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Welcome and hurrah for me!

This is my first blog from my newly aquired iBook. A bit depressed at the spec, considering I expected 512MB RAM and assumed a 1GHz processor, but the 800MHz 256MB iBook is singing happily here.

Tiger installed seamlessly. To be honest, had I actually looked at the install modules, I could’ve saved about 15 minutes by leaving all the language packs out.

Having installed Windows on over 100 machines to date, Tiger is the most foolproof and by far the quickest OS I’ve ever had the “pleasure” of installing!

Gotta finish the dinn dinns now so blog ya later!

diarmy

In a typical diarmy-style move, I forgot to blog the weekend report. But to be honest, nothing happened really that moved me enough to think that it was worth documenting.

diarmy

So many people are buying laptops these days (I confess, I bought an iBook on Friday) but Windows ones… Millions of them are shifted through production lines and into peoples homes every year. More and more people have laptops. It seems a given now that students have to have them.

But my laptop (senior by rank of age and not technology) is a Dell Inspiron 4150 Notebook, purchased in October of 2002 at a cost of IR£ 2,500.00!! That’s almost unthinkable in today’s terms as a cost of a notebook computer, but it was worth it. Having a keen eye for technology, I saw the need at the time to invest heavily, purchasing a blistering (remember the year) 1.8GHz Pentium 4 Mobile CPU with 512 MB RAM (something that’s not even standard today!!) and a high-resolution 32MB ATI Radeon display adapter with an SXGA screen. Now, granted, most people wouldn’t know what all this means, but it means in layman’s terms, that today, after a fresh re-install, doubling of memory capacity, and the upgrade to an 80GB hard drive, that this laptop is still powering all of my creations for almost 3 years solid.

I once lamented that this beast has been switched on and in use for over 95% of its life and has created many websites and driven many mad ideas. It is still in invaluable condition and it still worth a pretty penny! It sports a 48×24x4 speed CD/RW/DVD combo drive (modern for it’s age), a built-in PCI 802.11b WiFi card, and has recently undergone a transformation by adding PCMCIA USB 2.0 ports. I’ve also upgraded to Bluetooth.

I’m searching for a rough guide to building-in the Bluetooth option, as I think it’s a great technology to have!

So, if you’re careful and observant, you can save a small fortune by picking up an old(er) laptop and upgrade it cheaply for about 2/3 of the price of a bog standard notebook computer. What’s more, you can relax in the knowledge that if it’s stolen, your credit-card bill won’t hurt as much either!

diarmy

Well, yet another trip by my MasterCard villians brought me to the Apple Store once more to splash out on my very own copy of Tiger, the new Mac OS.

Last week, while on a secret and ongoing reconnaissance mission in eBay, I finally took the plunge, and invested in an iBook. Costing a mere €400 on top of profits from a much hyped sale (my first genuine one on the site) on eBay, the iBook is due to be delivered tomorrow morning. (Yes, before you ask, I did get up early this morning thinking the postal system here would cop-on and deliver it on time… time lost is time lost!)

Anyway, it’s sitting now atop a pile of tax reciepts (not mine!) behind the screen of my Dell. Lovely. Can’t use it yet though, but give it time. Watch out for the review! (just hope the iBook i purchased has OS X 10.3 and not Tiger or i’ve spent €89 on something I didn’t need… for those of you wondering, I used my student status to get the €30 cut on the price… I love the Apple Store!!!)

diarmy

Apple Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” Website

Welcome to the Republic of Ireland, land of a thousand welcomes, the Island of Saints and Scholars and the country with no enemies.

Ireland has been dubbed (by our illustrious Government) as the Digital Hub of Europe.

This “Digital Hub” brought with it tax incentives that has attracted some of the world’s largest companies and corporations to our island. Intel, Microsoft, DELL, Google, eBay all have their European Operations Centres here. PayPal followed recently and manages the accounts of members throughout EMEA at it’s Dublin headquarters.

PayPal is the preferred payment mechanism for eBay, the world’s largest auction site. I’ve been a member (a very active one given my sick bank account) for over 18 months. Recently I became a seller (more in another post).

Today I finally took the plunge, and committed to buying something I’ve wanted for so very long, an iMac G4 (for those of you who don’t know what it is, here’s a pic: IMAC G4 - CLICK HERE )

Armed with my PayPal account, I bought it and completed payment in my usual lightening-speed nature. However, I was quickly emailed by the seller because he was not comfortable sending the item to an “unconfirmed” address. (i.e. MasterCard did not confirm that the address supplied was my billing address).

After much heart-wrenching the seller decided to cancel the purchase and refund me. During this time I was in touch with PayPal.

Apparently, according to the Spannish assistant I was speaking with, VISA cards have a better chance of getting confirmed addresses. So, jumping through all the hoops AIB are so good at forcing people to tackle before getting what they want, I managed to register and verify my card with PayPal.

Then I was told (call number 2, this time to a nice Irish lad called Rory), that Irish addresses CANNOT be verified AT ALL! When I asked why, I wasn’t given a straight answer. (Credit cards are a joke anyway when it comes to security)

So the long and the short of it is I’m iMac-less and looking at another reason to leave this island in order to function as an actual member of the globalised community.

Imagine, a company with it’s European operations centre located not 230km from my house, cannot verify my billing address from a bank, who’s headquarters are about 30km from PayPal HQ. All the time we’re in the same country!!!

All I can say is this country is gone to pot altogether. Sometimes you can live with it but more times it just kicks you in the ass and you’re back to reality!!! I’ll now have to become Taoiseach!

diarmy