michaelhong.com

I’m going to be doing some research, but after talking to my buddy Anand today, I’m thinking about selling my MacBook Air. This is dependent on what the current resell value is. Let’s think this through:

I currently have a black MacBook 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo, MacBook Air 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, and a Lenovo x60t Centrino Duo 1.83 GHz. I wouldn’t mind selling my MacBook Air now and waiting until November to buy the new laptop. I paid $1700 for the laptop, no taxes (hooray Delaware), with the education discount. Ebay and PayPal fees would probably eat around $100, possibly more. The cheapest MBA currently on eBay has a dent and is priced Buy-it-now at $1200. The most expensive MBA (Brand new) is currently $1710. Mine would fall somewhere in between. Let’s say $1400. Subtract out the fees and I would be left with $1300. That’s a $400 tax to get the new MacBook Air, which comes with the new 45nm processors at the same clock speed (but increase 4MB -> 6MB L2 cache and a TDP decrease from 20W to 17W), 120GB HDD (40GB more than my current model) and the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M which is way better than the Intel X3100 integrated graphics the outgoing MBAs have. Also, I would get the new mini-DisplayPort output port rather than my micro DVI port. That wouldn’t necessarily benefit me now, but it would be nice to future-proof myself. You know what is horrible? The $100 it costs for the mini DisplayPort -> Dual-link DVI adaptor. Ouch, Apple. But I guess if you have the money to buy a 30-inch monitor, what’s another $100. I would just wait for the 30-inch Cinema Display to refresh, and apply the $100 to the purchase of that monitor.

So what do you think? Is it worth $400 (maybe more) to get the new model MacBook Air? Should I keep my current-gen MBA? Should I sell the MBA and buy the new MacBook at no added cost? Or should I avoid eBay and try Craigslist to avoid seller fees?

Personal note:
No one was in line today at the security checkpoint at LAX Terminal 2. It was blissful. I’m sitting at the NWA WorldClub in LAX, which is probably one of the worst WorldClubs in, uh, the world. Fallout shelter comes to mind when thinking of words to describe the lounge.

MacBook Air Update Update:
Still haven’t gathered enough courage to run the update since I love CoolBook too much. Seems like Apple has limited the proc speeds to 800MHz during heavy load to prevent overheating and eventual core shutdown. Can’t say that solution sounds too appealing to me.

Olevia Woot
The Olevia 65″ LCD HDTV for $2300 from Woot looks like such a sweet deal. Do want. Badly. Just not sure about the support… The whole bankruptcy thing kind of scares me. Still, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Olevia and was seriously considering picking up an Olevia back in the day. Not enough time for me to do adequate research. I’ll have to pass and wait for maybe a woot-off or a super deal at Sam’s Club.

iPhone 3G battery life…
…sucks. Yes, I do have bluetooth/wifi/3G turned on which does drain the battery, but isn’t that the point? “Hey, my iPhone 3G with 3G/wifi disabled gets 1,000,000 hours of battery life.” After about 9 hours, I drop down to 20% battery life. The dreaded red. From there, it just gets worse. And that’s with pretty normal usage. No videos, no music. Just occasional web surfing. The bluetooth connection must be staying active and just killing the battery…
UPDATE 11:09PM: I must say, the iPhone 3G has charged pretty quickly. I went from the dreaded red (10%) to fully charged in around 2 hours. I was using it during that time, too (voice calls). I’m GTG for my flight which is taking off in one hour. Maybe it’s time to look at a battery pack.

Dial-a-human
Saw this on Lifehacker today. It’s just a list of phone numbers and the key prompts to press to connect to a real-life operator. I’m just throwing this link on here to bookmark for myself. Hopefully you’ll find it useful, too.

Dial A Human via [Lifehacker]

That’s all for today.