Pricing Up a New Maxed Out MacBook Pro Max

I typically buy a new personal laptop computer every 5-6 years. I was a diehard Windows person until Windows Vista came along when I crossed over to the Mac world. I've been a Mac person ever since.

Because I keep my computers for a long time, when I buy I always load up on hardware. I typically go for the fastest processor, most memory and the largest storage drive.  Today I decided to price up a new loaded MackBook M3 Max and was blown away by the price - $7200!

Pondering, I decided to skip the $19 Apple Polishing Cloth. I can always pick one up later.

Granted, maxed out the configuration is for high end niche users and not users like me. My 14 inch M1 Pro is only two years old with 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD so..... I'll just hang on to that for now.

My Summer 2008 "See How Paperless I Can Become" Project Update

Back in May I wrote a post titled My Summer 2008 "See How Paperless I Can Become" Project. The Amazon Kindle was the device that I felt had the most potential in reducing my "paper addiction". I saved a lot of gas and donut money subscribing to the electronic version of the Boston Globe when I was out on Cape Cod. Over the summer I wrote more posts about my experiences with the Kindle - I've got all of those posts linked here.

So.... how did I do? A picture probably explains it best - here's a shot of the paper currently in my bag along with my Kindle that has replaced most of the paper.

Two file folders, a copy of Business Week, a composition book I use to write notes and my Kindle - that's it...... less than a pound of paper. Shifting gears from paper to the Kindle took some getting used to and the conversions are not perfect.


Here's a few things that I believe still need some work:

The Kindle uses locations instead of page numbers which can be confusing. Here's an example, In May I attended an OP-TEC NSF National Visiting Committee meeting at Indian River State College in Florida. Prior to the meeting a 200 plus page Word document had been distributed to attendees. Instead of printing out the 200 pages I converted the word document to a Kindle friendly azw file and loaded the document on the Kindle. Now - the Kindle screen is not an 8.5 x 11 inch screen so it does not display a full Word document page at a time. What is displayed is smaller than a page. The amount of text displayed also varies based on the font size the Kindle is set to. So..... page numbers don't make much sense to the Kindle - for this reason the Kindle uses location numbers that do not map to page numbers.
Back to the meeting in Florida - everyone else had hard copy and I had electronic copy - as we were flipping through pages I found it difficult to keep track of page numbers others were referring to. In the end I cheated and started using a hard copy I had been given when I got to the meeting.

I've also had rare problems with PDF file conversions - I heard Jeff Bezos say once somewhere (I cannot remember where) that PDF conversions work perfectly around 80% of the time. Bezos calls the conversion "re-flowing". I would put it at 95+% based on my experience. I find myself pdf'ing anything that can't be directly converted to an azw file. That includes PowerPoint presentations, flight itineraries, web pages, google maps, etc. I write the PDF in my desktop application to disk and then send the PDF document to Amazon for azw conversion. It works great!

The Kindle is great for reading finished documents but not very functional when tracking changes in draft documents being passed back and forth. In these cases I find myself converting the Word document to azw format and placing it on my Kindle. I then read the document on the Kindle and use my notebook computer to make the edits.

I can't organize a folder structure on my Kindle. All documents I convert to azw display on the main screen and sometimes I have to scroll through lots of documents to find the one I want. I can organize the files in folders on the SD card in the Kindle - I just can't bundle them together in one folder on the main screen.

With regards to textbooks - it is getting close. Things like charts, graphs and color pictures are tricky - the Kindle only has 4 shades of gray. I believe textbook support would be much better if all figures, tables, graphs and pictures were designed to work with the Kindle. I'm confident Amazon and publishers are working on these issues and we will see Kindle ready classroom versions soon.

In summary - am I paperless? I would say pretty darn close.

Could Colleges Sell Courses the Way Amazon Sells Kindle Books?

[I continue to be impressed with the Amazon Kindle and will be writing more this week about my Going Paperless Experiment. Today I wanted to walk through the way Kindle users purchase books using an example. And.... I've been asking myself.... could we start selling courses this way? Perhaps some colleges already are? See what you think.]

I'll admit I'm caught up in the hype and have been wanting to take a look at Scott McClellan's What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. We live in the woods and buying anything (unless it is delivered) involves jumping in the car and driving. Last night I did not feel like driving so I figured - what the heck - I'll go to Amazon, pull down a free sample of the preface and first chapter of McClellan's book on my Kindle and go from there. Here's what I did:

Step 1: On my PC I went to the Amazon.com Kindle section and found that the book was available. Here's a partial screen shot of the website:

Over on the right you can see I could either buy the book with one click or I could sample the beginning of the book for free. I decided to request the no cost sample. With a single click of the "Send Sample now" button the beginning of the book was ready for me - waiting in a queue for my Kindle to download the next time I turned it on and connected wirelessly.

Step 2 (30 seconds later): I power up my Kindle and turned wireless on. It took maybe 20 seconds for the content to download. Once downloaded to my Kindle it appears on my Home screen as a "sample". Here's a screen shot of my Kindle home screen showing the sample:

The book sample listed at the top - notice I've got a couple other samples I'm checking out!

Step 3: I took the time last night to read the sample preface and first chapter. I was not standing in the isle of a bookstore skimming the beginning of the book - I was sitting comfortably at home - relaxed and able to focus. I decided I'd sleep on whether I wanted to pay the $9.99 for the book. Here's a screen shot of the last page of the sample with the purchase option:

I had the option of doing nothing, buying or seeing details.

Step 4: I woke up early this morning and gave the sample another read (this time much quicker) and decided I wanted a little more detail before making a decision. On the last page of the sample I selected "See details for this book in the Kindle Store". Here's a screen shot:

I looked at the reviews, was hooked and decided to buy.

Step 5: I selected "Buy" and got the following message:

I was given the option to cancel the order if the purchase was buy accident. I also received an email (withing about 15 seconds) with my order summary from Amazon.

Step 6: The entire book took less that a minute to download wirelessly to my Kindle. Here's a screen shot of my Home screen showing both the entire book and the sample at the top.

Notice the entire book is tagged "new".

That's it - easy, simple, fast and efficient. It's not just Kindle selling this way - Apple has always sold music on iTunes by providing a free sample of the first 20 seconds of a song.

So.... could a college sell courses this way? Could the first week of a 15 week course be offered as a no-cost sample? I'm not talking about a pay up front, money back if not satisfied arrangement - I'm talking no money down, no credit card required first week free. Most will probably say no - it's impossible with billing, enrollment, scheduling, etc issues - right? But.... people are getting used to buying this way - especially young people. Someone somewhere at some college is going to figure out how to make this work - maybe somebody already has.

[I am in no way affiliated with Amazon and receive no compensation from Amazon. I purchased my Kindle and all content using personal funds.]

My Summer 2008 "See How Paperless I Can Become" Project

I'm not sure about you but the bag I lug around seems to get heavier and heavier - I have a tendency to blame my notebook computer for much of the weight so today I took a look at what was in my bag. It is loaded with folders full of paper. Here's a shot of what I pulled out this morning - I don't have a scale handy but I'm guessing there is at least ten pounds of paper here.

A quick scan of what's in the picture indicates I could lighten up about 90 percent of the pile - around 9 pounds - if I moved the stuff I've printed out to various electronic forms to read, annotate and file.

If I make an effort could I go without paper? Maybe. I currently carry an iPhone, an Amazon Kindle and a 13 inch MacBook. I think I've got a nice combination that I can conscientiously work with to lighten my paper load.

Here's specs on the three along with how I think I can use each:

iPhone

• 4.8 ounces.
• Goes in my shirt pocket, not my bag.
• Use for email and web browsing when not near a PC.
• Also on the fly viewing of email attached Word documents, spreadsheets, PDF's, etc.

MacBook

• 5.1 pounds.
• the power adapter weighs .71 pounds.
• I also carry an optical mouse that weighs 5.2 ounces.
• Use for email, web browsing, document editing, podcasting etc when convenient.

