what kind of computer should a hoos get

DESKTOP

says the proud owner of a laptop, but capabilities> mobility

esp. if your gf has a laptop. if you ever thought you might want to type while out you could always borrow hers...?

thing is hers is mad heavy and has overheating issues. she doesn't like taking it anywhere if she can avoid it.

The other catch is that the less-expensive desktop doesn't come with a monitor.

i mean you can get a nice lcd monitor for like $70-80 nowadays tho right

Eee

http://au.asus.com/999%5Cimages%5Cproducts%5C1907%5C1907_m.jpg

<3

Who needs a monitor when you have ESP?

lol autumn that's exactly what i'm looking at

http://www.lmharnisch.com/images/bat_computer03.jpg

Can't find the get a Mac button on poll must be ILX2 bug.

definitely get the desktop. if u have a comp at work esp.

i mean, there's the cheaper price and also? i don't take my laptop fuckng anywhere. also desktops are sexy.

You can't use a desktop computer in bed. VVV imp point.

Other salient point: Scrivener is Mac-only.

wellll, what if the desktop was NAER the bed and the keyboard cord was long enough or something? okay okay i get your point

that would be actually a very tough thing. but now i've already voted.

Buy iPhone, type with thumbs.

surely these things must be going for a song now:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/8/84/300px-Cray2.jpg

http://www.worldvacation.org/images/blogs/10-2006/laptop-child-8931.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6d/WOPR.jpg/250px-WOPR.jpg
BTW I voted desktop - the problem with a laptop that does the minimum you need is that pretty soon you outgrow it. The desktop is cheaper to upgrade.

http://www.doubleazone.com/images/abacus.jpg

etc etc

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/7813/12ok5.jpg

I have a laptop that doesn't leave the house anymore. It was useful when I went back and forth to school and everything, but now it just inspires new forms of bad posture such as from computing in bed, as mentioned above.

Bring on the pictures of Etch-A-Sketches, Magnadoodles, Spirographs, etc., etc..

waterproof keyboard

^^^ important
An old client brought his laptop in to be fixed because he'd spilt coffee on the keyboard. While we were fixing it, he bought a new laptop and broke that one by spilling red wine on it.

Also the Pantograph, so called because it was pants
I'm thinking that perhaps my aversion to laptops is a projection of my experiences with the crap geometry based drawing toys of my childhood...

HALP I have $600 to spend, HOOS et al please point me toward good deals. Best Buy is selling a compaq laptop w/ dual core pentium, 1G Ram and 120G HDD with 15" monitor and wireless of course Vista : / for $499 (and supposedly "pricematching" to 399 today), SO... Y/N?

sorry Hoos for attempted hijack

those eeePCs have like a 7 inch screen! my dick is bigger than that!

pix

laptops break and you can't fix them

if you buy a mac that doesn't matter tbh but if you're just getting some junk so you can participate in (the storm botnet for massive damage) vista fashion week there is honestly no reason to get a laptop unless you genuinely have a powerful need to type on the train or want to live in the kind of fantasy world where hot chicks talk to guys who do computering in starbucks

but really if you pay money for a computer that has vista on it, at this point, I feel like getting a bus ticket just to slap you many times

Tom he's a student. There's something to be said from having your copy of word open in the library and not have to fend people off a shitty dell in a lab when you need to go get something from the stacks

^ too fucking right

(or, indeed, for not even having to use a shitty dell in a lab in the first place)

oh I forgot he's a kid. whatever. suck it up punks in my day owning a computer meant hauling 23 lbs of CRT back and forth every semester. now you got what, flatscreens? unix on the desktop? eat shit, whippersnappers

eat shit and DIE

Tom: Thanks for the anti-Vista advice. I wasn't sure how seriously to take this issue. I am basically clueless about buying a new computer, but with bog bix retailers it's Vista or nothing. Some online dealers will give you XP, but they sora make me nervous. Maybe I'll call the local store. I don't have a good copy of XP.

ok I don't even know what these xp's mean

writing papers is much easier for me in bed with my laptop than when chained to a desk

maybe i should go to a coffee shop and try to meet girls

I would try my best to boycott any retailer that forced me to buy a copy of vista with my computer

