Laptop Sales Surpass Desktop Sales in 2008

For the first time in history, laptop sales have surpassed desktop sales. With the world's growing demand for mobility, the laptop has finally outdone the PC. Research shows that in the third quarter of 2008 laptop sales have increased by 40% compared to last year while desktops sales have fallen. The laptop wasnt predicted to outdo the PC in sales until around 2011, but with the momentum that the laptop industry has been building, its no surprise that the laptop is taking over.

Hewlett-Packard still holds the lead in notebook sales but Acer is becoming a big player in the market seeing as they have increased their unit shipment market share by 45 percent. Acer was the big reason for laptops outpacing desktops because in the third quarter, Acer shipped almost 3 million more notebooks than in the previous quarter.

It seems that we are entering a new age and thats the age of the notebook.

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Netbooks Get A Much Needed Graphic Card Boost

Tired of your netbook sucking, well so was Nvidea and they have decided to try and do something about it by infusing its Gefore 9400M Video Card into its Intel Atom Processor and calling it the Nvidea Ion. So pretty much you get a small dedicated graphic card inside of your Intel Atom Netbook.

So what does this mean from a performance stance? Nvidea is promising 5x faster graphics and 10x faster video transcoding compared to a standard Atom powered netbook. It is also said that you will be able to play modern games like Call Of Duty 4 with a respectable framerate of around 25-30 fps. Nvidea has also reported that you will be able to play 1080p movies without any hassle at all and the Nvidea Ion will be able to handle Vista Premium and Windows 7. These are some high claims they are boasting for a graphic card that is small enough to fit in a netbook.

Well I guess no one will know till the Nvidea Ion first releases onto netbooks in summer 2009. Some more good news is supposedly you will not see much of a drop in battery life and the cost of this new chip will only raise the cost of your netbook by about $50.

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Most expensive laptop you can buy

If you were rich and wanted to buy the most expensive laptop you could possibly find what would it be? Well I set out to answer this question and I feel that I have succeeded in making the laptop of my dreams. The laptop is of course an Alienware and its final cost is $7,127.00!

Now that is a lot of money, but what can you get inside of a $7000 laptop? Well for starters you had to pick which laptop to get from Alienware’s already expensive lineup. The choice was easy the Alienware Are-51 m17x would be easily the best pick because with a base cost of $2000 it was by far the most expensive choice.


Now we get into the real rich man’s playground, the upgrades! I am sure you have all went into a laptop upgrade config and selected all the most expensive upgrades and drool at the cost and the performance, well that is exactly what I did.

Video Card: Dual 512MB NVIDEA GeForce 9800M GT SLI
Cost: $850 – The 9800M GT SLI is the fastest video card out right now. These two video cards will guarantee you the highest quality in any game you play for a long time.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 2.8GHz (6MB Cache 800MHz FSB) *Also the worlds most powerful mobile processor
Cost- $900

17” 1900 x 1200 LCD w/ illuminated keyboard
This is ridiculous quality for a 17 inch screen. My 22 inch monitor only has a resolution of 1650 x 1050! Also the Alienware illuminated keyboard is very sexy and if you have never seen one before you are truly missing out. Upgrade Cost - $50

4GB DDR2 667MHz RAM: This seems a little low to me. I would think a high end laptop like this would have at least DDR3 RAM and 6GB, but it might they might have been limited by the fact that they had to fit so much inside of it already. Still 4GB of RAM is plenty for a laptop and you will definitely see a huge performance gain.
Cost- $350

Hard Drive: 256GB (128GB x 2) Solid State Drives. Not sure you will see a performance gain in here when it comes to games, but you will sure see a price gain! Also worth mentioning is the fact that solid state drives are very quiet and produce very little heat.
Cost- $1050

Optical Drive: 2x Dual Layer Blu-ray Disc Burner. Wow could you imagine having a Blu-ray player for your 1200p laptop. This is a must and it sure would impress. Blu-ray movies look amazing especially when it is being played at the highest possible resolution.
Cost- $400

Software & Accessories
Alienware Orion Back and 320GB External HHD - $195
Astro A40 Audio System - $275
Wireless Mouse - $80
3 year warranty $300
36 month subscription to McAfee $80
Microsoft Office 2007 Professional - $250

The best part about this is you get your name engraved on the laptop, I mean how cool is that and all you had to do was spend a small fortune. I would really like to see this laptop built and would love to have it. I am very curious as to how well it would play Crisis. A couple facts worth mentioning is the fact that with all the performance upgrades makes this laptop not the most suitable for portability. It is 2.1 inches this and its just a solid black tone and comes in at a total of 11 pounds!

