Computer | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

When I played a movie several days ago I noticed that the VLC icon had changed:

A little bit larger:

Videos and documents of Computer Networks, LaTeX files, Gimp to edit the included images, a large map of Shanghai and Firefox with about 25 tabs (Shanghai Metro Map, apartments, …) were a bit too much for only one Gigabyte RAM. That problem had to be solved. And the owner of the computer store was right when he said he doesn’t sell memory without testing it. The first one we tried was incompatible with my ThinkPad.

But now it’s really, really fast… ok, back to work.

Took off the harddisk. In the external case I can transfer the most important files to the laptop and take the rest with me to China. With all my things gone, my computer feels so strange now.

I don’t know if the recycle bin has ever been emptied before. With the large hard drives you don’t really notice that you’re wasting 49 GB.

The man from lenovo Germany wanted to call me “in half an hour”. I’ve been waiting twice as long now. Seems like figuring out what to do with someone who wants to get a Windows tax refund takes a while.

Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard yesterday but didn’t announce any new products yet. Three weeks ago, AppleInsider had reported:

Apple Inc. has begun preparatory measures for significant announcements to take place during the last full week of October, AppleInsider has been told.

While sources have requested that we not go into detail regarding the specific measures being put into place, they say the announcements are likely to arrive any time between the 22nd and 27th of the month.

So let’s hope they’ll present something today.

I can’t take my desktop computer to Shanghai so I have to look for a laptop. I’d like to get a ThinkPad but couldn’t figure out yet how to customize a model instead of just buying one. It works on the US site, why not on the German one?

And why do I have to spend money on Windows Vista?? I’m very happy with my Ubuntu Linux and even if I’d want to use Windows (what I don’t) I could get a free and legal copy from my university. Praise Dell that offers computers with Ubuntu.

I’m also thinking about getting a cheap laptop from a discounter which I’d use at home where size, weight and battery life won’t matter and try to find a small used ThinkPad at eBay. But then I can just as well get another desktop computer in China… Anyone competent around?