The Crazy Cornellian

Some of you loyal readers may remember my post a while back about how I prefer having a desktop. Well, last semester I finally caved in and got a laptop just like all the other cool kids.  So what why the change of heart?  Well, Moores law has continued and today’s lower end consumer laptops are quite cheap and more powerful than my desktop.

It’s very convent to carry a magical machine that does anything you tell it to.  From it I can reach the furthest corners of the world and create anything imaginable and except for playing new games, my laptop can run everything my desktop can.  Today computers are limited more by their software than by their hardware, it’s a matter of having them set up right to get the most use out of them.  So when I got my laptop I wiped the hard drive and installed XP and all my favorite programs.  You might sneer, “Windows, how un-1337 of you.”  But that’s what I like and what I am familiar with.  Perhaps the next time I have several hundred hours free I’ll dual-boot Linux.

So am I now inseparable from my computer?  Does it have a name and eat meals with me?  No.  I still believe in avoiding using computers when possible in my work.  Only for programming, number crunching, and sometimes for reference (I still <3 wikipedia) do I use my bring along my computer.

Are laptops convenient?  Yes, it’s nice to be able to carry around a computer, setup just the way you like it, but are they necessary?  No, my previous post still holds: there are plenty of computer labs on campus and there are never situations where you have to have one.  There some people though who simply expect you to own a laptop, you’ll tell them that you don’t have one and then they will stare at you funny, incapable of comprehension.

The problem is that laptops often end up distracting more than helping.  In the library I look out at all of my peers and few are without their little sidekicks.  What are a good number of people using them for?  Facebook, email, videos, etc.  It’s important to view your laptop as a tool rather than an inseparable extension of yourself.

Cornell has been pushing Ruckus, a company that provides free music downloads for students. According to this article in the Sun, almost 6 thousand people have registered for Ruckus at Cornell so far and “over 750,000 songs have been downloaded.” Now what exactly these numbers mean I wonder. I do know a lot of people who have signed up for Ruckus, but I don’t actually know anyone who liked it and still uses it. Also, how do number of songs downloaded relate to number of songs listened? In any event it is clear that some people actually do use Ruckus. I’m not a heavy music downloader, but what is important to me is that I can get what it is I’m looking for and that it is not DRM. Ruckus does not do this. The Sun goes on to say:

Cornell’s agreement with Ruckus is one of many initiatives to decrease illegal downloading and educate students about its consequences … Beginning this coming school year, the University will take further steps to educate new students in an effort to prevent illegal downloading.

Of course if Ruckus really does decrease illegal downloading, it can only relate to music. This does nothing to illegal video and software downloading, which bandwidth-wise take up the bulk of pirating. I personally think that groups like the RIAA and MPAA are fighting a losing battle to control media as it becomes more and more user controlled. Ruckus is a nice compromise for music, but what happens when the user can’t find what they want?

See also Matt Hintsa on Ruckus, Wikipedia on Ruckus, Defective by Design

When I’m in Bailey Hall and Dr. Maas plays a video and turns down the lights I see it, hundreds of glistening lights in the darkness. What are they? The glowing minds of bright students? No, they are laptops, and lots of them. So why am I in the lowly darkness? That’s right, it’s true, I have a desktop.

Computers are a necessity in our modern lives. Nowhere is that more true than in college. We need them to get/submit homework, coordinate with our friends, write our essays, look up anything in the world, and most important of all, complain to our professors when the TA didn’t see our very small negative sign and stole half a point from our prelims. Some crazies do so much with computers that they even major in them!

So why don’t I have a cool laptop like everyone else? I’ll tell you why, it’s because I love my desktop (pictured here twice. The third picture is my awesome neighbor Steph’s Laptop). After a long hard day of classes, my computer is there waiting to greet me. It’s my home base of operations and is always running. My desktop is custom built. I first made it in 2002, and I’ve been upgrading components every once in a while. Today the only component that I still use from 2002 is my 80 Gig hard drive that I now use as a backup. Right now I have a dual-core Intel processor, 2 Gig RAM, a nice sleek case, and 4 hard drives totaling over 1TB of storage. Also, I have a really cheap video card so I can’t run the newest games and get addicted to them. It’s powerful, a lot cheaper than a laptop, and does everything I want it to. I’m familiar with it and if I ever feel like upgrading a component, I can use Newegg (which is awesome) and it will be here in only a couple of days.

That’s why I prefer a desktop, but I am crazy; what about for most people in general? Desktops are cheaper and more powerful, while laptops are mobile. Customizing a computer is really only practical with a desktop, and for most people it isn’t important. So the overarching issue is, how much is mobility worth to the individual? Some students take full advantage of the mobility of laptops and use them to take notes in lecture, study in the library, and do work between classes. The mobility of a laptop is very helpful when working on a group computer programing project where working without a computer is near unavoidable. But some other students never even take their computers off their desks and may as well have desktops.

But mobility isn’t always such a wonderful thing. Carrying a laptop around everywhere is a huge liability. How much money and work would you lose if your computer went missing? Do you keep backups? Also, with computers around us all the time, it’s easy to overvalue the usefulness of technology. Pen and paper are underrated; in fact, almost all work can (and in my opinion should) be done without a computer. Even computer programing should first be drawn out on paper. Computers can be very distracting as we all know and having a mobile one just makes it worse. If you really need to use a computer for something while your on campus, there are computer labs almost everywhere. Sometimes it can be hard find a free spot, but there is almost always is at least one. If you just need to look something up fast, it is a lot easier than lugging a laptop around with you all day.

To sum up,