Craig Lloyd

In November of 2010, I got my first ever smartphone: the HTC Droid Incredible. I probably would’ve gone with the iPhone if I could, but Verizon didn’t have the iPhone at the time and I liked Verizon enough that I didn’t want to switch carriers just so I could get a certain phone.

Fast forward to February of 2012. I was still in my two-year contract with the Incredible and things have obviously changed drastically those last 15 months as far as advancements in smartphone technology. I now wanted to upgrade my phone, not necessarily because I hated the Incredible, but I was just getting bored with it amongst the current selection of smartphones with larger displays and 4G data.

Obviously I couldn’t get a brand-new subsidized smartphone since I wasn’t eligible for an upgrade yet, so I had to resort to a used model since I didn’t want to pay for a full-priced unsubsidized smartphone. I ended up with a one-year-old HTC ThunderBolt for just under $150. It had the larger 4.3-inch display that I wanted, as well as the 4G LTE data that I’ve been eyeing. I ended up enjoying it for the first couple weeks, but things started going downhill after that. Battery life was awful — 3-4 hours max if I wanted to use 4G, which was most of the time. I liked having the larger display, but I quickly found out that having a bigger phone was becoming a pain in the rear end. It was clunky and heavy, and just didn’t fit well in my hands.

At this point, I started missing the Incredible. I know, it’s hard to believe that I wanted an older and slower phone over a newer and faster one, but that goes to show that newer isn’t always better. The 4G was fast, but I discovered that there wasn’t a huge difference from 3G as far as browsing and surfing Facebook and Twitter. The larger display was also definitely not what it was cracked up to be. Sure, larger screens are generally admired by folks, but mobile phones are devices that specifically don’t need larger screens. The 3.7-inch display of the Droid Incredible was perfectly sized and I completely overlooked that simply because of public hype.

I now use an iPhone 4S. It has a 3.5-inch display, which is even more perfectly-sized than the Incredible. It doesn’t have 4G, but it’s seriously not needed — 3G is easily fast enough for me. I don’t need Facebook status updates to load 0.5-seconds faster.

Overall, I love the hardware and construction of the iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, I do miss Android and there are several features that I wish the iPhone had, but the physical phones themselves just don’t meet my expectations.

I completed my first Hackintosh build yesterday (it’s for the fiance). For those that don’t know what a Hackintosh is, it’s essentially a PC computer that is hacked to run the Mac OS X operating system. However, it’s not as simple as slapping in the Mac OS X disc and clicking “Install.” You have to make sure all of the internal components will work with Apple’s OS. It’s mostly the motherboard, though, that you have to be careful with. You have to find one that’s compatible with Mac. Luckily, there’s a website that helps you out with that. You also have to find and install the correct drivers so that sound, graphics, and ethernet will work properly.

Anyway, here’s the list of components that I used:

• Apex MI-008 Mini-ITX Case
• Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 Motherboard
• Intel Core i3 3.1GHz Dual-Core Processor
• Intel HD 3000 Integrated Graphics
• Mushkin 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM
• Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB SATA Hard Drive
• Samsung 20x Dual Layer DVD-/+RW Drive
• Acer G235H 23-Inch LCD Display
• Logitech MK120 Mouse/Keyboard Combo
• Logitech S220 2.1 Speaker System
• Copy of Mac OS X

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Grand total of all this? $487

Now, I’m not one to compare Macs and PCs spec-for-spec, but the equivalent of this if you were to buy it from Apple would be over $700 easily.

The build went smoothly except for a couple of mistakes on my part, but nothing serious at all. I was able to go from complete disassembly to booting up in just a couple of hours. Installing Mac OS X and all of the drivers went fairly smooth as well. There was a moment that sound and ethernet weren’t working, but after a simple restart, it was all good.

Overall, it was a fun time and I got some very good experience with working with Hackintoshes. I’m looking forward to doing this again sometime in the future hopefully.

Even though I haven’t followed this year’s NCAA basketball season at all, I decided to fill out a March Madness bracket anyway just for fun. I really have no idea what teams are good and what teams aren’t (aside from their seed), but all I know is that a 1 seed will always beat a 16 seed and a 2 seed will beat a 15 seed most of the time (although that wasn’t the case twice this year). I also know that I want Indiana to go pretty far and that’s fairly realistic with them being a 4 seed. They went all the way to the championship game in 2002 being a 5 seed before getting beat by number 1 Maryland.

Anyway, I would upload my bracket here for you to see, but that would involve me having to go over to my all-in-one printer, scan it in, save it in a web-friendly format, upload it to my website, change the image size to fit in this post, and then finally pasting it in here. Besides, it’s late.

Instead, I’ll just tell you some of the highlights of my bracket: I have Kentucky winning it all beating George Mason in the championship game. Louisville and Syracuse are the other two teams in the Final Four. I have Indiana getting into the Sweet 16, but will lose to Kentucky. The only crazy upset that I had was 12-seeded VCU beating 5-seeded Wichita State (which they did!).

So far, after all of the first-round games, I have a winning record of 22-10. Not too bad for a guy like myself!

If you’ve heard of Spirit Airlines, you’ve probably heard nothing but bad things about them. Even if you haven’t heard of them, you can easily go online and find mostly awful reviews about the airline. The only thing they have going for them is their super-cheap airfare, but other than that, it seems customers haven’t been too happy.

It’s easy to see why:

- $25 fee each way for a checked bag. $30 fee each-way for a carry-on.
- No free snacks or drinks during flight. Must pay for it (and they’re expensive).
- You must pay a fee of at least $20 if you want to pick your own seat. Otherwise, the check-in desk picks it for you.
- The ticket counter charges you $5 just to hand you your boarding pass, but it’s free if you use the computerized kiosks.

You might think I’m crazy when you hear that I’m actually one of the few people that has enjoyed Spirit Airlines so far. However, I’m probably different than most passengers.

I have flown with Spirit Airlines twice: A trip to Las Vegas for $234 round-trip in October 2011 and to Boston for $127 round-trip just last week. Both times I only took along a personal backpack that fit under my seat, which they don’t charge for. That alone saved me at least $50 for the round-trip flight. I also made sure I ate before I boarded, that way I wouldn’t be hungry during my flights, thus I didn’t have to spend money to get a snack or drink on the plane, which saved me about $15 round-trip (Yes, animal crackers and a soda is around $7).

While I did have good experiences with Spirit, I’ve obviously had better with other airlines, but you simply cannot pass up the cheapest airfare of any airline, and their customer service really isn’t as bad as what reviewers make it out to be. I’ll give you a personal example:

When I booked my flight to Boston for $127, Spirit came out with a $50-off coupon the very next day (which would’ve knocked the fare down to just $77 round trip!) — bad timing on my part. I figured I would give them a call to see if they could apply the coupon code to my already booked flight, but no cigar. However, they did give me free priority seating at the front of the plane for both flights (a $40 value). It’s not as good as the $50 discount, but will I take it? Absolutely.

In the end, I don’t get on a plane because they’re luxurious. I get on a plane because I need to go somewhere. Spirit Airlines even said themselves that their only obligation is to get you from point A to point B. If I’m paying half of what other airlines are charging, there’s no reason for me to be upset about anything during the flight.