“But! But! The price!” the loonz say. Guess they weren’t around when low end computers cost thousands. Nowadays slightly north of $2500 gets you the dream setup of two computers with all the features you want. If computing is what you do, this is a drop in the bucket. Going cheap here is like buying a 1978 Chevelle for your 75 mile daily commute.

But I’m also one of those crazy people who doesn’t use WASD or the arrow keys for movement in FPS games.

You want to worry about “evil” corporations? Look up Monsanto; then tell me about your crusade against Microsoft and helping people with “freedom”.

I LIKE PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE. JUST BECAUSE I USE LINUX DOESN’T MEAN I DON’T.

Why are you so concerned about things being proprietary or not? You don’t pay any bills! Do you complain about proprietary food, proprietary car companies, etc? To paraphrase someone from LH a while back, if someone prefers a Kenmore washing machine over Whirlpool, do you yell “Kenmore $hill!”?

Quit following the rantings of a bunch of delusional hippies; that’s way before my time, and definitely waaaaaaaaaay before yours.

Your inane trolling has made you even more confused; if you get a Mac you’ll see that it is the epitome of proprietary.

Yeah, I hate this kind of design policy. The old Macbook Pros had a DVI port built right in, but now they’ve replaced it with their proprietary “Mini-DVI”, which requires a dongle, so they could shave like 1/8th on an inch off laptop thickness. Now you’ll jump on a plane to give a presentation, get to the conference and–fuck–realize that your dongle is still attached to the monitor at work/home. Anyone here have one? No. Even the other Macbook toting guys forgot to bring theirs, as usual, even though they know this type of shit happens all the time. DVI cables are easy to come by if you forget that. In fact, chances are you don’t need one given the intended setup already includes it, but only Macbook owners have Mini-DVI cables. Similarly, they’re pretty easy to lose or forget, so you’ll have to buy more. Having multiples can alleviate the forgetting problem, though. Surprisingly, Apple doesn’t assrape customers on the adapters like they do with everything else (I’m looking at you, purposely faulty $80 power cords). The Mini-DVI to DVI cable (and all others, I think) are like $20. Still, I’d rather have the damn DVI port built in and eschew this nonsense altogether. I don’t remember anyone ever complaining the Macbook Pros were too thick.

They did something similarly frustrating with the iMac line. It used to be that loosening three Phillips head screws on the bottom and lifting the back panel off granted you access to the entire machine, but now you need a giant industrial strength suction cup (not exaggerating) to yank the display cover off, all the while praying you don’t drop it. It wouldn’t be a huge deal except that the hard drive, the #1 most problematic component, is behind the screen. Macbooks suck at this, too. Apple engineers would rather have “no screws” on the body rather than give the end user easy access to replaceable components.

Oh I agree. Although weight isn’t the issue for me it’s the physical dimensions which is why I’ve been going with 14″ laptops. For me the hassle of carrying around a USB hub, optical drive, and ethernet port, off-set the benefits of the size.

In some respects its like Linux. A lot of the time you can do whatever it is you need to do but then there are those times where you’ve got to jump through some extra hoops that annoy the piss out of you. To me, nothing would be more frustrating than going to a hotel that only had wired internet and finding that you forgot your usb ethernet adapter.