Had to pick up a prepaid SIM card the other day (long story) and found a great deal for the price of a decent load. For about €15 on top of the cost of the SIM card, they throw in a Samsung C180 along with the equivalent minutes. Nothing special, I realize, but I can’t get over this phone.

Last time I did this a little over a year back, I got a clunky Nokia 2600 that must have been thrice the thickness and the weight. Granted, this C180 doesn’t do much more than that old Nokia, but do you see how thin this thing is? Blown away.

Oh, and the dude behind the counter kept trying to sell me on a deal that would knock some €18 or so off the total price if I traded in my old phone. He couldn’t understand why I was passing it up.

Until I had to take a call.

As geeks the world over slowly recover from the lingering effects of the Jobs Reality Distortion Field, I imagine more than a few are going, “Uh, that’s it?”

The keynote itself was something of a let down. No new, non-wussy (as opposed to the Mac Mini), non-sissy (as opposed to the iMac) mid-range desktop, no MacBook EEE, no “one more thing”. I mean, really, after he pulled that stunt and introduced the I-still-want-one-btw G4 Cube back in 2000, he set a bar of expectation he’s not likely to clear or live down any time soon (although he did come close last year).

But it’s the iPhone 3G that’s really got me going, “Ooh, bulk delete. Big. Whoop.” Keep reading »

German-engineered mechanical key switches, an integrated USB hub (still a mystery to me why this isn’t standard on every corded keyboard on the market), and blue LEDs. Blue LEDs!

I’d also love to take the n-key rollover function for a spin next time I’m in the typing zone and most standard keyboards start tripping all over themselves trying to keep up.

And it’s gotta be the Ultimate version with the blank keys. Because that’s just too badass.

I realized this post was starting to get rather long and Pournelle-esque as I was writing it and thought briefly of breaking it up into several posts. But I figured it would be easier to ignore and skip the inanity of the whole thing if it was just another entry. So, here…

My daily Go Gear’s seen some sophisticated upgrades since I first posted about it. The most significant of which has got to be the MacBook Air which replaced the 2.16GHz black MacBook.

(flickr-noted version)

Keep reading »

Last week, Cisco let it be known that he was ready to give up his Mac Mini in exchange for a Windows PC. It’s what his friends have, it’s what his school runs, and, well, he’s seven.

Still, going from OS X to Windows? Giving up the slick ’stack-of-six-CDs’ form factor for a mini-tower’s worth of eyesore? Apple to MS? The boy needed some serious talking-to. Two days I geared up for it, simplifying my reasoning to elementary school level. But in so doing, I completely defeated my own arguments. And, well, he’s seven.

So I spent the weekend putting together a decent XP-class P4 out of my previous two rigs. An upper-end core solo from right before the duos took over, a couple of gigs of RAM, an 80 gig drive for the OS and a 320 for his growing collection of, uh, ripped media, etc.

Now, I’m pretty handy with XP. I managed and was the technical lead in two projects that migrated whole critical networks of hundreds of workstations over to the platform from NT. I designed the Active Directory configuration for the severs and developed tightly locked down, closely managed workstation configurations for a variety of user types and requirements. I took full advantage and squeezed every bit of functionality I could from global/local policies, user profiles, and everything the Zero Admin initiatives could give me to come up with a solid, reliable, and relatively secure XP-based workstation build.

So no bot-net-bait on this home network. This little guy’s machine will be locked up tight as a drum. But after a relatively blissful year on the OS X security bubble (which is fast approaching critical mass as the Mac market share does the same — inevitably attracting the ne’er do wells and popping this lickable aqua-themed bubble) and all that vaunted XP experience, I still can’t help but feel like I’m handing the kid a loaded gun. Or a thermolyte explosive charge with remote detonators scattered all over the Internet.

I’m not an Apple elitist by any means — I run Vista on my primary desktop mostly by choice, and I’m learning to love my media-serving, torrent-leeching ‘buntu box — but this has got me asking, how responsible is this?

And, more importantly, is there a special circle in hell for those who give XP boxes to their kids?