Words cannot express how much I hate Oracle’s “Forms Designer”. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s this steaming pile of shit my school decided to use for the exercise sessions of my 4GL course. It loosely resembles Microsoft Access forms, except that it presents them in a Web environment, using an extension of applets—for which you need to install a separate application first—and servlets. Really now. The UI’s even less intuitive than Access’s; it doesn’t distinguish between frontend and backend at all; it’s pretty much impossible to keep track of program flow; don’t try to get it to produce a portable or even decent layout—it can’t. And even if it was a decent product, how on Earth is using a proprietary drag-and-drop wizardry thingamajig that rarely involves writing PL/SQL yourself going to teach you anything about databases?! “BBME Greatest Hits”, coming to a theater near you soon. For fuck’s sake.
You know, I never linked to this beauty. I think it was Shady who pointed me to it, and if it wasn’t, well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?
Right, well, I’ve decided on the MSI S260, with any CPU as long as it’s a Pentium M (there’s a Celeron M version) and at least half a gig of RAM, and—here’s the tricky part—in black, because something tells me the white case would turn a nasty shade in a matter of days. So far, the only black ones I’ve found had a Celeron M. I should be able to dig up a satisfactory one though. Once I’ve done so, I should have it within a matter of days. Especially since the financial matters have been arranged already. Yes, it’s supposed to sound dodgy.
Well, looks like the M1006W is a lot like MSI’s Megabook S200’s. MSI does offer a wider range. Time to check out the reviews. Again.
I’m looking into the Pointer Systems M1006W now, seeing as how it’s dirt cheap and seems to be pretty much exactly what I’m looking for. Unless the actual components are dirt cheap, which is the first thing I’ve wanted to avoid all along.