Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

The Hunt for a New Laptop Begins

Posted on July 24, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

I have spent a chunk of the past few days looking at what I call “laptop porn” — enthusiast reviews and critiques of new laptops. Because I can't put off buying a new one much longer.

My trusty nearly five year old Dell 300m is in its death throes — not only is the body a bit damaged, and the battery good for only about 20 minutes, but the machine's 1.4 Ghz Pentium M chip will no longer go over 599 Mhz. I've turned off speedstep in the BIOS, put the power settings to their most greedy, I've downloaded various utilities to make sure the fan cools it (it's getting hot under there), and the chip is asked to give its all. To no avail. It's a slug. It's slooow. And I worry it may decide one day to slow itself further. So it's got to go.

I use my laptop a great deal, both on the road and in meetings at work, so for a combined birthday and 20th anniversary gift, I'm going to get a good one. But what is that exactly?

I thought hard about getting an ultralight Atom-powered machine. My wife's MSI Wind is a wonder of portability. It doesn't feel as slow as the specs suggest it should given the Atom chip and the 2GB RAM limit imposed by Microsoft. I hate the MSI keyboard because the “.” key is in the wrong place, but some competitors don't have that problem. But the deal-breaker, I've decided, is the screen just isn't deep enough — you just don't get enough lines of text on the screen to work well with a footnoted legal document.

So I'm going up a size for a bigger screen and a speedier computing experience. I still want as light a machine as I can afford, because airports are not getting any more convenient (have you seen what they did to MIA??? but I digress). That said, I don't want one that is flimsy and won't stand up to the abuse I seem to subject laptops to. I need a fullsize or very-close-to-fullsize keyboard so I can touch type. I figure, might as well get a core2 duo, so it will take everything I throw at it, but I don't have to have the very fastest clock speed. I won't play games on the machine, so I don't need a superfancy graphics chip. I will need an optical drive, but not every day, so it can be external, although a very light bulit-in would be nice. I want lots of ports, but don't need HDMI output.

It turns out that most of the brick and mortar shops that stocked the kind of laptop I am looking for either don't exist any more, or don't stock them any more. So I'm going to be even more dependent on reviews than for previous purchases. Being risk-averse, that tends to push me to established brands like Dell or, to my surprise, Lenovo — an idea planted by a commentator on my earlier post on this self-indulgent subject, It May Be Time for a New Laptop.

There doesn't seem to be a Dell available right now that meets my specs and gets good reviews, although I find their site hard to use and may have missed one. The closest might be the Adamo, but it seems to be glitz over performance and weighs 4lbs without an optical drive. (And before you ask, I'm a PC, not a Mac. I run wordperfect.)

The Toshiba Portege R500 & R600 have very impressive specs and low weight, but the reviews have scary words like “flex” and “loud fan”. The review of the Fujistu Lifebook P8020 didn't make it sound attractive at all. T

I need to learn about Sony's offerings, although at first glance the high-end Sonys Vaio seem expensive.

Lenovo has a trio of high-priced attractive machines offering a different mix of features and compromises. The list prices are mostly too steep, but there seem to be good prices sometimes on refurb jobs and I've had good experiences with those: both my laptop and my desktop are refurbs from Dell.

So I'm looking at the X200s, the X301, and the T400s.

The X200s is the lightest, in part due to the external optical drive. It's 2.47 lbs (!!!) with the 4-cell battery and a very attractive 3.0lbs even with the six cell I'd likely get. The problem is that there is no trackpad, and I've gotten pretty used to them. My experiences with that little red stick on the Lenovos hasn't been great — they seem hard use to make small adjustments as one often needs to do in documents.

The X301 might be perfect, at 3.3 lbs with a 6 cell and internal DVD, but it is expensive even refurbed, even with the smaller SSD drive — which I think will be enough for my needs. It seems to come mostly with various flavors of Vista, which is a bit of a problem as I'm still in XP land, and plan to stay there until I graduate to Ubuntu or am forced into Win7 or maybe Win8. I could get a regular drive, but I think I would very much benefit from the increased disk speed from solid state (and the modest weight savings) whatever model I get. My only worry there is that a future windows operating system, if I have to use one, might be so bloated as to fill the smaller SSDs….

The T400s refurbed isn't quite as expensive, although it's still up there, but the weight is getting up to 4lbs. I like its looks, although online X partisans sneer at its T-ness. But it weighs 4lbs, which is more than my current machine. Shouldn't progress mean things get lighter? (Although to be fair the T400s has a full 14” screen, and I'm used to the 12.x” variety.)

