Geek service

Chrysler, Toyota, and the reliability doctrine

June 23, 2011

We are trying to decide between two new minivans and are finding ourselves torn, over the issue of “reliability”. I’ve posted a note at Facebook asking for feedback, and wanted to reprint the note here to get your all opinion. Let’s discuss reliability of cars. We are trying to decide between a 2011 Chrysler Town [...]

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APOD got screwed

June 2, 2011

I was very eager to see the latest APOD, a timelapse video of the night sky where every frame was digitally rotated to make the sky seem stationary and the earth rotate. Unfortunately, the video was served with a copyright takedown notice by one Nicolas Fabian Bustos Vargas, who appears to be a PhD at [...]

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Alienware M14x unboxing

May 3, 2011

Introducing DENT. As in, Arthur Dent.

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my next phone: the Blackberry Bold Touch 9930 aka Montana

May 2, 2011

RIM just made it official – the 9900/9930 will be released this summer. It’s a Blackberry Bold with a touch screen, so we get the best blackberry keyboard, the latest blackberry OS, and touch goodness in one package. Assuming it comes to Sprint, I will be grabbing this as soon as my current contract expires [...]

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Filco Majestouch mechanical keyboards for sale at Amazon

April 29, 2011

Filco is a legendary manufacturer of mechanical keyboards, which for some reason stopped making them. So, finding Filcos for sale (especially new ones) is an opportunity indeed. Looks like a UK-based outfit called The Keyboard Company has a stash of various models that they are selling via Amazon. I’ll list the models available here, but [...]

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30% off Alienware M14x, and Dell paid me for a printer

April 23, 2011

Well, my earlier skepticism about the M14x aside, I’ve pulled the trigger on a nebula red model with the following specs: Intel Core i7 2630QM 2.0GHz (2.9GHz Turbo Mode, 6M cache) 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz 14.0 High Def+ (900p/1600×900) with WLED backlight 1.5GB DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M using NVIDIA Optimus technology 500GB [...]

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M14x and M18x launching today at 10am CST

April 19, 2011

Alienware just tweeted a few hours ago that there will be some sort of announcement at http://www.justin.tv/alienware at 10am CST. This is clearly the M14x and M18x announcement. Stay tuned, I will update the post. FYI the M14x page for Canada is already up – you lucky Canadians! The rest of us have to wait [...]

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Detling Adventures

April 17, 2011

A long overdue link has been added to the sidebar – Detling Adventures, named for a Wisconsin Matron and looking-glass universe of a certain second floor of a certain dormitory at the University iof Wisconsin campus in Madison. The proprietor, going by the pseudonym Christian Neuhass, is known for flights of fancy and oft-macabre humor [...]

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time to buy an SSD: 128GB C300 for $200

April 6, 2011

The SSD market is providing a rare opportunity for anyone not intent on building at the bleeding edge. The newest generation of SSDs like Crucial’s RealSSD C400, OCZ Vertex 3, and Intel’s SSD 320 are out and have been reviewed, but offer incremental performance upgrades at best (mainly from refinements of the controllers’ firmware, and [...]

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Alienware M11x R3 crossing the Sandy Bridge in April, joined by M14x

March 29, 2011

Back in January, Anandtech previewed the entire Sandy Bridge lineup, including the mobile LV/ULV parts, and commented: What’s interesting to note about the ULV parts is that even the slowest i5-2537M (yeah, those code names are going to be easy to remember!) comes clocked higher than the outgoing i7-640UM, with more aggressive Turbo modes and [...]

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