@sighing: You know, just because you can't tell the difference doesn't mean there isn't a difference. Try shooting w/ a 400m lens on a $35 monopod some time.

@mongoosemuffin: Gitzo is the brand a lot of pros swear by. I don't like them any more than my Manfrotto monopods. What you're buying is material (carbon fiber), light weight, good design (easy and quick to extend and collapse), ability to support heavy weights. Plus you're paying a premium for the name.

@totoro: Maybe they're holding it wrong?

@cheeseycom: :) I'm in my mother's house a fair bit.

@KamWrex: Sorry, I lied. It's 8.8 seconds.

Every old person I know would just turn to me and say 'Could you unplug that for me?' No strain on their hands at all!

@duroc: The Volt is supposed to do 0-60 in about 8.5. You won't win drag races with that, but it's fine for its purpose

@tegz: Hey, my hat's off to your cousin who can afford to do that. But yeah, that's pretty sad.

@justinpe: Mine does! Nobody ever answers, though.

@awer25: Outstanding!

@dgkz0idberg: Really? Mine has never crashed. Return it. Or chat with a 'genius'. THEN return it. :)

@kooster_v2: I have two partitions on my Macbook Air (w/ SSD.) The main one runs OSX and the smaller Bootcamp partition runs Windows 7 Pro.

I think people go WAY overboard gushing over their Macbook Airs.

@tn544: I don't get it. You were back online because of your WP7 device, not your laptop.

Great stuff. I cut my teeth on displays like this.

I use my laptops to handle large photographs (about 19MB or so.) I bought a 1.6GHz Macbook Air 11" w/ 4GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. Getting RAW images into Lightroom on the Air is WAY faster than it is when I ingest them into Lightroom running on a 7200 rpm drive in a 2.4GHz Macbook Pro w/ 4GB RAM.

@Totenglocke42: I'm not sure what familiarity w/ technology has to do w/ general knowledge or intelligence. This is a geek blog. We are not typical. That doesn't make others stupid. In fact, it probably means they're smarter than us for not spending all their time obsessing over computers and phones.

@CountChocula: Agree completely.

$180 seems like a lot for some steam-curved, polished plywood.

@nixternal: Did you take the opportunity to tell your Spandexed friend that it's not a particularly good look for him?