Buying stuff

Author: jawapro
Date: Mon 18/02/2008 01:13 PM




Well, apart from the game announcements that have made up the previous posts, I've spent a lot of time this week looking at stuff to buy.

I'm upgrading my computer - so that means trawling around the net digging up specs and reviews on hardware, and listening to friend's advice (wich often contradicts) and trying to decide what to purchase.

Well - I just sent an order to ItEstate.com.au, on behalf of myself and some of my friends. The order is over $2500! But a lot of that isnt mine.

ItEstate is a shop with good prices, but they just rang me up because half the stuff isnt in stock and they want to know about replacing it with other brands etc. But unfourtunatly most of the other stuff isnt mine, so I have to wait until I contact my friends before I can let them know what to do.

Stupid - if it's not in stock, dont advertise it!

I've only ordered half my computer so far - I'm waiting until the new Intel CPU comes out before deciding on CPU/motherboard and RAM. The case, psu, harddrives, graphics card, and dvd drive are all either here or on their way though.

And I'm looking at buying a few other odds and ends as well. A large screen TV, and a house, and other nick-nacks like that.



Comments: 37

 

Comment: 1

Author: Joolz
Date: Mon 18/02/2008 02:12 PM




A house is a nick nack?

 

Comment: 2

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Mon 18/02/2008 05:31 PM




It's nowhere near as important as a good computer and a TV. So it must be a nick nack!

 

Comment: 3

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Mon 18/02/2008 06:44 PM




I agree. Advertising out-of-stock stock can be annoying.

 

Comment: 4

Author: jawapro
Date: Mon 18/02/2008 06:47 PM




G'day there Oblivion!

It's especially annoying if they dont tell you its out of stock until you buy the thing.

 

Comment: 5

Author: mlipsy
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 11:28 AM




Woohoo! A post about something other than computer games! You know, last night I dreamed that everyone was getting a chocolate that indicated what character they were and I was Strider (aka Aragorn) from LotR. And you, Rob, were showing me the stance I should take to look like Aragorn... a sort of battle-ready let's-have-at-'em stance. Anyway, there's your random amusing tidbit for the day.

 

Comment: 6

Author: jawapro
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 12:08 PM




You can of course get pre-built PCs. But they cost more, and have lower performance. Of course - they still cost less and perform better than a Mac.

If I do buy a house, my policy of not permitting Mac users to enter will be in effect. So it may be some time before you actually get to see it (other than in photos).

And what LotR character was I?

 

Comment: 7

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 03:33 PM

Watts LotR? Anyone?

And its DARTH Oblivion, Doofy lord of C&C...

 

Comment: 8

Author: jawapro
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 04:27 PM




It's Lord of the Rings. Sorry for not explaining.

 

Comment: 9

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 04:51 PM




OHH! Ok! I get it now! Lord of the Rings... LotR...

 

Comment: 10

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 06:47 PM




Your law does beg a question Jawa... I am an avid mac hater (yes, you can quote me on that), but I am forced (against my will of course) to use macs at school. Seeing this would make me a mac user, would I be allowed in your house?

 

Comment: 11

Author: jawapro
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 06:58 PM




Yes, the exact wording is tricky.

I cant just expel Mac owners, as I do have those 2 myself (which are being destroyed as soon as you build your tree-bucket).

So the practical result is:

I will not allow anyone who bought a mac costing over $400 (I say costing, cause it is never worth that much), or uses one by choice, to enter my house. The cost thing allows someone to buy an old mac for some specific purpose (such as to blow up) and still be allowed.

Anyone who has previously owned a Mac, but has since gotten rid of it, is welcome. If someone is forced to use a Mac because their work/school/parents force it upon them, then that is fair enough. But anyone like Terry and Martha who go out and buy one by choice, that is where the issue lies.

They are not welcome in my house:
I will not visit them in their house:
They have forfeited the right to any tech advice other than "get rid of the mac" or "what did you buy that for? It was a stupid thing to buy". That last part can refer to the Mac or indeed anything else they buy.

Martha has somehow convinced herself that because the Mac lives in Terreth's office (in the garage) that I will allow myself to enter the house proper. I have no idea where that idea came from, and although I havent spoken against it when she has mentioned it, I dont agree. As far as I'm concerned, I dont intend to enter their house or property willingly.

They knew about all this beforehand, but still bought the Mac. When asked why, Terreth's responce was "there was no reason not to", which means they obviously dont care about being welcome in my house anyway. Not that I'd care overly much either, it's not all that interesting.

But a Pastor not being welcome in the homes of his congregation, that does beg some questions...

