In a few weeks my laptop will be 4.5 years old. And for all intents and purposes it still holds its own pretty well for practically everything, but the most CPU-intensive tasks. Tasks that I typically perform on much faster desktop machines anyway.

Some weeks ago the laptop, a 2003 17″ Apple Powerbook G4, started exhibiting pretty weird symptoms: the laptop would intermittently ‘lose’ the AC adaptor, or it would stop charging. This would happen at different times, without any movement of the device or the power brick. There were times I left the laptop on all night on battery power and connected to the AC adaptor, only to find the battery completely drained and the laptop in a weird power state — not completely off, not sleeping, but certainly not charging either.

I was initially very perplexed by this behaviour and was ready to write the laptop off — it is ageing and I have been meaning to replace it for a long time, although I never quite found a good reason for doing so until now.
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I’ve been interested in the OLPC project ever since it started in early 2005. For one it represents a great humanitarian effort that — in theory — promises to bridge the gap between the technologically advanced US and Europe and the under-developed or developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In late 2006 I wrote an article rebutting [article in Hellenic] a — largely ridiculous — claim that the leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Party made at the time whereby he pledged that if his party was elected, they would provide OLPC laptops to everyone from pupils, all the way to university students. I presented a number of arguments as to why such a statement implies ignorance of what the OLPC stands for and what its capabilities are, but more importantly how it diminishes the image of that party (and its leader, a known technophile) with regards to technology whilst at the same time offends anyone who knows a thing or two about technology, usability and the OLPC. What was especially annoying is that the claim took advantage of a good project in order to ‘fool’ those sensitive to educational matters, but ignorant about technology. From anyone even remotely following the project, it is clear that the OLPC is not intended for adults (or even teenagers). It is, after all, one of the ‘core principles’ of the programme and it is also evident throughout the hardware and software design decisions. In that article I also made it clear that I believed that while the OLPC might be an excellent educational and recreational tool that brings computing to the mainstream for millions of children between the ages of 6 and, say, 12 years of age, there should first be a review of the options available to the Hellenic Government when the time comes to procure such a tool and — equally importantly — Hellas, as an EU country, should be very well capable of providing ‘grown-up’ laptops to pupils over the age of 15 and should definitely be able to afford higher end laptops than the OLPC for university students.
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Perfectly timed just before the start of the school season, just when most people already are or are soon going to be on holidays (at least wherever people do go on holidays) Apple announced their new redesigned iMac and the long-awaited iLife and iWork updates. It also gave .Mac a badly needed ‘Web 2.0′ update. In this article I’ll sum up my impressions of the new products and services.

The iMac

This is the B&O of consumer desktop computers. Slick, slim and packed with quality consumer-grade software, a work of art for design conscious users that hate clutter, the iMac has long been a token of Apple’s industrial design prowess ever since the original came out in 1998. The new update seems to continue the trend where gradually features previously found in Apple’s Pro series of computers make it to the consumer lines; it is also a tasteful incremental design update over the previous one, with a major change being the switch to the aluminum encasing. Even though Apple’s Cinema Displays are ageing, their design seems destined to live on for at least another couple of years as the new iMac borrows much from their form and size; Available with 20″ and 24″ displays, as with the previous model, the new iMac strongly resembles Apple’s ‘pro’ screens while also maintaining significant similarities to its predecessor. Visually it is stunning, thinner and more elegant than the previous model, with a black frame around the glossy screen. Although I presume technical prowess was never its strong point, this iMac is a bit more interesting than its (underpowered) predecessor; While the new iMac also seems to be using the low-TDP (mobile) Intel Core 2 series processors (aka Merom) — most probably the Core 2 Duo T7300 (2.0GHz, 35W) or an underclocked higher model for the low-end and the T7700 (2.4GHz, 35W) for the mid-range model — Apple offers a BTO option for the impressive Core 2 Extreme, probably an overclocked X7800 or derivative thereof (X7900 perhaps?) at 2.8GHz, rated at around 45-47W at the higher end. Given that the iMac is — effectively — a laptop stuck behind and under a TFT screen, the choice of CPUs makes sense and the Merom XE (Extreme) option is very welcome¹. Apple seems to have found an excellent partner in Intel, especially given the excellent low-power mobile chips it’s been releasing lately².
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