Technology

New Powerbook 15″ ordered. 1.67mhz processor, 120GB HD, 2GB of RAM. Should be here in a week and a bit.

So I broke a screen support on my 2.5 year old Apple PowerBook G4. I suspect there’s a new one in my near future.

Skimming tonight, one with 120GB of HD and 2GB of RAM sounds good. But the 15″ again, not the 17″ I think.

Oh well, time to ponder. Perhaps it will hold together and I won’t be purchasing a new one – the trip to Texas next week will likely tell the tale.

Since I’m a geek, I’ll do the geeky thing here.

My previous car was a 2000 Toyota Camry, had I driven it to Woodbury, Minnesota from Boston (1405 miles) at 23 mile per gallon, I would have used 61.09 gallons of gas costing around $175.32 (I use premium at around $2.87 / gallon).

My current car is a 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid. It used only 34.77 gallons of gas costing me around $99.80.

Calculate that over the 24,000 miles I’ve driven since I bought this car and it’s burned only 592 gallons of gas costing around $1700 vs. the Camry’s 1,043 gallons of gas costing around $2,994.

There have been only two downsides to the hybrid. One, the maintenance is slightly more expensive.. an oil change is about $115 due to using synthetic oil – then again, they’re only every 5000 miles vs 3000 miles or so previously. Second, the trunk is six inches less deep due to the batteries being between the rear seats and the trunk wall…

Otherwise, I love the car!

On the left, the Apple Powerbook G4 (2003 version), an iPod 20GB, some business cards, a glass of water.

On the right, a Motion 1400VA TabletPC (Sitting on the portable keyboard as my stand is in Minneapolis), connected to the fullsize USB keyboard.

In the middle, an empty coffee mug, an old presentation, a Nextel i730 cell phone.

Somewhere.. a Motorola 5.8ghz phone connected to Vonage’s VOIP service.. with a Minneapolis number even (I live near Boston presently, but work in Minneapolis)..

Strewn about – alot of chicken scratch that I’m trying hard to turn into something meaningful on the Tablet using Microsoft Visio. It eventually turned out well!

Dave has a piece over at Scripting News that I’m quite happy to hear:

Minnesota Public Radio: “The city of Minneapolis is receiving proposals to develop city-wide, wireless Internet access.”