Another boring money post

[retailguy]

I have 35-40K in mutual funds. I'm diversified. I do respect your advice because clearly you know how to manage money. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but some of it is certainly beneficial and principals I've applied to the old ball and chain and my personal finances.

If you have more than $1500 - $3000 in Apple stock you are not properly diversified. You can screw around with 5% or 10% of your portfolio. More than that, you're taking too much risk. $1500-$3000 in stock is not paying off a house.... you are not diversified.

[Zool]

Penis

[mraynrand]

envy

[Freak Out]

Cockring.

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Samsung already hedging bet on Android.

http://www.bgr.com/2011/09/20/samsung-to-open-bada-to-other-manufactuers-developers-next-year/

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http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/20/apple_continues_unstoppable_winning_streak_in_customer_satisfaction.html

Apple has once again topped the American Customer Satisfaction Index for PC makers, making it eight years in a row that consumers have been most satisfied with the Mac maker.

Apple's score in 2011 was up 1 percent to 87, placing the company a comfortable 9 points ahead of its nearest competitor. The average score in the personal computer business was tracked at 78 points on the 0-to-100 scale.

"In the eight years that Apple has led the PC industry in customer satisfaction, its stock price has increased by 2,300%," said Claes Fornell, ACSI founder. "Apples winning combination of innovation and product diversification—including spinning off technologies into entirely new directions—has kept the company consistently at the leading edge."

The ACSI said that Apple's dominance in computer satisfaction appears to be "unstoppable," as competing PC makers topped out in 2011 with scores in the 70s. HP was the best of the lot with a score of 78, while Dell and Acer sat at 77.

The ACSI numbers com from interviews with about 70,000 customers rating more than 225 companies in 47 industries and 10 economic sectors. The latest report released on Tuesday covers consumer satisfaction with PC makers, as well as major appliances and electronics.

Apple's score of 87 in 2011 marks its highest tally yet, besting last year's result of 86 points. HP also improved by one point over last year's score of 77.

Competing PC makers have slightly narrowed the gap against Apple in recent years. In 2009, the Mac maker was 12 points ahead of its nearest rival, Dell, with Apple posting a score of 84 percent.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/20/pc_makers_want_cheaper_intel_chips_to_compete_with_apples_air_pricing.html

Struggling to compete with the pricing of Apple's MacBook Air lineup, "Ultrabook" PC makers have again asked Intel to reduce the price of its mobile CPUs.

Executives from both Acer Taiwan and Compal Electronics have turned to Intel and asked the chipmaker to aid them in achieving pricing below $1,000, according to DigiTimes. Intel has partnered with PC makers to push a new specification, dubbed "Ultrabook," designed to compete with Apple's popular thin-and-light MacBook Air.

Seems like competitors are having a hard time matching the prices that the extremely overpriced Apple is charging.


AAPL up 4% so far this week. Hopefully 6% by the end of today!

[3irty1]

I had never heard of Ultrabook before but how sneaky is Intel for dealing to both sides? Can one get a bigger battery for the smallest macbook air? What is the best possible battery life one could squeeze out even if that meant a new battery?

I punch away at a 2 or 3 year old 10" Acer netbook that thanks to some power saving scripts I made can get me 11 hours of battery life of dicking around on the internet. I like it but only having 600 vertical pixels gets me into the occasional problem--like dialogs where you can't see the "OK" at the bottom.

[Partial]

I had never heard of Ultrabook before but how sneaky is Intel for dealing to both sides? Can one get a bigger battery for the smallest macbook air? What is the best possible battery life one could squeeze out even if that meant a new battery?

I punch away at a 2 or 3 year old 10" Acer netbook that thanks to some power saving scripts I made can get me 11 hours of battery life of dicking around on the internet. I like it but only having 600 vertical pixels gets me into the occasional problem--like dialogs where you can't see the "OK" at the bottom.

Why's it sneaky? Macs are running the same guts as nice computers, just with a different OS. Apple strategically invests their cash years in advance. This is why they have the best LCD panels from Sharp, the best batteries in mobile, and had the flash memory market working to it's advantage for years with the iPods. This is why they have 75 billion in cash under Steve's mattress.

One cannot get a bigger battery in the MBA. They get a real world usage of 7 hours I've heard. Apple is one of the few vendors who doesn't overstate battery. My MBP gets ridiculously good battery life. The 11" is 1366x768 IIRC

[3irty1]

Intel makes a line of something for the Macbook Air, then on its own time comes out with this Ultrabook recipe to create competition between Apple and Acer/Samsung/Sony etc who didn't have anything like the Air. Dealing to both sides of a war they created themselves in computers its good business but in guns its war profiteering.

[Partial]

Intel makes a line of something for the Macbook Air, then on its own time comes out with this Ultrabook recipe to create competition between Apple and Acer/Samsung/Sony etc who didn't have anything like the Air. Dealing to both sides of a war they created themselves in computers its good business but in guns its war profiteering.

The Ultra low voltage chips have been available for awhile. Recall Sony had powerful sub-notebooks during the Netbook phase of a few years back. Not Apple's problem that the competition doesn't have as good as engineers or cannot anticipate what users want. Intel didn't create a market, Apple did. The netbook has been around for years, but they were all wrong. Too slow, too thick, too low res, etc. Apple applied their knowledge of design and what the users want to create the ultimate notebook, the 11" MBA!

Recall the MacBook Air has been out for years. Yes, the refresh of it last year made it the sexy little beast it is today. The competition just ignored this market, and now they can't keep up it in. It's really not very surprising given that they ignored it.

[Partial]

Intel had better be worried. Very worried. ARM is gonna take the consumer market out from under them in the next few years if they don't get their PPW (performance per watt) cleaned up.

Nvidia is gonna be a huge player in this. They release the next gen stuff earlier then the opposition, so it's slower than the chips Apple, TI, and others are putting out, but the adoption rate is high due to it's early availability.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/20/nvidia-releases-kal-el-white-papers-announces-a-fifth-companio/

[Freak Out]

Right now the only Apple laptop I would consider buying is the 15 inch pro at $2100.....and I still would have to upgrade the fucker. Final price....$3899. Fuck you Apple.

I take it you can still replace drives and ram on the pro yourself or has Apple locked that down as well?

[retailguy]

I take it you can still replace drives and ram on the pro yourself or has Apple locked that down as well?

That depends on who you talk to.

Honestly, ram and hard drives are about the only things you CAN replace on a macbook pro. Probably the only things you don't have to buy from apple. Though I bet if you dug through all the stuff, you'd find licensing agreements with part of the sales price going to apple. Of course, depending on your POV, that's just "good business".

[Zool]

That depends on who you talk to.

Honestly, ram and hard drives are about the only things you CAN replace on a macbook pro. Probably the only things you don't have to buy from apple.

That's also true with almost every laptop on the market. Most have proc's and GPU's right on the motherboard not in a socket. There are very few exceptions to this.

[Freak Out]

That's also true with almost every laptop on the market. Most have proc's and GPU's right on the motherboard not in a socket. There are very few exceptions to this.

I know that.....I just want to know if you can you still remove the back panels on the new Pros and upgrade the ram and drives. I can get great deals on compatible ram and an SSD.