Technology

It is widely known that the Airport card that ships with a MacBook Pro supports 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks. It also has support 802.11a networks, though this feature is undocumented and is not supported by Apple or Applecare.

Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro, network, undulattice

Apple have announced the addition of the 17″ MacBook Pro to their Intel based range.
Specs include Firewire 800 and a Double Layer 8x Superdrive, which were both missing in the 15″ MacBook Pro. It also has an additional USB 2.0 port.

You also get the option of up(down)grading from a 120gb 5400rpm hard drive to a 100gb 7200rpm hard drive. Personally I’d go for speed over space!

It’s expensive though, about £200 more expensive than a 17″ Powerbook (which have been discontinued and are no longer available from the Apple Store)

Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro, undulattice

Having just read a recent post on Daring Fireball regarding how Boot Camp will start an exodus to Windows, I have to go one step further than John Gruber’s “Jackass of the Week” description and label USA Today’s Andrew Kantor a complete idiot!
Firstly we have this……

Boot Camp isn’t going to propel the Mac into the mainstream. If anything, it will get Mac users to switch to Windows. Sure, it’ll be terrific for Mac fans not wanting to give up their machine of choice but find more and more they need to use Windows. But Boot Camp doesn’t offer any kind of compelling argument for PC users to buy Mac hardware.

From experience, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Since switching to Mac a few years ago, I have found it LESS AND LESS that I need to use Windows, to the degree that I no longer own a machine that is even capable of running Windows. Boot Camp offers PC users the chance to try OS X and still revert to Windows if they don’t like it. So why wouldn’t you?!

Followed by……

The Macs that can currently run Boot Camp are the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro notebook. Price-wise, they can’t compete with PCs.

The Mini will set you back about $1100 for a machine with 512 MB of RAM and a 60-GB hard drive — that’s when you add in a keyboard, mouse, midrange monitor ($150), and a full copy of Windows XP.

The iMac is about $1600 (with 512 MB RAM, a 160-GB hard drive, and Windows). The MacBook Pro, with an 80-GB hard drive, is about $2000 with Windows.(All these prices come from the Apple Store. I mention the hard drive sizes in particular because you’d need the space to load two operating systems and two sets of software.)

I don’t know which “Apple Store” he’s been looking at, but iMacs currently start at $1299 and MacBook Pros at $1999. Prices exclude a copy of Windows which we can safely assume most “switchers” already own.

And “two sets of software”? Surely the idea is to only use the other operating system when it’s absolutely necessary, so the second “set of software” is most likely going to be fairly minimal.

In contrast, a 3 GHz Gateway DX210 PC with 1 GB of RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, and the same monitor I suggested for the Mac Mini — that’ll be only $900.

In contrast, a 3GHz Gateway DX210 PC has a single core, single processor Pentium 4, no Superdrive, crap video card, and ships with Windows Media Center Edition. GREAT! Way to compare like with like!

Oh, and the whole “no viruses on the Mac” business? Besides the fact that it’s no longer true, you can get this neat stuff called anti-virus software.

Now I want to punch him. If we’re gonna be pedantic about it, let’s rephrase.
“No viruses on OS X”. Better?
And given that Windows can’t read the Mac filesystem, I think the “spreading” argument is effectively null and void.

The folks at Parallels.com, however, released “virtualization software” that they say allows OS X to run any operating system, including Windows, within OS X — no rebooting required. So that’s a step above Boot Camp right off, even if it costs $50.

Rumour has it that Leopard will have this feature built in. Certainly wouldn’t surprise me. Though it would be funny if Apple treats Windows the same way they treated Classic environment.

It may not be so bad — they might even enjoy the convenience of sharing a common platform with the other 97% of the world, brought to them courtesy of Boot Camp.

A million people are not smarter than one.

Technorati Tags: apple, boot camp, mac, OS X, PC, technology, windows

From the BBC News Website

The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply.

The OLEDs do not heat up like today’s light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.

They also produce a light that is more akin to natural daylight than traditional bulbs.

Technorati Tags: technology