Let’s be honest here, we’re all geeks of one type or another: we love the latest and greatest, the neatest features, the fastest and sleekest gadgets and other technology out there. But such machines usually carry a matching price tag.
That spiffy new quad-core processor will add a few hundred dollars to your computer. Oh, you like that super-thin chassis with carbon-fiber reinforced composite and magnesium alloy? You won’t find that on the a budget machine. However, I bet if we step back and ask ourselves just how much performance someone really needs for day-to-day web and office-esque tasks, then we might able to forgo that Extreme Edition processor.
Instead, models like this dirt-cheap Dell Inspiron 15 can more than handle the average user and, despite its $299 price tag, comes very well configured. Gone are the days of laptops that had stripped down motherboards, missing ports, or could barely run the operating system it came with.
This Inspiron 15, a recently refreshed model 3521, is far from stripped. It starts with a dual-core Celeron 1007U processor; don’t let the Celeron name fool you though, this chip is actually somewhat impressive. It’s based on the same Ivy Bridge core as all the other 3rd gen CPUs, supports 64-bit, has the HD graphics GPU built-in, and is even a low-voltage chip coming out with a max TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 17W. It isn’t the go-to choice for media encoding, due to its 1.5GHz clock speed, but still has plenty of performance and battery life.
This model 3521 also comes equipped with 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive, ensuring you’ll have a smooth experience running the preloaded Windows 8 operating system. The list of standard features includes Wireless-N, Bluetooth 4.0, HD webcam, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, media card reader, and HDMI video output. The ports and connectivity on this $299 laptop are equal or better than anything else you’ll find under $600 these days.
A few days ago, two little boys and their donkeys were scavenging for firewood in Afghanistan. For undisclosed reasons, Australian troops in the locality summoned assistance from a US helicopter, which promptly appeared and blew the little boys and their donkeys to pieces (''A 'few hundred' the price paid for two dead boys'', March 9, p11). At the same time, hundreds of totally innocent children are being imprisoned in tropical hell holes in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. These offshore prisons are euphemistically referred to as ''processing centres'', but no one is ever processed there and the children can expect to be imprisoned indefinitely.
I have never met an Australian who would willingly cause harm to any child, but in our name our morally bankrupt politicians of both major parties are authorising policies that see hundreds of children slaughtered and even greater numbers imprisoned indefinitely in our 20th-century versions of concentration camps.
Surely it is time for decent Australians to tell our politicians that enough is enough. Our troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan immediately and all children should be freed from prison into what I believe will be a deeply caring community.
So, two small boys gathering firewood in a field in faraway Afghanistan are apparently slaughtered by Australian troops and the issue that captures our attention is not the tragedy of innocent young lives lost but just the question of how much their lives were worth.
What does it say about us that no one can bother to explain why they were killed, any more than they can explain why those who allegedly killed them were there in the first place?
It's a worthwhile exercise to rate the current (and previous) Assembly according to potential salary. How many MLAs could win a role as a departmental head on merit? How many would be worthy of an SES salary? But it is from this pretty shallow talent pool that we have to draw the ministers that tell departmental heads how to do their job.
As Evans points out, Canberra is very poorly served by ''the sterile game of government versus opposition, with a shadow government under the imperative to oppose everything and their tiny backbench faithfully following''. Any reforms that would enable all MLAs to positively contribute to the business of government would be welcome.
It would appear that the Australian War Memorial's new director, Brendan Nelson, seemingly with the imprimatur of the memorial's governing council, is intent on transforming the Anzac dawn service into some form of entertainment event otherwise seen at theme parks such as Disneyland. Dr Nelson, who confesses to having never been to a Canberra dawn service or Anzac Day march (ABC 666 interview of Thursday, March 7) has failed to come to understand that the growing numbers that attend the dawn service do not participate to be entertained.
Rather, they attend to contemplate in silence and with personal dignity the service and sacrifice that all service men and women have made over many years. His plans for the dawn service as outlined in the article ''Walls will come alive this Anzac Day'' (March 9, p1) fly in the face of the purpose and charter of the War Memorial as it was originally conceived. It is, in simplistic terms, a place for solemn reflection. It was never intended to be a place of entertainment or theatre.
To see the ''staged theatre'' of Friday, March 8, when Dr Nelson and Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith arrived at the memorial in an army vehicle to announce the dawn service plans was more in keeping with his previous life when resident in the big house on the south side of the lake.
Political theatre of the ilk of last Friday is neither befitting nor appropriate for the operation of the War Memorial and should be roundly condemned by its council.
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