I'm using the bottom of the line iMac as the kind of thing you buy Grandma. And she gets a quad core system.

I have a 2 year old 13" MacBook bro, and I it

I would love a MBP but I just can't justify it. I just spent $380 with free shipping from Dell for a 15 inch laptop with HDMI that has 4 GB RAM, Win7 Professional, Penryn T4200 proc, and 320 GB HD. OSX installs on it relatively easily, too. (Not that it matters, I run Ubuntu)

PC hardware prices are just insanely cheap and I can't justify the ridiculous chasm between PC and Mac for good looks and a matte screen.

My counter argument for this is that the average Dell laptop will last 2-3 years max before you have to change the battery / HDD etc.... I hope that my MBP will last 5-6 years. This probably still doesnt account for the huge price difference tho. $380 is a pretty sick deal, dont think you would get something that cheap in the UK.

Thumbs up for running ubuntu, do you play poker via linux too or do you dual boot?

I don't play much poker anymore but I did use VMWare's Unity function without much issue. I have to use Win7 on my main home PC due to my biomechanics and mathematics software being Windows-only (and incompatible in WINE).

$380 for that isn't an everyday sale price; it was a refurb and I found it through a deals site I'd been looking at for awhile. Don't get me wrong, I would love a MBP, but the price is just unreasonable to me when the components are not really an upgrade.

I feel similar to SSDs. I know the performance boost will be insanity, but I can't pull the trigger on one. I have WD Raptor drives for OS/Programs, and it's good enough for now. If I had regular 7200 RPM disks for OS/Programs, I'd snap buy an SSD. But these 34 and 72 GB Raptor drives will be useless then!

Beware of SSDs at the moment (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/201...ive-scale.html), they appear to be very prone to failure, although the performance boosts I have heard are insane.

I agree about the MBP, they are very dear... I am really glad I got one, but fk me it made a big dent in my finances.

SSD is great, one of the best upgrades you can make as long as you don't require much space (ATM). I can't wait for 1TB+ SSD's to be out one day at <£100! I love them mainly because they are 100% silent, and heavy programs like VS load in a snap.

I remember back when I was a kid, the latest PC was a 200mhz one with 16mb RAM I think, begged my mum for it but never got it as it was too expensive at £200, which is equivalent of around £500 now I guess roughly. I just bought a new PC recently for ~£600, Hexcore 3.2ghz and 8GB ram, just shows how far things have really come!

Coding horror is great Thanks for link, I will make sure I backup more Scary they fail so much wasn't aware of that

I want a 64 GB tier-two SSD (like one generation back). What's my best bet and what's the best price I can get? (No rebates or any of that BS)

Ye, I was really surprised too, always assumed they would fail less because they had no moving parts.

Also, there are some interesting hybrid drives around. The idea is that it is a combination of traditional HDD and SSD, e.g. 100GB HHD, and 4GB SSD. The drive automatically moves files that you access regularly to the SSD portion of the drive and leaves files accessed rarely to the HDD part. I have heard mixed reviews about the hybrid drives, but they are certainly a lot cheaper than full out SSDs.

Yeah, but I don't need the storage. I have like 4 TB in externals and bare 7200 RPM drives laying around (might need more since I started up my media PC). Just need a blazing fast OS/Programs drive. Right now it's two WD Raptors in RAID 0 which runs pretty darn fast. 64-70 GB of storage would be enough for my OS and programs installations.

I don't like the idea of hybrids, 64gb SSD are affordable, instead of hybrid it's better to have a 64gb SSD + large mechanical drive. Move the files you use regularly onto the 64gb yourself, but it's an interesting concept. There's no longevity in them though, it's just a temporary market gap filler.

Ye, I completely agree.

In the process of building a media box for my flat. Got my 5 year old PC, going to add 2x2TB HDDs with RAID 1.

I've been buying a few SSD's for people at work, I've been buying the OCZ Vertex 2, it seems to be the sweet spot for price/performance and the laptops we use don't support the 6 mbps that the Vertex 3 provides anyway.

I freaking LOVE my new Dell Precision laptop - SSD system drive + 7200 rpm hard drive for storage. It's nasty.