Also I would like to end this article with a great quote I heard today from my friend Andy Wendt.
“Dear God, you made many, many poor people. I realize there's no shame in being poor...but it's no great honor either. So what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?”
-Tevye

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Learning Adventure 10: the 3n problem

Assignment:
Dear Distinguished Mathematicans:For your penultimate Learning Adventure, I've pulled a classic out of the archives. It uses MicroWorlds EX, but only as a laboratory for running an experiment using tools I have created for you. You don't have to write a line of code, unless of course you wish to customize the environment.Al of the instructions are in the attached PDF file.Happy Problem Solving!

Reflection:
So with this LA, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what others have done, as well as talking with a few math people. First of all, no one I asked has ever heard of this problem before. It was funny because I guess I thought this was a big deal in math, but apparently no one I spoke with thought so. Now, jsut for clarification, I have not taken a math class since I was in high school- that means 1992 was my last math class which was Prob/Stat and trig second semester. So, umm, yea- it has been a LONG time since I have done any math thinking. According to a friend of mine, we think about math everyday, we just don't know it. I must really not know it.

So, I began my thinking contemplating why I need to know this? Why does this problem in math even matter? Why is this important? This is where I sought out some math experts talking to them about this problem. No one could give me a practical application and this I think is why I struggle sometimes in math. I want to know how and why I have to know something to use it useful to learn. This I am learning about myself.

Next, I just began by working with numbers I liked. I know this is corny, but I wanted to see what happened with my favorite number. Here is the chart I found with using 7

7 : 14 generations (G)
21: 5 G
35: 11 G
49: 22 G
63: 105 G- holy crap my biggest generation wow- why did this happen?
77: 20 G
91: 90 G

I tried to stay with odd numbers hoping to get the biggest generations realizing that by using whole numbers, the generatons would automatically be reduced much faster. Whereas with odd numbers, there aren't pairs and so by multiplying by 3 and then adding one, the system seems riged because eventually we will always create 4, 2, 1.

For my next try at this LA, I decided to try something one of my students had suggested. I took a number and did 2 to the power of that number and then -1. The results were interesting generations. Here is what I found:

number-2n-2n-1-G

Number/ 2n /2n-1 /Generations
3 8 7 14
4 16 15 15
5 32 31 104
6 64 63 105
7 128 127 44
8 256 255 45
9 512 511 59
10 1024 1023 60
11 2048 2047 154
12 4096 4095 155
13 8192 8191 156
14 16384 16383 157
15 32768 32767 127
16 65536 65535 128
17 131072 131071 222
18 262144 262143 223
19 524288 524287 175
20 1048576 1048575 176


Here is what I noticed: looking at the first two, they are separated by one. I am going to call these pairs from now one. Then there is a 90 point jump between the first pair and the next pairing. So, then I decided to look at pairings and see if they were all separated by 90 points. No, that was not the case. The next pair is separated by 60 points and then next was 15 points, 94 points, the finally we get to a large section for numbers 11-14 that are continuous. Why does that happen? Then the pairs start again with being separated by 30 points, then 95 points and down to 47 points. I didn't see any connection or patterning other than the pairs and the one quartet. I am unsure of why this only happens within sets of two or four but it is interesting .

What I learned from this learning adventure is that it is helpful to seek out experts to get some clarification. I had no idea about this LA and it really helped to have people who could get me thinking. Also, I can't find the graphing button. I have no idea how to graph this project and am wondering if it is totally in front of me, but somehow I am just not seeing it.

What did you observe about the learning style(s) of your collaborators?

I think this is one of the portions of our LA’s I enjoy more than anything. It is always really interesting to see how each person approaches the journey. For example, it usually seems that the same people complete the LAs right away but this time we had a new leader. There is something interesting to me about who completes each task first and then watching others come back over and over again to add their two cents and additional interpretations. Tanner jumped all over this assignment and I was truly amazed by his understanding as well as continual support of others to complete this task. It seems that he was quite the leader here helping others figure things out. Additionally, another observation of learning styles is how some of us need direction from others to get us started while others need to complete parts on their own then come back to the fold to gain additional understanding, and finally, there are those that totally operate solo.

Which subject(s) does this project address?
Off the bat I thought about the applications to math and science, but as Gary pushed my thinking I could see the point he was making about a connection into descriptive writing thus a Language Arts class. I also wonder if you could make some connections into art classes with the graphing.


What might a student learn from this project?
A student would learn various things such as problem solving, collaboration, hypothesis, critical thiking, data interpretation, to name a few.

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This I Believe Goes Global Reflection

We have all the essays and podcasts in for my classes as well as our cooperative classes in Virgina and Qatar for our This I Believe assignment. It has been an interesting in a good way, learning adventure. I am really interested in my students’ reflections about the whole experience. Did they gain any cultural understandings? Did they learn something new or appreciate something they never thought of before? How do their beliefs connect with kids from around the world some of who are not native English speakers?

