I've owned various Apple portables (as well as PCs) since the Powerbook 170. Until I owned a G4 iBook, Apple's battery longevity was nothing different than the PC counterparts. I bought a used G4 powerbook when that model was 1.5-2 years old. When I got it, the battery was good for about 6 hours of solid average use. I had it for five years (only replacing it with this Macbook I have now last year) and in all that time, the battery only ever lost about 30% of it's capacity. I still saw a solid 4 hours of use out of it per charge. It was by far the longest I've ever had a laptop battery last (even keeping the comparison to Li-Ions). Comparatively, this Macbook never got great life (maybe 3hrs tops) but in over a year, I've yet to notice it losing any capacity. And in the past, a year is about all the time it ever took for previous laptops' batteries to hold zero charge at all. I had a Sony Vaio that killed it's battery every nine months, and before I bought the iBook, I was just used to a $50 replacement cost annually or so.

From this article (as well as what I've heard from others) at some point between this Macbook and the current models, the batteries or charging method Apple's used have significantly shortened the usable lifespans. Which will probably prove annoying when it eventually comes time to replace this machine in another 3-5 years.

Thanks to A/B/C (and D, in wagons) pillers quadrupling in size, increasing focus on aerodynamics lowering visibility in modern vehicles (especially for tall people like myself), I'm less likely to get into a wreck in my antique because I can actually see the damn road!

I gladly give up the side curtain airbags and better rollover survivability for that 25 or so degrees of road that's now typically blocked. The best way to survive an accident is to avoid one, and the best way to avoid one is better view. Somehow, this principle seems to be lost on those designing cars nowadays.

I have seen quite a few newer vehicles so poorly maintained as to more than offset superior emissions control. The 2007 Ford Cobra blowing a giant cloud of blue smoke I saw a month or so ago is a great example of how newer != better. My three decade old diesel does not smoke. At all.

I have seen (and predict more of) people like myself maintaining "classic" older vehicles longer in order to avoid exactly this sort of crap, as well as the occasional custom build or kit cars. They can have my '84 when they pry my cold dead hands off of the wheel.

Is it bad that I know that your Mercedes is one of the W123 era diesels (or older) just from you mentioning those special wrenches (of which I also have a set)?

....comfortably numb!

My 1984 300TD begs to differ. I'm happy if I make 0-30 in 20 seconds.

I've found phone-sized on-screen keyboards almost completely unusable. So much so that I tote around a Bluetooth keyboard with my phone when I think I'll have cause to enter a lot of text. What is with this trend of making devices' input options so fucking horrible? Remind me why we did away with the rather elegant solution of using styluses on touch screens?

And to anyone who says "use speech recognition"? It doesn't work for me. I get atrocious (70%+/-) accuracy with it due to my gravelly voice.

Depends on the state. NY is abysmal at construction... they took 11 years to replace a ratty-ass bridge near where I used to live. Florida on the other hand kicks ass at it. I-275's been completely rebuilt in a matter of months.

I think it really is as simply as paying the contrator by the job, and not by the hour.

I'll have to look into that. I work on-call, so a single whole day is a lot easier to swing than being unavailable part of several days. Thanks!

Thank you for replying to this with actual useful information rather than either a blatant troll or a defense. This is actually useful, and pretty much what I'd expected.

It seems stupid that I can take college courses online, but not the GED tests. As of the last time I looked into it, it did require more than one appointment, which is part of what makes it so damned inconvenient for me.

Where I live currently, they require several ass-in-seat days. Could be tests, could be classes, I'm not sure, offhand.

That assumes that the state you were homeschooled in graduates you, which in NYS at the time, was only if who you were being taught by was an accredited "education professional", as defined by them. My mother was a former primary education teacher, so I got better from her tutelage than I ever would've gotten from the state public system (just comparing what I learned to what my friends came out of the system knowing... or rather, not knowing).

I started working at a young age. Since I have been gainfully employed without a diploma or GED for all but a few months (total) of that time, it has never been a priority to shell out money in order to sit in classes for several days. I'd like to just take the equivalency test online, but for some idiotic reason it's not offered.

...does this mean that I'll finally be able to take the damn thing online?! I've been meaning to take it for years (I was homeschooled) but I've never been able to find time around my job to go to the classes.