I expected to see a lot of laptops at OSCON. (Including the strange and rude practice of emailing and chatting on your laptop during sessions that you've paid a lot of money to go to.)
I also expected to see Linux running on most of them. After all, this is OSCON. I was a little embarassed about running Windows on my laptop. (I dual boot with Linux, but Windows is my primary environment.)
What surprised me was the number of Apple Mac laptops. These were definitely the machine of choice with both attendees and speakers. Although there were lots of other brands around, I'd guess about half the machines were Macs. That's way more than their overall market share. Although Macs do run a version of unix, they also run a lot of proprietary software. Something must be attractive enough with these machines to overcome open source fans' resistance to non-open software.
I discovered the Apple store downtown in Portland so I got a chance to fondle the toys. I have to admit these are very sexy machines. I especially like the looks of the new black or white 13" Mac laptops. (I think the silver ones look too much like every other machine.) They are very sexy pieces of hardware with a very sexy gui. I want one! I also love the Mac Mini - such a contrast to big clunky desktop boxes.
1 comment:
I agree with Andrew that it's rude to be chatting and e-mailing while "listening" to someone's presentation. I think most people aren't paying to attend a conference. Their employer is. That's part of the reason they don't see any need to pay attention. The conference is just a field trip from school -- something they have a right to, but not anything that they have to put any effort into.
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