Anyone still thinking of buying a netbook? Get 2GB of RAM.

Well I was, and I did, and it's still awesome. Despite the fact that apparently tablets are killing netbooks.

Anyway, the point of this post is that when I was getting one, I was wondering whether 1GB of RAM was really enough in this day and age. Out of the sample size of Best Buy and Costco, few netbooks had more than 1GB. So "maybe the manufacturers know best? I don't need 2GB?" Googling "1GB enough" didn't answer my question. So here's my contribution: 1GB is not enough.

I got an Asus Eee PC 1015PE with 1GB of RAM. It was very slow, and I could tell it was accessing the pagefile all the time. After I upgraded it to 2GB, it sped way up. And I saw that upon startup it was already using 700MB of RAM (with Windows 7 Starter). And with Firefox regularly taking 300MB on its own, I knew 1GB wouldn't cut it. These days when I open up Task Manager it's usually in the neighborhood of 1.1GB in use. So modern OS's and browsers have reached that point. Get 2GB.


image credit: netbookreviews.net

Yes, West Coast, we know.

Last earthquake post I promise, but this just sums up very well all the comments from the West Coast.

(via pleated-jeans)

Recovery will be difficult.

(via jmckinley's posterous)

Conservative/Liberal "threats"

(chainsawsuit)

Fun op-ed (for liberals) in the NYT from Warren Buffet on why he wants to be taxed more: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

So when I read this quote:

I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.

I realized — is threatening to not work/invest because of taxes the conservative equivalent of the "I'll move to Canada!" liberal threat? I knew the liberal one was a melodramatic, empty threat but I guess the conservative one is too?

*Disclaimer: I think this is as political as I'll get, since I swore to keep politics out of this blog

Why thank you Linux, I didn't want software, I wanted a project.

Just ran into an image that perfectly encapsulates this ethos:

Sometimes I get a little tired of it. Gotta vent.

We're fucked - UPDATE