Month: April 2011

Going the “turbo Honda” route with my new computer

2011 is my upgrade year for the “main machine.” I had been spending a while trying to figure out the best fit between performance and portability, and had settled on the $2,199 15″ MacBook Pro. But I ended up going with the $700 cheaper 13″ model and investing less than half the savings in some great custom additions:

MacBook Pro internals with upgrades labeled: Crucial C300 6Gbps SSD, 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, MCE OptiBay Hard Drive bay

At the end of the day, I have:

  • 2011 Unibody 13.3″ MacBook Pro
  • Dual core i7 “Sandy Bridge” – 2.7GHz, up to 3.4GHz turbo mode, hyperthreading, on-chip integrated graphics (outperforms my 3-year-old discrete GPU, which was more than I needed)
  • 128GB Crucial C300 SATA 6Gbps SSD (solid state drive). (Crucial announced a new model the week after I installed it, grr!)
  • 8GB Corsair 1333MHz DDR3 RAM
  • MCE OptiBay hard drive bay (replaces waste-of-space DVD drive with original 500GB SATA hard drive)

I came in almost $300 under my originally planned purchase, and got the added benefits of a more portable system and a blazing-fast SSD. I simply cannot believe how much of a difference the SSD makes; I’d guess that many people would feel like their old computers were brand-new if they installed an SSD. My system boots in mere seconds, and almost all applications load instantaneously. (Big ones like Photoshop take a couple of seconds.) I was really happy that I could get rid of the DVD drive and keep my capacious media drive with me with the MCE OptiBay (though it has pretty bad shock protection and a couple of big screws that hopefully aren’t digging into the unibody’s lid.)

The only hard part is getting used to the glass-covered 1280×800 screen. There is no matte option for the 13.3″, and it’s sheer marketing evil that Apple offers better resolution on the 13.3″ MacBook Air while forcing Pro buyers up a price notch to the 15.4″ to benefit from a high-res display. The glass covering the display is… interesting. Yes, it has more vibrant colors, but it also has terrible glare, and is also a major fingerprint magnet to boot.

So I’m pretty happy with it, all things considered. I’m very surprised with just how much performance can be squeezed into a 13.3″ package- except for the requisite screen size difference, this is a no-compromise high-performance device suited to be my only PC, and it’s under 5 pounds and an inch thick. I feel like instead of paying more for a V8 BMW, I bought a cheap little Honda Civic and gave it a killer turbo while keeping the weight low.

For others looking for a new computer, I recommend:

  1. If you don’t run CPU-intensive tasks like media encoding or gaming, consider just throwing an SSD into your current system instead
  2. If you think you need the specs of a more expensive model, compare its marginal cost with that of upgrading a cheaper one.

Music, movie, and software piracy is a market failure, not a legal one

This comes as no surprise. From Michael Geist, University of Ottawa Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law:

Trademark and copyright holders frequently characterize piracy as a legal failure, arguing that tougher laws and increased enforcement are needed to stem infringing activity. But a new global study on piracy, backed by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, comes to a different conclusion. Following several years of independent investigation in six emerging economies, the report concludes that piracy is chiefly a product of a market failure, not a legal one.

Read more about the 400-page report commissioned by the Canadian government at thestar.com .

How to keep your email protected when companies don’t

I got several emails today informing me that several corporations entrusted my data to a contractor with sub par security, my email was compromised, and that they “seriously regret that this incident occurred.” (Hey, Target: nice non-apology. You have the final responsibility to your customers, even when your contractors fuck up.)

Right now, many are fuming over the fact that the spamonauts now have their emails on a “confirmed live and breathing people who need weight loss and boner pills” list. And it will happen again. It’s simply impossible to ensure total privacy of your personally identifiable information.

But me? I just laughed, hit a few buttons in my mail client, and knew I’d never have to worry about some retailer’s mistake. I have a system that over many years has saved me from people who mismanage my identity –and even given me proof positive of the responsible party.
Continue reading How to keep your email protected when companies don’t