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My old ‘laptop’ is a Advent 4211 NetBook, and is getting a wee bit long in the touth for day to day use, coupled with its small 10 inch screen, and lack of graphics power (built in graphics card). also my desktop, is due a hardware refresh, allowing me to use my old mac mini as a development box for testing things on.

So the question is Mac or PC, and to be honist its not a hard question to answer, I am looking to replace my MacMini (mid 2007, Intel core duo 2GHz 1~Ggi Ram), With Loupie having a uni-body aluminum Macbook (not pro . October 2008 – June 2009), so that gives me an idea of how powerful the Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 with 2gig of ram is; and the answer is much more powerful than the Mid 2007 Mac Mini.

Looking at apples current line up, and knowing I was after a laptop, I set out to chart the two most important parts of this desision, Cost V Power. Cost I could get from Apple, meaning power was going to be slightly harder. thankfully OSX Daily had been there for me [1] allowing me to plot Price, against benchmark. According to the benchmark for Loupie’s mac her benchmark  is 2706 and my Mac Mini’s is 2593, both well below the lowest benchmark of the current pros of 3390.

While I still have a number of people I know at university, mostly through TermiSoc, it may be worth using the Apple Education store, as there should be no reson why I may accidently be able to order the machine at education store costs…

I am looking at going for the 15″ Macbook Pro as that offers the Largest benchmark jump, for least jump in pennys requiring removal from my pocket.

Against my 4211, and Mac Mini it stacks up as such:

So the next challange is finding some pennys.

On the Weekend Loupie, a few of TermiSoc and I went to see the SteamPunk exhibit at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. The trip was suggested by Stewart Starbuck as he was going to meet up with a group of Steam Punk geeks from Brass Goggles, and invited others from TermiSoc to come along for a Trip. so all in all there were 6 of us intrepid adventurers; As well as the three mentioned there was bma, Laces, and Sayyan.

The exhibit itself was in a small gallery on the basement level. along with the steam punk exhibit there was a work shop to learn how to make steam punk jewellery and an area where you could play with Maccano.

Apart from the size of the gallery, everything else was really cool. We went for lunch in the (well according to Laces) the Burning Baby, or as the rest of us called it The Eagle & Child. a small pub of No notability at all

The Eagle and Child was once a favourite watering hole of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. They often met for discussion (and argument) over a pint.

On the bar wall is a signed note to the landlord written in 1949 stating that J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis have drunk to his health. well we mostly stuck to one drink each.

[View with PicLens]

Some one in deepest darkest TermiSoc Twittered about Project52; and as such I had a look

Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!

And because this site so often is devoid of new content I have decided to sign up both this site and PhilipMcGaw.com to the challenge. This all coming from some one who has posted about 5 times in the last 3 years, so please wish me luck.

My Free Fon was delivered yesterday, but i have only just got round to writing about it, as Rich says, it is quite good, I have now got three AP’s running in my house (with my Fon box being AP3)

Its Public AP i beleve runs in a VPN through your network to there servers, as such it totaly bypasses any of your network, making it imposible for a person conecting to it to get access to your network.

One anoying thing about them though, (reason that the Fon AP is not high on my prefered conection list) is that between the LAN port and its privert SSID is a Router, compleate with NAT and firewall, this stops me accessesing my own network in the open way i ushaly do.

Seth said yesterday that the One Year offer page had gone, and as such i dontated my invite to him. I think ben will be getting his soon, and then we should have a more technical autopsy of the free Router (including how to flash it and stop sharing your wi-fi).

on Saturday Ruth and I started our UK tour, our first stop was to see the Wonderfull TermiSoc people to get a cup of tea, and to give ben a collection of computing books, that make him look like a young wippersnapper (does any one remember pre 1986 computing books?) saw the hard working TermiSoc Coding party, not sure how the code went, but ben and gemma bought stuff online. after leaving the party, went over to the TermiHouse and saw Chris and had a lovely bacon sandwitch, and a refreshing cup of tea.

we stayed with tim and carly for the weekend, on the sunday we braved the rain to go for a lazy forsum trip down the cost into the backwards lands of cornwall, to grab a pint at the famous Blue Peter Inn, for some inisplicable reson this provider of fine westcountry ales failes to provay a fine west country cider, so three pints of strongbow were ordered up, and a coke for the little ones we draged with us (thats you carley). and went for a wonder around the small village of Polperro.

Ben seems to think that heavy rain is better than snow, but looking out my window at falling snow all day is better than Rain,

when was the last time you could make a rain man, or rain angels, or rain ball fights,

I am not sure but Ben thinking that heavy rain and hail are better, well its just a lie pupetuated by a soft sothener. (Ruth’s INER-CITY London school was closed yesterday due to the snow)

Following Bens post, I desided to see what he was talking about (i have a life, and dont watch a lot of TV), yes i have seen the posters, but i have not seen the adverts, so off i went to the mac website, and here is there list of 15 resons to choose a mac over a Personal Computer. Continue reading »

Protect your freedom!

Help spread the word, and take part in maintaing your freedom to use digital media as you wish to!

If you are down in Plymouth See what TermiSoc have Planned and join in if you can! or Check out Defective by Design’s site

Oh and another part of the action is, this googlebomb:- DRM

Of the Computer Geek Quiz Takers:

• 17% are scared of links
• 17% of Windows users curse it
• And one that ben wont like:-
• 4% of Linux users selected Bill Gates as their hero
• And Loupie got 71%

I am sorry to say, but i missed all this great fun, but i cant help but woner, what on earth was in the bucket,