ResComp Newsletter
January 2008
Table of Contents
- Macbook Air: Apple's New Super-Thin Marvel
- Rent Your Media Fix
- The Best Tech of 2007
- ResComp to Compete Against ResComp in 4th Annual “Big Disk” Game
Macbook Air: Apple's New Super-Thin Marvel
Touted as the world's thinnest laptop, the new Macbook Air is the next technological innovation from Apple Computers. The laptop sports a wedge design that makes the thickest part of the laptop just three-quarters-of-an-inch, and the thinnest part just 0.16 inches. The laptop weighs only three pounds.
Announced on January 15, the Macbook Air is Apple's entry into the "ultraportable" laptop market. Coupled with its sleek design and several new features, the Air is set to revolutionize the idea of portable computing.
The Macbook Air boasts several interesting features:
- CD-ROM drive sharing: While the Macbook Air has no built in CD-ROM drive, it can access the CD-ROM drives of other computers (with permission, of course). This feature lets the Air pare down its thickness and weight, while still letting users install applications or watch movies using an external drive that isn't connected to the laptop.
- Full-sized display and keyboard: The Macbook Air boasts a full keyboard, which makes it much easier to type, even though the computer is smaller. It's even backlit, allowing for easier usability in dark areas or at night. The Air has a 13.3 inch widescreen display, also making it easier to use.
- Multi-touch gestures: The Macbook Air has a large trackpad which accepts multi-touch gestures. For example, when viewing a photo, pinching the trackpad with two fingers will zoom out from the image. Other gestures include flicking with three fingers, which translates into paging forwards or backwards through a document or website.
- Five hours of battery life: The Air boasts five hours of computing power, making it very productive on the go.
The Macbook Air is now available at Apple retail stores, as well as online at www.apple.com.
Rent Your Media Fix
Want to watch a movie but feel like it's too expensive to buy the DVD? Don't immediately log on to DC++ to download it (that's illegal if the movie is under copyright). There's two new, inexpensive ways to rent the movies without even leaving your room.
- iTunes Movie Rentals: While students may be familiar with purchasing songs and TV episodes from the iTunes store, the new rental option for movies makes it an easy way to watch films--legally. The movies can be downloaded in regular or high definition, with HD costing slightly more. New releases in regular definition cost $3.99 to rent for a 24-hour viewing period. Older titles cost just $2.99. iTunes gives you a 30-day window to start the film, and you can watch it as many times as you want within the next 24 hours on any device, such as a video iPod or the iPhone.
- Netflix downloads: Netflix also lets you download and watch movies from their collection, but their rules work much differently. The download option is only available to current Netflix rent-by-mail subscribers, and they are allotted approximately one hour of view time for every dollar that they pay for their subscription. The upside to this system is that only the time you spend watching the movies gets counted against your quota. Skimming through movies does not deplete the allotted time given to the subscriber. Netflix subscriptions range from $4.99-$23.99 per month.
The Best Tech of 2007
Apple iPhone
Bringing multi-touch goodness and a myriad innovations to the cellphone market, the iPhone captured a large proportion
of the smartphone market share in 2007. Such features as a full-featured internet browser, a Google Maps application,
visual voicemail, and the built-in iPod set the iPhone apart from the rest of its competitors.
Nintendo Wii
The Wii was another big winner in 2007. Taking a radical new approach to video game interaction, the Wii remote's intuitive
functioning opened up gaming to people who had never played video games before. The Wii's easy learning curve made it a popular
console in the last year, explaining its victory over other systems such as the Playstation 3.
Adobe Creative Suite 3
The new version of the industry standard in image manipulation and graphics creation allowed for products within the suite to
interact with each other more fluidly. Collapsible panels in many of the applications provided a more streamlined user interface.
ResComp to Compete Against ResComp in 4th Annual “Big Disk” Game
Your friendly Residential Computing team at UC Berkeley is gearing up to compete against your unfriendly Residential Computing team at Stanford (they’re actually pretty friendly too, but who’s counting?) in this year’s annual ResComp versus ResComp “Big Disk” game.
For the fourth year in a row, nerds of all types will come together to play an actual physically active sport as determined by members of both Stanford and Cal ResComps. While Cal (1-2) may be the underdog of this year’s game, our roster is promising with Chris Nelson (Unit Supervisor at Unit 2) as our team captain. We’ve also got a set of all-star players, such as Victor, Unit 5 RCC, who says, “I can run and catch better than Wendy” (Wendy is his boss); Gerard, Network Security Coordinator, who claims, “I know the rules, I guess,” and Eric (Unit 2 RCC), “I have a load of Madden '08 hours in the bank.”
Past highlights from Big Disk games include when our team sent a member of the Stanford team to the hospital in a friendly game of dodgeball, a “longest-hair” contest between ResComp alumnus Kititep Theeraprawat and an equally l ong-haired Stanford foe (both male with hair that went down to their knees), and a game of “drive the ResComp van on the field... over and over” during last year’s game of kickball at CKC.
What will happen at this year’s Big Disk on Saturday, February 9th, at Stanford Stadium? Nobody knows. But when you bring thirty nerds together in a physical activity in a brand new football stadium, shenanigans are bound to occur.
- Articles by: Krithika Muthukumar and Jeremy Weinstein.
- Assorted graphics by: Elizabeth Eady.