I never really understood what a tranreflective screen is. It might be known by a different name, depending on the manufacturer. I think hp calls it “BrightView” and I believe “Ultrasharp” is the name Dell uses. I’m not 100% certain about the names. All I know is that this thing’s screen is extremely reflective. It is the first thing I noticed when I took it out of the box; I could clearly see myself in the reflection.

While watching South Park, I looked over at the notebook and noticed that I could watch the show on its LCD. I then set up my old notebook in the same position and found that virtually no part of the TV could be seen. Take a look (forgive my camera’s extremely poor low-light performance, the reason for all the noise):

For unknown reasons, the AC adapter to my notebook MOONBASE1 (a Toshiba Satellite P3 1Ghz) just up and died. Part of me thinks it was crushed by the couch when Nad was cleaning up last week, but I can’t be 100% certain about it. I planned on ordering a replacement sometime this week.

However, Nad did something about 1000 times better than that. She bought me a new notebook!

For a while, I thought about not mentioning anything about it on the blog. Why? Tech people have this extremely annoying habit of shitting on what you buy if it isn’t their favored manufacturer, brand, or whatever. For example, upon telling a tech-savvy friend that Nadia bought that Media Center PC, he responded with, “It would have been better if you built one yourself.” Upon telling another techhead, he said, “You bought an hp?!”

This type of reaction annoys the shit out of me. Why not be happy that I got something new? Do you need to crap all over my purchases? Be happy for me, instead of downplaying my ability to make an informed decision. Most of my tech friends display this type of behavior.

Here’s a screenshot MOONBASE2, showing Firefox and SlingPlayer side-by-side. You may notice the widescreen resolution. I like.

Nad is heading back out to Kansas at the end of the week. She’ll be gone for three weeks. After that, she’s back here for two weeks, then back out on assignment for another two months. Who do you think she misses most when she’s out there? Me? The cats? Neither! The DVR is who she misses most, because its got all of her episodes of Passions, Days of Our Lives, Real World and Road Rules.
To help her feel less homesick, I bought a Slingbox today, a neat little device that broadcasts your TV across the interweb. After setting up the device, which was very simple, I installed the software on Nad’s Media Center PC and her work notebook, both of which were very easy.

As I type this entry, the Sling Player (the program the displays the TV program) is running in the background. Take a look at what it looks like while playing one of those awful PSP commercials:

I should also add that Nad’s work notebook freakin’ rocks. It is an hp nc6000. What impresses me about it is that for the last hour I have been running on battery power while typing this entry, surfing the net, and streaming Comedy Central shows wirelessly without a hiccup in performance. If I ever get around to buying a new notebook, I will buy one of these.