Yeah, I have to agree with everything here.

$380 is a sick deal, and as much as I love my Macs, you honestly can't beat this deal. Even for a white plastic MacBook (which will last probably about the same length of time)

Mac build quality is pretty great, and they do seem to last quite a bit longer than PC laptops in the same 'tier' (won't say price range ) -- a huge but often overlooked advantage for macs is if you travel a lot -- it's near impossible to track down a basic part (like a power adaptor), let alone something internal for a Dell, HP, Toshiba, whatever while abroad (and not able to stick around in the same place while they order parts) where as you can nearly always get Mac parts.

Had a white macbook that lasted 3.5 years or so. Now onto a MBP that I've had for 1.5 years. Always amused at how many old MBPs I see in my travels.

I hadn't done any serious 3D graphics work in a long time. I've kept up with the conceptual development of the field, broad strokes and all that. But it'd been probably 15 years since I actually wrote any code.

Wow have things changed. And I'm enjoying it. Writing shaders is nice. I enjoy being able to do the linear algebra without having to specify component wise math. Writing what I mean, leaving the compiler and the hardware to the rest, and accomplishing powerful things is fun.

I can't imagine using a computer without a SSD any more; it'd be like going back to dial-up internet or 13" CRTs or single button mice. Over my dead body, man!


Seems like someone isn't a fan of Macs either. Really, though, why do they ship with single-click mice? Even the macStore doesn't have many two-botton mice. Yuck.

More Mac bashing with a slight deviation:

Here's some RoR programming ads:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbuy...924C8AE3B632C8

Best comment: Ruby has just been compared to Mac... Ruby now sucks... i'm going back to PHP...

Second best comment, if you agree with it:

This kind of smug videos don't do any good to Ruby community.

Um, all Mac mice have been multi-button for years.

The magic mouse is pretty nice, the addition of finger scrolling is awesome. Too bad the track pad has replaced all my mice. You've been able to use two button mice and ctrl-click for a right click for as long as I've been buying macs. I never cared about the price of Macs that much, when I could afford them I switched. Complaints about the price always struck me as being the same as bitching about how much a BMW costs.

I have a magic mouse and I really like it. I think the scroll feature is just mint!

Except a BMW has a chain (as opposed to rubber) timing belt and other odd things that don't come with a Honda accord. I search for the correlary from Mac to PC.

My friend is a life-long Mac user, but that's because way back when, he had to use Final Cut, which I guess wasn't available on Windows years back. He's a film editor by trade. He says he doesn't like Windows because of all the folders and folders and folders and folders....

He hates what Mac has become, not because of the computers, but because of the crap Steve Jobs attempts to cram down our throats. I guess you can say it's like following a great garage band for years, they finally make it, then they put out a turd of an album.

I know it's silly, but it is because of Jobs that I don't like Macs. He is basically a liar (ask for specifics if you really care) and the whole antenna thing with the iPhone4 was just crazy and stupid: "hold your phone like this." Seriously Jobs, you're surprised people want a phone that works after they pay a week's salary for it?

I'm sure from a development pov, there are benefits to a Mac, but for now, I'm not convinced. However, if I had the money, I would have great Mac, PC, and Ubuntu machines. It's impossible to say I don't like something I never really dived into (iPad not-with-standing).

Meh. I never disliked Windows because of Bill G and don't like macs because of Jobs. I understand the nerd rage over where Apple is taking the PC platform but think it's more interesting, and certainly more customer facing than anything done by MS, Google, or *nix. Mostly it's a lot of fun watching everyone chase after Apple, its a great time to be a geek.

What is everyone's favorite solution for personal backups? Free or otherwise?

Also, any recommendation for some sort of automatic backup (to cloud or USB storage) that requires the least amount of user intervention? I'm setting my mom up with a new PC and I wouldn't mind having some sort of automated backups going on, just in case.

I'm also feeling a little bit foolish for not backing up my OS drive with the latest news about SSD drive reliability.

I'm shamelessly bad with backups Was thinking about buying a 2TB external HDD to use for backups but idk, is that a good plan?