Yozora said:
@"Genesis" Maybe look up US package forwarding services. I've used one for Japan, tenso.com, and they gave me a Japanese shipping address, and then sent the package to me once it arrived. Any US-based ones are probably similar. It might be a little pricey, so they're good for things you really want, but can't get otherwise.
Thanks Yozora. Great idea! :good:
smalpierre said:
@"Genesis" I thought you were a south african! Why are you in the UAE? One of the locations of the company I've been working for is in Dubai. I'll never go there, I don't care how wealthy the nation is. I could probably be thrown in jail for life just for words I've said - words I didn't even speak there. Ideas in my head ... You couldn't pay me enough to get on that plane. I'd risk it to see the monster white sharks in SA though!
Haha .... I'm a South African who emigrated to Canada and am living in the UAE. My family lives in South Africa, so I'm probably more South African than Canadian in my roots. I do love Canada however and what it stands for so am a proud Canadian living abroad. You'd love the surfs in South Africa. Plenty of sharks on the Eastern side where the Indian Ocean is and very challenging waves. Not easy to dive there. Best part of the beaches however for what you like to do is Mozambique. There are some awesome islands and those who love diving usually like to visit those areas.
smalpierre said:
Are there import restrictions on encryption there? Do we have export restrictions? Might have something to do with availability. A forwarder might work, but they'll be looking at it in customs and might charge you some kind of import tax.
I'm sure there is a way of doing it, I'm just a bit lazy to sort that out. The UAE by the way is one of the easiest countries to import things into. It's just the country where one imports from where the problem lies. If I should return to Canada I'll have to give up my international purchases as customs regulations are tough and duties high. There are common sense limitations in UAE for mail ordering things, usually after X dollar there is duty payable but I rarely get there. They also check bulk items. I.e. if you get six and maybe even 12 of something, it's more or less OK, but more than that, they ask you to come in and explain. In the UAE there are long working hours. Shopping malls are open from 10 to 10. Some of the shops are open from 9:00 to 11:00. Seven days a week with slightly shorter hours on Fridays: 9:00 to 12:00 and 4:00 to 11:00. Feels strange when I'm in Europe or the UK and shops close so early. UAE is a shopping Mecca. I'm sure if I really looked properly I'll find someone who could get the exact laptop for me.
smalpierre said:
I will have to concede though, that I haven't been geeking out on hardware for a long time. I don't really care as long as it does what I want. I don't game, so I don't really NEED to know how top of the line hardware stacks up against the other brand anymore. I used to because I ran servers on consumer grade hardware back when hardware was really expensive. Even then I learned the hard way that it's not all about numbers and specs.
I've always owned no-brand computers. The kind that is assembled from preferred parts and specs. At a lower price. They seem to have become a dying breed however. Last upgrade was a Dell, my first brand computer ever. Kind'a boring and I miss my GeForce graphics card. Next time I'm going back to something assembled again. Maybe I'll try it myself. Something super powerful with super surround sound, best colours ever. I really like my desktops. But am acquiring a taste for laptops too, particularly lightweight laptops that are genuinely portable. I still have to enter the world of smart phones. Am being teased about that at work when my very old and trusted Nokia is noticed
Now this is a real solid phone - battery lasts for a week, it's safe and secure, no blue tooth, solid ring, made of genuine materials. This is the exact model and color phone I have - a real phone - the number pad is awesome:
smalpierre said:
I saw a 450mhz powerPC RISC with far superior subsystems (SCSI instead of IDE, better RAM but the same quantity ...) blow the DOORS off of a p4 800mhz machine. At the same time - comparing x86 hardware, the intel 600mhz p4 slayed the 800mhz Athlon, even though it was running a SLOWER memory bus, mostly because of on die cache ... and at the same time I saw a SPARC 400mhz with half the memory run them ALL into the dirt shamefully when you're talking about a database server with a ton of concurrent connections.
:shock: That sounds like mega hardware ... a little over the top of my head, but I'm learning. What's your desktop dream machine?
