Macbook

The New MacBook Air

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This week turned out to be a two laptop week.  I was already thinking about selling my existing 2010 Macbook Air and upgrade to the new i5 2011 Air’s that just came out in July  when I convinced M to order a new Macbook Pro but I finally pulled the trigger on the new Air today.

I was waffling for a while since the 2010 model is still perfectly good.  The big drawback for me was the processor wasn’t anywhere near a desktop or even a bigger laptop’s speed.  That changed when the new i5 Air’s came out.  After figuring how much i could sell my old Air for i decided to make the jump and upgrade.

I have bought lots of stuff at the 5th ave Apple store but today was actually the worst experience i have ever had there.  It was super crowded and it took forever to find someone to help me, only to have them tell me oh you need to find a free computer and tell the ipad sitting next to it you need assistance and then you will go into queue to get help.  Problem there is everyone is on these laptops for hours surfing Facebook and two no one tells you that is the process.  I have bought more than one computer from this store and this is the first time i have ever had to do that.

Drama aside i was able to get the model I wanted and headed home.  Well after more minor train drama i was able to get home but that is another story.

I had already taken a backup of my old Air using Carbon Copy Cloner so setting up this computer was as simple as plugging in the backup hard drive and saying yes restore from an external hard drive.  For that function alone i have to love Apple!

 

 

Spring Cleaning with Ebay

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Yesterday I sold my Nokia E71. I know, I use an iPhone 3G. I also bought a E71 a few months ago to play around with. I was hoping to be able to switch between iPhone and E71. I know, I bought and returned a previous Nokia E71 for that same reason. I wanted to give the Nokia more than a day trial. The verdict was it is a great phone but even with its drawbacks I like the iPhone and even when I did use the E71 I would often switch back to the iPhone. So since I am currently on a sell my extra stuff kick I sold the Nokia on Craigslist.

So far in the past month I have let go of my Macbook, and the Nokia. I loved the Macbook, but the reality was I wasn’t using it so I opted for the much faster iMac desktop. I am even contemplating letting go of my HP netbook since I have my work laptop that is an ultra portable. I am also looking to offload my 160gig iPod. When I got the iPhone I thought I would slowly stop needing an iPod. That is exactly what happened. With my new 16gig USB key and 16gig SD card in my laptop I no longer need the 160gig iPod for any portable file storage. That means it is getting wiped and put up for sale.

I am also in the process of selling my old Airport Extreme base station, but that is only because I upgraded. That sale will recoup half the cost of the new one. Man ebay you are my enabler for buying new stuff!

What I am not selling is my old 23″ cinema display. It found a new home as my second monitor on my iMac. I need to rummage through my storage bins to see if there is anything else I want part with. Don’t you smell spring cleaning in the air.

The New New iMac

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Last Wednsday I broke down and ordered one of the new iMac’s that were announced on 3/3. This was both a planned and impulse purchase at the same time. It was an inpulse purchase since I wasn’t planning on taking any action just yet, but I had been planning getting something. My issue has been that for about a year I have wanted something bigger than the 23″ Cinema Display I had. I deffered purchase for months because none of the computers I had could power such a display. Then I got a new Macbook in November that could power the 30″ display. I didn’t go right out and buy one since first it is an expensive piece of hardware, second the adapters to power the display on the Macbook were backordered. By the time the cable was availible the big rumor was (and still is) that Apple will announce new displays. So yet again I waited, until they announced new iMac’s. Now I was torn on what to do. Do I spent allot more and get a huge display but have a slower computer, or go for the all in one really fast computer?

The answer has always been for me to go modular. Get a laptop, KVM and maybe a desktop. I actually owned several iMac’s since I started using Mac’s. Each time I ended up selling them or returning one of them because I wanted more options than an all in one offered. So as I write this post from my new 24″ iMac I have to wonder, did I make the same mistake in buying an all in one again for the 3rd time? My own answer to that question is I am not sure, but I hope not. The reason I think now is the time for a nice fast desktop is that since last year when I hatched my plan for wanting a larger 30″ display my situation has changed slightly. My previous jobs have not cared if I used my Powerbook or Macbook. Partsearch even bought me a Macbook Pro to use, so I was always using the same machine at work and home. That made sense that I had a desktop setup at home that accommodated that. An all in one computer didn’t really do that. My current job issued me a windows laptop. Now I am hearing that I can probably do a non standard build and actually use a Macbook, I haven’t really wanted to test that theory. That means I keep my work and home computers separate. This is the first time in years that I have had to do that. Since I bought my latest Macbook in October it has been used off of its stand maybe 4 times. That for me was the deciding factor that I don’t need a personal laptop. For the times I want a portable that is not work issued I do have the netbook.

