on EBOS

Last year, I made up the acronym EBOS. It stands for Entire Battery Operating Session, or the amount of time I pledge to spend each day using my computer to manipulate words, images, and websites. During the couple of months before I bought a new and larger netbook battery, EBOS kept shrinking until I could barely get a solid hour in before the lights started flashing and my system began reminding me every few minutes to save any unsaved material and prepare for imminent shutdown. I read somewhere that batteries work best when they are drained to the last before being filled back up again, but I read somewhere else that such behavior damages lithium-ion batteries. (I have not noticed a significant or rapid decrease in battery life resulting from wringing the last electrons out of the battery before recharging it to its maximum.) Running Ubuntu – Precise Pangolin helps stretch battery life; I have installed a widget to manage CPU usage and learned that making backups to my 3 external drives sucks juice like a mugfug. So far, EBOS has been a success: I blog 6 days a week; my unique page-views (across 8 different sites, without using paid advertising of any sort) number in the hundreds each month; and I just launched a number of new, stand-alone sites based on what I have learned about how to use the Internets good. Huzzah. Blog-writers of the world, EBOS!

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

netbook vs. tablet

Tablet computers seem to be selling well, but they are inferior to the now-nearly-extinct netbook. Limiting and limited in design, the tablet appears to be intended for use by the casual peruser of internet data, not by the individual for whom writing is a way of life. Useful perhaps to a housewife chasing toddlers (who might need to put aside her computer at a moment's notice without first powering it down), or to field-operators needing a quick glance at technical specifications (without having to wait for a laptop to spin up), the tablet is intended to be held with one hand and operated with the other, and to run one program at a time. Tablets must be propped up against something or against a separately-sold propping-up-gadget should the user desire to look comfortably at the screen or to type out a message with all ten of her fingers, whereas the netbook has a built-in, adjustable screen that can swivel to and stay at any of more than ninety degrees of articulation. Unlike the netbook, tablets do not have depressible keys or physical keyboards, which makes it harder to write upon them comfortably, a problem which tablet-makers are trying to fix by adding retractable keyboards to their design (a move that all-but obviates the supposedly revolutionary keyboard-less tablet design). While perhaps more portable and thinner than the netbook, the tablet requires the user to carry around add-on gadgets in order to make it usable, whereas the netbook is a complete and fully developed package that is more than capable of doing anything one would need to do on the interwebs. The netbook, with its clam-shell design, automatically protects the glass screen when it is folded against the keyboard upon closing, compared to the tablet, which again requires the user to carry around a separately-sold (but arguably far more customizable) screen cover.

In summary, the tablet is for people who like to buy and to carry around a sack full of add-ons in order to make their tablets usable, whereas the netbook user's computer is a compete, compact package of vast utility. Tablets are for casual and affluent consumers self-enslaved to the candy-floss joys of conspicuous consumption, but writers, being a frugal and cunning breed, prefer the netbook.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit