Classroom III

Well, first I have to say that I looked at several different PC’s at Sam’s Club this week.  I was most impressed with the Sony Desktop Sony Vaio® Desktop 2GHz, 320GB HD, 19″ LCD, $1,549.74.

Processor and Memory:

This was the first exposure for me to Vista. I liked it. I could never figure out how to make the web cam that is built into the 19 monitor. The user interface seemed responsive and very OS X-like. I thought PC were cheaper than Apple computers. Not so. I was in the Apple Store today and the iMac, $1499.00 (retail) I used there was just as nice and

• 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 1GB memory
• 320GB hard drive¹
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory

If I boost up the memory to 2 GB, Crucial offers 1 Gigs for $45. But the factory standard 1 G works fine for 90% of my video and photo editing. I used a PowerBook for years with 512 Meg of RAM for 4 years and did everything I wanted to do on a laptop.

My attention shifted quickly to the shiny new iPods. My fav immediately was the aluminum colored iPod Classic (with the 160GB HD). I would love to have one of those to use along with my laptops in the classroom.  Set it up as a portable hard drive. It would be a great way to share photos and videos in a laptop lab and to backup student projects.

I looked at the iPod Touch. I did not like how slow the wireless was in the store. I know they have a nice wifi setup. I have used their wifi with my MacBook. I was not excited with how sluggish the menus operated on the iPod Touch. I would buy the iPhone in a second over the iPod Touch. I am going to wait until the next generation of the iPhone. I can not wait to see what improvements they will have.

Oh well, back to reality. Teachers do not get paid enough to afford all these high tech toys. It is still nice to dream.