I'm gonna do that right now jon! let's reko-neuter in an hour and see how things turn out

okay, i want to see pictures of this.

tombot, in 30 minutes' time:

http://ninaturns40.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/dad_coffee_computer.JPG

apologies for size (as DG might put it if he bought an eeeeeePC)

i hear you can get these starving african laptops on ebay??

sout

also, on a coffee/GIS/what-computer-to-buy/grimly-bored-at-work tip:

http://www.vancouvercoffee.ca/wp/uploads/comca.jpg

it's hard out here for a hoos

anyway don't get vista, like everyone else said, it's ruined my pc and somehow has stopped me putting xp back on, it should be called MICROSOFT RUBBISH

Blur were prophets

good work ilx

i concur

Too late I know, but I am reading and posting to ILX on an EEE Pc right now, and it's great (no horizontal scrolling required). It really feels like a fully functional laptop - so far I've been able to do everything I normally do on my Macbook Pro that cost 5x more. May not be the best option for someone looking for laptop they are going to use every day for serious work (you are bound to encounter the MS/Openoffice compatability issues at some point) but it certainly doesn't feel like a toy, I may try and see if I can replace my Macbook permanently with it. The OS is lovely too (more than just the novelty of buying a computer with linux pre-installed) - it would be especially great for children. All in all - an amazing piece of technology for £200/$400!

hey apparently everex (co. that makes the desktop u guys voted for) is launching the Cloudbook which seems identical to the EEE PC except that it's black and touts better battery life. And it runs gOS instead of the OS the EEE ships with.

http://au.asus.com/999%5Cimages%5Cproducts%5C1907%5C1907_m.jpg
vs.
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/everex_cloudbook_CE1200V.jpg

and has a ~30Gb HDD.

oh ya lol

This makes it hard.

I don't like the idea of lugging around a HDD though. Flash is far more robust in a portable device.

Totally serious though: that ugly hole between the screen & the keyboard may make it a no-go for me. Given I use online storage for all my work, I can do w/o the HD.

It doesn't seem to have a touchpad either.

If it's got one of those stupid knobstick things it can gf. I've had one of those, it's murder on your fingers.

hey apparently everex (co. that makes the desktop u guys voted for) is launching the Cloudbook which seems is not at all identical to the EEE PC

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, January 10, 2008 10:59 PM

I like the idea of gOS though. I've heard that the Xandros version on the Eees is more clunky and spacehog than it needs to be.

We're not using English anymore, near as I can tell.

...

Can anyone tell me what that pink thing is by Bill Gates?

http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2008/01/gatesbbc.JPG

Is this some ultracuet little girl laptop?

gOS is a variant of the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon distro, as far as I can tell. Xandros is a commercial variant of a broader Debian release (Edgy, maybe?). The latter uses hyperthreading multihoovering technology to cut down the user experience and Fitts fewer objects on the screen, with a cormalescent slidepro mechanism at the bottom of the screen to increase real estate potential. gOS relies heavily on Aqua-like appearance and functionality to meet the user halfway whilst including more robust package management and cron job/kernel psychosis processing with ultra flange mootability in the outer fringes of silicon jarring fackshnog I HOPE THIS IS HELPING TO PUTT YOU AT EASE ABBOTT.

HAHAHahahahaha

0-excelsior in less than two minutes, that one.

"multihoovering"

vs. "fackshnog"

I got a laptop last week. It is infuriating how often that, when you are trying to type, some part of your hand/palm grazes the touchpad and somehow, God knows how, half of what you were typing is deleted, the cursor is transplanted to the address bar, Calculator is launched or some shit. Argh.

It's like Live Fire computing...

(xp) Used to happen to me too, but I got used to it.

I'll never get used to it, it happens ALL the time. I just have to re-learn how to type I guess.

Still, I am glad I got a laptop. Wifi is at effing McDonald's these days fer chrissake!

I'm still adjusting to my laptop, and I hate typing on it, too. Mousing isn't much better.

Through a long & painful process I learned to type with my wrists arched a bit to avoid the touchpad at all times. Alternately you can put the thing on an incline so that the touchpad is a few inches beneath your hands.

what kind of a computer DID a hoos get?

