cancerward's Journal: Covetousness

Sir Tim Berners-Lee uses a Powerbook. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me.

My only problem, then, is that I'm having trouble deciding between the 12" and the 15". My last laptop was an Evo N115 (I'll never buy another HP or Compaq, because of random shutdowns and crap quality) and its 14" screen was good enough for watching DVDs. Will 12" be too small for watching DVDs? Will 15" be too big?

Also, it's not something US users can relate to, but we poor Australians are hugely overcharged for Apple computers. Apple produces a nice product. But they haven't cottoned on to the fact that the exchange rate is currently about 0.77 US cents to one Australian dollar, not 0.52. (Must keep in mind that very few Americans pay ANY sales tax on computers.) Other computer manufacturers, then, can drop their prices due to the falling US dollar.

As of Jan 6 2004, for a 12" PB with a superdrive, the US .edu price is $US1599 and the AU .edu price is $A3059.10. The ratio is 0.52 not 0.77. Plus, they're made in Taiwan, which is much closer to Australia than the US... and they're much cheaper in Singapore or Hong Kong too. I'll have to wait for the next iteration of Powerbooks and see if there's a price drop. Kiwis have it worse.

One blessing is that I don't have to worry about region codes on the thing, because of vlc. It's still a damn annoyance that something like a laptop could have a DVD player with region codes, because the whole idea is, you take it with you to other countries, right?