 

Comment: 12

Author: klutz
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 08:36 PM




Man... you've taken a hard line on this have you. I'm with you on the count of not using a mac unless absolutely neccesary, but to outlaw those who have already been brainwashed by the system prefered by zombies from entering a premesis is a bit extreme. I'd think you'd want them to come around to distribute reading material for the mac zombie transmogrification academy.

 

Comment: 13

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 10:59 PM




I believe the hard line Jawa has taken on this issue is most appropriate. I don't know why you would let mac users into your house after all. If they can't look after themselves properly (I mean, a mac does no good for your sanity, I know this, I have to use them. I go insane because of the MASSIVE holes in the OS, including in Leopard (mainly because Apple didn't want to go and completely redo their OS because that would make it uncool (brackets in brackets are cool))). And on a slightly divergent note, I had an argument with a mac seller (worse than just a user) who I occasionally have to call my friend. He thought it was OK a $3000 lappy didn't have ethernet because "People who buy this lappy aren't going to do CAD work. All they're going to do is browse the Internet." There's some flawed logic for you. If that lappy was at my house, I wouldn't be able to surf the web, mainly because I can't connect it. But then he goes on: "If you're that desperate for ethernet, you can get [massively bulky, unlike the lappy we're talking abou there] USB ethernet adapters for them." NO!!!! What a compromise! I don't get their logic. Apparently anyone who buy's a mac loses their sanity, and their logic. I can totally understand a perfectly sane person not wanting lunatics in his home.

(Hey! Would you look at that, I managed to work a complete apple rant back into something worthwhile!)

 

Comment: 14

Author: jawapro
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 11:04 PM




I agree that using a mac drives you crazy - but you'd have to be pretty insane in the first place to actually buy some (unless you're a uni and you get huge deals from Apple to buy their products, and then have to force your students to use the Mac labs. If you dont force them, they all use the PC labs. Yes, it's true.)

 

Comment: 15

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 11:07 PM




I know it's true. I go to a school with both a PC and a mac lab. We do most of our work in the mac lab, unfortunately. They haven't figured out that real people use real computers yet. Mind you, sledging the teacher by sledging the macs is fun...

 

Comment: 16

Author: jawapro
Date: Tue 19/02/2008 11:08 PM




Uni knows about it - but they dont want to see the Macs getting no use at all (apart from one or two freaks who prefer them) so they force some clases to use the Macs.

 

Comment: 17

Author: klutz
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 10:09 AM




As for me, i'm gonna get another big usb drive and see if I can find a mac os x86 emulator and run windows on the mac so i can do some of the stuff without going insane... then again some would argue that because i talk to myself, i am already insane...

 

Comment: 18

Author: jawapro
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 10:17 AM




That would work for some units - but for others they use Mac specific programs. You can get the PC equivelants for pretty much all of them (which I used to do most of my assignments) but you'll still need to test on the Mac OS, cause that's what the uni guys will use to mark the assignments.

 

Comment: 19

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 12:52 PM




It just proves that Apple is making payouts to make people use their stuff. They're corrupting our world, and I don't think I want that to happen. Oh well, I want to rant, but I've sort of lost concentration, so it's not working right now. We'll have to try again later.

And why wouldn't you buy a mac? I can think of plenty of reasons.

Oh, Klutz, try getting a bootable Linux distro to work. That way you've got the best of all the worlds! Plus it has some very good Windows emulation software (Wine) and I assume you can get some OSX emulators, seeing its "Unix based" and all that. I'm guessing the Uni will be running Intel based macs, so they (should, don't quote me) work with your average distro. Its your choice if you want to go for x86 or x86-64, though I think I'd go for a straight x86 if I was making something like this. There's a guide on how to install a bootable Linux distro (PCLinuxOS) (including auto-sensing of hardware) in the February edition of APC. Rob has a copy if they've stopped selling it...

 

Comment: 20

Author: jawapro
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 01:03 PM




Yes, the only good thing about the new Mac OSs is the command line - which is all ripped off Unix anyway.

 

Comment: 21

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 01:20 PM




From the Unix lover sitting beside me, he's telling me it's not actually ripped off, it's based on it. But as far as you and I are concerned, there's probably not a huge difference. Said geek beside me loves to print out the latest issue of the Unix Family Tree...

Anyway, the whole issue of command line being good doens't work for me anyway, as we have the stupid parental controls in operation, so we can't use the command line. We don't like it one bit. Mind you, we have also heard that there is a way to reset the root password (out mac seller knows how) but we haven't done it yet. Pity.

 

Comment: 22

Author: jawapro
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 01:33 PM




Ok - at least at uni we still had access to the command line.

