Tag: MacBook Pro

Categories
Geeky/Programming

One Year Ago Today…

One Year Ago Today, I bought my MacBook Pro. And guess what? It is still running, on the original config, original boot, no reformatting, no repaving, no major surgery, nothing. And it still runs great. I have a ton of apps installed, but just enough, just what I need.

What is funny though, is that using VMWare Fusion, I have reformatted or redone my Windows VM’s multiple times because of issues. Is that just how things are? I think so.

This is probably the longest time EVER that I have had a machine without reformatting it. I think back when I was eleven years old, like 1991, reformatting our 386 25Mhz Packard Bell every 6 or so months with Windows 3.11

I have to say, the MacBook Pro is an awesome machine. Every time I use it, I wish I could just run a Windows VM for work on it, off a USB drive, just take it back and forth, and that is one less physical machine I would have to worry about.. someday..

What is the longest you have went without reformatting, voluntary or involuntary?


Photo Courtesy of Alistair Israel


Categories
Geeky/Programming

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron – Second Chance, Wireless Works and was Easy!

So, last night I decided to give Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron another try. I blogged previously about setting it up and getting wireless to work, and what a nightmare it was

What I did this time was this. First off, I have computers everywhere, a MacBook, MacBook Pro, Dell Desktop and Dell Laptop. I have Vista on the desktop, and the Dell laptop I wasn’t doing much with, so I decided to load up Ubuntu on it. After installing, I connected it to a wired connection, downloaded the OS updates and let is sit for a while. After a few minutes it popped up with an alert telling my that there were updated drivers for the BroadCom wireless nic card. Wha?!? I open the alert, hit enable, and it downloads new drivers and fwcutter and lo and behold, wireless starts working with no hassles. I am on Ubuntu right now dinking around. So what is the first thing I do? Well make it look like a Mac of course.

So now I have Mac OS 10.5, Vista, and Ubuntu 8.04 all running on different machines. I would say right now though I do like the Mac the best. I use Vista for anything that really needs Windows. I will probably setup VMWare Fusion again on the MBP, but a smaller partition. I moved all my music there (80+ GB) and had to free up some space, my Vista partition was 60 GB.

Categories
Geeky/Programming

The Apple Fandom.. Continues

Woah, well it has been a while since I talked about my “Media Center” experience I am trying go for, but I will get into that later.

First, yes, I have the iPhone 3G. I was off Friday for other stuff and decided to “camp out” since I had the time, hoping I would get out early. I went to AT&T on the East Side at 4:30 AM with a chair and my laptop and waited until 8:00. I was 6th in line. It was a good time, Einstein Bagels opened at 5:30 so we had coffee and bagels, and just had fun talking with fellow iPhone geeks. I already had the 2.0 Firmware beta loaded because I am in the dev program, and I was running iTunes 7.7 Confidential Beta as well.

Anyways, getting the iPhone, they let the first 9 in, and out of the 9, 2 people got activated and went home. Mine wasn’t working so they just let me go, and since they upgraded my SIM, I left with 2 bricked iPhones. Ugh. Once home I connected it and let it sit and it finally went through. Cool! I like the GPS and the 3G, Exchange Sync, MobileMe sync, the apps, it is all good. Battery life could be better, and there are always ways to improve, but my biggest gripe with the iPhone (no SDK, etc) is now gone. I find myself using my computer less and less, since I can do most “personal computing” stuff on the iPhone (read feeds, facebook, etc)

In between getting my Mac Book Pro, and the new iPhone, I picked up two other things on my Apple wishlist. First, the Time Capsule. 1 TB and AirPort Express N – this thing is sweet. The best part is my MBP is backed up every hour on the hour to the Time Capsule. I feel way more “secure”

The other item is AppleTV. I used to be a HUGE fan of Netflix and would watch 10-12 movies a month. But once you get through all the ones you want to watch, it gets stale. Also, not being able to get all of them in Blu-Ray, it is kind of a downer. I still have Netflix, but I reduced my plan down to like 1 at a time, I might re-look at Netflix now that Xbox has native streaming, and also the plugins for using MCE as an extender, but for now I am good there. The PS3 announcing downloadable movies TONIGHT!!! and with the Xbox 360 streaming, and Netflix discs and streaming, PLUS the AppleTV, I am pretty much set.

What does AppleTV bring? Well first, the HD movies , downloaded direct, and other movies, which is nice. TV shows, Music, Photos and YouTube. I have found myself watching YouTube on the couch now for like an hour straight, crazy. I really like being able to get Flickr pix or MobileMe pix as a slideshow, and also syncing with my MBP iTunes, and even better, the iPhone 2.0 firmware has the iTunes Remote which rocks, and controls iTunes on your laptop or Apple TV.

My guess is I will be cutting back my Charter lineup (I wish I could just get the HD channels, that is all I watch anyways!)

So, finally , some iPhone apps that rock.

Midomi – I use this to tag songs and buy on iTunes

GuitarToolkit – must have for any guitarist

iTunes Remote – I already talked about this, it rocks

Tuner, VisuaRadio, AOL Radio, Pandora, Last.FM – all your music needs, taken care of (check out Tuner… they have a Beatles Radio station – lovely!!!)

Loopt, Whrrl, iFob – pretty cool LBS based social networking

Others? Pownce (ok), Twitterifc (I am not impressed)

Facebook, Myspace – meh iphone.facebook.com is better than the Facebook app!

MonkeyBall – hard, but fun

I am sure there will be more, but right now I am surrounded by Apple, never would have thought (although I am writing this post on Vista on my Dell Laptop, which I fixed the Hard Drive on :))

Categories
Geeky/Programming Life

Dell Dies, And In Its Place..

A MacBook Pro. Yes, and it is awesome.

So the story, my Dell laptop was humming along fine, but then recently I heard some clicking, and was like WTF? Asked Emily “Did this fall on the ground or something”… “No… but I dropped a glass on it”… Oh man, and you know, one month after the warranty expires, as usual.

So this weekend I went to the Apple store and spec’d out a sweet MacBook Pro. 4 GB ram, High Res, everything. Picked up .Mac cheaper since I was getting a machine (soon to be MobileMe).

Right now I am running Vista in a virtual machine, giving it 2 GB, and it flys. This is probably the sweetest machine I have ever used 🙂 I am using VMWare Fusion instead of Parallels like by MacBook, figured Fransen said it was good, so I would try it. I like it.

I really like the light up keyboard. What else? Like they say, everything just works. Take for example my Verizon EVDO card. In XP or Vista, you have to install the connection manager, hope it works, hope all the drivers install, and then hope it launches. You run into admin issues, and just a ton of other stuff. In the MacBook? I plugged in the card, 2 seconds later, connected. No install, nothing. Just worked. God send.

So I think I am an Apple Guy now. iPhone, MacBook, MacBook Pro. Mighty Mouse (wired and bluetooth) and a bluetooth Keyboard. And on the 11th, I will get the 3G iPhone. When I think about it, all I need Windows for is Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and SQL Server stuff. Everything else I can do on the Mac, and with Virtualization, it is almost seamless. I like it.

What’s next? AirPort Extreme, AppleTV, Time Capsule…

I don’t think I will go back, unless something totally changes with the machines and the OS…