I hate IBM/Lenovo, almost everyone this morning
- Over at the Guardian there is a vigorous discussion of the new Apple Airmac, on which someone mentions that the IBM competitor, the Thinkpad X61, is on sale in the states for $1349 right now. Well, I love the X series thinkpads, and have used nothing else for years. My present one would not be harmed by updating, if I can put it like that. So what does the equivalent model cost from the website here? £1350, near as dammit.
- The Guardian has also published some unusual but clearly labelled pictures of the well-known blogger Daniel Davies. Unfortunately they have vanished from the web version, but anyone with access to yesterday’s paper paper will be rewarded by a trip to G2. Especially if their tastes are perverted.
- A horrible sadness from the Risks List: just before the New Year it reported a small riot in the parking lot of a supermarket (K-Mart) in Wisconsin, after the computer decided to give $4000 in credit to anyone who applied for a card. One witness said: “It was a nice brawl. It came from inside to outside. If you go up there, you’ll see hair, earrings, all pulled out on the ground”. Future historians should remember this moment at the beginning of the slump, when women were tearing out each other’s hair for the chance to borrow money at an interest rate of 30% or so.
- Has anyone else noticed that the 101st fighting Keyboard Kommandos have a beachhead in Luton?
- Could anyone who has read the Harry Potter books to the end explain to me why Martyn Minns and his chums are now known, apparently, as the Deathly Hallows?
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With the dollar at something like 50p and heading south, Andrew, surely you could get a cheap flight to NY, pick up your new $1349 thinkpad, possibly see some friends/take in a Broadway show/enjoy a bagel in the only place on earth they’re made properly, fly home, and still come out ahead?
“Ahead” in the rather specialised meaning of being around a thousand pounds poorer, yes. And did I mention that my daughter just got into Cambridge? So there go another three years of fees and battels; or chattels, or something. Whatever they are called, I will have to pay for them.
Hem? If £1=$2 and I’ve done my sums right (never a great likelihood, I admit), then the thinkpad you want costs $1349 in the USA and $2700 in the UK. Surely it is possible these days to get from London to NY and back, with a possible bagel or whatnot thrown in, for under $1351, let alone $2351? You’d be ahead so long as the difference between the UK and the US prices of the thinkpad exceeded the costs of your journey to America. And you’d have had a visit to New York! Of course, you’d only be ahead by that amount if you’d’ve been willing to buy the thinkpad at the UK price.
Fair play to your daughter, BTW, and as for lees and wattles, it could be worse: she could be going to Stanford. (Very nice place, I’m told, but a year costs far more there than in the UK, and there are four of ’em.)
The answer to your last question is “No”: I would understand it if they were referred to as the “Death Eaters”