So I made my decision. I went with the all in one iMac. It is fast, and at some point when RAM gets a bit cheaper I can fill it with 8gig’s of memory. My Firewire 800 Drobo is plugged right into it, and it is FAST! For now I think the added cost and slower computer that would be used didn’t make the 30″ display viable for me. If money was no object I would of course go for a Mac Pro, but unfortunately it isn’t.

For now I am very happy with my choice!

Its a Netbook

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I tried out an Asus eee 10000H back in August. I wasn’t a huge fan. The keyboard was too small and the battery layout was a bit awkward. Those reasons and the fact that at the time my main use for it was minimal I ended up selling the eee PC to Jayson. He loves it and uses it every day on the train to and from work.

With my new job I have had more of a need to have a really small computer that I can throw in my bag for chat and emails when I am out and about. The Thinkpad T61 from work is great (for a windows machine) but it isn’t so great to carry around unless I am going to and from work. For that reason I went back to looking at Netbooks. I looked at the Dell Mini 12, and the HP Mini 1000. The Dell wasn’t available to ship until January (come on dell) and I wasn’t sure if the 12″ netbook would be too big. That was my dilemma. I want a small machine, thus looking at a netbook in the first place, but I also have bad eyes. I want the biggest screen i can get. I think the Dell 12″ would be borderline too big. The keyboard on the HP Mini 1000 also got fantastic reviews for how good it was. I also looked at the Macbook Air. It was still light even though it was physically bigger than the other netbooks I was looking at. The Air did have a 13″ screen. The final deciding factor not to get the Air was price. It cost more than my regular laptop.

I opted for an HP Mini 1000 with a 60 gig hard drive and bluetooth from Amazon.com. Amazon Prime is great. I ordered the computer on Friday and for $3.99 it was at my house on Monday. Along with the Netbook I also picked up a Verizon Aircard for internet anywhere. I opted for the USB dongle device. I could have gotten a built in card for the mini but I wanted the option of using the device on my Macbook or Thinkpad also. So far the combo has worked out. I took the HP to work yesterday and got great signal on the Verizon Broadband.

I have yet to try out office or any real intense applications on the computer yet. One of the guys on my team did try loading videos from YouTube yesterday and said it worked great.

I am giving the computer a run for its money this week when I take it as my only computer to Jayson & Gretchen’s for a few days.

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How Some Hardware Companies Can Confuse Their Customers

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I wonder sometimes what Technology companies are thinking sometimes. A few months ago I bought a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 to use when traveling with my Macbook. It is a good portable mouse. I had no real complaints about it. That is why when I needed to use a portable mouse with my Thinkpad T61 I wanted to configure the mouse for use with it. The Thinkpad has bluetooth. That is when my problems started.

It turns out that the Thinkpad does not have the control panel option for Bluetooth even though the driver is installed and working. Some forum searches later and I discovered that this is unfortunately common for SP-2 + installs of Windows XP. I can’t really setup a bluetooth mouse without that control panel applet. I then figured I could download the latest Microsoft drivers and mouse software for the Notebook Mouse 5000. I was hoping that maybe I could configure the mouse using the Microsoft Mouse software. This is when things got interesting. When I went to Microsoft’s Hardware site to download the drivers I couldn’t find the mouse I own in the list. I verified that I have the right mouse type and I still couldn’t find it anywhere on the Drivers & Download page.

