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My two-year-old netbook runs modern security software just fine. Takes longer than I like to boot, but after that it is no problem. Mind you, if I was stupid enogh to use Norton or Mcafee bloatware, it would be different. I'm tempted to ask why anyone in their right mind would want to run the...

^ yes but it will cost more

Not really. Or at least not exactly. I can't remember if they have changed it now, but for hundreds and hundreds of years, the date of Easter was unpredictable because the Christian higher-ups that set the day had to wait for the Jewish higher-ups to set their Passover so that the Christian...

I don't and I don't, but it is indeed a good day - perfect autumn weather, 20-odd degrees, sunny with fluffy white clouds, can't get any better than that - and the compliments of the season to you all. If I could bottle weather, I'd send you today in the post. :)

^ What for? Seriously - what actual processing does a student need? (Specialist disciplines aside, I mean.) You can write essays on a 286 - well, a Pentium-75 if you want to run a GUI - and surf the web quite happily on a Celeron 1700. I'm not saying that anyone ought to use such machines, but...

Once upon a time, Ultrastars were ~ 10 times the price of Deskstars.

I second CityK's remarks. The L412 is a very nice unit. the 14 inch screens are better tan the 15 inch ones, IMO. But for college ...... what on earth could any student need that isn't amply fulfilled by a netbook? The only think my netbook really misses is a real mouse and a 19 inch 4 x 3...

Why is anyone even bothering to talk about Seagate and WD failing? What an absurd idea! This is the whole point - now that there are just two players, they will sit back and take it easy. Prices will not go up, they just won't continue to fall the way they did when there was a hard drive market...

Well, it's not a Thinkpad, but at that price, what is? Haven't tried them myself. I only know about Thinkpads. But it looks good to me,

The old one, Lunar. The difficulty has very little to do with the lens, though. It's the crappy focusing aids modern viewfinders have, coupled with the light loss you get with a crop camera. I just can't see well enough to focus it correctly, except perhaps with the 1D III. I should imagine...

^ And be horriibly difficult to use (not so bad on full frame though) Want to buy my 24mm TS-E?

Good thinking Dave. I keep it simple: I buy Sandisk 'cause they are good quality and 'coz the Post Office (of all places!) sells them for ... well, I forget the price. $10 maybe? Roughly the price of a decent hamburger, anyway. No idea what speed. Who cares about that? (Flash cards - that's...

OK. I'll bite. Why do you want a faster wide lens? My theory is that when you get down to this sort of focal length (under 25mm, let's say) you have so much DOF even at F/2.8 that you might as well admit that you are never going to blur anything out and just shoot at f/8 for everything. Hell...

^ Listen to Lunar. I've never used a 17-55 IS but I know enough about it to be very cnfident that it is simply the best general-purpose lens available for 1.6 crop. (My GP "lens" is arguably even better, but that's because I use two with two bodies: 20D & EF-S 10-22, 50D & EF 24-105/4. I came...

G'day Clocker! Not too much new. I've more or less retired, but I haven't done too much work for quite a few years, so it's not that great a change. Good to see you here! And Bozo - bit of a surprise there. I suppose I think of all you guys as a bit like Tea - you know, she's a permanent...

It's a non-issue, Liam. The only warranty service that matters is the warranty service I provide. I sold the drive; I am the person my customers expect to service the warranty. I need the ability to get prompt, cost effective service so that I can afford to continue providing the prompt...

I'd rather have a Seagate drive than a Toshiba. Or a Hitachi. And obviously a Samsung. I'd take a Toshiba before a WD, but who wouldn't? This sucks.

What Merc said. Exactly what Merc said.

I got the home phone cut off, Lunar. The bastard company that has a monopoly on copper-wire-in-ground telephones here in Oz charges $35 per month just to have the wire there even if you are not using it. You can switch to another company, but you still have to pay, and what is worse, you know...

I have a 100% effective method. there are two steps. You must apply both steps to get a good result. 1: make sure that your mobile phone has a flat battery. (Or just leave it at the office.) 2: get your home phone cut off. Of course, there are side effects, such as (for example) if you want...

Change your supplier. You can just about put your house on it that whoever is handling and shipping your drives is not doing it properly. Samsung drives, properly handled, fail in service at a rate measured in tenths of a percent. Even Western Digital drives at their unlovely worst don't fail...

I'd have thought it would go OK, long as you give it a decent amount of RAM. Let's see .... 2011 >> 2001 .... Thunderbird 1200C, 30GB hard drive, maybe an Athlon XP 1700 and a 7200 RPM 60GB drive if you were feeling extravagent. Yeah, I'd surf the web happily enough with that rig. Wouldn't be...

