I adored my Macbook, but at the same time I wanted something a little beefier on the CPU / GPU front than what the current line Macbooks had to offer. The Macbook Pros looked delicious, but the price points made my head hurt. So began the search…

I’ll skip past all the gritty details and laptop comparisons and hours spent reading reviews and articles and becoming familiar (again) with Nvidia’s / ATI’s mobile graphics cards and Intel’s Core i3, 5, and 7 chipsets and the pros and cons of this and that and on, and on, and on.

Instead, I’ll jump right to the end. I bought an Asus U30JC-A1 from XoticPC.com. Regarding hardware specs, this puppy falls somewhere between the 13″ and 15″ Macbook Pros, and it’s half the price.

Some quick highlights: Intel® Core™ i3 Processor 350M/330M : 2.26 GHz – 2.13 GHz, 4GB SDRAM DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM, 13.3″ HD (1366×768) Color-Shine (Glare-type), NVIDIA® GeForce® G 310M, with 512MB & Intel GMA HD (Support NVIDIA Optimus Technology) VRAM, 320 Gb Hard Drive @ 5400 rpm.

No Bluetooth, but Asus claims up to 9 hours of battery life while using the integrated Intel graphics card (I’ve read reports of 8+ hours from actual users). It’s 4.7 pounds, exactly what my Macbook was. Most ultraportables are around 3 to 4 pounds. I’m 6′ 2″ and 185 pounds — an extra pound is not going to break my back.

Nvidia’s Optimus technology looks really nice. Depending on your point of view, I’m happy / sad to say that I’ve been upgraded / downgraded from a hardcore gamer to a casual gamer over the last half decade, so gaming wasn’t my main concern when looking for a new notebook. With that said, I do like to fire up a little Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Battlefield Bad Company 2, yada yada yada, from time to time. I’m also a frequent Adobe Lightroom user and have been known to do some video editing here and there, both of which will get a nice boost with the addition of a discrete graphics card.

With decent graphics capabilities, outstanding battery life, acceptable portability, a powerful, yet energy efficient processor, an elegant and very solid design (brushed aluminum), and half the price of a Macbook Pro, I simply couldn’t resist this laptop. I’ve been purchasing Asus products for years, mainly motherboards (or mostly mainboards, ha!), and I’ve always been very pleased. This will be my first laptop experience with them. It should be delivered on Wednesday, so cross your fingers. Hopefully all my expectations and presumptions will hold true. If not, back to Mac I go?

What would you buy? Here is what I’m debating.

a. The new Rebel XSi camera kit. (coming in April) I noticed the standard 18-55 now has image stabilizer. That’s really nice, but it’s still just an entry level lens, right?. = $900ish

b. The Rebel XTi body only with a decent lens, such as Sigma’s 17-70mm f2.8-4.5 which seems to be getting good reviews. = $900ish

c. Or, since I have no more ties to Canon, make a complete switch to another brand such as Nikon. This scares me a bit since I have no experience with them, but you can’t argue with their reputation.

Decisions, decisions, decisions…

The phone is absolutely gorgeous. It runs OS X and has a 3.5″ widescreen / touchscreen (only one actual button). It plays music, movies, and TV shows, and integrates seamlessly with iLife. I’m excited and I’m not even a phone guy.

Oh, and it has wi-fi and bluetooth capabilities. Wow…

***edit***

Apple partnered with Cingular (now AT&T)

$499 for a 4Gb
$599 for an 8Gb

From what I gather, the iPhone (or maybe iTalk?) has been a hot topic for years now, but many questions still remain. What will it look like? What features will it include? How much will it cost? It seems that no one outside of Apple really knows for sure, but many have had fun imagining.

Here are some pictures of Apple concept phones designed by various geeks around the Net. Some of these images date back to 2002, if not longer.

There’s even a mock iPhone commercial that was released a few weeks ago. It’s pretty damn sleek too. Check it out.

I would buy that in a heartbeat.

The first thing I want is a huckleberry attachment for my MacBook. It’s a little webcam mirror that will turn the built-in webcam around and allow me to shoot things in front of me. I can’t think of a practical use for this, but I want it nonetheless.

The second thing I’d like to add to my list is this Web 2.0 poster that would look absolutely smashing in my office. You have to order this one from Europe, so I’d get a move on.

While you’re at it, you might as well throw a Zune on that list. The brown one please. It will look nice sitting next to my iPod. They can fight it out for my affection.

Enter my new camera. The plan is to keep this camera with me at all times. I’m also going to focus less on getting the perfect shot, and more on just getting the shot. If I want to take a portrait of someone, or if have the time to use my tripod, then yes, I’ll whip out one of my big guns. But for everyday use, this camera is perfect.

I also created a new flickr account. This will be the heart and soul of my photoblog. Every picture I take with this little camera will be uploaded to flickr for all to see. I’m not claiming that these pictures will be all that exciting, some of them may be down right boring. Okay, most of them, but that’s not the point! The point is that they will be there in chronological order from now until I die in 2097. You’ll be able to sort them by tags, groups, dates, or photosets (albums).

On the right sidebar you will always see the latest (or random) pictures I’ve uploaded to my flickr account. I can change the photostream by changing the tag associated with it. For example, if I use the tag “friends”, the photostream will only show the last pictures I’ve uploaded which I’ve tagged “friends”. Right now there is no tag associated with the photostream so it will show all of my pictures regardless of what I tagged them. But that’s neither here nor there.

You can view my entire photostream anytime by clicking on this icon located at the bottom of the sidebar. You can also just click one of the thumbnails also located on the sidebar. And that’s that. Exciting huh? Where are you going?

Let the fun begin…

In the interest of avoiding copyright infringement, I should mention that these four pictures were taken by the very creative and talented Cameron Ann. Yes, including the self portrait. Like I said, she’s very creative.