I then decided to search the internet for references to drivers for this model mouse. After about 15 minutes searching I found several references to the same problem I was having of not finding the drivers. One of the posts was actually on a Microsoft Forum. The answer blew me away. Yeah, there aren’t any drivers to download. According to someone who seems to be working at Microsoft said that since it is a generic Bluetooth Mouse there is not specific driver set for this model. My response to that is, oh I am sorry that I the end user didn’t know that. How can you expect a consumer to figure that out? You sell someone a product but when you can’t find that product listed on support and download lists it is kind of frustrating. I can understand that I don’t need a driver or special software for the mouse. Wouldn’t it have been a good idea to have this model in the list of models to choose from on the support site and when you select it you get a notice about not needing to download anything special for it? Come on Microsoft you can do better than this.

In the end my problem is still not solved since I don’t have any way to pair the mouse to the Thinkpad. Lenovo hasn’t been very helpful either. I am still working on the issue but I thought my little story was odd enough to take a few minutes and write about it

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My New Monitor

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After searching far and wide for a good deal on a monitor I ended up ordering a Dell 23″ LCD. I got a nice discount and it was the right size for me. It also offered DVI & VGA inputs. I got it yesterday and it looks great on my new computer table add on. I am finally using Outlook the way it was intended (full screen with a nice big 3 pane setup so I can see everything).

Now all I need for the perfect computer setup is a better mouse and keyboard for my Thinkpad. I just got a Microsoft Wireless Laser mouse for my Macbook and it is really nice. Moves really smooth. I might get another one for the Thinkpad, but I can’t figure out what kind of keyboard to get. I love the Apple Wireless Keyboard I use on my Macbook, but I don’t think it will work with a Windows machine.

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The Weirdest Technial Problem

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On 2nd I wrote about a weird issue regarding my iPhone resetting. Unfortunately since then the issue happened on two other occasions. By the 3rd issue I decided to call Apple and open a ticket on my problem. They couldn’t help me much on the phone so they wanted me to bring the phone in and see someone at a local Apple Store. This is when things get interesting.

A few days before the 3rd incident with my iPhone I noticed that one of the external USB drives I have threw an error when I booted up the Macbook. I was bad and kind of ignored the error since I could see the drive mount and didn’t appear to have any issues. After a few reboots with the sam error I actually read the error and noticed it was warning about a corrput file system. Since this drive was a backup drive and only used as an archived copy of data I didn’t need the data I decided to pull the drive and use a spare I had. The next time I rebooted my computer Sunday night I got the same error, but this time it was on another 750 gig USB drive I had plugged into my Macbook. This time the error was on a drive that I do use and have critical data on. I was not hugely worried since I could still read the data on the drive. I decided to copy the critical data off onto another 750 gig drive that I decided to use as a mirrored copy of the data on the first drive.

Once I moved all the data off of the damaged drive, I formatted it and prepared to mirror all the data on the 2nd drive back over to it. I started off a replication of the good drive using Synk and then went to bed. This was the same night I called in the iPhone for support. I woke up the next morning to find that my Mac had crashed and never copied very much data. Once I rebooted my Macbook I noticed that the one good drive I had was now not visible in OSX. I checked the disk utility and I saw the drive but it was not available. A verify failed telling me the file system was messed up. I began to panic a bit. All my efforts to create a good backup process ruined by some weird fluke issue. At this point I had to take my Macbook and goto work.

After work I went to the Apple Store on 5th Ave and told the Genius Bar guy my woes. He looked over my iPhone and then my Macbook. After explaining what happened to my USB drives they decided that I can hold onto my iPhone but that they want to take my Macbook in to run some tests on.

Now I am without my Macbook, my iPhone works but has no media on it. I was instructed to reset it again, but not restore it. I am waiting to do that when I get my Macbook back. I can’t install anything without all the data on it. After a bit more panicking about the lost data on my hard drives I am feeling a bit more optimistic. I am using Data Rescue II to pull the data off my bad drive. It is taking ages to copy but so far I have been successful. I am about 70% done with my restore. I think the most critical data is already restored onto my good drive. Once I am done I will format the bad drive and mirror the data back over to it. I will then do what Jayson does and physically unplug the backup drive and sync it every week or every other week. Longer term I am looking to get another Drobo or some sort of other solution that does some sort of RAID.

While I wait for my Macbook to return I am not off the Grid. I am using my iMac I typically use for TV, and I have my work Thinkpad.

