Saturday, February 5, 2011

me, the gadget geek

I get enamored over my devices. and before I make a purchase, I research until I'm blue in the face.

I loved my BlackBerries, and I'm actually thinking of getting one again- I really liked making themes, people liked them, and I need something to test apps on when I start getting more into it. probably pick up something with BB OS 6 second-hand off contract to have around when I need it- would be great if I could find a cheap 9800, but I doubt it.

though I wasn't as impressed with the iPhone 3G as others are, it was fun to play with, easy to use and I can understand why people love them. when Andy switched to the Vibrant and Rylie switched to the Optimus T in December, Eric bought Andy's iPhone and Taryn replaced her Gravity with Rylie's. Everyone is happy, and I still have an iPhone in house to mess with when I get the urge. I've also gotten quite good at jailbreaking and unlocking- so easy to do with the Mac mini.

until last year, I've always had Windows machines. after I screwed up my $4k+ Gateway laptop cuz I'm dumb sometimes, I went to Sam's and picked up an HP XP Media Center tower. Didn't quite care for MC, or the fact that it was an HP, but it did the job, most of the time. something happened and I wasn't even able to get in, or retrieve from an outside source, to back up my files before having to wipe and reload, and I lost ALL of Taryn's baby pictures.piss.me.off.

I needed to be portable sometimes, so I also grabbed the cutest little Dell x300 with dock that ran XP Pro for $300 or so. that little laptop gave me some good use for just shy of 3 years. I had decided to switch to Macs last January and picked out a low-end mini and low-end MacBook Pro. my sister needed a laptop for school, so I did a wipe and reinstall of XP on the little laptop with the intention of giving it to her. somehow in doing this, the network adapters, both wired and wireless, totally shit out. luckily, I had bought a SquareTrade warranty, I filed a claim, sent it to them, they sent me back what I had originally paid. frikin sweet! but Dana didn't get a free laptop and had to get one on her own.

how did I f-up my very expensive Gateway laptop, you ask? I had been thinking of upgrading the RAM and possibly the processor. It was one of the first P4's with HyperThreading, but not the M version- it ran HOT and got to the point of shutting itself down. one of those laptops you don't put on your lap, not only because of the heat, but it was also heavy as hell. but I loved her dearly. I did research on what to replace with what and how to do it... and then I felt I had enough knowledge to open her up and see first-hand what I needed to do. taking apart was easy, putting back together is where I went wrong. don't freakin ask me how (I know how I did it, and it's SO stupid of me that I care not say it aloud), but I bent the processor pins, didn't snap it in all the way and then of course, no booting. I cried, and cried. I have replaced processors and put together systems from scratch, but those were towers. it wasn't figured out until much later, when finally replacing the CPU, that all I had to do was snap it in. even with pins bent back into place, the old CPU still fired up, once properly seated. poor thing sat in a case for well over a year before I decided to attempt to fix it and sell it off. only got $700 for her, but by then, that P4 wasn't too snazzy and thinner and lighter varieties were emerging, so that was a fair price, I suppose.

so the HP sat in a corner of the dining room after the mini arrived- used it now and again to get files from or do something on Windows that I couldn't do on a Mac. Taryn and Andy love the Mac. I love the Mac too, but not as much as they do... like the iPhone, I feel it's a little dumbed-down, too easy to use. I enjoyed the MBP while I had it- went on our road trip, used it for work, and a second computer is necessary in our house. Taryn knows how to log into her account, play her games, open her iPhoto and PhotoBooth and the text editor and painting programs, and how to close them all out, quit them from the taskbar and log herself out. not bad for a 5-year-old! she loves her iPhone and shows me stuff she figures out. it's very cute and very cool.

I lost my job on a Wednesday, and the MBP was sold by that Friday. when I started school, whenever I would get on the mini to do homework, if Mumma is doing homework on the computer, then Taryn wants to do her homework on the computer.. as soon as my school refund arrived, I was buying a laptop again. I spent over a month researching- I wanted one of the Toshiba netbooks at first- cheap, easy to transport, would certainly fulfill its purpose, I liked the trackpad and keyboard, I like Toshiba. but then the new Toshibas were announced, and I started thinking of long-term functionality, I wanted to have a triple boot system for the fuck of it, and though I'm happy with what I ended up with, now that I'm lugging it around at school, I'm wishing I had gone with a netbook. wth do I need an i5 for? once I raised my budget, I was set on a Toshiba that I would have to have shipped. but I hastily walked into Best Buy, picked up an Asus and exchanged it for a Dell 15inch. I loved the Dell, but it was too big for my school bag, so I returned that one.. and as I was wandering around the laptop section, I saw a 14in Dell just put out on display, hand-written product tag and all, and said "I'll take it." the only thing it's missing from my ultimate wishlist is a bluray player. but all the blurays we buy, we get the digital copy if available, so no.big.deal. the video card probably won't support OS X, and my network cards are having issue with Ubuntu, so that part of my wishlist was also forgone. VirtualBox works well enough for now- I'll give the bootable partitions another go at some point.

the MyTouch 3G was my first Android phone. I also had the BB 8900 at the time (my fav BB so far) and trying to use an on-screen keyboard proved frustrating. I did root it and loved almost everything about it, and discovered some of my still favorite websites. AndroidCentral and XDA is where I spend the majority of my time online, aside from facebook of course.

and this is what happens when I get going.. I ramble. and I'm supposed to be doing homework. this will be continued...

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