Old dog
 

Yea what can I say I just hate wasting money on buying something new when I have something that works perfectly fine. Actually I am now looking at moving up to something more state of the art for 2010 because of my job, but I am not willing to spend more than $1000. My 14 year old son has already done his research for updating the desktop I have now in order to make it a gamer for his needs. I think it will be a great way for him to learn a few things along the way. I am not a gamer, but I do love speed and good audio & video preformance. There are a fair amount of pretty savy machines out there in the $600 range. Here is what I am planning for.

A 2.6 to 3.2 Ghz quad core(preferably Intel).
At least 8 Gigs up to 16gigs of Ramm DDR3 would be good.
A fairly good video card (gamer quality is a plus).
A motherboard that has plenty of USB ports and leaves room for expasion
A 5.1 or better sound card.
A mini tower that does not weigh 100lbs loaded up.
A 650W power supply or better.
A teribite of hard drive space.
A desent(fast) DVD burner.

And something that looks up to par style wise. Personally I still like HP because of their customer support and because I can get just about all of this for approx $600 through the base exhange. Most of the electronics we have are HP. We have Dell, Toshiba, Sony, as well, but THeir customer support sucks. I hate propietory crap. The 15 year old PC I use now is a custom built machine that I came up with myself while learning the PC technical side back in 1994. It is a simple Athalon 1.6ghz porcessor. Nothing fancy in todays market, but it was pretty good back in 1994. It still runs along just fine, but something is wrong with the motherboard and only one of the DDR slots is working right now, which really limits my memory speed(1 gig). So yes it is time to move up. Luckily for me I have a few friends to lean on who really know the PC world inside and out. I do my research and call on them for advice, and yes assistance when needed. Still it is not hard to learn new things on your own. I started by buying one of those "Build your own super computer" books and went from there.

I guess I'm gonna burn then! The first computers I ever used where Apple IIE's back in elementary and middle school. Never had a computer living at home, got my first one in 2003. Started with a HP desktop that did ok, went to a Compaq laptop that lasted 4 years and never gave me a problem until it suddenly died. My HP laptop that just died was 3 years old and has been nothing but a POS for the last year and a half. I got my first and only ipod when they first released the ipod video like 4 years ago or however long ago it was. It has never given me a problem and it's used everyday, I'm sure the battery isn't up to par anymore, but since it's hooked up to the radio in my truck and is powered that way it doesn't matter anyways. My iphones have been great phones and have kept me in touch with people and the internet even when my HP laptop had died. I can honestly say I don't think I will ever look back!

I'm in the same boat as you are with the iPods!

I bought my very first iPod, the 5.5G iPod Video, a month or two later the iPod Classic came out, boy was I pissed, 50 more GB for the same price? Yes, I actually use 30GB..

I STILL use it every day (when I go running, boy is it heavy now compared to the iPod Touch), I switched out the battery, which is quite easy to do btw, I'd recommend you do it if you need to..

And the iPod touch I now have, has left me happy!

One day on a Pupil-Free Day (noschool!) my hard drive decided to explode on me, literally, no way was it coming back, if it weren't for my iPod, I would've gone insane, I was on my iPod Touch day and night! Talking to friends via AIM, and even on RC-Monster!

My English teacher told me a funny story the other day, she's kinda mad at Apple, even though I guess you could consider her a diehard Apple fan.

Her very first laptop (A PowerBook G3 or G4 I believe), oldest of the old, she dropped it at least 20 times in class (once in my period! Smack down on the screen and hard drive), and it still works perfect.

The other day she dropped her newer Macbook Pro on her bed and it went poofed. Hard drive was corrupted.

She was furious because all our essays were saved on there :lol:

Needless to say I got an A.. :whistle:

Then she saw the "iPad" and thought it was a joke, an oversized iPhone without the phone!

Threadjack over.

Apple's battery policies are jacked up. Why can't they just just make a battery door, like every other electronic device made?

Gotta pay $99 bucks to get a new batt in someone else's broken equipment? :/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361358,00.asp


Is it threadjacking when a thread is dead? Maybe just necrophilia? :lol:

Well if you happen to have a apple store nearby I'm pretty sure that they can and will replace the battery. However I'm not sure about the rest of you but I have no problem receiving a refurbished product. Often a refurbished one is better than original as any known issues with the original have been fixed (ex. a bad run of a certain chip or some other component it would be replaced) and they generally have a warranty on them. If I brought my iphone in for a battery replacement after 11 months and the it has all kinds of scratches all over it and I get a new one that I simply have to plug into my computer and all my if will be on it in 5 minutes I have no problem with that. In my experience Apple has stood behind there products much the same as Castle stands behind there's. I had a set of earphones that started sounding crackly, brought them in and they gave me a new set. After 10-11 months and many drops to the ground my original iphone's ear speaker wasn't loud enough for me to hear on anymore, brought it into the store and walked out 10 minutes later with a brand new one. I still say I didn't have any problems with my apple products because they where immediately taken care of free of charge. The battery on the matchbooks is replaceable, they sell them right in the store, sure they aren't as easy to replace as on other laptops but for something that doesn't have to be done very often it's not a big deal to have to take out a few screws.

I have had my Macbook pro for just over a week now, no complaints. Yes there are somethings I have to figure out as there are differences between a Mac and a PC but it's not hard to figure them out and if you can't then call apple and they will tell you!

Hmm, my cousins MacBook (Not pro I don't think), has a detachable battery... and battery door, turn the coin slot, and out it pops..

I've heard MANY success stories with Apple and their replacements, I gave a iPod Data Cable to a friend last week, he brought it in and gave me a new one (the old one stopped working all of a sudden, it was over 4 years old, easily).

He's done the same with my iPod headphones (that I got second hand!), needless to say, their customer service is definitely not A+, it's OVER A+.

Hmmm weird about the macbook pro, IDK what they are talking about.

Looking at the apple site, they do say this about the iphone (and ipad), which seems to correlate to the story in Pc Mag:


Also says it costs $86 bucks. This ARS service is an extra $30. Damn.

IDK, but it would creep me out a bit to get someone else's phone/max-ipad. What if the guy used it just sitting on the crapper & browsing adult sites? Eww...
Not enough bleach in the world to get that clean.:lol:
Rather just order a cheap batt myself and just pop it in. No worries about losing data or anything either.

They replace the exterior, but the internals are replaced.
Tis all.

But I know what you mean.
God forbid if you get Harold's or Linc's stuff.. Oh lordy.

All in all
 

All in all this whole idea of proprietary crap sucks if you ask me. I love the fact that most things use rechargable batteries like AA's & AAA's so you can just have a load of energizer batteries in the charger ready to go. Having products that use only the manufacturers brand is a bunch of Sh#$^ if you ask me. They are one of the richest companies in the world and still they are worried about after market products taking money out of their pockets. Life is too short to have to deal with that kind of stuff. We already have enough to worry about these days without more censorship type stuff.

I think that Mac stuff is pretty cool, but I am not willing to pay extra just to be a part of their club.

"Oh sweet, got my iphone back!!!"
[opens box]

*sniff sniff*

"What is that smell? Its... musky.."


lol

What a vision that is.
 

Yea that is from the last guy using it to practice his newest musical intrument skills playing taps with his but hole. Then you get all kissy face with your wife or girlfriend with that same mic. NICE!!! Exchanging BL motors or ESC's does not even come close in comparison. Good luck with that.