Amazon Kindle

• 10.3 ounces
• Use primarily for for document reading, limited web browsing and I can even check my email using the Kindle in a pinch
• Also use to read my daily subscription to the Boston Globe

Power adapters and cables for the iPhone and Kindle add another 6 or so ounces - adding the major electronic devices up I come up with about 7 pounds in my bag. I also carry a composition book for taking handwritten notes and a bunch of pens and pencils, a laser pointer/slide clicker, 3 or 4 thumb drives, etc adding maybe another pound. Some things I cannot get electronically (at least not yet), including many of the magazines/journals I read - they add another half a pound or so. Summing it all up I'm looking at about 9 pounds without any extra paper documents and....... I could stop blaming my notebook computer - not bad!

I'll write about my project progress every once in a while over the summer and will be sure to include a picture or two.

MacBook Air Hacked

The ninth annual CanSecWest 2008 Conference was held last week in Vancouver, British Columbia. CanSecWest focuses on applied digital security, bringing together ndustry luminaries in a relaxed environment that promotes collaboration and social networking.

A crowd favorite at the conference has been the hacking contest and last week the tradition continued. This year's target machines were Ubuntu, Vist and OSX based. Here's details on the contest from the CanSecWest website:

Three targets, all patched. All in typical client configurations with typical user configurations. You hack it, you get to keep it.

Each has a file on them and it contains the instructions and how to claim the prize.

Targets (typical road-warrior clients):

• VAIO VGN-TZ37CN running Ubuntu 7.10
• Fujitsu U810 running Vista Ultimate SP1
• MacBook Air running OSX 10.5.2

This year's contest will begin on March 26th, and go during the presentation hours and breaks of the conference until March 28th. The main purpose of this contest is to present new vulnerabilities in these systems so that the affected vendor(s) can address them. Participation is open to any registered attendee of CanSecWest 2008.

Once you extract your claim ticket file from a laptop (note that doing so will involve executing code on the box, simple directory traversal style bugs are inadequate), you get to keep it. You also get to participate in 3com / Tipping Point's Zero Day Initiative, with the top award for remote, pre-auth, vulnerabilities being increased this year. Fine print and details on the cash prizes are available from Tipping Point's DVLabs blog.

Quick Overview:

• Limit one laptop per contestant.
• You can't use the same vulnerability to claim more than one box, if it is a cross-platform issue.
• Thirty minute attack slots given to contestants at each box.
• Attack slots will be scheduled at the contest start by the methods selected by the judges.
• Attacks are done via crossover cable. (attacker controls default route)
• RF attacks are done offsite by special arrangement...
• No physical access to the machines.
• Major web browsers (IE, Safari, Konqueror, Firefox), widely used and deployed plugin frameworks (AIR, Silverlight), IM clients (MSN, Adium, Skype, Pigdin, AOL, Yahoo), Mail readers (Outlook, Mail.app, Thunderbird, kmail) are all in scope.

Here's the results according to Heiss Online:

Of three laptops to be hacked, the MacBook Air with Mac OS X 10.5.2 was the first to fall victim to crack attempts of participants in the PWN to OWN contest at CanSecWest. The laptops with Windows Vista SP1 and Ubuntu 7.10 remain uncompromised. According to information provided by organizers of the TippingPoint competition, Charlie Miller, Jake Honoroff and Mark Daniel of security service provider Independent Security Evaluator were able to take control of the device through a hole in the Safari web browser. The vulnerability has supposedly not yet been made public and is still under wraps until Apple is able to provide a patch. In addition to $10,000 prize money, the winners also get to keep the MacBook as a bonus.

Here's more on the contest from ChannelWeb:

The vulnerability has been purchased by the Zero Day Initiative, and has been made known to to Apple, which is now working on the issue, TippingPoint said. "Until Apple releases a patch for this issue, neither we nor the contestants will be giving out any additional information about the vulnerability."