Now a play in one act:

"Nice to meet you, I'm Topic!"

"Oh, so nice to meet you! My name is Off."

"Off! Ah, one of my favourite names."

"Thank you, Topic, I like your name as well. It starts and ends with hard consonants, which I enjoy."

"Yes, my mother, Miss De Point, was a great fan of anything hard."

"Oh, how embarrassing for you!"

"It was a horrible childhood, to be sure."

"Wait, how did we get onto this tangent?"

"Geez, we sure are Off, Topic!"

"That's right, Off and Topic! We'll be here all ze week!"

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"and no amount of metal paint can get around that"

Hey guys, when they manufacture metal paint for use on notebooks, what is the actual metal content? Is it subject to oxidation? And will it set off metal detectors if, say, I have an electronic device strapped to my groin?

"Vista very fluidly"

Do you guys know any other notebooks that run Vista fluidly? I am looking to upgrade from XP, and though my Dell Inspiron 630m has the specs to run Vista (according to Microsoft), I'm thinking maybe I should buy another notebook. Maybe another Dell, or a Lenovo, maybe?

"Push the envelope and force the market to adapt."

Just like Kraft blew everyone away when they introduced Cheescream Rollups. You know, ice cream rolled up in a slice of American cheese? Or did I just dream that?

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Most of the $ goes towards that ridiculous SSD, not the "VGA".

I'm sure if Apple made a MB Pro with a half-tera SSD they'd charge something like $5000, though, so you'll be all set when that comes out.

Look, I don't care what your computer-manufacturer preference is. You could favor laptops crafted out of shit and duct tape for all I care, but at least come into the argument armed with more than a nonsensical WTF.

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I agree, I'd prefer to see a DVI and/or HDMI port on there.

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Good design ≠ decoration. Just because Apple makes a few choices (remember the USB saga ("Where will all my floppies go?") don't discount Apple's design choices as poor manufacturing overall. Generalizations: they are general.

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Good design ≠ decoration

You know, I searched my reply and nowhere in it can I find the word "decoration". Nor was I saying anything anti-Apple. That said, I clearly did not communicate appropriately. My point is that Apple focuses on consumer products, and as a result they have the ability to push technology forward, including being able to move ahead with newer concepts. We could go into all of their technologies that they included that did not go over well. However, that will happen to any company pushing design.

The reason business laptops still us VGA ports is because that is what is available on nearly everything. DVI is out there, but certainly less than half the devices that a business person would need to connect to, and as a result, it would need to be a secondary option.

My apologies if it feels like I was beating up Apple. I am happy to do that if needed, but it would not be because of their hardware. It would be because of their Windows consumer software -- but that is a whole different conversation.

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I can see my house in that picture!! Mark, is this your apartment or office? Let's go to Timothy O'Toole's and grab a beer!

(Also, the curvy building to the right of the notebook is Prentice Woman's Hospital, which was structurally engineered by my boss just prior to me working for him...that's right I'm a building name dropper)

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