The Wikiness

wh/ i purchased for $350 this afternoon. Its keys don’t seem too narrow after a while, it runs Firefox OK and Chrome, but it has funky sensitivities that make fluent use something that will take time. Since I move among wifi zones, it makes sense to have this little guy. That way I can make my current three year old macbook my home computer and extend its life. I had to put its predecessor, a lovely aluminum MacBook G4, in the broken part section of my closet last weekend, so it is an inevitable purchase.  

But who says the market isn’t working for consumers? Consider the value I am getting since i paid 1200 for the Mac in 2007–this little guy is just an internet racing vehicle with a big trunk. It’s a machine designed to surf fast and carries a whopping 120 gigs of storage. I’m not sure but i think that’s many major motion pictures worth of data. Sure, he doesn’t have the ease-to-use Mac OS, and he’s of limited use offline, but I can perform all important professional functions–grading, communicating with students and stakeholders, record-keeping–online anywhere with the “Aspire.” 

 Tonight, before giving the machine to my student teacher to use tomorrow, I want to (a) drain the battery –rated to hold a whopping 6.5 hours, and (b) try out web based applications like Prezi.com, which my sophs are now using, to see if even on a small machine like this, students can use the powerful presentation software to make their argument  visual. 

I shall report anon whether student teacher’s progress is all that I aspire it be.