Well, actually, I haven't even slowed down; I just haven't had time to WRITE ABOUT IT! So, in the interested of catching up; here goes.
First, I'll have to admit that things have been slow on the photography front. Ever since I decided to sell the D200 and use my backup D70s until such time that I'm ready or in the financial position to upgrade to the D300, there's been no progress. .....well, actually that's not exactly true. I was making good progress till a travel trailer, the right travel trailer came between me and what I had accumulated towards the upgrade. Well anyway, we'll just say that the D70s does an adequate job for right now. I'll do another post on just the photography situation soon.
So, now to what I've been up to.... technologically speaking. There's actually been 3 areas: upgrading my phone, my desktop computer and laptop(s).
The simplest is the phone: after years of refusing to upgrade from my venerable RAZR used in tandom with my IBM WorkPad C505 (a Palm Pilot clone) for organization, I finally gave in and bought a "smartphone" which began a series of events that has changed everything about my communications set up. Let me start by saying that I don't care for that constantly tethered/on demand lifestyle that you see so many living where they are constantly looking at their phones. However, I REALLY wanted to not carry 2 separate devices any longer, so after much research I came to the conclusion that there was no way around paying AT&T for a "digital" package. Actually, the event that started me down the slippery-slope was that I kept receiving texts that I needed to answer and as you can imagine, this wasn't simple to do on a RAZR, plus it was costing me money for every one. This of course led to an unlimited family text plan since Camille already had it tacked on to her part of our plan anyway. You add this to my convergence desire and an increasing need to access my personal email while at work; it all adds up to a very good excuse to pay for a data plan and buy a "smartphone".
The tipping point came with the "smartphone" of choice appeared in "unlocked" form on a Newegg (they are the devil) special. I received an electronic flier listing the Motorola Q9h (2nd generation, global Q) for about $70. So, now here was the phone I wanted, at a decent price and "unlocked" so I didn't have to be beholden to AT&T for the next 2 years! I bit, and now I'm completely up-to-date communications-wise. The added bonus is that I can connect to it via Bluetooth from my ThinkPad and get on the internet via 3G virtually anywhere. Of course, now I'm on the hook to AT&T for that monthly data plan (there's a reason that their corporate symbol is the "Deathstar"), but it's been worth it so far.
Now, on to my latest forays into laptops. Personally, I've done precious little since I finally got my "pieced together" X40 up and running. Well...actually, that's not completely accurate, but I'll get back to that in a minute. Mostly my work into laptops in the last couple of months have been almost exclusively into Gateways, HPs, and Dells, meaning I've done a LOT of work for other people. That's awesome for the pocket money situation, but leaves little time to sleep and working on my own projects. The main plus is that I've found a very viable alternative to refurbishing and selling ThinkPads. The problem is that although, ThinkPads make excellent candidates for this sort of thing, they hold their value so well, that they leave little profit margin after costs.Therefore, my new favorite for that use have become the Dell Latitude D620/630. They are very nice machines, easy and cheap to upgrade and can be found by the drove for a ridiculously low price since Dell sold tons of them to corporations around the world just 2 or 3 years ago. So now with thousands of them coming "off-lease" or surplused as a result of upgrades, there value is very depressed for there capabilities. They can routinely be picked up for between $200-250, reimaged, updated and sold off for a $50-75 profit while requiring little or no work. They can even run Windows 7 or Vista quite well for a minimum upgrade cost. I've handled 5 of them in the last 2 months and have yet to be disappointed.
As you guys know, I always keep an eye open for interesting machines or potentially under-valued computers to upgrade our household stable or as simple projects. The latest "apple-of-my-eye" have been the unusual Z Series that came and went very quickly in the IBM ThinkPad lineup. I'll give just a very basic description here since you know that the fact that they are relatively rare and a little odd is enough inducement for me!
Basically, they were marketed as a full-on multi-media machine built off of the other T/R 60/61 design. Their motherboards were similar if not identical and of course their capabilities are comparable as well. As typical of the ThinkPad range, they can be "spec'd" down to Celeron CPUs with a low resolution WXGA screen (1280 x 800) or up to Core 2 Duo CPUs high res WUXGA screens (1680 x 1200) or just about anything in between. What this mean to me is this: I can get into this machine cheap (if I'm lucky and work hard at it) and put whatever I want in it. The price on them is typically high since they never sold in large numbers like the Rs and Ts, so most were sold to individuals who sped'd them pretty high. Other than the interest of them being different, there are a number of other factors that attracted me and might interest others as well. The chipset and motherboard allows the later Z61 machines to take dual core CPUs which in turn, allows them to run a 64-Bit operating system, besides being just down-right FAST for normal use. Then there's the magic specs for laptop upgrader; it supports both SATA hard drives as well as DDR2 RAM. This is key in that as compared to parallel HDDs and/or DDR RAM, the price of this stuff is so much cheaper, especially if you want large drives (or SSDs) and a lot of RAM (2Gb or more).In my case, what happened was that I came across somebody on eBay who apparently had several of them that were replaced in their business and was selling them one by one. In addition, they were about as low spec'd as you could get them AND the bidding was coming due at an odd time....the perfect storm of high potential and low price. How low you ask? $138!!! To make this situation even more special, I happened to have a DVD burner for that series machine left from a previous project (no cost), 2 1Gb RAM modules of the correct spec....from a previous project (again, no cost). Oh and I had bought a 3 license copy of Windows 7 a month ago for $50 locally. My original intention was actually to make it a project computer for myself, but this machine came with the low-end, but very bright WXGA screen which has a resolution what's almost perfect for my optically challenged wife. I already owned a 320Gb/7200rpm SATA hard drive that I had previously purchased which went into this machine. And did I mention that I was able to sell her old computer (ThinkPad R52) for a very fair "market value" of $250?
So, with the the upgraded C2D CPU and the yet completed, WiFi "N" upgrade, I will have accomplished her computer upgrade for essentially a zero sum bottom line. Now she's set for the next 2 or 3 years.
Of course, my head is already working on upgrades for Josh and Katie some time in the next year, but that's for another post....along with what's going on for my desktop rig and upcoming home theater computer that sits awaiting attention.
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