profBill - Slashdot User

Submission + - Best computer for med school

Submitted by profBill on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @10:00AM

profBill writes: My son is applying for med school and his venerable Thinkpad T43 is getting a little flaky. He needs a new machine for his upcoming studies. The question is, what is the best, one computer to get someone for professional school where programming is not a big issue? His understanding is that what he needs is a machine that will allow him to watch lectures online (I guess med students can't get to all their classes regularly), write papers, do spreadsheets, read slides, do email. Pretty basic stuff. My inclination is to get the new Asus 1201n . Very portable, good battery life and enough power to do the basics. However, they are underpowered compared to a Macbook or the like. Assuming you aren't trying to do lots of games (and med students mostly aren't), what would you suggest? Real laptop, beefy netbook, even a desktop?

Submission + - SPAM: The Good, Bad, and Ugly OSes of the Decade

Submitted by itwbennett on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @09:59AM

itwbennett writes: Hundreds of Operating Systems were released during the past decade, finding their way into microdevices, watches, refrigerators, mobile phones, cars, motorcycles, jets, even the International Space Station. Some worked; some even worked well. Others, sadly, didn't. And some were just ahead of their time. Blogger Tom Henderson takes a look back at the best and worst OSes of the decade. Among the worst? Vista, as you'd suspect, along with WinME. But what about GNU Hurd? And some of the best? Solaris/OpenSolaris 10, MacOS X, And newcomer Google Android.

Submission + - Yahoo Imposes Weeklong Shutdown (wsj.com)

Submitted by Arvisp on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @09:55AM

Arvisp writes: Yahoo Inc. is shutting down its offices, except for "essential functions," from Dec. 25 through Jan. 1, as the Internet company searches for new ways to cut costs during the recession.

Comment Sprint Novatel727 + cradlepoint router (Score 0, Flamebait) 177

by profBill on Wednesday April 29, 2009 @07:23PM (#27765865) Attached to: Viability of Mobile Broadband For Home Use?

I live in the sticks where my options are few. Too far away from anything for cable or DSL and satellite is just a joke. I finally bit the bullet and bought a mobile card from sprint. I plug it into a cradlepoint (mbr1000 cellular, wireless N) router and the mobile card provides wireless service for the house. Yes, there is a 5Gb limit but the service is quite good. 200-300Kb down, 100Kb up on average. Sometimes quite a bit better, occasionally poorer but not often. Streaming video is not terrible and music seems good.

Anyway for rural use it is far and away the best solution

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