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MBA Recess

November 27, 2009

in MBA experience,Side Notes

When instructor in Financial Accounting II told us at the very first session that we would not have a class on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and we would have to learn material for that week on our own, I felt a bit dissappointed. First, because for me personally the face time in the classroom is very important to have. Second, because the material in this particular MBA course is quite challenging for me, and I would prefer to have it explained in the class first and then to study additionally with the textbook and exercises.

Only on Wednesday afternoon I realized what a blessing in disguise was that class cancellation. At my work we received a three hour earlier release because of the eve of Thanksgiving. This allowed me to do some important errands that I had been postponing for a while. By the time I got home I realized that going to school would be a real drag. I just enjoyed my night at home thoroughly.

I also took my family to the movies that night. By the way, Fantastic Mr. Fox is absolutely hilarious. You would not think that a puppet animated movie can possibly be something really good, but it is absolutely fantastic (you are actually hinted to this in the title). We do not have a very big collection of DVD’s in our family, but this is the movie I will definitely get on DVD when it is out.

Thursday I spent almost like a typical American: lots of food, drinks, sleep, minus football, as I am not really a sports fan.

Friday, I undertook a major upgrade to my home desktop computer. I already mentioned how much I liked Windows 7 on my new laptop. That’s why I wanted to install it on my desktop too. Which I did. But the result was not as appealing as I expected.

Since my computer is quite old, the video adapter is not capable to support the cool visual Aero effects. And the manufacturer would not have updated drivers, as that video adapter is obsolete and long retired. Moreover, I was not able even to use native resolution 1680×1050 for my display. 

Next to go was my scanner as there are no drivers for it either. My Norton Ghost 10.0 which I installed to recover my backed up files would also have some minor errors at installation, but at least it worked.

In general Windows 7 did work, but the cool visual effects were gone and along with them I would have to sacrifice even some basics I got used to. After some emotional struggle I decided that the marginal benefits of partially handicapped Windows 7 were not really worth the sacrifice of the basics I already had with XP. So I reverted back to Windows XP.

Frankly, I had been considering a clean re-install of my XP even before Windows 7 became available, as my system had been running since summer 2005 and had a lot of clutter that slowed it down quite a bit.

Anyways, this is a recap of my Thanksgiving recess. As much as I love to spend time studying for my MBA classes, I really needed a little break, just to slack back and relax for a couple of days. On weekend, however, I will have to get back into my study mode, to tone my brain for the final two weeks of classes and after that – the final exams.

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Part-time MBA to Part-time PC Technician

November 14, 2009

in MBA experience

It is 2 in the morning on Saturday. I just got my laptop set up the way I want it (hopefully I can also say, that it was not just a whim, but I really need it that way). I am so excited that I want to spill my joy and share a bit about my experience.  

The Sony laptop I bought came with the Windows 7 pre-installed. The moment I opened my new computer I loved that OS: clean, fast, intuitive, with a bunch of built-in features that previously were available only as additional applications. But I knew that I wanted and would eventually need more.

 At my work I  have a few people who have been instrumental in introducing me to the exciting world of Open Source. For most of us, Microsoft users, the very idea of Open Source software idea is alien. We have become so dependent on Microsoft, and MS related applications that we have been missing on a whole new and different world which is out there for exploring and taking. Microsoft has been very successful in scaring us of from other Operating Systems, namely Linux in a variety of its flavors.

So when I got my computer I wanted to set it up differently from original configuration: I wanted to have at least a  dual-boot machine with Windows and Ubuntu Linux installed. In addition I have become very dependent on my XP, so I thought that I was not quite ready to quit it cold-turkey. Therefore my original idea was to have a triple-boot machine: Windows 7, Ubuntu, and XP- just in case.

I have my work laptop set up with dual-boot: Windows XP and Ubuntu. In that case there are particular applications that I use at work which have been originally created for Linux only. I set that laptop that way myself with some marginal help from my collegues, so I was rather confident this time that I can tackle on this task and accomplish it quickly and easily.

I was wrong. I learned more about MBR and bootloaders than I could ever care. I found out that there are different dependencies, and dramatically different proceedures and outcomes depending on in what order you install the given operating systems.

For a short while, with a lot of help with setup from my collegue, I had a reasonably well-working triple-bootable machine. But then I went on tweaking some finer points of boot process and the whole thing just fell apart. Every next step in a futile attempt to fix it and bring back to fully operational state was just making it worse, to the point when I did not have access to any of my operating systems.  This whole ordeal with intermssions was going for over a week. And really I don’t have all this time to waste on setting up the computer, because I bought and need my computer as a tool for work in my MBA classes, and not to have it as a thing to itself.

Eventually I had to make an executive decision and severe my ties with XP (isn’t this what Microsoft wanted us to do in the first place anyways?). The final stage of this laptop setup (cleaning the mess of previous installations, repartitioning of the HD, reloading of the OS’s) took me two days. It was pretty straight forward process, though time-consuming. I set up a dual-boot machine with Windows 7 and Ubuntu. My setup of the hard drive space is as follows:

  •  Windows 7   –  75 Gb
  • Ubuntu 9.10 – 15 Gb
  • Storage partition for keeping all my documents in one place accessible from both OS’s – 200 Gb

Now I still have to re-install some educational software in Windows, but this is not going to be a problem from this point. So now that I am done with configuring my laptop, I will be able to work without distraction on the homework for my MBA classes, and to post in this blog on my business school experince more regularly.

