Pack - I'm the opposite. I work on computers all day long and the last thing I want to do is look at a computer when I get home.

I've been reading the Harry Dresden books and finished the 10th one. I love burying my face in a book instead of going online.

Eng - Forgot to mention. You want to get more out of your textbooks? Take a speed reading class. I went from 200-something wpm to 660.

Best pre-college course I ever took.

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For someone like me, who is seeking to continue his education, my old textbooks are invaluable, and I do not intend to throw them away any time soon.

I'm one of those dudes that likes to not only highlight, but in addition add my thoughts to the text, or note down in margins some of the key points I think the text is trying to make. I also like to synthesize the text I am reading with other materials I have read.

Over time, especially as I have progressed through upper year courses, I find myself using my books as sources more and more. And then when I open them, it becomes really interesting to see some of the ideas I had written in the past, and frankly a few times these ideas have led me to more critical ideas that I have used within my papers. It opens up a level of critical thinking that, frankly, would not be accessible to me were it not for the physical texts I keep stored.

Amongst all my possessions, I probably value my old under-grad books than anything else. Besides being a labyrinth of information, I feel I can navigate that labyrinth much, much better than I can the information on the internet. After using the material so much, it literally feels like I know the books quite well, and thus can access the information within them much faster than I can using the internet.

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That's something I had thought of doing for at least the past 5 years, but never did. It would help a lot with reading articles (and I sure read a hell of a lot over my time at uni), though stuff like maths and physics can't be speed read.

Oh well, it's all too late for me now that I've already entered the rat race, hah.

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When I was growing up we had great tasting tap water. (This was in the days before water de-hardeners became required appliances for some reason.)

I remember one time I borrowed one of my Dad's water testing kits. Water turned nice and pink....and I found out the most likely explanation was certain chemical byproducts of "animal waste." ROFL.

That put me off water for awhile! (No real bottled water alternatives in those days.) But in the end, I went back to drinking from the sink tap because, well, because those minerals or whatever, gave it a better taste. WHereas the water that was supposedly "safe" in other towns...tasted like, and even had a slight brownish tinge reminiscent of, well, shit.

Now I have one of those Britta pitchers. But to tell the truth, what matters most to me about water now is the temperature. Someone told me room temperature water is better for me, but ice cold water to me is the best drink in the world.

Heck I even like what the Portuguese call agua with gas (i.e. sparkling water/soda water/snooty French water) if its ice cold. (Of course the Portuguese are like the rest of Europeans in my experience, they think "with ice" means one meaely little cube.

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When i was in college, we had to buy a $50 textbook for one class. Well, i didn't have the $50.......so i went down to the bookstore, picked up the book, read what i needed and put it back!
Did that a couple times, and never bought it.
Got an A in the class!

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I think Apple products are overpriced, but not in relation to manufacturing costs VS retail price.

For a device that is restrictive (no flash support, USB port), the ipad has a prohibitive price with a marketing scheme based on aesthetic value. If I wanted something useless that had a nice shape, i'd get all my electronics in a Beyonce shaped casing.

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I'm an Apple person. I believe design is of critical importance. Yet I am seriously pissed about the iPad.

I was hoping for something that would blow the "tablet PC" market away...not just an iPhone mated with a Kindle.

I would have bought the high end version had they did just one thing -- gave it a full version of Keynote rather than an emasculated one. I don't know if anyone else here uses Keynote, but it is way better than Powerpoint. Night and day, IMO.

Except the version they use for the iphone/ipud ....which is pretty much useless for anyone who needs something more than a half-assed set of bullet points.

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Open Source > Control Freak Apple - just an opinion of course.

I actually do not mind the MAC OS, I just do not agree with a lot of apple products.

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Philosophically, I like open source. As a consumer and techno-challenged person I like Apple.

But I think Apple is successful *despite* Jobs' control freak approach, not because of it.

If you want to consistently succeed at pricing your goods higher than most competitors, you need to consistently provide more options. Not less.

I love my tricked-out MacBook Pro with its solid state drive. But when I first switched to Apple (a Bondi Blue G3 tower and matching humonguous CRT monitor) it was because all of the things it didn't do that Microsoft based systems didn't -- random crashes, cool GUI, not having to be a computer person to use fancy features. Now...it sometimes seems like it is content to adopt the worst parts of the Microsoft business model between ever thinner veneers of cool design.

The G3 looked cool, and underneath was a major machine. The iPad looks cool, and underneath is a lot of nothing much.

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Eldrick disagrees.

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