Today I made my way over to the Malvern Computers Now store to, for the first time, see a 12-inch PowerBook in the flesh, well, in it's brushed aluminium alloy.
Two people at work have a 15-inch and until recently there was another who had a 17-inch. However I never saw them together and I was struck today with the realisation that the 15-inch and 17-inch aren't really that differenct size wise. It's just that the 17-inch in isolation looks ungainly. What struck me even more was how much smaller the 12-inch appeared compared to the 15-inch.
While I was there I asked about education prices and they confirmed that even though I am just a general staff member (versus an academic) at Monash Uni I was still eligible for education prices. Very good.
Since I recently got a DVD burner for my home box I'm not even considering a SuperDrive version. So what differs between the base 15-inch ($2902 EDU) and the base 12-inch ($2286 EDU)?
The 15-inch has a better video chipset, not really much of an issue as the most intensive thing I can envisage I'll use it for is watching via the TV out.
The 15-inch has gigabit ethernet while the 12-inch only has 10/100 ethernet. Another non-issue as I don't have any gigabit gear and on the rare occasion that I'll transfer large amounts of data time is not an issue. There is also firewire target disk mode at 400mbit/sec.
For each of the differences I have a reason why the difference isn't a factor.
The most critical issue for me is portability. I need a laptop that is small enough to fit in a backpack for my ride too and from work. The 12-inch and an STM Glove fits the bill.
Today was the first of two days of having Damian Conway in at work to present his Perl Best Practice course.
So far most of what we had been arguing over at work for at least the last six months was ratified by Damian.
Due to a lack of response to my queries I finally decided that I should change my web hosting provider.
On the train home from Melbourne.PM last Wednesday I spend most of the time recording my thoughts the low tech way; in a notebook with a pen. What was really frustrating was that I got to a point where I had to write down possible ways that we could wrap Log4Perl for use in the portal.
Tonight I decided to cut the longest uptime for Gromit, my linux box for network services, short at 82 days so I could add another 128MB of RAM (to the existing 128MB, it is only a P3 667) that I have had lying around for quite a while. The second longest uptime was 54 days that started back in October 2000 with kernel 2.2.12 (I know this thanks to uptimed).
Work is getting pretty frustrating at the moment as I am assigned to a project that must be in user testing by the second week in June. That means that coding really needs to be complete by the end of this month.