Pat:
> The explorer thing has been going on for some time.
> Time to look at a MAC ... better operating system and more fun too.
> Fritz Messere
> Communication Studies Department
> Chair and Professor of Broadcasting and Telecommunications
> State University of New York at Oswego
> (office) 315.312.2357 (fax) 315.312.5658
>
formatting link
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If anyone has an older Apple MACintosh,
> I'd not mind giving that a try and see where I could get with it. The
> other thing I have considered -- but have not yet been brave enough to
> try is to go with Linux on the laptop. You see, on my larger desktop
> computer I have Red Hat Linux (version 7 something) on a partition;
> when I boot the larger machine, it defaults to Linux _unless_ I tell
> it to go to Win 2000 instead. I'd not mind going entirely with Linux
> if I were assured I could get some of my software working correctly. I
> do NOT need chat windows and all that; but I do need to have X-Windows
> working correctly. Ditto with any MAC, which would also be a new
> experience for me. I'd like to be able to get a couple cameras working
> with no hassles, something similar to to XWindows, and the network
> configurations correct, etc. And I have seen a couple commercials on
> television for Dell, with desktop prices of around $499, but I know
> those would most likely be Win XP, which is okay, I suppose. But with
> Dell, the new laptops seem to cost more. Good ideas, in any case. If
> anyone wants to contribute to a 'computer fund' please remember the
> PayPal account: snipped-for-privacy@telecom-digest.org , or if you have some
> older machine you no longer want donations will also be gratefully > accepted. PAT]
Not to make this a Mac vs. PC thing but here's a little story.
Had to price out new machines including laptops. High end Latitude with 1.5GB of RAM and 100GB HD - $1,599.
Apple 12" Powerbook G4 with a gig of RAM, 60GB HD - $1,899
That's with goverment's discounts btw.
Instead -- get a PC and download Firefox 1.06 (Deer Park). Then go and find the following extensions:
adblock bugmenot popupsdie
You'd be surprise how much more a pleasure it is to surf the web less pop-up's.
AdBlock dialog comes up and asks you if you want to block the ad you just right clicked on. It also supports wildcards for the more egregious of ad servers. Put it this way, I don't see ad's on Projo.com anymore because between AdBlock and me pointing Belo's adserver to 0.0.0.0 it eliminates every last one of the suckers.
ButMeNot is also a pretty handy tool. When you run across a news site that requires registration just right click the username field and select BugMeNot. It reaches out to a BugMeNot server, looks for a username/password combo for that web address and pastes it in. Some sites lock out pasting into their username/password fields. Example of that is Belo owned papers like Projo.com
Popupsdie turns on the options for very restrictive pop-ups thought some sites such as the New York Times have figured out how to get around this.