Category: Technology

By Alex Geli –

As William Shakespeare once said, “Oh laptops, where art thou laptops?”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t The Great Bard of Stratford himself, but rather parents all over the nation.

Now is the time where moms and dads can be found scurrying around stores like Best Buy, Radioshack and Circuit City for laptops. Why the outbreak of these wide-eyed head-scratchers? They are trying to find one of these cutting edge gizmos for their soon-to-be high school graduating offspring. Starting now and going on through June, these creatures will be on the hunt for the perfect thinking machine.

So the decision is… Mac? PC? Tablet? The argument can go on for days.

“It depends,” said technology teacher Nick Crowther. If my son or daughter is going into graphics, then I’d get a Mac. If my son or daughter is going into computer programming or if he/she is a gamer, then I’d get a PC.”

“(Personally,) I’m a Mac guy,” said Crowther. “Since I teach web design and animation every day, I’m comfortable with them.

A junior, Matthew Weidinger, is also on the Mac band wagon.

“I would get a Macbook Pro because it’s reliable,” he said, “and it’ll last you a good ten years before you have to do anything to upgrade it.”

During a scuffle with the two different viewpoints, Weidinger and senior Zane Sensenig put out their opinion at the lunch table on a silver platter containing Italian cheese pizza, fresh fruit and their choice of laptop.

“Yeah, and he also has to pay three times the amount of what he’s getting,” Sensenig said.

After Weidinger pointed out that a Macbook Pro can be bought off of Craigslist for cheap, Sensenig fired right back.

“I could get a brand new one for less than what you’re paying-” Sensenig said before getting cut off.

“-Well it’ll be crap,” Weidinger intervened, “and most likely it’ll break within two years and you’ll have to buy a new one.”

Crowther, though, had to agree with Sensenig on that point.

“Macs are very expensive,” he said, noting that you could get a PC for cheaper while having “similar processing.”

Sensenig, Zach Sheaffer – who are both seniors, are not only rooming together, but majoring in Web Development at Pennsylvania College of Technology next year – and Nick Weidinger – another senior of Crowther’s animation class – have a slightly different take:  PC all the way.

“Windows is just more customizable,” Sheaffer said.

“(A PC) is more of a productive computer,” Sensenig said. “Graphic design? All for Macs.”

He and Sheaffer combined their knowledge about computers and their passion towards PC’s to articulate this statement:  “Macs are for people who are novice computer users.”

Currently, Sheaffer has an HP Pavilion but said he is going to get another laptop for college.

“I don’t know what I want yet. (All I know is that) I want the top of the line,” he added.

He also is going to get a PC desktop for their dorm room “with two Acer monitors.”

Sensenig, on the other hand, does not currently own a laptop, but is going to get one for graduation, he said. Not having one specific kind in mind, he has the specs all planned out.

“It should have at least 4 gigabytes of RAM, aka memory, a 500 gigabyte hard drive, an ability to have a video card added to it and at least a quad core processor,” Sensenig laid out.

“No netbooks (though),” he added. “Netbooks are trash. You might as well get an iPad because they’re essentially a netbook. They just do ‘it’ better and it’s more fun to use.”

Nick (Weidinger) is more comfortable with PC’s and “fancy” them over Macs.

Actually…

“I would fancy anything…,” he said, then catching himself.

“… anything that’s not a Mac.”

Here is the list provided by Amazon.com of the “Most Wished For in Laptop Computers.”

Choose wisely, parents.

By Blake Wales –

Guns, Grenades and Gadgets….

Call of Duty Black Ops, one of the top selling, first-person shooter games of all time, is back at it again.

Treyarch and Activison have tried to give their players more variety in their most-played multiplayer mode. They did this by initially releasing the map pack “First Strike,” which gave the players who purchased it four maps – “Discovery” “Kowloon” “Stadium” and “Berlin Wall.”

The pack also included one zombies map “Ascension.” But on May 3, they released “Escalation,” a map pack which supplies players with four additional multiplayer maps and a zombies map “Call of the Dead.”

One of the first maps you come across in the new pack is called “Stockpile.”   This map is supposed to represent an urban village in Russia but also has a Cold War theme because of the middle building which features armaments. The center building in this map is really the heart and the key location. This building features doors that can be operated from inside the building and outside.

The next map is called “Hotel.”  This map is a branch from the Cuban hotel in the original map from Black Ops call “Havana.” This map features an operational elevator that allows players to move to different floors of the hotel. This map also provides a lot of places for the players to hide and includes a few flanking points as well.

The third multiplayer map is called “Convoy” which is the scene of an ambush by Soviet forces on a United States convoy.

Snipers will love this map because of the high positions. But this map is also good for “run and gunners” who want to get around the map quickly.

The fourth and most favored map by Xbox players is called “Zoo.”

The location is, of course, a zoo.  But not just any zoo, it’s an abandoned Soviet zoo. This map features a broken monorail that runs throughout most of the map, an advantage point for players who can advance to this key point.

These maps are available now to Xbox live custumers for the price of 1200 Microsoft points (1600 Microsoft= $19.99). This pack costs the same amount as the first map pack “First Strike.”

If you want to learn more about the zombies map “Call of the Dead” you should download the pack and play it. Hopefully you can survive to talk about it.