monster with 19" and weighing more than 4kg, and then the Sony Vaio Z11.
On those B&W images you see me on the train, speeding down to Mödling, one of Vienna’s suburbs. A dealer there had a very good price for the Sony Vaio Z21, the successor to the Z11, and now I have such a beast. Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz, 4GB memory, a wonderful non-glare display with high contrast and wide gamut, 1366x768, weighing only 1.5kg. Yup! That’s more like a Photoshop machine 🙂
The Song of the Day is “I’m So Free” from Lou Reed’s classic 1972 album Transformer. Hear it on YouTube.
There are 6 comments
Ted (2009-06-12)
I seem to be channeling you. I just bought a new laptop: Like you I'm attached to an op system, largely because of my investment in Mac Software which I can't get to run on any PC. Add some Mac dedicated peripherals and, well, Steve Jobs finds an insidious way to build walls around its users. Someone is going to figger out how to run Mac OS. If Sony makes that break through... Apple could be in trouble.
Seinberg (2009-06-12)
Ha! Great. Just went through a couple agonizing (relatively speaking) nights of determining whether to purchase a new ThinkPad or MacBook Pro. In the end, Apple pissed me off enough to convince me to buy another ThinkPad with superior hardware for for $500 less.
Seinberg (2009-06-12)
Oh my god! I just saw that you're from Lancaster, Ted! I lived there for 24 years! (From birth til 24, in 2004). My undergrad/BS is from Millersville. Great place. I still want to get some photos in an art gallery for First Friday at some point, just out of Lancaster Pride.
(Also just had some great Lancaster Milk Stoudt on tap tonight at a bar in Baltimore and felt the Lancaster pride ;-) ).
Andreas (2009-06-12)
No problem, you're welcome 🙂
As to whether Windows or Mac, I don't know. I wouldn't want to mix systems, thus we are speaking of three computers here, a laptop and two desktops, one in Vienna and one in Carinthia, and the desktop in Carinthia is bound to be a genuine Windows computer (i.e. not an emulation on a Mac), because it has to run a certain accounting software with hardware dongle. Thus, in reality, I had not much choice.
Professionally, as a software developer, I work on Linux and love it 🙂
Seinberg (2009-06-10)
Great song. As a Lou Reed fanboy, I'm incredibly excited to be moving to a neighborhood in Manhattan only a few blocks from where he lives. Maybe I'll make a LR sighting sometime ;-)
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