Vista is Out

There are a lot of little things to talk about today, so I figured that I should start with the biggest little thing: Windows Vista is out! I know that you're all exhausted from waiting outside your local retailer at midnight. I can't imagine that any of you had forgotten about it over the past 5 years. Alright, enough sarcasm. Bill Gates appeared on The Daily Show to help promote it to younger demographics, and it's funny just how different he is from his most formidable opponent, Steve Jobs. He's really not very personable, but I think he understood Jon's jokes even though he didn't ostensibly think they were very funny. All in all, he was pretty sober about the release. This is a man who is ready to retire, you can see it in his face. Even as he was talking about the future, he wasn't really getting into it. This isn't the same young man who had dreams of Microsoft, this is an old man who has seen a lot come to fruition through his achievements in the field of technology and is ready to move on. In any case, Vista is out and I've yet to try it out. It's not out at our campus computer store (massive discount there), so I'm going to wait until it does. Everyone raves about how great it is, but what worries me the most is that it may demand ridiculous hardware specs or else be very slow. Though this computer still rocks (2.4 Ghz P4, 1GB RAM), it was built before I started college. Maybe I'll wait until I get my laptop in May. In any case, it's out for the rest of you already.

Finally some supporters of what I was claiming earlier: the profit margins on the iPhone are closer to 20%, if even that much, when some of the parts (namely, the LCD screen) are more realistically priced. And once again, R&D still isn't being taken into account. The iPod Shuffle is being re-released in more colors now: pink, blue, [burnt] orange, and green. You can't look at that picture and tell me that it's not Longhorn orange. Anyway, they also come with the updated earbuds (guess they ran out of the old crap ones). Oh, and they seem to have released an 802.11n enabler for newer MacBooks, iMacs, and Mac Pros, which is a bit controversial since it costs a couple of bucks extra. I kind of agree, it was promised with the device in its specs, so why should you have to buy a driver for it? It's been a long time coming, but it's finally upon us: the floppy disk is basically dead. Its biggest manufacturers have stopped making them, and PC World has decided to stop selling them. I don't even know what they're useful for anymore, but they were a good friend for me back in the mid 90s. Because searching Google has become so important in today's society, I felt it was worthwhile to post about some more tips for searching efficiently using keywords. Definitely worth checking out. If memorizing is as painful for you as it is for me, then you'll get a kick out of memorizable.org. It uses a wiki interface to quiz you on words and phrases, which makes it ideal for language classes or biology classes, I'd imagine. I don't have much use for it at this point in my college career, but I wish I had it two years ago. Lastly, if you need to share large files online easily, you should definitely check out senduit. I think it's a lot cooler than You Send It, and will definitely start using it myself.

I went through all the movie news, and it's pretty boring or just not noteworthy. So let's not cover it today.

Now for the Tuesday Twosome:

1. How often do you update your blog/site and why?
6 days a week, because that's when the most news breaks.

2. How often do you comment on other people’s sites and why?
Whenever I have something to say! Probably every other day or so.

3. How often do you change the layout of your site and why?
Of this blog? Like maybe once a year. If you change it too often it becomes gawdy.

4. Do you ever feel guilty that you don’t reciprocate comments or you really don’t care?
Sometimes, yeah. Usually though, I try to visit whoever commented, but I won't force a fake comment.

5. How many sites on average do you visit daily and of those, how many do you comment on?
Maybe 15 sites? They're not all blogs though. I may comment on one blog a day.