Barb's Connected World

Gianfranco Lanci, you're an uninformed CEO if you don't know that the disappointment is in YOUR company's lack of driver support, unintelligible support and download site. How can you state:

"While the industry had waited for years for Vista, the software was not really ready when it was launched to great pomp at the start of this year" when your company has done so little itself?

Don't blame Microsoft. You've had more than enough time to join the party.

Yes, my Ferrari 5000 runs like a dream under x64 Ultimate, but my Ferrari 4000 is still missing updated drivers for the pccard controller and media reader/card slot. Yeah, the 3 year old ones from XP x64 still work, sorta, almost.

The word "schmuck" comes to mind.

I finally got to do something I've wanted to do for longer than I can remember. My fascination with Hot Air Balloons began some 30 years ago when I saw one up close anchored in front of Rosie O'Grady's in Florida. I'll probably never get to the mother of all balloon festivals in Albuquerque until I retire, but it is on my list of "someday I will..." dreams.

The big "if" about these events is that they are weather driven. The lift offs are scheduled for dawn and just before dusk because that's when the winds are supposed to be the lowest. In the summer, it's always a crap shoot as to whether the late afternoon brings thunderstorms.

I got lucky. Last Saturday the 7PM-ish lift off at the Hillsborough Balloon Festival actually happened (but the later balloon glow did not nor did the second day of evening activities as there were, er, tornado warnings posted along with t-storm warnings).

I shot something like 20 gigs of RAW digital. It was gorgeous, amazing, inspiring.

Up, up and away!

I've got to say that I have not fallen out of love with the pedigreed racehorse computer that my friends at AMD sent last year. I keep recommending this machine to everyone that asks me "for the ultimate laptop experience". I have never been happier with a laptop. Typically for me, after 6 months of using a laptop, the love fades and I lust for something newer, faster, cooler. But I'm still in love with this machine.

Some of my peers asked me recently how I'd compare this Turion x2 64 bit processor to Intel's Core 2 Duo. Tom's Hardware has some gearhead type comparisons that look pretty decent (sans the Intel Santa Rosa). He used a Ferrari 1000 for his comparison (and that only had a Turion 56 X2 processor as opposed to the 60 in the 5000).

It isn't as simple as that for me. It's a holistic experience that includes the processor, the HD performance, the video performance, and the hardware and peripheral feature set. (Note: the 3945a/b/g wireless on these Intel models sucks beyond belief.) And the performance of my applications is what it's all about. Photoshop is important to me. Benchmarks are theoretical and good marketing materials. I live in the real world.

I've been running Vista Ultimate x64 on the Ferrari 5000 on 2GB of RAM quite happily since I received this machine last November, but my batch image processing seems to be getting larger by the day and I'm wondering if more RAM will make Photoshop happier. It certainly takes advantage of the 64 bit processor.

The last time I priced 2x2GB sticks for this machine, it was like as much as some entire laptop computers. All of a sudden, the prices seem attractive and I'm having a hard time resisting. In fact I'm sure it's just a matter of time before I make the call.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Ferrari+5000+Series pricing is very very very sweet. It will be like a second honeymoon.

Another of the "I couldn't write this kind of stuff myself" words for the wise.

Wonder if this is applicable to humans?

Your tax dollars are hard at work. We may never go back to the moon, but this is an expense "need to expand from three to six crew members" at the International Space Station.

I couldn't make up stuff like this if I tried.