I've had several weeks to enjoy/get used to my MacBook Pro. As I expected, there are things about this experience I enjoyed, and things that make my head explode. Here's a list of the current pros and cons that come to mind.

PROS

Power plug. The "mag safe" power plug is really nice. For one, it's a magnetic plug, so you just get the plug near to the MBP and it gets sucked right in. This means the plug is also fairly "trip safe," although I hope to...

It's been a rough month. Two friends got sent to the hospital for different reasons, my favorite cat had a stroke and had to be put down, endless car problems, familial obligations, and I'm just wiped. I haven't made any progress on buying my new PC, and work has stopped on my case mod competition entry. Meh.

Plus I have to admit that my original plan is starting to look bad. I cringe with every new post detailing the 790i motherboard's neverending corruption problems. Water cooling...

So, I went out n' done it. I bought a MacBook Pro. If you haven't followed my previous blathering on the topic, my Dell XPS m170 laptop has been experiencing several hardware issues. I used that laptop for both work and home, so after three years of hard use I drove it into the dirt and kicked out its teeth. Then I spit on it and called it names. But it was very dear to me, a solid machine, and by that I mean it weighs 13 pounds. Seriously though, it was one of the earliest gaming laptops worth...

So I got to spend a little time last night working on my great experiment in watercooling. I'm keeping hush about it, because it's really a prototype for something in the case mod competition. And oh man, what a disaster. Water was everywhere. The funnel didn't fit, the barbs didn't seal, the pump choked on an oxygen-rich atmosphere, and my impromptu, temporary reservoir did a fine job of being way too tall. I learned a few practical tidbits about the what's and why's of water cooling, even though...

EK has 9800 gx2 waterblocks up on their site. They actually list three different products. Here they are with today's US$ currency conversion:

EK-FC9800 GX2 SLI for $194.46
EK-FC9800 GX2 SLI - Acetal for 202.43.
EK-FC9800 GX2 SLI - Nickel-Plated for $209.93

Now, what's strange about the first two products is that they have identical descriptions, but I suppose they intended to change the word acrylic in the 2nd description to acetal. I didn't think there...