Last night a Hoos purchased this sumbitch, though I've decided that if finances allow (a big if!) I'd like to get the other thing sometime before the end of the year.

lol apparently Wired gave this a glowing review and PC Magazine gave it a "this is a steaming pile of shit" review.

I'll post my thoughts as soon as it comes in (thinking Wednesday).

Does it do fackshnog?

Wired says it blackboxes fackshnog like nobody's business, but the PC Mag guy was too busy bitching about it not running Hrothgrams to even notice!

it are here

i are using it and u guys get a half-assed review later

This is definitely an Ubuntu build. Setup is easy easy, 5 mins out of the box I'm up and running. A couple items that seem to be pretty consistent from person to person:

-Mouse scroll is not working. I've been using these things so long it's like instinct now to flick my finger if I wanna scroll, so this'll be an issue til I can get it fixed. (and it does look like there's a fix)

-The dock with all the icons to Google stuff has way too much shit in it by default, and it does this annoying thing where it scrolls ahead of you to get to the rest of the programs. Can be fixed.

-The min/max/close buttons are all on the left. I realize this is no thing to Mac people, but given that Win & all the Linux distros I've messed with have them on the right it's kinda jarring.

-OK I just got my very first "application error" while playing around with internet radio? First time I've ever hit one in Linux.

-The speakers/mouse/keyboard they came with aren't much to write home about, but I'm surprised at the quality given that they were essentially throwaways.

The monitor I got at the shady "Discount Electronics" store from down the way looked bright and great at the store. Then I took it home ($30) and realized that the contrast button is broken. ILX is making me snowblind, to say nothing of Writer.

layers of wax paper

I mean no question it's a step up from the giant CRT I had that would randomly turn everything beige, but it's like "come on now"

Interesting. It fusses when I try to full-screen Firefox.

ok this lack-of-mouse-scroll is driving me a lot more nuts than i thought it would. also there've been a couple program freezes on firefox & amarok. ew. those two factors are making me consider a switch to the ubuntu live cd on my desk.

if i add KDE i can do whatever the hell i want with the desktop anyways.

If you use Compiz Fusion you can reverse the screen colours, which would make ILX &c white on black.

Hmm, hooz, can you rip out the button and shove a pencil or such into the monitor to access the thing the button would be pressing? I've had like 4 things (TVs & Montiors) I largely operated by shoving pencils into.

I feel ya on the shitty monitor front. Right now the red channel on mine goes out at random, and I have to smack it sometimes up to 20 times for another 30 minutes of normal computing. I was looking at ones on the online today, but I've only ever adopted orphaned monitors & never bought one so the idea is making me uncomfortable.

At one point I had THREE MONITORS sitting around! And three broke, so I asked someone else who has hell of spare monitors and that is how I got my current one, which is at least 9 years old. Everyone I know basically runs a Used & Broken electronics store (emphasis on broken) but everything is FREE!

Man I am not liking this new KDE much. And GNOME is rather boring to my tastes.

lol i can complain real good

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/01/19/macbookcommodorecompare.jpg

> ILX is making me snowblind

i find this too. i have customised windows desktop that isn't the default white but web pages tend to specify #ffffff as a background so...

install firefox, add the Stylish extension and have this as a global style:

body {background-color:#eeeeee !important}

(makes normally dark background pages hard to read but you can disable it with two clicks so...)

and mouse scroll is typically a case of defining buttons 4 and 5 in your xorg.conf...

I've got 3 17" CRTs that I'm probably going to take into the woods and shoot if nobody claims them soon.

I'm living with Ubuntu pretty happily now, and I found a hidden button on the monitor so the contrast is fixed!

With the tax refund I'm considering indulging and buying the tiny eeePC laptop mentioned in the poll.

y/n

So the hard drive on this piece has started making mad noises. I backup everything once every few days on my external, but I think it's gonna be out of commission pretty soon. I have no money for a new thing.

now what

if you can live without backups and you know what you're doing and the external drive is not a little 2.5" one, open up the chassis. there is just a regular 3.5" drive in there which you can use when the one in your computer dies.

what you runnin these days HOOS