Good to chat with you again also, Pradeep. :) I'm not quite retired - I still enjoy coming into the office two days a week .... and I enjoy not coming into the office for the other five days! ;) Life is good.

Well, there has been speculation around that Samsung will exit the business and/or sell out to one of the others for .... hmmm .... since at least 10 years ago to my knowledge. It had better not happen!

I've had her on ignore for years, mate. Never seems to make any damn difference though. :(

Fair enough, Merc. I'd use it myself ...... just so long as you give it a proper 22" screen. :) Oh, and a decent keyboard.

OK, time to reflect more seriously on this shock anouncement. (Well, I was shocked.) First, the disclaimer. I haven't bought an new IBM/Hitachi drives since they were indeed IBM. Last IBM drives I bought new were 75GXPs - which, I hasten to add, worked perfectly. So far as I know, they are...

It's a time warp, Lunar. Tannin, iGary, Newtun, all the old crew. Hell, some of us even go out without our walking frames if the weather is good!

Seems to cover it .... :)

What? Addressed the 65 years of unfulfilled promises from the nuclear industry? Or addressed something else? :)

Ahh ... I practically never read the stupid damn random thread. I wish someone would just delete it so we could go back to having sensible conversations, and find stuff, and have a rough clue what the latest news is.

Why should I? I haven't got time to go through all that stuff. Chances are, if it's important, they will phone me.

No. Phones waste time. If it's important, they can email.

So? It works for me.

Errr .. wouldn't it be better to just use a real computer in the first place? You know, one with an actual screen? Wouldn't it maker more sense to ..... .... oh never mind. Phones are for talking on.

Ahh, thankyou iGary. Does Merc know yet? He'll have a coronary! Or, possibly on the news, we will hear that rescue teams were called to a small but highly radioactive brain core meltdown event in Chicago.

Farnarkle me! That was a shock! Where is the huge thread discussing Western Digital's takeover of Hitachi's storage division? Why wasn't I told? (And, frankly, why don't I really care all that much anymore/)

PS: I should also add that there are some very promising newer nuclear technologies in prospect. But we have been promised cheap, safe nuclear power starting Real Soon Now for 65 years straight, so I'll actually believe these endless promises when the first plant is running on-time and...

Did anybody ever say it was THE most expensive? It isn't - but it's in the upper quartile. It is one of the most expensive technologies around, and because it only works (with present technology) on a large to very large scale, it's even more expensive than the raw numbers make it look. And it...

Could very well be, Bill. Well, better put that another way for accuracy: it could very well be that an as-yet undeveloped safe nuclear technology will play a part in the mix - for mix of many things it will certainly be. It's not really very sensible (mush as it's a nice armchair game) to try...

That's an excellent starting point. It gets hard, however, as both fuels produce delayed as well as instantly visible deaths,which are hard to count, and nuclear contamination goes on producing elevated death rates for a very, very long time indeed. So to compare fairly, you have to measure all...

No need to cite laughable figures, Stereodude. We will never know the exact number of deaths, but you are looking at one or two orders of magnitute higher than your high figure. Claiming "31" isn't just wrong, it is palpably dishonest. (For some reason unknown to me, I took you off ignore a day...

Why the rolling of eyes? That's EXACTLY what engineering decisions are all about - doesn't matter if you are speccing up a beam to support the roof of your outback dunny or designing a space shuttle - in the end, you have to decide where you want to draw the line between cost and safety. The...

Duh. Do read up on stuff before you make a fool of yourself.

Nailed the crux of the matter right there, Bill. Mind you, just saying that something is a gamble shouldn't rule it out. Gambling with our future is something we humans often do, sometimes with good reason. But we should at least be clear on what we are doing. Almost certainly not. We really...

Oh, and a few more few more years and all the manufacturers will start introducing special, extra-cost screens with extra depth. Bank on it. :(

^ yep. Not much use to a photographer though. The moment you want to work on a picture in portrait mode (round about half of all pictures sold), you are rooted. I think I'll go back to oils on canvas. The technology is superior.

I am almost stupid enough to spend that sort of money on a monitor, but if they think that I am going to sped serious $$$ on a monitor with that stupid space-destroying shape, they can think again. Shallow screens really, really, really, really, really, really, really suck.

I agree, Liam - LG's customer support is bloody terrible, certainly in Australia. Their warranty service is fine though - if you just have a faulty product and need it fixed/replaced, that works fine. But the moment you need something different, forget it. They are crap at that.

Cheap Samsung screens are generally pretty spotty. I usually avoid them. If you are going for high quality, on the other hand, Samsung make truly wonderful products. But you won't ever see that sort of thing in Costco. In your price range, look at LG - a company that does a nice job of quality...