I'm thinking this isn't going to be easy. Or cheap.

Posted in Shopping, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 12 Comments

Deconstructing the Police Report in the Skip Gates Arrest Case

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

I think this may be the best posting on the Skip Gates arrest case — The Reality-Based Community: Nightmare on Ware Street.

You can read the full police report here.

PS. I know Prof. Henry Louis Gates from way back — we had the same Mellon fellowship in different years — and he was, then at least, universally known as 'Skip'.

Update (7/25): The post at Justice Building Blog looks good too, especially in light of some of the comments below.

Posted in Law: Criminal Law | 28 Comments

Mind the Neighbors

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

OK, here's a question:

(source: Dante Shephard, survivingtheworld.net)

I suppose one answer is that people sign up for a Twitter feed….

Posted in Internet | 8 Comments

The Joys of International Cell Phone Roaming

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

When I went shopping for a cell phone about a year ago, I knew I wanted four things: I wanted great call quality and a speakerphone; I wanted a clamshell style phone; I wanted a GSM world phone so I could take it anywhere, and swap out the SIM card when needed; I wanted a national family plan that didn't cost too much since even the kids don't chew up the minutes, but we do use them when we are away from home. We were more or less stuck with AT&T as a call provider, as they have the strongest signal indoors in our house; there was only one other company that had a strong signal too, but they were much more expensive.

I ended up with a RAZR Z9. It seemed to fit my needs, being a quad-band clamshell with great sound. It had some other disadvantages, like clunky software and a reputation for a little lack of ruggedness, but I decided I could live with those. AT&T unlocked it for me without any argument.

Indeed, everything has gone fine with this phone until I got off the plane in Manchester. Unlike my old, reliable but sometimes comical, NEC 525, it wouldn't find a signal.

On the old phone I had to reset the networks to Europe; there's no control for that on the Z9, and the manual suggests it should switch automatically.

So I go to the AT&T help pages. Nothing seems of much use. I check out the plan description and see that international roaming isn't selected — aha! Now, why anyone would want a quad-band phone that wasn't set up to work abroad, I can't begin to imagine, but then again, AT&T has gotten into legal trouble for turning int'l roaming on without warning people and then sticking them with their insanely high rates. So I'll just turn it on then. Wait, what's this? There's been a problem with my request, and they can't fulfill it. And I should click the image below for live person assistance? But there is no image below…. Ah. In the very fine print well below it says that if there is no image, I should just call them… but the PHONE ISN“T WORKING.

So I email for help. And I get a reply within minutes:

Thank you for contacting AT&T.

We appreciate your business and know that your time is valuable. An AT&T Online Specialist has been assigned to your case and will respond to your concern within 2 business days; however, our response may be sooner. We will do our best to exceed your expectations.

Now at this point, I'm thinking that isn't going to be hard, since my expectations are pretty low. Good thing I've got a UK SIM card sitting somewhere in my luggage. I only want the US SIM connection to pick up messages anyway.

Between the time when I started this note, and getting to this point in the account, I got a second note from AT&T, this time from a real person. The person tells me I don't have international roaming set up on my account. So I reply asking to have it activated. And they say it's fixed, turn it off, wait a minute, turn it on.

So I do. But it still doesn't work.

And then 10 minutes later, it does.

Posted in UK | 1 Comment

Jimmy Carter Breaks With His Church on Treatement of Women

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Jimmy Carer again demonstrates that he's a much better person than he was President: Losing my religion for equality.

This can't have been easy for him.

Posted in Etc | 4 Comments

I’ll Be Good

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

I'm leaving for the UK today, but I won't be going to any parties — especially not any all-night parties.

I'm aware that US cops can use excessive force in busting up a party — a political fund-raiser at that! — but the difference is that by all accounts the US cops were acting illegally and used excessive force. It appears that the UK cops were just a little enthusiastic about enforcing a pretty draconian law.

Even so, it's instructive to recall that although the civil liberties situation in this country is in many (but not all!) respects at an ebb, things are in fact worse in several other liberal democracies. I'd take French health care, but not French cops or treatment of minorities. I'd take British tolerance for middle-class dissent and eccentricity, but not the intolerance for young people enforced by ASBOS. According to the worn notices tied to lampposts in the part of Manchester I visit there was, and maybe still is, an ASBOS order in effect which pretty much makes it an offense for groups to congregate on the street in the evening. In practice, I imagine that it's a license to arrest young people, at the cops' whims.

Posted in UK | 4 Comments