For my part, I am impressed for the most part by their comments and conscientiousness towards others feelings and beliefs. I remember sitting in Karl’s office thinking, “How are they going to comment on one another’s beliefs without hurting someone’s feelings or coming across as too critical?” And you know what, the kids figured it all out. They talked about what they should do, they communicated with one another what was appropriate, and many ended up reading more essays than the ones they were supposed to .

Did we change the world through this assignment? Probably not, but did the kids get a chance to see how others think and feel? Yes, and in order to change the world, we have to start with a little bit of understanding other’s perspectives. After all, period 2 and 5, doesn’t it all come down to thinking for yourself and appreciating another’s perspective?
Here’s an example of a shift in perspective:

FatimaEmranAmir My comment on Kelsey's essay
Hi! My name is Fatima Emran Amir and I am a ninth grader in Qatar Academy. Personally, when I started reading your essay, I thought that I was going to disagree with your point of view at the end. You may know that I, as a Muslim, believe that dogs are unclean and thus, we are told to keep a little distance from them; not that we hate dogs! Instead, I thought it was a great essay at the end! You really changed my approach towards the fact that how a simple dog can make a special place in your heart and act like a family member. I must say that you have an awful lot of power in your writing! Posted Sunday, 11:13 pm -

KelseyC2012 re: My comment on Kelsey's essay
Hey! I never knew that the Muslim religion believed that about dogs. It seems like such a foreign concept to me. It is really cool to find out these things though. I am glad I could give you another perspective on this animal. Posted Monday, 11:25 am

What did you guys think of the work we did with TIB? What did you learn? What are your take-aways? What would you do differently and keep the same? Be reflective!

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Bargain Laptop Buying Guide

In today’s laptop market a good mainstream laptop does not need to cost $1000 anymore. You can find a great laptop for a much more reasonable price of around $500. Now it might not be the best laptop out there, but I will guarantee you that if you choose your laptop wisely, you will not be disappointed in the performance of these budget laptops.

Picking a budget laptop is not the easiest thing. The problem there is a long list of manufacturers to choose from including: Dell, HP, Apple, Lenovo, Gateway, etc. and if this is not enough almost all these companies have a wide variety of notebooks to choose from.

So to help you out here is a couple guidelines that you should look for when buying a $500 laptop.

Size & Layout: A bargain laptop usually will be heavier than a more expensive notebook, try and get a laptop that weighs around 6 pounds or less. Also the size of a $500 laptop will usually be in the 14 to 15 inch range.

Resolution: The minimum resolution you should be shooting for is 1280x800 and the higher resolution the better.

Hard Drive: For $500 you can expect to get a 5400RPM hard drive with at least 100GB of space. If you can try to shoot for 160GB of space, this number really varies between users, but usually you will never need anymore than 160GB. If you do need more space then you are better off storing the information on an external hard drive. When it comes to hard drive speed look into getting a 7200RPM hard drive if possible the performance gain is a great benefit, but it will be more expensive.

RAM: RAM is very vital on a laptop. If you do not have enough RAM you will see your laptop start to run very slow as you have more and more processes start to pop up on your laptop over time. It is almost essential to have at least 2GB of RAM especially if you are running Vista. Also remember that RAM is very replaceable so if this is the only reason not to buy a certain laptop, you can always just upgrade the amount of RAM on your own.

Processor: A duel core processor is a must for today’s laptops. Almost any mainstream laptop offers duel core processor’s and makes sure its 2.0GHz or better. Avoid at all costs Intel Celeron & Atom Processors. Remember it is almost impossible to put in a new processor into your laptop so more the one you get you are pretty much stuck with.

Everything Else:

• Look for an optical drive that can burn DVD’s.
• Make sure to buy from a reputable brand and always read reviews on the laptop you are choosing.
• Look for an HDMI cable slot. This will allow your laptop to play videos onto your nice big screen you have.
• Of course make sure it has Wi-Fi capabilities and if you use are into Bluetooth you can usually find a laptop in this price range that is Bluetooth compatible.

Good Tips:

• A refurbished laptop is an easy way to save money. Expect atleast 10% off the normal price and the have good warranties to protect you from getting a bad one. In my experience you hardly ever see people have problems with refurbished laptops
• If you are into gaming what so ever look into getting a dedicated video card. This almost always will bump up the price $100 though.
• If you are looking for unbiased information about your laptop make sure to check out notebookreview.com and laptopmag.com or just look at some of the laptops we have reviewed on our blog.
• To save even more on a laptop make sure to search the net for coupons. They are very easy to use and are a great way to save an extra $50 to $100.
• If you are looking for any battery life make sure to get a 6 cell battery instead of the 3 cell battery.
  

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