What laptop?

[Kim]

Virtual memory is a bit like putting stuff on top of the filing cabinet across the room because you've run out of desk space. It will be cleaned away at the end of each day but is still accessible (although less quick to get to). The top of the filing cabinet is always available because it's reserved for that purpose.

Nahh, that's breaking the metaphor.  The virtual memory exists *in* the filing cabinet, in a file marked "stuff" at the front of the drawer.  The cleaners won't touch it, you have to empty it out yourself when you clear the desk.  And you need to have left enough room in the drawer for the stuff folder to grow, otherwise you're going to have to keep moving all the other files between drawers, which takes *ages* if your desk is already full.

My dad used a physical version of this when he was writing book chapters:  The entire living room floor would be adopted as volatile^[1] storage for piles of papers, and every now and then the memory management unit would come along wanting to hoover and move the piles to a shelf, adding a header describing exactly which part of the floor they came from.


_{[1] Cats.}

[Butterfly]

I still haven't decided and the decision has been put on hold for a bit due to clarion being unemployed. Most of the discussion is still over my head in written form. I do need it to talk to my Ipod and my garmins, and do word processing occasionally. Oh well, I'll stagger on for now 

[Afasoas]

1) Running an Android Phone does not mean you have sold your soul to Google
2) Absolutely no reason to trust Google at all^[1],[2]
3) Acer hardware is awful - built down to a price and it shows
4) Not sure a Chromebook will run any apps that enable interfacing with a Garmin - all I can say is that doing this on Linux is not a plug/play affair

Chromebooks are massively convenient if you can accept the shortcomings - and I think would certainly take care of most of Butterfly's needs
But young folk should learn to computer. Abstractions away from the business end of technology serve to make things worse^[3]

[vorsprung]

follow Julia Evans https://twitter.com/b0rk for more cartoon fun

[Gattopardo]

You sorted?

[Butterfly]

You sorted?

Not yet. Need to wait for clarion to get a job now and still don't know what I actually need.

[fhills]

3) Acer hardware is awful - built down to a price and it shows
4) Not sure a Chromebook will run any apps that enable interfacing with a Garmin - all I can say is that doing this on Linux is not a plug/play affair

Chromebooks are massively convenient if you can accept the shortcomings - and I think would certainly take care of most of Butterfly's needs
But young folk should learn to computer. Abstractions away from the business end of technology serve to make things worse^[3]

3:Not sure where you get that from? My Acer Chromebook 14 (model CB3-431) is the best physically built computer I have ever had and I've been working on computers since about 1982.

Cost £170 - sleek metal case - been in a backpack through torrential yorkshire rain on my bike. (suitable waterproofing of course).

4: You don't necessarily need an app for everything, and in any case many Chromebooks will now run Android apps. It's true that as far as I know you can't run Basecamp on it but you can of course extract all your gpxs off Basecamp. I do most of my long routes on http://cycle.travel/ which needs only seconds of online time to produce a route. You can then quickly download the gpx in a format which limits points by just marking turns.

You could then get that into your garmin via a USB lead. Or at least you can with my Etrex 20.

True I then tend to tweak the route by going online on https://www.gpsies.com but you don't have to.

I prefer to number my points (many don't bother) so I do final editing of the gpx file, numbering points and hacking out superfluous padding using "caret". This works totally offline - no internet needed at all. Then it just gets fed to the garmin via the USB lead.

Butterfly, apart from the user benefits, I would also consider a Chromebook on cost as well. You should be able to try a couple in PC World.

Also worth checking out the Argos ebay shop - they do "grade A" reconditioned units, which as I understand it are just returns from folk who opened the box and thought twice. All are I think fine and come with decent guarantees. 

[Woofage]

Miss Woofage's Chromebook is also made by Acer and we've been very pleased with it's build quality. She lugs it to school every day and there are no signs of mechanical degradation. I'm muchly impressed.