Jon Stewart and Cheap Notebooks
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 2, 2005 10:57 AM EST- Posted in
- Anand
I got a lot of comments and emails asking me about this mysterious Jon Stewart thing that Vinney and I went to over the weekend - allow me to clarify.
Jon Stewart's Daily Show is taped in NYC every Monday - Thursday, tickets are free, but you've got to basically spend the majority of your day waiting in line. This past weekend however, Jon Stewart had four shows in CT, where he performed his stand up routine.
Now I had never seen or heard Jon Stewart's standup before, so I was unsure what to expect. I'm a huge fan of The Daily Show, dating back to the very first season with the unfunny-man whose name I dare not mention, but I wasn't sure what to expect from Stewart's standup. What I ended up seeing, was an interesting mix of humor, vulgarity and social commentary that you'd pretty much expect from Jon Stewart.
While The Daily Show ends up usually being a show about current events for the day of its taping, Jon Stewart's standup obviously focused more on the overall state of affairs - which as many can probably guess, can make for some good humor.
Stewart's delivery is pretty much what you would expect, given his demeanor on The Daily Show; it is very steady and calm. The show was about 1.5 hours long, which meant that at some points the delivery could use an extra kick to get the audience's attention again, but overall it was entertaining.
The crowd there was a lot older than I expected, given that I seem to view a good percentage of Stewart's audience as college students. A lady there did bring her 8 year old daughter to the show - which was a big mistake, as you can guess, there is no TV censor when Jon Stewart is performing live.
Our time in NC was great, I got some work done and we got a lot of house-stuff taken care of too. We'll be down again for Thanksgiving, and hopefully there will be some more progress to look at when that rolls around.
The one project I started when I returned was that notebook review I briefly mentioned earlier. The first roundup will be a roundup of the glamorous world of $600 notebooks. Why focus on the cheapest notebooks out there? Well, out of the ~7.5M people we've got reading the site every month, I'm willing to bet that a lot of you folks recommend hardware to other people. And not everyone out there, yourselves included, are interested in spending $1500+ on a notebook. So I figured I'd start small, and work my way up the price chain.
What is interesting is that most notebook manufacturers don't want these things reviewed. Out of the 5 notebooks in the roundup, we had to buy 4, the manufacturers simply refused to send review samples of those - although they had no problems sending samples of more expensive models. The reason being that most companies don't make money off of these $600 systems, and thus selling more of them isn't always their goal. They have to offer them to remain competitive, and to lure buyers in for more expensive upgrades, but in a perfect world from a manufacturer's standpoint, the $600 notebook wouldn't exist.
I've probably given away too much about the roundup already, as it is still about 2 - 3 weeks away, but work is progressing nicely.
Jon Stewart's Daily Show is taped in NYC every Monday - Thursday, tickets are free, but you've got to basically spend the majority of your day waiting in line. This past weekend however, Jon Stewart had four shows in CT, where he performed his stand up routine.
Now I had never seen or heard Jon Stewart's standup before, so I was unsure what to expect. I'm a huge fan of The Daily Show, dating back to the very first season with the unfunny-man whose name I dare not mention, but I wasn't sure what to expect from Stewart's standup. What I ended up seeing, was an interesting mix of humor, vulgarity and social commentary that you'd pretty much expect from Jon Stewart.
While The Daily Show ends up usually being a show about current events for the day of its taping, Jon Stewart's standup obviously focused more on the overall state of affairs - which as many can probably guess, can make for some good humor.
Stewart's delivery is pretty much what you would expect, given his demeanor on The Daily Show; it is very steady and calm. The show was about 1.5 hours long, which meant that at some points the delivery could use an extra kick to get the audience's attention again, but overall it was entertaining.
The crowd there was a lot older than I expected, given that I seem to view a good percentage of Stewart's audience as college students. A lady there did bring her 8 year old daughter to the show - which was a big mistake, as you can guess, there is no TV censor when Jon Stewart is performing live.
Our time in NC was great, I got some work done and we got a lot of house-stuff taken care of too. We'll be down again for Thanksgiving, and hopefully there will be some more progress to look at when that rolls around.
The one project I started when I returned was that notebook review I briefly mentioned earlier. The first roundup will be a roundup of the glamorous world of $600 notebooks. Why focus on the cheapest notebooks out there? Well, out of the ~7.5M people we've got reading the site every month, I'm willing to bet that a lot of you folks recommend hardware to other people. And not everyone out there, yourselves included, are interested in spending $1500+ on a notebook. So I figured I'd start small, and work my way up the price chain.
What is interesting is that most notebook manufacturers don't want these things reviewed. Out of the 5 notebooks in the roundup, we had to buy 4, the manufacturers simply refused to send review samples of those - although they had no problems sending samples of more expensive models. The reason being that most companies don't make money off of these $600 systems, and thus selling more of them isn't always their goal. They have to offer them to remain competitive, and to lure buyers in for more expensive upgrades, but in a perfect world from a manufacturer's standpoint, the $600 notebook wouldn't exist.
I've probably given away too much about the roundup already, as it is still about 2 - 3 weeks away, but work is progressing nicely.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
7 Comments
View All Comments
Zirconium - Wednesday, November 9, 2005 - link
While most of us would do a clean install to get rid of any junk that Dell/Gateway/Toshiba/HP/Compaq/Other big brand would put on it, many users do not. Will you take a brief look to see how much the preloaded software slows down the computer?Zoomer - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Look forward to this, it's always interesting to see if buying a laptop for real work (read: lousy processor, lousy gfx card :D) is worth it than a so called "work" laptop (with x800 graphics!). ;)tappertrainman - Thursday, November 3, 2005 - link
If anyone is ever interested in a good stand-up comedian, look up Brian Regan. He is totally clean, yet is still the funniest guy I have ever heard. My face hurt for the next day after seeing his stand-up routine, it was about an hour-and-a-half of non-stop laughing. Take a listen to his CD or DVD if you want before plunking down the cash on a live show. He's also been on Letterman several times and didn't seem as funny, but he's much more animated in person and that's partially what makes him so funny. Hope you enjoy!Live - Wednesday, November 2, 2005 - link
That is right on. I almost always know what to buy for myself. I know what I want and I am prepared to pay for it. I find it much harder to know how low I can go in my recomendations for others.
Marlin1975 - Wednesday, November 2, 2005 - link
Yep i think most can live with a sub $900 laptop that has a 15.4 inch screen, sempron3000+ (or maybe faster now) etc...The only thing I hope you really look at is the video cards. That seems the first place to cut cost. I know the newwer AMD laptops from Compaq don;t have the 128mb of ram anymore (not even a pay option), only shared that and pretty much all Celeron laptops have the pos Intel graphics that are shared mem as well.
Delta Rhythms - Wednesday, November 2, 2005 - link
While video cards are important, I doubt anyone would purchase a laptop in this price range for gaming purposes. For $600 I'm interested in mobility: battery life, weight, and ability to get office work done without being cramped.Marlin1975 - Wednesday, November 2, 2005 - link
Video card is not all about gaming. Having its own memory will allow some programs to function much better, like editing, and some video carsd have better video outputs then others. So a good video card is not all about gaming, but it does not hurt if it can run the eye candy at a fast pace either. ;)