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iPhone 3G Reset

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My afternoon today was thrown for a bit of a loop when I tried to go out today and tried to play some music on my iPod. There wasn’t any. That was odd since I always have about 8gigs of music on it. I then went to sync it up again with my Macbook. That is when things got interesting. I kept getting an error saying the phone couldn’t sync and I had to reset it. I figured a quick reset and I should be good to go. Well that didn’t work either. I reset the phone and then it kept giving me an error. I couldn’t sync it, or boot it up. An Apple KB article said to reboot the computer so I did that. After about 3 more tries the phone reset and started restoring.

This is the problem with one converged device. I almost can’t go anywhere without it. It is my phone (only one except Skype until I get my blackberry from work). It is also my music player, and PDA. I am sunk if it doesn’t work. Today was a perfect example of that. 3 hours later I am back and semi running with the phone. My only lingering issue that I know of is my icon’s are all in the wrong order. I am more concerned with the fact that I don’t know if this will happen again, and I have no backup plan. I guess that is my operations mindset going. I always need a “plan B”. I am thinking about that, but for now I am just happy things turned out as well as they did. It could have been allot worse!

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13 Days With an iMac

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As my bad luck would have it I went out and bought a 24″ 3ghz iMac the weekend before the announced the new Macbooks. Now I admit I knew they were going to announce new laptops. It wasn’t really a secret. At the time I had given up hope that Apple would come out with a regular Macbook that could use their 30″ displays. I gave up on an affordable solution to have a 30″ display. I wanted the display but didn’t need the Macbook Pro, or Mac Pro that I would need to own in order to run the display. Since my new job gave me a laptop that I need to use for work I didn’t really need my Macbook as much so I settled on the cheaper option of the iMac. I gave up on the larger screen but got a more powerful desktop.

So when the new Macbooks came out and could solve my original requirements I was not happy. I had already owned the iMac. This was of course the week I was out of work sick. I was contemplating selling the new computer for a loss on ebay and just getting the Macbook. I didn’t realize that I could return the iMac to the Apple store and just pay the high restocking fee. I opted to pay the restock fee since I could never sell the computer for what it was worth. I returned it with 1 day to spare on the 14 day return policy. I went ahead and picked up the low end aluminum Macbook. I thought about the more expensive one, but the hard drive space wasn’t an issue. My extra $400 would get me 400mhz in processor. As much as that would be a nice boost, it wasn’t worth the money. Instead I spent a little over $200 and upgraded the unit to 4gig’s of RAM and put in a 320gb 7200RPM hard drive. For less money I than buying the higher end laptop I think I speed up the unit more by getting a better HDD and RAM.

I just finished upgrading the new hard drive today. It was a as simple as running Carbon Copy Cloner on my old drive to a USB drive. Then I booted to the USB drive after installing the new 320gb drive in the laptop and ran CCC again in the reverse direction. The process took several hours to copy the data, but only required my interaction for a few minutes. When I was done my entire computer was cloned onto the new hard drive. I could never do something that cleanly with Windows, trust me I have tried over the years.

The only downside to note is yes I can use a 30″ Cinema Display with the new Macbooks, however the cable that will allow me to do that is not yet available or backordered that it will take several weeks to get. That means I am still on my 23″ display until I can get the cable and buy the new display. Why is going from 23″ to 30″ so important? My eyes aren’t the greatest, so the more screen that I can get the better!

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Teleport

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The ablity to teleport would be a nice to have, but in the mean time I will stick with the Mac application Teleport. Sorry I couldn’t think of any other segway! Teleport solves an annoying problem I have had for a little while. I have setup my Macbook (without a KVM) on one part of my desk, but since I got my 20″ iMac a few months ago when I am not using it as a TV (almost all the time) it is on a portable table near my desk. I have had two keyboards and mice at my desk for a while. That was annoying. Now that I am working from home a bit and sitting using my laptop screen was killing me I setup a spare 19″ flat panel I got from my dad also. Three displays / computers setup near each other is great, but 3 keyboards and mice are not. Now with Teleport I can control my iMac with my main keyboard and mouse from my Macbook. It works great and took a whole 2 minutes to setup. I could have used an open source tool to control both my Mac’s and my Thinkpad, but I would rather have a dedicated setup for my work computer anyway.

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