Giles, help! He's going to scold me!

Buffy ,'Never Leave Me'


Buffistechnology 3: "Press Some Buttons, See What Happens."

Got a question about technology? Ask it here. Discussion of hardware, software, TiVos, multi-region DVDs, Windows, Macs, LINUX, hand-helds, iPods, anything tech related. Better than any helpdesk!


JZ - Aug 21, 2013 1:34:54 pm PDT #22911 of 25496
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

Hivemind poll:

My ancient Macbook (six years old? maybe seven?) is slowly dying; it may be rehabbable by a local Mac guy willing to go in and tinker with it on his own, but it's old enough that the actual Apple Store people won't touch it anymore. Local Guy is definitely going to get a shot at giving it better braaaains, but it would probably behoove me to get another laptop just in case. I could get a refurbished last year's Macbook Air for around $800 with my academic discount, but, while futzing around in Groupon, I saw a new special for HP Envys for $569.

I don't game or play movies or watch TV or do much of anything but write and edit, mess around with fairly basic graphic design, and hang out here. I'm fine with either OS but probably rather more at ease with Windows than whatever big cat Mac is up to now. Any opinions on whether it's worth it to go for the Macbook Air, or whether I'd be just as well served with the HP and letting Local Guy see whether he can Frankenmac the old laptop?


NoiseDesign - Aug 21, 2013 1:44:40 pm PDT #22912 of 25496
Our wings are not tired

I adore my 11" Air, it's the second one I've had. However, you'll probably get more space and such on the HP Envy.


JZ - Aug 21, 2013 1:51:16 pm PDT #22913 of 25496
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

We've got a small windfall coming in so the Air is doable; I'm just not certain that it's worth the extra $200 and change for what will amount to a portable box to plonk words into. I do love them, though. So terribly pretty, and fast, and so light.


Rob - Aug 21, 2013 2:28:33 pm PDT #22914 of 25496

If you want to keep the new laptop for six or seven years I think you should get the Air.


Gudanov - Aug 22, 2013 5:11:45 am PDT #22915 of 25496
Coding and Sleeping

I love my now 2-year-old Thinkpad Edge. The 14" model starts at $530, but it's a regular laptop at 1" think and 4.75lbs rather than Macbook Air size.

ION, I picked up a Lenovo S6000 tablet. So far I'm liking it. Much faster than my old Xoom 2 and I put in a 16GB microSD card I already owned to expand it to 32GB. The big drawback is that the resolution isn't any better than a Xoom 2 or iPad 2. But still seems like a good deal at $250.


Tom Scola - Aug 23, 2013 4:35:47 am PDT #22916 of 25496
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

Steve Ballmer to retire from Microsoft.


Tom Scola - Aug 23, 2013 4:49:30 am PDT #22917 of 25496
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

Microsoft's stock price is up 7.5% this morning.


§ ita § - Aug 23, 2013 10:26:59 am PDT #22918 of 25496
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Why would someone change their Apple ID email address to someone else's? It's not like you type in my full name by mistake (well, I found a chick with the same name as mine who messed up on her Facebook account, but Andy Mahon has no such excuse). Is there some sort of angle? Like, can he get into my Apple shit, or something--is email address the unique key for those?


Steph L. - Aug 23, 2013 10:39:37 am PDT #22919 of 25496
I look more rad than Lutheranism

Like, can he get into my Apple shit, or something--is email address the unique key for those?

No; he would need your password, too. That's happened to me before. Do you use a Gmail address for your Apple stuff? Gmail does this thing where adding a period into the part of the address before the @ doesn't actually change the recipient. For instance, I will get e-mail to smlang @gmail .com, but also sm.lang or s.mlang, etc.

Someone registered as s.mlang and I got an email from Apple welcoming "Steve" to his Apple account, so I immediately went in to my account and changed my password. Take THAT, Steve who doesn't understand e-mail!


§ ita § - Aug 23, 2013 11:22:20 am PDT #22920 of 25496
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Do you use a Gmail address for your Apple stuff? Gmail does this thing where adding a period into the part of the address before the @ doesn't actually change the recipient. For instance, I will get e-mail to smlang @gmail .com, but also sm.lang or s.mlang, etc.

Which is fair, since it was sent to my full name without the period, but still--what business does Andy Mahon have with any variant of my full name?

(I got into a weird fight with someone who tried to pull some shit with an itaitaita gmail address (I usually use ita.ita.ita) and a sketchy looking site, so I changed passwords on them, and they promptly signed the address up for a bunch of Filipino spam (yeah, I had it translated to see) in retaliation.