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lots of macs!!!
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Anoesis
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Apr 19, 2008, 10:04 AM
 
     
Faust
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Apr 19, 2008, 11:14 AM
 
That's not true. I can see at least one more PC laptop left center.

Funny picture. And scary too, in a way. I remember my Uni days and we still wrote things down with pencil and paper and you'd see one or two people with laptops. That was only a few years ago. What happened?
     
Cold Warrior
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Apr 19, 2008, 11:25 AM
 
Originally Posted by Faust View Post
That's not true. I can see at least one more PC laptop left center.

Funny picture. And scary too, in a way. I remember my Uni days and we still wrote things down with pencil and paper and you'd see one or two people with laptops. That was only a few years ago. What happened?
Me too. It wasn't that long ago. No one took laptops - just notebooks, literally - to class. We took notes by hand, although I find it easier and faster to type. Maybe if I ever go back for a master's, by then we'll all have virtual projected keyboards from our iPhones.
     
starman
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Apr 19, 2008, 12:31 PM
 
I find it easier to write. It's faster and you don't hear a room full of people typing.

Home - Twitter - Sig Wall-Retired - Flickr
     
Doofy
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Apr 19, 2008, 12:48 PM
 
Note to occupants of that class: Using a Mac does not make up for your other style shortcomings.
Been inclined to wander... off the beaten track.
That's where there's thunder... and the wind shouts back.
     
philm
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Apr 19, 2008, 12:55 PM
 
Anyone know about this? Who are the students, what course, where?
     
Cold Warrior
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Apr 19, 2008, 01:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by philm View Post
Anyone know about this? Who are the students, what course, where?
A number are wearing shirts with MIZZOU.

mizzou - Google Search
     
MacinTommy
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Apr 19, 2008, 01:27 PM
 
I spy a red MacBook...
     
Laminar
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Apr 19, 2008, 01:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by starman View Post
I find it easier to write. It's faster and you don't hear a room full of people typing.
Especially in a math class, where you'd spend ages trying to type out equations that can be easily handwritten.
     
64stang06
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Apr 19, 2008, 02:43 PM
 
What, no hotties?
MacBook Pro 13" 2.8GHz Core i7/8GB RAM/750GB Hard Drive - Mac OS X 10.7.3
     
brassplayersrock²
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Apr 19, 2008, 02:45 PM
 
i also see with my lil eye a modded front apple
     
Zeeb
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Apr 19, 2008, 03:25 PM
 
Somehow, this picture makes me feel like I want to get a PC next time around.
     
Laminar
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Apr 19, 2008, 03:38 PM
 
Originally Posted by MacinTommy View Post
I spy a red MacBook...
Originally Posted by brassplayersrock² View Post
i also see with my lil eye a modded front apple
Good thing you were the first one.
     
analogika
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Apr 19, 2008, 03:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
Good thing you were the first one.
And that you were here to let him know.
     
brassplayersrock²
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Apr 19, 2008, 04:18 PM
 
actually i was referring to the apple on the lid. not the red macbook case. glad you could get your daily need of assholeness out of your system.
     
Andrew Stephens
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Apr 20, 2008, 03:53 AM
 
I'd say the college/university in question would be one of those that hands out ibooks to students or at least offers a mega discount to stoods.

In which case I like the butt headedness of the Acer owner, a lot.
     
andreas_g4
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Apr 20, 2008, 02:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by starman View Post
I find it easier to write. It's faster and you don't hear a room full of people typing.
Yes, you do, if you are the only one writing with hand…
     
f1000
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Apr 21, 2008, 03:49 AM
 
Originally Posted by Anoesis View Post
Someone, please caption the Acer user with the word "FAIL!"
     
OwlBoy
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Apr 21, 2008, 04:59 AM
 
Man, the ammount of wifi flying in that room…

-Owl
     
MacosNerd
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Apr 21, 2008, 07:57 AM
 
Wow, now that's a lot of macs.
The last time I took a class (evening part time program) Most people had laptops, but then most of us were working slobs and took their work laptops from the office since we needed to do work at home as well.

I write faster, easier, and more accurate on my laptop then with pen and paper. I do take notes in meetings and such with a notepad and pen, but these are just short bulleted lines. Anything more comprehensive, I'd use a laptop.
     
