My new Toshiba Z935 – Almost too Light!
As no one has claimed my 100 peso offer for reading my last long post from start to finish (I can’t blame you), likely no one knows that I dropped my Dell laptop a few weeks back. Likely no one cares.
I guess I will never really get over tech toys, but I do use some restraint, skipping a model release for my iPhone and iPad. With Verizon locking me into a two year contract, that makes perfect sense.
But I had planned to keep the old reliable Dell as long as it functioned, as I do less with it and more with the above toys. The Dell was, and still is, functional with the hinge to the display taped to keep it from springing apart. But sudden death could occur at any time.
So when I was home in Piney Point I made a necessary impulse buy and picked this really skinny and light Toshiba Ultrabook Z935. Finally mechanical hard drives are becoming obsolete. And DVD drives are nice, but take up space and are nearing obsolesce as well. Toshiba copied the concept of thin and light from Apple’s MacBook Air – something I would have considered buying if the purchase was not at impulse.
All the critical data and software has been moved to my new toy except for my Alibre Design Software. The developer wants me to upgrade before allowing me to download it on the Toshiba. Screw them!
So far I love this new computer. It boots fasts, is very quiet and does get hot like old laptops stuffed with a whirling hard drive. Each key has a LED light in it. The entire keyboard lights up when tapped, just bright enough to be useful in the dark.
As it was bought retail, it lacks enough RAM (only 4 gig) and has limited hard drive space. No worries – next trip back I’ll upgrade the RAM to 8 gig and I think it is time to start using the “Cloud.” I think I have been mesmerized into thinking all is safe with cloud computing.
Let’s face it: Apple, Google and Amazon want our data in their energy hogging data centers (although Google claims their’s run efficiently). The more we become dependent on them, the more money they make on us. Soon they will rule us!
The old Dell is just fine as long and I keep it stationary. It has become my entertainment center here in Santiago de Querétaro – wirelessly streaming Netflix and Hulu through a US VPN!
I just recently discovered I have my own Cloud with each; five gigs each for free and more for a fee. Does this scare me a bit? Damn right, but one has to use a bit of judgment with what to store in these clouds.
Music and video files fine! For me, a backup to this website is a no-brainer, as it is all public anyway, Personal stuff – ah, no thanks – I have two encrypted hard drives for that.
Anyway not all clouds are the same. I haven’t figured out how to use Apple’s iCloud yet – except to back up my iPhone and iPad. Unless you are a hardcore Apple junkie, Apple products are not all that intuitive. I am still annoyed that my first iPod didn’t have a switch to turn it off! So I think that’s all I will let Apple store for me.
I decide to put all my music files on the Amazon Cloud (mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to do it with Apple). But the Amazon uploader is slow and clunky. My solution was to load smaller groups of files and forget about them. Once loaded everything is fine and the files download much faster than uploading.
Google’s Cloud is the coolest, as it just appears as a Network drive, and seems as fast as moving things to a local drive. My RAW photo files are getting monstrous in size, so all my Lightroom 4.0 files are with Google. I’m sure they will “do no evil” with them.
Next weekend I head back to California for a little R&R in San Francisco, Napa Valley and, if time allows, Lake Tahoe. Havest time in Wine Country should be fun! Something is calling me back: My Heart!
