Posts Tagged ‘Apple’

iPhone 3GS

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Picked up an iPhone 3GS to replace that of my iPhone 3G that I already have had for sometime. The existing phone was purchased outright and was locked with Telstra. It was on a Telstra cap, and the amount it cost me was certainly not competitive.

I managed to get a new phone on a plan that includes more for less then I was paying with Telstra using my own phone. Go figure.

iPhone 3GS seems a bit different so far, in fact better then previous model. Had considered to get something else, but kept coming back to the iPod which can be used for audio/video playback. Both handy features for a phone device all in one unit.

Apple Time Capsule Failure

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Arrived home from holidays to find my Apple Time Capsule which was purchased in April 08 to be dead. It has no functional L.E.D.S.

Not impressed at all, as the didn’t last long. It was purchased with 2 machines that both had extended warranty, so my theory is it too should be covered, as Apple Displays purchased with machines that have extended warranty is typically covered.

Will soon find out, once I call Apple Australia tomorrow. If the unit is NOT replaced, then I won’t be replacing it. As I am not impressed that the next one would last outside an 18 month period.

EDIT: I am told it’s not covered. So a $700 item purchased in Apr 2008 has died outside of the 12 months warranty. Not impressed. Won’t be buying another.

Next MacBook Upgrade

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

The next upgrade I have planned for my MacBook is to purchase a 320gb sata notebook hard drive, so I can swap out the 160gb unit that it came with. This will give me a lot of storage. Oddly enough it will end up making this MacBook have more disk space and ram then my iMac. Not to mention it’s also got the faster processor.

more ram

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

With the price of ram being so low, it was a better time as any to buy some 2Gb so-dimms and swap out the MacBook factory 1Gb so-dimms.

My MacBook now has 4Gb of total ram as per the screen capture below, now I can run a few more VMware Fusion Guests, or One really memory hungry VMware Fusion Guest.

I should also mention, the 2 x 2Gb chips in question cost a total of $92 ($46 each). Like I said, real good price at the moment.

Apple MacBook

Monday, July 7th, 2008

With a little nudge from the wife, I’ll be picking up an Apple MacBook in the next week or so.

She said to me that it might be a wise idea to pickup a portable machine while we have the chance. I already own an iMac 2.16 Core2Duo which is now over 12 months old, so when I thought about it a bit. I knew she was right. I don’t need a MacBook Pro, and the MacBook would allow me to do most of my day to day stuff from anywhere in the house while I do other things. I am trying to be not so attached to the desk in the office.

Opted to pickup the middle model White unit. My wife had a Black MacBook and I can’t say I was a fan. So have opted for White. Getting a little excited about getting the new toy, but more excited about moving all the email and other documents across.

Once I get settled, will eventually increase memory to 4Gb total. Then will eventually get a 250-320gb drive for it. Then it should be a sweet portable machine.

Of course having this machine will also enable me to leverage the existing Time Capsule we purchased, thus I know the portable will always backup.

VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta1 observations and opinion

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

I’ve had VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta1 installed now for a few days and managed to give it a good test in that time. Below is a few screen grabs which show some rather nice changes to the products GUI, unfortunately I cannot show it in comparison to what they use to look like. Unless I wanted to reinstall it and capture them.

VMware has revamped the Virtual Machine Library window, and I must say I do like it. Although I think the image shown to the right could do with a bit of work to make the scaling of it work a little better. It looks a little wrong.

Further more, they have improved the dialog for editing the settings for the guest operating systems and I do like this too.

Unfortunately one thing I do think that is lacking is the that when I add another Hard Disk, it doesn’t prompt you to create a vmdk that is split or not. This is a bit fustrating, as it only appears to do this during the inital configuration of a guest from scratch. Something that needs to be improved.

It would appear we still haven’t had the development of a network configuration tool to manage the virtual network interfaces, it would appear we still have to edit this stuff via the command line.

On the whole, an improvement. But I would love to see certain things fixed as suggested (and I hope they do in future builds).

Mac Mini and ACD 20" Sold

Friday, April 25th, 2008

We’ll for the first time in a long time I am down to a single system. I recently decided to sell my Mac Mini 1.66 Core Duo. The machine had served me well and was 2 years old. Since I was using it a little less then I had hoped, I figured why not just sell it so someone else can use it more then I do.

I had every intension of selling it in a years time anyways, so I just did it earlier. I also decided to sell my ACD 20″ Display which had served me extremely well. So both items got a new home.

I use my iMac 20″ 2.16 Core 2 Duo for pretty much everything, so this machine will continue to be used for everything day to day. The plan has been to pickup a MacBook to replace the Mac Mini (and use the MacBook for day to day stuff which doesn’t require me to be tied to the desk at home). I think it’s going to be fairly important to break free of the desk as much as possible and use computer via wireless as much as possible (especially when we have kids).

So I am expecting to purchase white MacBook mid-range model and bump it to 4gb ram, since ram is so well priced atm. This machine will suit me perfectly. The way extra ram will allow me to continue running a number of virtual machines via VMware Fusion with ease. I don’t really need a MacBook Pro for the beefed up Video. Maybe I can step upto this at a later stage if and when it’s required. Maybe to replace the laptop + iMac down the track. We’ll see what happens.

1Tb Time Capsule

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Our 1Tb Time Capsule arrived last week. I immediately got home with the unit and opened it up.

Not much inside the box, configured the unit. Then set 2 machines to backup to the unit. Things have been going fine since then.

Speed wise from the ethernet based machine seems okay, from the MacBook Air it tends to vary a bit. It works well enough and hopefully future firmware revisions improve things.

I’ll do another post in a few days time that includes screen grabs from all the options that can be configured as seen from Airport Admin Utility, which I couldn’t find on the net before I purchased.

New toys – MacBook Air

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Well my wife finally got her new notebook/laptop. She opted to get an MacBook Air. I must say I am very impressed so far.

Job for tonight is to do a reinstall and remove the extra install items that we don’t need so we free up some space. Then I will move over all her data which is currently sitting on my iMac.

Unfortunately, the 1Tb Time Capsule I ordered with it has been delayed. It appears Apple are having troubles making enough of them for demand. So the reseller is filling orders as they arrive. So eventually we will make it to the front of the order queue. I believe they said they got 5 units in stock earlier in the week and fulfilled 5 orders. I am looking forward to this item arriving, then I will be happy to know the MacBook Air is being backed up every so often (without the need to manually do it each week).

VMware Tools, still the best for Linux Virtual Machines

Monday, March 24th, 2008

If it wasn’t for the VMware Tools package being as good as it was, then running Virtual Machines would be alot more difficult.

Below is a screen grab from my Xubuntu install which has since had the VMware Tools installed, thus the resolution of the Virtual Machine is running at the resolution I dictate. Could make it full screen, but I still like to be able to see my desktop for other tasks.

Click for High Resolution version.