OwlBoy
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Apr 21, 2008, 08:37 AM
 
I would assume this is a school where laptops are provided with tuition. Thus the crazy number of one type via a contract of some sort.

-Owl
     
ghporter
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Apr 21, 2008, 09:04 AM
 
My university's dental school used to include a PowerBook in the tuition-they had all their texts in digital form, and the reader was Mac-specific, so every dental student got a new Mac as part of their orientation. I have some pictures of one of those Mac-fests somewhere. Oh, and there ARE hotties in that one-dental school starts in the summer here, and it does get pretty hot where I am, so the combination of pretty ladies and hot weather makes for attractive photo opportunities.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Kenneth
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Apr 21, 2008, 03:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by f1000 View Post
Someone, please caption the Acer user with the word "FAIL!"
I see it as the other way around.
     
f1000
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Apr 21, 2008, 03:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by MacosNerd View Post
I write faster, easier, and more accurate on my laptop then with pen and paper.
Based on that sentence, I'd hate to see what you'd write using a pen and paper.

GIGO
     
- - e r i k - -
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Apr 22, 2008, 08:41 AM
 
Originally Posted by Kenneth View Post
I see it as the other way around.
Why? Individuality is great, but individuality for the sake of being different in the face of common sense and informed decisions is just dumb.

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- - e r i k - -
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Apr 22, 2008, 08:42 AM
 
Or in another analogy: If you are the only lemming jumping off the cliff are you the winner or the loser?

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Dakar the Fourth
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Apr 22, 2008, 08:45 AM
 
I find the assumption that these people are using the laptops to take notes laughable.
     
ghporter
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Apr 22, 2008, 09:07 AM
 
The last class I had in a lecture hall like that was a combination of people from a number of different programs. It was a professional ethics class. My class (we're about to finish the second of three years in a professional masters' program) would use computers during class to work on material for the class. We wouldn't take notes as such, but we had to write a short paper on the topic of the day's presentation, and most of us would get that taken care of during class. Other groups in that class (generally freshmen-I have no clue why we were mixed in with them), would do anything but pay attention in class. I saw two guys sitting right in front of me playing Internet Pool! It was pathetic.

Back during the time I was getting my prereqs, in my Abnormal Psych class (the toughest of the psych classes I had, and taught by the toughest professor), there were people regularly playing solitaire and such right there during the lecture. Let me emphasize how bad an idea this was by pointing out that half the test was on the lecture and the other half on the reading, and the lecture served to emphasize and illustrate ideas from the reading-but would introduce entirely new material and concepts. In short, you had to do ALL the reading and pay attention to ALL of the lecture in order to do anything useful on the test. This was just plain depressing to me.

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JoshuaZ
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Apr 22, 2008, 09:17 AM
 
Wow. Three years ago I remember thinking to myself "Man, that guy with the dell is such a douche." (He was)

I honestly remember seeing only one or two people bring their laptops to class through my entire 4 years of college. (There was a guy with a Newton, but he was a complete douche) Everyone had paper.

But the library was always full of laptops. I would know. I worked there 30 hours a week.

Why bring a laptop to class when you KNOW you'll just be IMing or facebooking the entire time? Seems like a waste.
     
Zeeb
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Apr 22, 2008, 09:28 AM
 
Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - View Post
Why? Individuality is great, but individuality for the sake of being different in the face of common sense and informed decisions is just dumb.
How do you know that was the case?
     
ghporter
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Apr 22, 2008, 09:30 AM
 
I actually found it helpful to take notes by hand and then transcribe them between classes. And my Dell laptop (a behemoth weighing in at about 8 pounds) took so long to boot up and be useful that I'd miss ten minutes of class just waiting for it, so why bother?

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Kenneth
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Apr 22, 2008, 11:11 AM
 
Well... in general, Mac users are still the minority. However, from that specific picture the PC user(s) is/are the minority.

In the past,I used paper/pencil or a MiniDisc recorder during lectures.
     
