Choosing a Laptop

Its back to university in a few weeks and I’m needing a new laptop. Currently I have my eye on a Dell Inspiron 6400:

Processor: Intel^® Centrino^® Mobile Technology: up to Intel^® Core^TM 2 Duo Processor T7400 (2.16 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB & Intel^®  Pro/Wireless 3945 (802.11a/b/g) network connection

Operating System:

Genuine Windows Vista^®  Ultimate

Genuine Windows Vista^®  Business

Genuine Windows Vista^®  Home Premium

Genuine Windows Vista^®  Home Basic

Chipset: Intel^® 945GM chipset (with Intel^®  GMA 950^TM  integrated graphics)

Display: Choice of 15.4-inch Wide screen displays in WXGA resolution, WXGA TrueLife^TM resolution

Video Graphics: Intel^®  Graphics Media Accelerator 950^TM  integrated graphics with up to 224MB shared system memory

Wireless Connectivity Solutions: Integrated Dual-Band (802.11 a/b) antenna. Integrated Dell^TM  Wireless 1390 (802.11b/g) or Intel^®  Pro/Wireless 3945 (802.11a/b/g) network connections. The Dell Wireless 350^TM  integrated Bluetooth 2.0 wireless solution is available as optional upgrade at time of purchase only

Battery Life: Be productive for up to 5 hours without re-charging your batteries

Design: Artic Silver and Alpine White design incorporating a 5-1 card reader and front-access multimedia buttons

Memory: Up to 2GB of 533 DDR 2 SDRAM provides for excellent overall system performance

Optical drives: Your choice of CD-RW/DVD Combo drive or 8x DVD+/-RW ²(supports double layer technology)

Software: Microsoft^®  Works^TM  including Works word processor, spreadsheet, database, calendar and My Projects organiser

Weight: Starting from 2.8 kg (6.18 lbs) with CD-RW/DVD Combo drive and 6-Cell Battery and integrated graphics

QuickSnap Colour Display (LCD) Back: Choose from four different stylish colours to personalise your notebook

Express card slot: Please note that this system has a ExpressCard slot and support the ExpressCard format only. This system does not have a PCMCIA card slot.

The only thing they forgot is the battery time. Since I’ll be using this to take notes, among other things, battery time is very important.

Any other suggestions?

Thinking about Facebook

Above is Shel Isreal’s Friendwheel of his Facebook Contacts . In the interests of disclosure, I’m not on it. In fact I’m not even on Facebook. And I’m exploring why in this post.

The above picture shows a true social network, pardon the term for a minute. Most people who know Shel know others in his contact list as well.

There are a few hundred contacts here, and it is a reasonable number of people to know and be in contact with. See the difference between being like Scoble who has 5000 people who happen to read his blog and having a shortlist of  “real” people that you know personally and do business with?

If you sit down and consider this for a moment, you’ll see the logic of that statement. We all have  lists of contacts, in Outlook, Messenger, in our Mobile Phones or perhaps written in a phonebook. They are there because we know these people personally and communicate with them often.

Now I would not have the email address and phone number of my readers ( assuming I have regulars who read my blog) on my mobile in Messenger or in Outlook ( actually Google Mail, now).

Why should it be any different on FaceBook???? Why do people add contacts that they’ve never met in person?

 (And Scoble, by the very nature of his work, needs to keep a pulse on the Valley – thus his large contact list. I was just using him as an example)

Now I DO concede the point that this is exactly what happens in business - people exchange cards on a whim in the hope of acquiring business or services from someone else.

Which leads us to the next question? What do you characterize Facebook as? Is Shel’s Facebook Contacts made up mostly of froends, ore mostly of people in the same line of work ( I guess its the latter)? In other words, is Facebook a social of a business contact site?

I ask since Facebook was originally a students only site.

So why am I not on Facebook? Simple. I don’t need to be.

PS. I addition to the above, where does Facebook add value? If its business-oriented how does it do this? If its Socially-oriented, how?

PodTech:The guy who runs Stanford\’s undergraduate computer science department

This is interesting, since I am studying CS: