Asus to Life

Just yesterday, I bought the asus ul30vt-x1k from amazon. The costs was 750 after tax and I received a free external optical drive. booyah.

I now have two laptops (notebooks? wtf is the difference?) but my other hp laptop isn't practical outside my apartment. It's too heavy and bulky and the battery is poor even after recalibration. What I need for school is a thin and light laptop with a great battery. The asus provides this. Today, at panera bread the laptop was on for 3 hours and the battery meter estimated it would work for another 6.5 hours! I didn't have the patience to measure but that is cool if you think about it. The advertised battery life is 11 hours if you run it conservatively.

However, there is one negative. The touchpad is not that good; it's jumpy and somewhat inaccurate. I knew of this before the purchase but this can be cured if I remove the touchpad elan software.

During my shopping, I was going to get a tablet pc so I would look cool at taking notes while everyone else was using pen and paper. However, the tablet I would buy is too expensive and with the new developments of a new generation of tablets coming this year, I knew my mind would fill with regret in buying a tablet pc.

Overall, I'm happy with this laptop. Also, I bought microsoft office professional 2010 from my school for only 10 bucks! Being able to use onenote 2010 on my laptop during class tomorrow has me excited. I can import the power presentations to onenote, and from there i can add notes, draw lines, add color, etc. on to the presentations. BAM!

If you have any tips to using onenote, please tell me!

RANT:

If you don't like rants, please close your eyes and count down from 10.

Now, I am amazed at the power of apple. Their marketing strategies have people hooked at their cheeks like a sucker fish! A few people in my class were immediately hooked into buying the macbook pro just from the influence of another classmate. Crazy.

MACBOOK PRO:

I did look into the macbook pro 13 inch for 1200 bucks. It definitely is slim and has a good battery life but the price is absurd. How could I in justification buy 4+year old intel core 2 technology for that 1200? Granted, their general pricing has gone down but not enough to compete for my money.

Take a look at the 15 in macbook pro with the intel i5: 1799 bucks! WTF! For half the price, I can already beat the specs with a windows build. The mac osx does have media editing software (for more additional charges) that does make a macbook appealing, but there are software applications on windows as well.

Viruses and other malware can definitely be a selling point to purchasing a macbook...for the ignorant. Certainly, I've accidentally downloaded malware when I was younger (like way back in early high school). But I used the internet to help me determine the do's and don't's to internet use. If you are so worried about malware and are rather computer illiterate, then you should buy a macbook. For now, you should be rather safe...I think.

Articles:

http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2010/04/18/one-hacker-says-apple-and-mac-users-dont-take-security-serious/

http://www.fastcompany.com/1673499/major-flaw-in-apples-safari-browser-gives-hackers-access-to-personal-information

http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/03/29/google-chrome-web-browser-unhackable-at-pwn2own-2010/

I must be missing something about these macbooks. Tell me please.

Gadget Fiesta

If you would remember from months ago, I wrote about wanting to get a new phone. Previously, I was sporting the ol' palm treo 700wx. Besides the size, the treo was a great phone: good touchscreen, great customization (even had multiple home windows as seen on smartphones today), and great overall phone...for it's time of 2005. I have been waiting...and waiting for the right phone. Here it is:

THE DROID X! I bought this phone on release day right here to Kentucky, and it's a fun device.

SIZE:

Reading the physical specs made me worry this phone would be too big for me, but it's near perfect. I tend to like bigger things, hence, my possession of the ol' goliath palm treo. The droid x is long but very thin except for the hump at the top where the camera is positioned. Actually, the hump is welcomed by me because it makes holding the phone or grabbing the phone from my pocket rather trivial. It's the biggest smartphone with a 4.3 inch screen that is terrific because I can read articles, watch videos with more ease.

GPS/GOOGLE MAPS

The gps and google maps software is good and has helped me find my way around this town. I'll plug it into my car audio system and it performs better than my garbage garmin nuvi gps device. Not once has google maps navigation led me down any weird paths like the garmin has done many times in the past.

Battery Life:

Super! My phone could last almost 2 days if I use it conservatively or less than 1.5 days if I use it more heavily in the wireless, internet and app departments. Most other smartphones struggle in this area, especially the htc evo as I've read.

SCHOOL:

The droid x has been very helpful with school purposes. Checking email is a breeze. A few times, I've even completed some online quizzes while in a boring class! Also, I've read study guides, old tests and notes during class; no need to waste time printing and unnecessarily wasting tree resources. This morning I was at panera bread and their internet was being silly. So I whipped out out my phone and downloaded old tests and quizzes for a test I have tomorrow. Perhaps for 1.5 hours I was studying the documents from my phone. AWESOME.

APPS:

There are very many useful apps. Certainly, the android market size is nowhere in size to the apple apps market but there is debate in how many apps are useless and redundant. The essential apps for me so far are dropbox, meebo and ebuddy, facebook, google maps, yelp, file manager, adv. task killer, youtube, dictionary.com, pandora, shopsavvy, mixzing, camera 360, and colornote.

CLOSING:

I'm a bit excited for android 2.2 aka froyo to see how more efficient my droid x will run. However, I read that the adobe flash player needs improvement.

I've fallen for the game that is the smartphone. Generally, I'm for innovation and competition but for the most part I have been convinced to join the android team. Also, I use to have a wallpaper of the android eating apple:

There's A Lot of Garbage

Certainly, there's a lot to write about: apartment and kids moving in for school this week, dental school progress, diet change, new phone and laptop, and random things. I thought I would make multiple posts but let's try it in one long attempt.

As foolish as this sounds, I moved into an apartment I have never once seen beyond the internet pictures. The price/mo. is really cheap at less than 500 which includes some utilities, internet, cable tv and furniture. Also, I share the kitchen and living room with a roommate who has yet been assigned to my apartment, thankfully.

I really expected the worse of conditions but the place surprised me at how not so bad it is actually(insert harhar! ). However, the bed provided was horrific as I saw some form of dried up barf or feces on the bottom. I demanded, nicely, that I get a new bed. My new bed was a strange one: no box spring and is supported 1.5 feet off the ground. It's good because I can store lots of stuff below but the center support pole is so squeaky. I'm now trained to sleep like a ninja and remain completely still throughout the night.

College kids are now moving in for school this week and my enjoyment of an empty parking lot is over. I know I won't like it but at least I can tolerate. Last Saturday some inconsiderate and lazy kid threw his kitchen garbage bag into my balcony and that made me mad. Luckily, the maintenance staff understood my situation and told me they would take care of the trash. When I was 18, I don't remember myself as a kid who was inconsiderate and rude to other people around me. But then again, I'm not a stupid person.

This blog post is already pretty long with no visual assistance so I retract my earlier statement (no, i refuse to remove the statement), and my separate topics will be divided by different posts.

My Bad

Haven't blogged as much as I would like to but school has been busy, and blogging is in the back of the line at the moment. Much to write about my place, dental school and classmates, new phone and other things. You should RSS feed this if possible; just kidding.

BTW, I appreciate sleep more now. Well, except for right now.