Zeeb
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Apr 22, 2008, 12:56 PM
 
I still take notes by hand. I've always found that more efficient than any other method for me since I frequently have to draw arrows here and there to connect ideas and write material in the margins. It's hard to do that kind of thing on the fly with a laptop--the lectures move fast without time for formatting. Don't have to lug a laptop on top of any books I may also need to carry as well. The *only* time I've carried my laptop to a class was once when the computer in the classroom broke down. I needed a laptop to keep up with the software we were learning to use so I brought it.
     
Laminar
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Apr 22, 2008, 07:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by JoshuaZ View Post
Why bring a laptop to class when you KNOW you'll just be IMing or facebooking the entire time? Seems like a waste.
That's precisely why I'd take my iBook to class. There's nothing worse than a guy with a funny foreign accent reading directly off of a PowerPoint. I'd skip, but often assignments were turned in or handed out during class, and I didn't want to miss that.
     
Railroader
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Apr 22, 2008, 08:31 PM
 
Must be a short class as they are all running off battery.
     
Railroader
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Apr 22, 2008, 08:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
The last class I had in a lecture hall like that was a combination of people from a number of different programs. It was a professional ethics class. My class (we're about to finish the second of three years in a professional masters' program) would use computers during class to work on material for the class. We wouldn't take notes as such, but we had to write a short paper on the topic of the day's presentation, and most of us would get that taken care of during class. Other groups in that class (generally freshmen-I have no clue why we were mixed in with them), would do anything but pay attention in class. I saw two guys sitting right in front of me playing Internet Pool! It was pathetic.

Back during the time I was getting my prereqs, in my Abnormal Psych class (the toughest of the psych classes I had, and taught by the toughest professor), there were people regularly playing solitaire and such right there during the lecture. Let me emphasize how bad an idea this was by pointing out that half the test was on the lecture and the other half on the reading, and the lecture served to emphasize and illustrate ideas from the reading-but would introduce entirely new material and concepts. In short, you had to do ALL the reading and pay attention to ALL of the lecture in order to do anything useful on the test. This was just plain depressing to me.
Not everyone has the same learning styles. I learn/absorb information better while distracted during a lecture. If I sit and listen to a lecturer my mind wanders and I day dream and don't pick up a single thing the lecturer is saying. Before I had a laptop I would bring magazines or books to read during lectures. When teachers would tell me they were disappointed I wasn't paying attention I would just point out that I was usually in the top 10% of the class and that I was learning what they were teaching, which was the whole point of going to class.
     
PlacidTubs
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Apr 22, 2008, 08:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
Must be a short class as they are all running off battery.
I can still squeeze over three hours out of my four year old iBook. I've never had a class longer than three hours.
     
Railroader
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Apr 22, 2008, 08:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by PlacidTubs View Post
I can still squeeze over three hours out of my four year old iBook. I've never had a class longer than three hours.
They're not using iBooks.

About half of my classes were 2+ hours twice a week.
     
brassplayersrock²
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Apr 22, 2008, 08:53 PM
 
lets compile a list of what this thread is not about shall we?
     
PlacidTubs
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Apr 22, 2008, 09:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
They're not using iBooks.

About half of my classes were 2+ hours twice a week.
So brand new macbooks and macbook pros have a battery life under 2 hours?

I'm glad I never upgraded then
     
Oisín
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Apr 22, 2008, 09:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
They're not using iBooks.

About half of my classes were 2+ hours twice a week.
All my classes this semester are between four and five hours and I have no problems with battery life.

Originally Posted by starman
I find it easier to write. It's faster …
You must be either a very fast writer or a very slow typer. I type at least twice as quickly as I can write by hand. Not to mention that taking notes is possibly the worst kind of writing to be doing by hand, since you constantly need to add or remove text from pretty much everything you write.
( Last edited by Oisín; Apr 22, 2008 at 10:54 PM. )
     
hayesk
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Apr 22, 2008, 10:16 PM
 
Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
Must be a short class as they are all running off battery.
I get 5.5 hours from my MacBook battery.
     
MacinTommy
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Apr 22, 2008, 10:21 PM
 
Not wandering too far off this important debate.. I spy a green MacBook.
     
Railroader
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Apr 22, 2008, 10:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by Oisín View Post
All my classes this semester are between four and five hours and I have no problems with battery life.
Cool. I wish I had your battery.

