I love the 21st century

So, this past weekend, my brother and I drove to Arizona from Salt Lake City. Since he is doing the driving, I did not have to take the day off work for the traveling. I was able to work on tasks for work. Since I have a Verizon Wireless Card, along the way I was also able to be online, receiving e-mails and handling customer issues for work.

Along the way, I was also able to share webcam with others on the instant messenger too. As I am typing this I am between Flagstaff Arizona and Page Arizona on the Navajo Reservation. There is virtually nothing around, but when the light is green on the 'Merlin XV640' EXPRESS CARD modem, I have an internet connection.

As I am using this, I was thinking how much it would have stunk to have lived my life at any other time. So, that is one of the things that I am grateful for during this thanksgiving season. Wireless internet on the Reservation. :-)

PS. After traveling through this wilderness areas, many of which I was not expecting any connection at all, I recommend the Verizon ExpressNet service. Right now, with a calling plan, the Unlimited Wireless Data is 59.99 per month. Great on Road trips (when another is doing the driving of course).

Apple Memory upgrade...

I think that I am going to start a new business. Here is my plan:

• Buy a load of memory from a place like Crucial.com
• Sit outside the Apple store with my table that says - "Memory Upgrades - 10% to charity"
• Charge 1000.00 to max out memory in a MacBook Pro
• Make 800.00 per transaction, donate 80.00 to some charity, pocket the rest.

WHY would the Apple store website charge me 1000.00 to upgrade, when I can order the memory for 200.00. I even found another site that had the chips (without a brand name) for 77.00 each.

I think that if I choose to go to the Apple store and upgrade, I should get a MacMini free. :-)

Mac Update

I thought that I would write an update on how the Mac experience thus far.

I have been using the MacBook Pro (MBP) every day at school. Here is the list of my observations so far:

• The space bar squeaks. No kidding. I generally type the space bar with my right thumb, and when I do, I get a squeak. Perhaps it needs some lube. I may take it down to the Mac store and see if I can get that taken care of. I mean, it has only been a week.
• As for performance, I have been quite happy with the speed. One of the key things that I was looking for here was the performance of the Parallels Virtual Machine. I have loaded up my Windows XP, giving it half of the 2GB memory. Most of the work that I do with windows does not need extreme graphics, and I found that going with 16MB graphics in parallels (the max is 64) I get better performance. Generally in XP, I have MS Outlook running in the background monitoring my school e-mail, and then running whatever application I need for school. Working with VS2005 and the NORMA tool, I have not noticed significant slow downs when building the application over my Thinkpad. I think that having the 2.4GHZ DUO processor makes up a bit. The Thinkpad was 2.16GHZ.
• I tried the Boot camp, which worked great. I was even able to VM boot from the Boot camp partition. This is great, however, I immediately noticed the loss of the suspend ability in Parallels. Well, that feature is important to me. I installed VISTA on the Bootcamp partition, loaded all the drivers and the speed seemed really good. However, the purpose of getting the MAC was to learn the OSx and UNIX environments, so I removed my Vista install, removed the Boot camp changes to the HD, and I will be sticking to the Parallels VM of XP that I have for now. When I am done with school, I might do a Vista in Parallels, although I have heard that performance is not good with Vista and Parallels.
• I had read some reviews regarding the heat issue and the MBP. The left side of the machine stays warm. I would say that it has only gotten HOT in a couple of instances where the machine was under a workload for an extended period of time. When I am at school, plugged in, I am working in FULL POWER settings. I notice that when I lower everything to conserve power, that it cools a lot.
• Software: I have found a world of software that was inaccessible to me before. Lots of shareware and freeware too. All of the apps that I have checked out have been from recommended lists and have been good. Perhaps I will make a list and blog it sometime in the future.
• I have found the OS x user interface to be quite easy to use. I like the expose features that make switching between programs pretty easy.

Overall, I am happy. I feel like I have a quality machine, which is in a nice package. Quite literally, the only disappointment is the keyboard squeak. Hopefully that can be fixed under the warranty.

A MacBook Pro...

Ok,
So, there are many things that I have on my 'to-get' list. I did not think that the Mac Book Pro would move to the top of that list.

Well, after hearing great things from several friends who are using the Mac Book, and enjoying OS x alongside of XP, I thought, what the heck... I might as well give it a try. Also, Apple announced at the beginning of July that they were upping the CPU to 2.4ghz Intel Core Two Duo.

The MBP(as I have seen it abbreviated on Apple.com) arrived today. I downloaded a trial of Parallels, installed XP, and so I feel quite confident running my Windows software in XP and giving OS X a shot. I have already found Mac Versions for a lot of the things that I need.

Oh, Parallels with cohesion makes it feel like I am using both operating systems seamlessly. I have only had a couple of instances where the Windows felt like, well, windows... but not in a bad way. Even with Windows running in the background, OS X performs the tasks that I ask quite well.

I will write more as the experiences happen.