Right 2 Know

The campaign to prevent the South African government from trampling on our basic freedoms through the imposition of odious legislation, is gaining momentum.

Make your opposition to the Protection of Information Bill and the Media Appeals Tribunal, known. Join the Right 2 Know campaign here.

These are just some of the individual signatories:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nadine Gordimer, Prof Kader Asmal, Zakes Mda, Prof. Max Price, Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Zackie Achmat, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Mary Burton, Mazibuko K Jara, Prof Hoosen Coovadia, Max Du Preez, Andre Brink, Pippa Green, Breyten Breytenbach, Cathi Albertyn, Rhoda Khadalie and Andrew Feinstein

For more international and local Organizations who have added their voice to Right 2 Know, click here. Add your signature not because they have; add it because it’s the right thing to do.

Beautiful Black Dream Machine

I placed my order today for this beautiful, black, behemoth of a dream machine inspired by the F-117 stealth bomber. It’s wiped out my bank balance, and probably consigned me to being as tight-fisted as Scrooge for the coming months, but it’s worth every penny. Really!

What am I rambling on about? No it’s not the latest sports car from Lamborghini (I’m an Aston Martin kinda guy, anyway) ; it’s the latest extreme gaming notebook (laptop, to you South Africans) from ASUS. You didn’t figure me for a gamer, did you? Well, you’re right; I don’t have the requisite skills, or inclination for such a, err pastime. I’ve opted for this model because of its processing power and HD graphics card which will come in handy for HD video editing, which is a more, err worthy pastime.

I did look at a custom-built Alienware machine, but the prices made my eyes water. The specification on this beauty (the ASUS G73JW is the latest release in the G73-series that is available to South Africa) is comparable, and at a lower price; not that much lower, but so-so:

• Intel Core i7 Quad Processor i7-740QM (6Mb cache, 1.73GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.93GHz
• 8192MB DDR3-1066MHz SO-Dimm Memory (4 x 2048MB)
• 1 TB (2 x 500GB) SATA HDD 7200rpm (Hard Disk Drive)
• 17.3″ Full HD LED display (1920 x 1080)
• Blu-ray ROM/DVD Multi Writer optical drive
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M graphics processor with 1.5 GB GDDR5 dedicated memory
• 2.0 MP built-in webcam
• All the other bells and whistles such as Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, backlit keyboard, microphone and headphone ports, 3 x USB 2.0 and 1 x USB 3.0 ports and 1 x HDMI port
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
• 2-year collect and return Warranty

I have opted to fork out the fairly hefty additional cost to replace the standard boot-up HDD (500GB) with a Corsair 256GB SSD (Solid State Drive), which ASUS-SA will do for me, before shipping. All of this makes the beast weight in at around 3.85 kilograms, so lugging it around is going to be somewhat painful. Fortunately, the cool-looking ROG (Republic of Gamers) back-pack they’re throwing in, should make this task a little more bearable, for when it is absolutely necessary to take this baby along for the ride.

As you can imagine, I can’t wait to get my hands on this beaut and caress that lovely back-lit keyboard with those oh-so-spaciously-placed keys, gigantic touch-pad and rubbery black finish. Just two more weeks, and this baby will be all mine…