Originally Posted by Oisín View Post
You must be either a very fast writer or a very slow typer. I type at least twice as quickly as I can write by hand. Not to mention that taking notes is possibly the worst kind of writing to be doing by hand, since you constantly need to add or remove text from pretty much everything you write.
Please label the quote you are responding to. You are certainly not responding to me.
     
Oisín
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Apr 22, 2008, 10:54 PM
 
No, sorry, laziness took over again; that was Starman’s quote. Fixed.
     
King Bob On The Cob
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Apr 22, 2008, 10:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by Zeeb View Post
I still take notes by hand. I've always found that more efficient than any other method for me since I frequently have to draw arrows here and there to connect ideas and write material in the margins. It's hard to do that kind of thing on the fly with a laptop--the lectures move fast without time for formatting. Don't have to lug a laptop on top of any books I may also need to carry as well. The *only* time I've carried my laptop to a class was once when the computer in the classroom broke down. I needed a laptop to keep up with the software we were learning to use so I brought it.
OmniGraffle is excellent. (I use it to do flow of mind-type note taking, as straight notes does not really work for me).

Only works in big lectures though. Gotta go to the good ol' pen and paper in discussion.
     
Railroader
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Apr 23, 2008, 08:05 AM
 
Originally Posted by Oisín View Post
No, sorry, laziness took over again; that was Starman’s quote. Fixed.
Thanks
     
ghporter
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Apr 23, 2008, 08:21 AM
 
Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
Not everyone has the same learning styles. I learn/absorb information better while distracted during a lecture. If I sit and listen to a lecturer my mind wanders and I day dream and don't pick up a single thing the lecturer is saying. Before I had a laptop I would bring magazines or books to read during lectures. When teachers would tell me they were disappointed I wasn't paying attention I would just point out that I was usually in the top 10% of the class and that I was learning what they were teaching, which was the whole point of going to class.
That's an excellent point, except that your reading a magazine in front of me wouldn't distract me, but Mr. Solitaire ALWAYS was a distraction. I really don't care if he was or was not getting anything out of the lecture, but the people around him were impacted by his very active screen. I guess I could have elaborated on what bothered me about his behavior.

Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
That's precisely why I'd take my iBook to class. There's nothing worse than a guy with a funny foreign accent reading directly off of a PowerPoint. I'd skip, but often assignments were turned in or handed out during class, and I didn't want to miss that.
That's a different situation from what I'd experienced. I fortunately finished the harder classes before the guy from India joined my undergrad school's faculty. As I understand it, his accent was really thick, and he didn't seem to understand that he was hard to understand (this was in Southern Mississippi in the early 1990s). This was also before any of that faculty began using PowerPoint for any sort of lesson, thankfully.

ANY lecturer that reads straight off the slides is not earning his/her pay. If that's the lesson content, then it should be posted for everyone to download so the class time could be used for something effective. I'm sorry you had to put up with that kind of crap.

Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
Must be a short class as they are all running off battery.
I think it's either an introduction to what this particular class is supposed to do online, or the class' digital reference/text material. When I finally get a chance to find 'em, my "big ol' lecture hall full of Macs" picture will show that very thing: "this is how you use your brand new Mac, and this is how your DVD-based textbooks work."

However, if I turn off my AirPort card, I get over three hours on my MBP's battery, so just using the machine to take notes is doable. On the other hand, every lecture hall in my school has power outlets aplenty-if not very conveniently placed. Our halls have these long, continuous tables with paired, swing out seats, and on the desktop there are little "outlet pods" centered between the paired seats. Now try plugging a MBP power adapter into a little hemisphere sticking up from a shallow table, then putting the MBP on the table so you can type on it. Not graceful, but doable.
( Last edited by ghporter; Apr 23, 2008 at 08:35 AM. )

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Apr 23, 2008, 09:19 AM
 
"Now try plugging a MBP power adapter into a little hemisphere sticking up from a shallow table, then putting the MBP on the table so you can type on it. Not graceful, but doable."


hence why you bring along the 3 prong plug. we have the same type of tables in some of the classrooms here, and like in your lecture halls, all classrooms have plugs a plenty. we're also implementing wireless into all the buildings on campus.
     
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Apr 23, 2008, 09:41 AM
 

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