Bad jokes about the name aside, I’ll be ordering an iPad just as soon as they are available:
I’ll probably order the 32gb model with 3G radio. Not 100% sure I’d use the 3G network option but I’d rather have the option…especially since it’s unlocked – which is a big deal by the way. This could also be foreshadowing of the next iPhone device. The fact they even mentioned ‘unlocked’ is huge.
More later…like when real humans actually get their hands on it.
Update: This guy nails it with a great post on the iPad as well as a lot of things on the internet.
Apple’s latest version of their OS X operating system, named Snow Leopard is now available for preorder at Amazon.com. It’s due to be released at the end of September.
It’s not on any Canadian sites yet for preorder but I’ll update this post when it is.
It’s a pretty slick update to Leopard (10.5) and clocks in at just $29 for one user
or $49 for a Family Pack
which covers 5 computers.
Apple has a full list of refinements that details what you’ll get for that $29.
I took the plunge this past week and bought a 15″ MacBook Pro. This was mostly due to the increasing amount of video and photography I’ve been doing lately and needed a bit more (okay a lot more) horsepower under the hood.
One thing that I’ve always wondered about, is that card slot in the larger MacBook Pro’s. I’ve always chosen the smaller form factor size for my laptops (iBook, 12″ PowerBook and most recently the MacBook Air) – none of which had an Expresscard slot (or it’s predecessors, the PC Card or PCMCIA slot).
Given the purpose of my laptop upgrade, it seemed fitting that I found you could get media card readers for use in this slot. This saves the hassle of bringing a card reader with you all the time – they are small and very losable. I have the added benefit of being completely on SD cards for all my cameras. Other formats like compact flash are wider than the opening for the Expresscard so those readers a bit bulky and don’t sit flush in the slot.
I found the Sandisk Expresscard reader
(which I found in Canada cheaper from one of my favorite online photography gear sources, Henry’s) to be the cheapest/most available. I prefer to trust my media reading with name brand gear so went with Sandisk over some generic brand readers I found online and locally.
The Expresscard reader just slides into the slot and clicks into place. You click it again to pop it out. It sits flush inside the laptop. When you insert an SD card, it will jut out a little so you’ll have to be careful with it if you have the laptop on your lap. At least you can easily see it in the slot as a reminder to download your photos and eject the card.
Considering most decent card readers cost around the same price, this solution seems pretty solid to me and means I have one less thing to carry.
In case you’re wondering, yes, my MacBook Pro is green…well it’s wearing a green skin at least.
I picked up this APC 450 battery backup from Costco last night for $36…I don’t recall ever seeing them that cheap. The box suggests up to 28 mins of backup power…the webpage linked has it somewhat lower depending on load.
Recently we had a power outage. I have a NAS, wireless router and cable modem that could have benefited from this if for nothing else to allow me to shut them down properly from my laptop (which of course has it’s own battery backup so to speak) during the outage.
This is by no means a high end, enterprise product, but neither is my home setup. At this price point, it seemed like a good investment in protecting those devices.
I picked up this little guy (aka the Toaster) recently after seeing Peter’s success with it.
It’s a network connected storage device. What does that mean? It means that you can put two SATA hard drives inside it, plug it into your network and access those drives anywhere on your local network.
Until recently, I had two 500gb SATA drives inside my PowerMac G5 tower that I was using as a file server. Unfortunately, the videocard (among other things) seems to be dying and a replacement is pretty expensive. I can’t even remote into the box anymore. Actually the replacement seems to be about the price of the DNS-323 (around $150 Cdn which doesn’t include any drives) so it seemed like a sensible way to upgrade. You can setup the drives to work as one giant drive or in a number of other Raid configurations. I’m currently only using one drive in there until I get a chance to clean off the other 500gb drive I have. I haven’t read any limitations on drive size but I’m sure they exist.
The main (big) selling point for me is the fact that it has a built in bit torrent client with a web based interface that you can interact with from any device on your network. This completely replaces the PowerMac for me – at least how I was using that machine as primarily a file server and bit torrent client box.
Unfortunately, the downsides I’ve come across so far include crappy Safari support so I have to use Firefox to initiate torrents. Also, the firmware likes to forget some settings when you reboot the device. Fortunately, the firmware seems to be actively updated and the settings bug is an acknowledged issue that will be addressed soon. The initial setup also required a PC to configure. I did this via VMWare but had to tweak my network settings so that the bridged connection could actually see the DNS-323.
Once it was all setup though, it worked like a charm. It just pops up as a network server on all my Macs and fully accessible. I’m not currently using it as my Time Machine backup system but I could easily set it up to do it.
The device also has a USB port but that’s reserved to function as a wireless printer port only so you can’t plug the toaster into your computer and access files via USB.
I haven’t set it up yet, but it also can run as an iTunes server which might be handy for those with multiple computers and one giant library.
Overall, I’m very happy with the DNS-323. It does what it says it will do and after a little setup, can literally be left alone like a toaster. Check out the manual, driver and firmware details on the D-Link support site.
