Just Works

I had a VERY pleasant surprise today with my new/old Powerbook laptop. I bought a used Powerbook because:

A: It has a PCMCIA slot and
B: It was 2,000 dollars cheaper than the MBP I want

But the PCMCIA slot was the important part since I have an EVDO card. I heard a rumor that the newest OSX supported my EVDO card and sure enough, when I pugged it in, it came right up and I promptly connected to the Sprint network and spent the next hours zooming around in EVDO land. Now, I did activate the card first on my Windows machine and I have read that this is a requirement for it to work. Small price to pay.

I was also impressed that I was able to use Superduper to snapshot my iMac G5 and first boot from the image and then restore it to the G4 Powerbook and it just worked. Pretty easy upgrade from the iBook.

SpyMe has become my favorite remote control app with it's scalable window. And WriteRoom is the favorite for taking quick notes.

The more I use Parallels, the more I wonder why Apple doesnt buy them and just intergrate it into OSX. It makes dual booting so passe. I have excellent performance and stability with it, even running the IE 7.x beta and GreenBorder which is an IE virtualization tool to protect your Windows machine against IE's many security holes.

I am heading to Rome and Spain in the coming weeks and I plan to use Skype onboard the ship with their wireless internet and see if I can save a buck or two on the cellphone bill. It's a "Geek Cruise" which should be a kick in the butt.





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Microsoft still sucks

I'm grumbling, out of everything that runs on my Intel Mini, Entourage is the one that half assed works and ends up crashing. To precise, it gets "stuck" and I think it is because it has issues with Rosetta which works fine with everything else. But everything is working well on my Intel mini. My 17 inch iMac G5 crapped out but the power supply was replaced under an extended warrenty and it took less than one day at the Apple store. You have to love ProCare :) But since I didnt know how long or what it was going to take, I upgraded to a 20 inchg G5 and now will sell the 17 inch. I'm also "upgrading" from my iBook to a used 15 inch Powerbook. Why not a Intel? Cost and reliably concerns. My Macbook Pro is going into the shop for random shutdowns even though the battery was replaced at my cost and the power brick was replaced under Apple's cost. And it's HOT, too hot to keep in my laptop or any part of my body. ANd since with the portable, I use Photoshop and a word processor, I can get by with the 1.6Ghz G4 for the next year while Apple gets it together with V2 of the Macbook Pro.

Parallels has been just awsome to work with. I use almost daily without issues. Even writing MS scripts :)

I replaced my VNC client/server with something called "SpyMe" which has much better speed since it hooks directly into Quartz among other reasons. It costs 15 bucks but over the VPN and with the scaled view, it just rocks. It uses a different port than VNC so I have had both running concurrently without any issues.







We had a AC failure at the office and in order to monitor the temps, I used a remote indoor/outdoor temp sensor with an LCD screen. I then used my iSight camera and iGlasses with Evocam to kludge together a "webcam" with the screen shot of the LCD temp. Worked well all holiday weekend.