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  1. Mercutio

    Should I wait until the holidays to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop?

    It's a little bit over 6lbs, actually.
  2. Mercutio

    Something Random

    There are bunches of online glasses outfits. I go to WalMart for my eye exams and tell the people working there that I plan to order my glasses on the internet. They give me all the relevant measurements and then I go shopping. The most recent pair I purchased from a company called...
  3. Mercutio

    Should I wait until the holidays to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop?

    You can also get an ultrabay battery. They only add two cells though.
  4. Mercutio

    problem Video trouble on game computer

    That does sound like video card in this case, but you might want to investigate a different display as well. My 27" Dell crapped out in a similar fashion.
  5. Mercutio

    Should I wait until the holidays to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop?

    The extra battery adds about one pound to the weight of the unit. Making it six + a few ounces instead of five + a few ounces, or about the same as what most 15" laptops weigh in the first place. Anyway, I've only needed it a couple times. The slice battery is installed in place of a docking...
  6. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Every year when I go vote I have to deal with hassle from the local pollworkers who keep insisting that I need to go to the OTHER nearby polling place. For reasons I cannot fathom my apartment complex is divided up between two polling locations. I actually think this is done to make it difficult...
  7. Mercutio

    Should I wait until the holidays to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop?

    The extended pack is another 9 cells that is connected via the docking port. That's in addition to whatever standard battery is present.
  8. Mercutio

    Surface with Windows 8/RT

    What does the app situation like? Do you have any other mobile platform experience to compare to it? Is Office support the thing that justifies it, or is there something more going on?
  9. Mercutio

    Hurricane Sandy

    I think it's safe to say that he probably has bigger things to worry about if he hasn't checked in by now.
  10. Mercutio

    Should I wait until the holidays to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop?

    I can tell you that with a nine cell battery and a fairly normal work pattern that involves moderate network activity, I can manage an entire working day without plugging in on a T520. I'd rather not do that, but I can get away with it. I have the extended battery pack as well, which pushes the...
  11. Mercutio

    The obligatory Blackberry thread

    When did Apple have a dominant platform prior to iOS?
  12. Mercutio

    Should I wait until the holidays to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop?

    You don't buy either those things from Lenovo in any case. Anyway yeah, the 1600x900 screen and i5 CPU are perfectly good options for most people. There's not much subjective difference between the mobile i5 and the mobile i7, so you're probably better off.
  13. Mercutio

    The obligatory Blackberry thread

    At some point, RIM is going to be appealing to someone or other if only because of BES. They need to either accept the inevitable and port it. Can anyone think of a situation in the tech world where a platform has come BACK after a catastrophic loss in user base?
  14. Mercutio

    Should I wait until the holidays to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop?

    A couple times a year, Lenovo does half off on warranties. Since the quality of service is a big part of the reason I'm willing to buy Lenovo in the first place, that's what I wait for. You're never going to get to do HUGE coupon stacking like you can with Dell sometimes, but the last couple...
  15. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I stopped selling on Ebay years ago. It's not worth the hassle. Craigslist isn't worth it either, to be honest. I have a bunch of electronics I know have real value, but I'm not giving them away to strangers, particularly not if they want me to drive to the north side of Chicago to deliver them.
  16. Mercutio

    Laptop Recommendations?

    The fastest I've ever seen over USB3 is 110MB/sec (Lexar USB3 flash drive) and it's usually more like 75MB/sec for a mechanical drive, so that's probably about right.
  17. Mercutio

    Should I wait until the holidays to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop?

    You should also register directly with Lenovo to see its discounts, and if you own at least one share of stock you can get its Shareholder/Employee discounts as well. They change pricing rapidly, sometimes several times a week. It's about shopping for the discount that you want. My particular...
  18. Mercutio

    OpenIndiana vs Solaris 11 zones

    Yes. Yes I did.
  19. Mercutio

    OpenIndiana vs Solaris 11 zones

    You don't. The hosts file isn't set up to deal with variable addresses. What you want to do is make an address reservation on a DNS server someplace.
  20. Mercutio

    Dell PERC 6i brackets

    I believe I have one I never used for anything. If I can find the stupid thing.
  21. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    Unfortunately, "bring your own" is an IT support nightmare as well. Because one person will be able to do something that other people can't, or one person won't be able to see something everyone else does. Like, hey, two calendars at once. :)
  22. Mercutio

    Hurricane Sandy

    I think dd is shooting for energy independence. ;)
  23. Mercutio

    Windows 8

    Under 10 seconds from the last of the EFI messages to a login prompt on my Server 2012 machine. It has an SSD, but so would anything you'd be using. ;) Resumes from hibernate are also really fast, but I haven't really tried to time one.
  24. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    Conversation view is actually a deal-breaker for some people. I really hate it and some of the aspects of Gmail's labeling system, e.g. "Whoops, I just trashed 600 messages with the same subject line because I miskeyed something on my phone." I'm willing to put up with it on Android because...
  25. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    One of my iphone people moved to a Galaxy last month. He gets along OK with it, but he hated conversation view in Gmail, which can't be turned off in the app version. I told him to try K9 and sent him a link with the proper settings to make it go. I probably got 150 emails over the next three...
  26. Mercutio

    Hurricane Sandy

    Why not a windmill? Probably less expensive and viable for longer than solar cells.
  27. Mercutio