Perhaps 'ripped off'' isnt exactly true then. But if they based it on Unix, they managed to take an awesome OS and make it into a terrible one.

I remember the early days of Windows 95. My friend (James)'s family had just bought a new computer, and it came with 95. At this stage I was still using DOS on my 486, and loving it. I didnt want to move to 95 (just like I didnt want to move to XP until later, and the same story with Vista).

Anyway - Jame's parents had installed a fancy piece of software that took away the 95 GUI and instead showed you a house. You could go into different rooms of the house (depending on what you logged in as). So the parents could go into the office and upstairs (I cant remember whats up there). The 2 older kids had an extra room, while the younger 2 could only enter one bedroom and the lounge room. It was basically a set of desktops, as each room had floating icons for different programs.

The idea was so we couldnt install programs or play things that we weren't allowed to.

Took me about 10 minutes (I was very new to windows, give me a break) to ctrl-alt-del and end the task, bringing us back to the Windows desktop. From there we had complete control, and installed our games.

Got to love parental control like that.

 

Comment: 23

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 05:51 PM




We tried. Unfortunately OSX has a couple of layers of security that stop us from doing something like that. There's 2 parental control apps running, one as "Student" which is the limited account, the other as "root" which controls the controls, and you can't as student end the task of the root application.

Pity.

 

Comment: 24

Author: jawapro
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 05:58 PM




Yeah - these days most programs are smarter than the one I was talking about. 

 

Comment: 25

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 06:21 PM




One would hope so.

 

Comment: 26

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 06:27 PM

Hey jawapro, would you prevent people who liked MACdonalds into your home? I like BigMACS from MACdonalds, so would I be stopped from entering your domain?

 

On a seperate note, will it be Security Chief Bob who enforces this anti-mac rule? Will he become NetSecurity Bob as well as AntiMac Bob?

 

Comment: 27

Author: jawapro
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 06:39 PM




Im pretty sure the place you're talking about is McDonalds - so no Mac in there.

Lol though.

Yeah - Bobs in charge of security - but I might have to give him a hand if we have to repel boarders.

 

Comment: 28

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 06:54 PM




I know! Invent an anti-mac: ray, force-field. Also a mac-lover detector to install in your doorway. You have the detector in the doorway, then if its set off (by a mac lover) a panel will slide up to prevent passage. A panel above the intruder will flip down to knock them down and into the wagon that has just come up from an open panel in the ground. The wagon will then slide to a robot that came up like the wagon. The robot will grab the mac lover with its arm and claw (that can lift up to 250 kilos) and dump him into his or her car. If they parked their car elswhere cue the truck. Sorry anonymous mac lover. 

 

Comment: 29

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 08:11 PM




Somebody has too much time on their hands...

 

Comment: 30

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Wed 20/02/2008 08:12 PM




Or a better idea yet, you could just employ MAC filtering!

 

Comment: 31

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Thu 21/02/2008 10:29 AM




An update on the school macs, I have discovered a way to kernel panic the macs on demand. We all enjoy it. Except my teacher, who I still love sledging. Gotta love it a lot!

 

Comment: 32

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Thu 21/02/2008 01:05 PM




Yes, Turkeybrain, I do have too much time on my hands... but i am only 10 if you didnt know.

 

Comment: 33

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Tue 26/02/2008 04:32 PM




By the way, speaking of computers, we just got a new one! Its a HP, and its really cool! I cant give you the specs because im not that much of a nerd/geek, but its got vista, and it looks a bit different from the norm. However, it came with better games than most do, and its just as easy to use. Hang on... its a hp w1907

 

Comment: 34

Author: jawapro
Date: Tue 26/02/2008 04:39 PM




Sweet! Ask your mum/dad these questions:
What is the processor?
How much RAM?
What version of Vista?
What graphics card (or is it onboard)?

Then I'll really know what sort of a beast it is. I looked up the HP w1907 on google - and all it showed me was the screen. Is your computer a real computer - or a laptop?

 

Comment: 35

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Wed 27/02/2008 04:50 PM

Its a real computer.

Windows Vista Home Premium

Intel core2 duo

2047 RAM

And I dont know the graphics card (but im guessing its onboard)

By the way, like my new avatar? I did it on paint on the new computer (the same one that this is being written from)

 

Comment: 36

Author: jawapro
Date: Wed 27/02/2008 05:10 PM




Nice!

Both to the PC and the avatar.

Can you email me the larger copy of that avatar?

 

Comment: 37

Author: DarthOblivion
Date: Thu 28/02/2008 01:10 PM




Sure thing! I have some other stuff for you to... MWAHAHA