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Brand New Laptop for Freshly-Minted MBA Student

November 2, 2009

in MBA experience

This weekend I finally bought my personal laptop. I was originally thinking to hold off a purchase till I get a passing grade for my second class – Financial Accounting. But with the homework requirement in my Judgment, Uncertainty and Decisions (JUD) class to use not just Excel, but also a special proprietary add-in for statistics that came with a textbook and licensed for two years, I decided that I would go ahead and get a laptop.


Besides, there have been getting more conflicts of time over computer usage. It would also be better to have all my Business School files kept in one principal place, so I would not get confused about the versions of documents I have, and I am working on for my MBA classes. Also I don’t really have much time to go shopping for pretty much anything. So since I had time that day I put it to good use.

There were four finalists on my list of potential laptops that I compiled on my visit to Best Buy a week before. I did not really add much online research this time.  I knew that all the computers I selected were reasonably good in quality, performance, and reliability. They all had the features I deemed necessary or desirable. So the only thing was to sleep on it, for a week ;-) , and then just choose the one based on visual, tactile, and other subjective factors – just to see which one would appeal to me in the store.

By the way, one laptop which specifically brought me to the store a week before was discarded from the list altogether: Toshiba, Model: A505-S6980.  Toshiba  is a very trusted brand for laptops. I liked what I read about it online in terms of features and specifications: it was really beefed up, with 16’ monitor, but once I took it in my hands I realized that it was really too heavy and too big for me to carry around to Business School and back.

The biggest turn off for me personally was the battery sticking out from the bottom of the laptop. It’s probably a cool thing if you just use it around the house as your primary computer instead of a desktop. The battery would give you a slight tilt for better viewing too. But to carry that monster out of house would be no joke for me.   It would probably hardly fit into my computer bag anyways.

So the short list of possible laptops was as follows:

  • Toshiba E105-S1802
  • Sony VGN-NW240F
  • Sony VGN-NW270F
  • ASUS U50a-RBBML05

I went around these models again: looking at them, touching them, testing the keyboard, weighing them in my hand, just short of smelling and tasting.

Just in case not to miss on anything worth considering, I asked the sales person to show me other brands that would be comparable to the laptops on my shortlist in specs and features.

I also solicited my older daughter’s opinion on which one from the given models she would prefer should she be choosing a laptop for herself.

First went down ASUS. Nothing personal – just the wrong color in my daughter’s opinion. It was branded Merlot – some kind of burgundish to my eye.   

Toshiba went down second. It was probably the coolest of them all: with fingerprint reader, 500 GB hard drive, Bluetooth. It was also the most expensive on my list -$850. The price and 14’ display knocked it down from the list. If I were extensively travelling with the laptop, I would most likely get this one.

But in my quantitative MBA classes I realized that having to work with spreadsheets all the time is much easier if you have bigger screen – you don’t have to do as much horizontal scrolling, and you hope to be able to  see all data in columns at once without scrolling . This was actually the reason I had been considering 17’monitors in the first place.

So as for Toshiba, I thought that 14’ display was too much of a tradeoff for my intended use of the laptop given the price.

Then I had two laptops from Sony left on my list. They were very similar in most of their features. But one – Sony VGN-NW240F – had 500 GB hard drive and was a bit cheaper. The other – Sony VGN-NW270F – had ‘only’ 320 GB hard drive, but it had Blue Ray disk support.

It was kind of a tough call for me. Because the one with 500 GB hard drive (which I thought is a good thing to have in the long run) was also $50 less expensive.

Eventually I leaned to the one with the Blue Ray. I don’t have Blue Ray player at home, so if occasionally I will have a Blue Ray disk, I thought it would be good to be able to watch it on the big screen TV from my laptop.  

One interesting observation on what had indirect or subliminal influence on my final decision. In the store together with us there was a couple who were also selecting a laptop. By the time I zoomed on the last two Sonys on my list, they were already at the Sony laptop area deliberating on what particular model to choose. At some point they seemed to get inclined to the one with Blue Ray over the other two Sony models.  I think they did not have a Blue Ray player at home either, and that was a compelling feature for them. At any rate, this served as some sort of reinforcement and validation to me and I finally decided on the Sony VGN-NW270F.

By the way, the guy in that couple was wearing a sweater with Georgetown McDonough School of Business insignia. Naturally, I asked him about that. He turned out to be a 3-rd year part-time MBA student at Georgetown University. So we chatted a little about it. It was interesting for me to learn some first-hand stuff from a fellow MBA-er.

To cap it all, I am now a satisfied owner of a new laptop – Sony VGN-NW270F. I like it very much, especially the Windows 7 installed on it. I really love this new operating system. But this is a topic for a whole new post, which I hope I will be able to do one day.

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