    Windows 8

    Have you used it yet? It's really not bloated. The hardware requirements are pretty much identical to Vista except they farm more work to the GPU. I hate to sound like an apologist for a new Microsoft OS here but there's nothing about Windows 8 to get deeply worked up about. Honest.
  28. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I was seven or eight years old the last time I did anything for Halloween. I stopped going when my brother got too old for it. A couple weeks ago, I had a short conversation with one of my friend Brittany's co-workers (while I was waiting for my friend to put her civilian clothes back on) that...
  29. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    Somehow I doubt that will stop them from making more OSes or maps.
  30. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    It doesn't matter. I know it and she knows it. I hate calendars.
  31. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    When I get Steam gift codes, usually from a video card purchase, I go on the web and give them to somebody, actually. I want to give my stripper friend a copy of Swords and Sworcery. She doesn't have a credit card she can associate with her itunes account so the ipad I gave her is basically...
  32. Mercutio

    iPhone syndrome

    It is possible to buy Android apps from the web, even from iOS. It is NOT possible to buy an iOS app except from with iOS or within itunes. I want to gift an app and Apple completely does not support that. The only thing I can do is buy an itunes gift card, apparently.
  33. Mercutio

    Something Random

    TAL in particular has taught me that sometimes, even if I'm not terribly interested in a subject, the producers offer enough of a hook that I usually can't stop listening once I start. The Moth, Radiolab and the Third Coast Audio Festival are all very good examples of the sort of long-format...
  34. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I've been looking for more stuff to put on my phone since I finished listening to This American Life in sequential order. Not every TED talk is available in audio-only. I could probably strip the audio from Youtube copies but I don't know if I'm that motivated. I have been enjoying Marc Maron's...
  35. Mercutio

    Another mass build and some hardware thoughts

    I'm probably better off talking to a traditional distributor. I may even be ordering enough to make talking directly to Silverstone worthwhile.
  36. Mercutio

    Another mass build and some hardware thoughts

    Amazon was perfectly happy to sell me 80 180GB Intel 330 SSDs and 86 DH61BE motherboards, but Silverstone ML03Bs? Screw you. Limit 1. Guess I'll have to go see if I can work something out with Ingram or something.
  37. Mercutio

    Something Random

    That's a bit of a sore subject 'round these parts.
  38. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    I don't know that Intel is more reliable. Intel DOES have really fast RMA turnaround. For someone like Lunar the fact is that a drive failure would just be a reason to go buy another drive anyway so it probably doesn't matter as much for him.
  39. Mercutio

    Hurricane Sandy

    I have a friend in Brooklyn (south and closer to the Atlantic) who tells me she doesn't have power but somehow she's keeping her smartphone charged because we kept up an email conversation all day.
  40. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Disney Corp acquires Lucasfilm. Mickey Mouse now owns Kermit the Frog, Spider-Man and Darth Vader.
  41. Mercutio

    New phone time

    There's no way to do complete backups without rooting to access app protected storage. Hopefully that will change as the OS matures and we have a real backup semaphore of some kind. I suspect it just isn't a priority yet.
  42. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The whole area is like this, really. I suspect a campus town or some kind of gentrifying urban area would be more appropriate, but Northwest Indiana is doing the opposite of gentrifying.
  43. Mercutio

    Hurricane Sandy

    Commonwealth Edison's main data center was (is?) located about 100 feet below ground. The aboveground portion was basically a house-size concrete structure surrounded by cornfield and containing several elevators. Other places I've been have more or less just been warehouse-looking buildings...
  44. Mercutio

    Hurricane Sandy

    I can see that for trading and reporting firms, but d'ya think that HuffPo gets a competitive sideboob-posting advantage for being there? ;) Chicago has a giant datacenter operation in the Merchandise Mart (basically the middle of downtown), and that's a little easier to justify since Chicago...
  45. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    1024x600 was standard on 7" tablets until maybe a few months ago; I suspect the Fire HD is a bit of a game changer among tier-1 devices. You DO want to pay the extra $15 to ditch Amazon's stupid extra ads, though. As far as Samsung devices go, new ones are released irregularly, but Samsung...
  46. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My job is awesome and I know full well that I'm never going to get anything like it if I leave. If I had a concrete reason to leave it, I might do so, but I'm too risk averse to consider leaving for the possibility that someplace else might suck less and/or have better social options.
  47. Mercutio

    Hurricane Sandy

    The storm knocked Buzzfeed, HuffPo and Gawker Media sites offline. Apparently they all use a data center that's located in midtown Manhattan. That kind of blows my mind, because midtown Manhattan seems to me like it would be a horrible place to put a data center.
  48. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    I'd say that your choice come down to the 1st generation Fire (cheap), the Nexus 7, the Galaxy Tab 2 7" and the Kindle Fire HD. The classic Fire is cheap and has a great screen but has Amazon's sucky interface and lack of Play Store support. The Nexus has good hardware and software as Google...
  49. Mercutio

    Something Random

    A clump of cells isn't a person. If you want to argue about where to draw that line, be my guest, but the fact is that this is something that's happening in a person's body that will impact the rest of her life, whether or not the pregnancy is terminated. Neither one of us should be the person...
  50. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    Because the market for 1TB drives in a 2.5" form factor is vanishingly small.
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