people you never thought you'd like

Currently watching a documentary detailing Ian Paisley's changing role in Northern Ireland, summarised by the title: "Paisley: From Troublemaker to Peacemaker". I'm not sure what bits are archived interviews of the time covered, and what bits are specifically made for the documentary, but he's just regaled the interviewer with a story of meeting the Irish Prime Minister over breakfast in London and having, as he put it, "an ecumenical meeting over two hard-boiled eggs", and I'm thinking he's a funny guy, he's a well-spoken guy, and he's actually someone I wouldn't mind having a chat with over a few pints.

Which is something of a surprise to me, but there you go.

macintax

I'm still toying with the idea of replacing my 8-year-old Compaq Armada M700 with a shiny new Macbook Pro. Out of curiosity, I did a bit of poking around on the Dell site to try and find a roughly equivalent laptop to the Macbook I'm looking at (much as tongodeon has done with far more care and attention previously) and this is what I've found (the Dell model is the Precision M4300):

Manufacturer	Apple	Dell
CPU	2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo	2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory	2GB	2GB
Disk	160GB SATA 5400 RPM	160GB SATA 7200 RPM
Optical Disk	8x Superdrive	8x DVD+/-RW
Screen	1440 x 900 15 inch	1680 x 1050 15.4 inch
Video H/W	NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM	Unspecified "high-performance" NVIDIA Quadro, as far as I can tell
PRICE	€2,399.00	€1279.00

So it looks like the Apple Tax in Ireland is pretty hefty for this particular box: over €1000, and you're getting a slower hard-drive and a lower-resolution screen into the bargain.

It's still a prettier machine, though.