TMoney

The rMBP work just got me replaced a dying 6-year old iMac so I just had a pretty similar upgrade. The speed improvements are really really nice and I think you'll be really happy with the 27". That being said, the new iMac screen is IMO the big upgrade you'll notice over the 6 and 7 year old models we were using. It's night and day difference vs what we had before. Enjoy! I don't know if you are a fan of touch-pads, Monkey, but if you are the touch gestures in OSX are quite handy. I'd recommend the wireless touchpad for your iMac for the touch gestures alone. The ability to quickly jump from window to window using mission control (or whatever they call it these days) on its own is worth the price of admission.

So anyone else use Parallels? I gave the trial version a shot yesterday and it's nice, but not perfect. I found it messed with some of the drivers such that booting into Windows via Bootcamp didn't work as well as it did before having Parallels installed. Given the amount of time I'll be using this computer in a Windows environment I think I'm going to ditch Parallels and just stick with doing reboots in and out of Bootcamp.

Work just bought me a new rMBP 15. Not bad... not bad at all. Now to get Parallels and Windows on this thing, pronto!

Congrats!

^ Great tracks! I was just listening to Blow by Blow the other week.

It seems like there haven't been that many big announcements this year, but this Tablet-PC convergence thing is really cool. Its the future. That, and Smartphone-PC convergence. It's nice to see Intel get their heads back in the game. While the Intel-based tablets don't match the ARM-based tablets on power consumption, they trounce them on performance. I'm sure its not the case for everyone, but I would gladly trade a few hours of battery life for 3-5x greater performance. ARM is going to have a real problem once Haswell and its successor Broadwell start hitting that 5W and below range.

Microsoft Surface Pro makes an appearance: http://gizmodo.com/5974705/microsoft-surface-pro-hands+on-this-is-what-it-should-have-been-all-along http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/9/3857076/microsoft-surface-pro-in-depth-impressions After reading the glowing impressions this is a day one buy for me. No question.

Is Tyll going to be at CES again this year scoutin' products for us? I haven't seen anything on IF.

In and accepted, thanks.

^ GREAT flick!

Got it. Done. Thanks!

I've been using 8 since the prereleases and I really don't see what all the fuss is about. If you don't like the tile interface, it just takes one click on the "desktop" button to make it go away. As for not having a start menu, the functionality is easily replaced by just hitting the windows key and typing the first few letters of what you are looking for. Is it intuitive? Not really, but if you put in a few hours to learn it its very hard to understand what the ZOMG-WIN8-IZ-TURRIBLE fuss is all about.

"T Money" (with a space) is my profile name, maybe try it again? If it says last online as of three years ago it must be someone other than me. I was playing the Walking Dead yesterday.

That one extra click to launch the desktop is just too much, eh?

Can I get an invite? (Steam ID: T Money)

True, but I've found the Apple Store employees to be much more willing to give free repairs even in the case of accidents when I've had a bunch of years left on my AppleCare. Of course, YMMV. Also whats with needing to get extended warranties for computers using SSDs? Unless you are running a server or some other I/O heavy application I don't think there is much of a chance of burning out a drive in the likely 3-5 years of use the computer will get under typical "home computer" use.

I'd say it depends on how often you expect your wife to take the Air out of the house. The more it lives at a desk, the less chance of it being damaged by a drop or something like that. Conversely, the more you take it with you, the more likely it gets dropped, bumped, or bruised.

Point taken, but I just don't prefer the sound of compression even with modern rock. Its funny going to live concerts and hearing what the songs sound like with fuller dynamics. Its especially noticeable with drums. They are so easily tamed by excessive dynamic compression. Live drums sounds great, even over the PA.

Great post! It's kind of a bummer to see that even the mid-1990s Pumpkin original CDs are pretty compressed. DRs of 9 and 10 aren't bad to listen to, but imagine how it would sound if it was in the 13-14 range.

The DR plugin is great and I highly recommend it as well. I've found that since I moved to Foobar and the DR-plugin I'm increasingly moving my music with less that DR8 or DR9 to my backup drive to free up space for better sounding albums. Even though they may be albums that I really liked, anything with less than DR8 just dosen't sound that great with my primary rig. With limited listening time why not listen to albums that sound great?

Yeah wow, avoid that 2009 remaster. I've heard some of the earlier Stones ABKCO SACDs and I'd say they are "just ok" as well. Probably about DR10 so listenable for sure, but not stunners by any means. I'd guess they might look a smidge better than that top waveform you posted but not much.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Analyzed: Dire Straits / Brothers In Arms - 20th Anniversary Edition -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DR Peak RMS Duration Track -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DR10 -3.70 dB -15.54 dB 5:11 01-So Far Away DR8 -4.20 dB -15.65 dB 8:26 02-Money For Nothing DR6 -5.27 dB -14.21 dB 4:13 03-Walk Of Life DR9 -4.68 dB -15.86 dB 6:34 04-Your Latest Trick DR11 -6.11 dB -19.48 dB 8:31 05-Why Worry? DR10 -5.42 dB -18.71 dB 6:57 06-Ride Across The River DR9 -4.48 dB -17.25 dB 4:41 07-The Man's Too Strong DR10 -4.40 dB -15.91 dB 3:40 08-One World DR8 -5.43 dB -17.08 dB 6:58 09-Brothers In Arms -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Number of tracks: 9 Official DR value: DR9 ================================================================================ In the early days of SACD the masters really weren't all that great. A DR9 kind of stinks for a band like Dire Straits, though its not too bad to listen to. The later Japanese SHM-SACDs of the Dire Straits catalog measure a lot better and average around DR12 to DR13 which is much more listenable. I don't think they've done an SHM-SACD for BiA yet though... I've got the self-titled Dire Straits SHM-SACD and it sounds wonderful.

This is what the waveform of the redbook layer of the my copy of the 2005 SACD of BiA looks like using Foobar's Waveform plugin. Pretty similar to those already posted above Anecdotally, I'd say its a little on the bright side for my liking.

Last year we got my mother (who is probably about your wife's age) a 13" MacBook Air for X-Mas and she loves it. The 13" Air is an easy recommendation.

One of my favorite Ravi moments (Quote from Wikipedia): "The concert [for Bangladesh] begins with [George] Harrison taking to the stage alone and addressing the audience, his comment "We've got a good show lined up − well, I hope so anyway ..." alluding to the speed with which the event was organised. He then introduces the first group of musicians, led by Shankar, who, like Harrison, attempts to convey the intricacies of Indian classical music to the audience, as well as outlining the reason for this "special benefit concert". Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan proceed to tune their instruments and then stop after about 90 seconds. The audience, apparently believing they have heard an entire piece, respond with enthusiastic applause, to which Shankar replies: "Thank you, if you appreciate the tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more." RIP, and thanks for the music, Ravi.