I’m thinking of getting a new MacBook Pro as a replacement for my 2 year old Mini. I know how much RAM I want and the size & speed of the hard drive. The only question remains is what CPU speed should I get?The choices are: 2.4Ghz and 2.53 – a difference of 133mhz. The price difference between them, however, is $250 making each Mhz about $1.87. That’s the cost of one Grande coffee from Starbucks. But is the price difference really worth the nominal speed boost from the faster CPU?I’m not a heavy user but I don’t accept slowness from my computers. When people have come to me for PC advice, I’d always steer them away from the fastest CPUs because I never thought the premium was worth it. But the idea of spending $2300 dollars on a laptop vs $2500 – a 10% increase – is just that: 10%. I know I won’t get a 10% speed boost. But over the lifetime of the laptop, will get a good return on my investment?Without doing a ton of math, I’m inclined to say the $250 over the life of the laptop will save me more than $250 dollars of my time. It’s just too complicated to do. I’ve already spent more than $250 of my time trying to figure it out.
Monthly Archive for October, 2008
It may come as a shock to some – but not to me – that MP3 players don’t reduce the number of listeners of a radio station. In the past, according to an article from the NY Times, radio stations had seen the the time listeners spent listening (and the number of listeners) to their stations drop and thought digital music players, like Apple’s iPod, were to blame. The article highlights how the radio research company Arbitron now sees an increase in radio listeners; no one sees any slowdown in iPod sales so one can suggest that the two are unrelated. Now what shocks me is that this could be shocking and newsworthy to some – not the fact that the two stats are unrelated.
Radio has, and for the foreseeable future, has always been about providing “free” entertainment; music stations being one of the dominant formats. Radio stations, of course, charge businesses to advertise and that’s how they make their profit; less listeners, the lower their ads can go for and the less money they make. But radio (generally) takes advantage of the record label’s new music and uses new artists and albums to keep users interested and listening. True, some stations play niche generas like oldies and easy listening. But they, too, promote music in some way.
Now its obvious to me that MP3 players don’t reduce radio audiences. MP3 players simply allow a person to take their music with them and control it as they like. The devices themselves don’t offer any way to discover new music. Radio does. Take away radio stations and people can’t discover music to purchase and store on their personal devices as easily. I would argue that MP3 players need radio more than anything; otherwise, one’s music selection would certainly be limited to those discovered by word-of-mouth or some other way.
The article does touch on the idea that fluctuations in the quality of new music has affected radio audiences more than new technology; I, personally, believe that is the case but I have no survey to back that up, however. If anything (besides the quality of music released by the record labels) is going to compete with radio stations, its going to be services that help people discover new music. Web radio stations like Pandora and social music websites like iLike are more of a threat than a fancy Walkman ever will be. As long as the terrestrial, over-the-air, radio stations adapt with the technology and compete with their web counterparts, they’ll be able to keep their listeners for as long as they want.
Wassup 2008
I LOVE this video!! If you remember the Wassup Budweiser commercials from 2000, you’ll appreciate this video – especially if you plan to vote for Obama this year. Even if you aren’t an Obama supporter, I think you can still get a laugh out of it.
Right now, I’m steaming as I wait in frustration for Google Maps to work properly. A simple query for Staples locations in New York City is taking forever. I get the infamous “loading…” in yellow up on the top of the screen. Everything else about the Maps site works: the redrawing of the street views and switching between the sat and classing map views takes no time at all.
As I type this, it still says its loading. I actually had to go to Staples’ website which uses some bastard version of MapQuest (Yuck!) to display store locations.
Maybe Maps is still in beta.
So It's Come To This: posted a photo:
I went pumpkin picking over the weekend. Only took one of these home but it was close race for the best one.
