Apr

3

Over the past few months, I’ve neglected regular posts. I don’t like that one bit. Many interesting articles have passed me by, and I’m not going to let that happen again. While I can’t promise a complete turnaround, I will promise I’ll do my best to catch you up, starting right now.

Phone Review: Motorola RIZR Z6tv

Back in November I purchased a new phone, and I promised I would review it. While this will be no spectacular review, here are my thoughts on my new phone.

I absolutely love the RIZR Z6tv. Although the Z6tv has nowhere near the functionality of the iPhone (I have an iPod touch for that), it functions just fine as a traditional cellular headset. The features are great, all Bluetooth profiles are enabled, the new Verizon user interface is a welcome improvement, and the reception is marvelous. In fact, I would say the reception is the best “new” feature of the phone. I’m seeing coverage in areas where I previously had little to no signal, and I’m picking up EVDO in areas where I previously had a weak 1x signal. If you’re in the market for a traditional cell phone with Verizon, I would not hesitate picking up a Motorola RIZR Z6tv.

FreeNAS Revisted

Early February, Paul Stamatiou managed to generate some buzz with his 200 Dollar PC series. I took the bait and ended up significantly upgrading my FreeNAS box. While I had originally planned the upgrade purely around saving space with the Mini-ITX form factor, a few weeks later I found myself completely overhauling the storage as well. I’m glad I did, as my FreeNAS box is now my central storage hub. I backup with Time Machine, rsync website backups, connect remotely over FTP, and store nearly every season of my favorite television shows directly to my small, slick server. Here are the specs to get your geek on:

WordPress 2.5

I’d like to now give an awesome shout-out to the WordPress commit crew and Happy Cog for a great release of WordPress 2.5. I’ve upgraded my blog earlier this week and couldn’t be happier. I thought WordPress 2.3 was amazing from a developer standpoint, but you blew that out of the water with an even better user release. Here’s to many more.

With that said, earlier in the week I completed my plugin and theme upgrades to WordPress 2.5. All plugins that I currently support should now work fine under WordPress 2.5. However, WordPress 2.3 users be weary. I dropped support for WordPress 2.3 in the majority of my releases to help speed up adoption of WordPress 2.5.

Funny Moment of the Week

I’d like to bring this post to close with perhaps the greatest moment of this South Park season so far. I don’t want to spoil the funny, so just sit back and enjoy the next two clips. If you like what you see, watch the full episode.

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Feb

28

This past Tuesday Apple released new Penryn-based MacBooks and MacBook Pros. This upgrade has been anticipated by Mac-enthusiasts for months, and the release has notebook users from all generations wanting to upgrade their notebooks.

I, on the other hand, cannot understand the madness. MacBook Pro owners using only a six-month old MacBook Pro are dumping their “old” notebooks in favor of the new model. For what, minor upgrades? To fully understand my side of the story, I need to first describe my current notebook:

Now with that said, I will begin enumerating the stupidity.

Minor Speed Bumps

Everyone always brags about the speed of new machines, but I have started asking myself is it really needed? Processors have become powerful enough for just about any task, so that the normal Mac user will never notice the difference from a 2.0GHz Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo to a 2.6GHz Penryn Core 2 Duo. The only people who will notice the increased speed are video professionals. In that case, is the extra 2 seconds gained rendering a half hour long file really worth the price? I don’t think so.

Multi-touch Technology

Alright, I admit that the new multi-touch capable trackpad is cool, but is it useful? I could see myself occasionally using the trackpad in iPhoto, but beyond that it would have no use. Not to mention, myself and most of the notebook owners I know dock their notebook to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, thus making the trackpad useless in those scenarios.

Increased Storage

Yes, the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros have increased storage capacity, but again, is that a big deal? Nothing has changed in the past few years with magnetic hard drive technology, so even the oldest Intel notebooks can be upgraded to a 320GB hard drive, a size that Apple doesn’t even offer as a BTO option. Oh, and for those who say the MacBook Pro’s hard drive is not upgradable, performing a drive swap is not that difficult.

The New Keyboard

Fair enough. The keyboard function keys have been rearranged for more optimal use. So, people are dropping $2000 on some ink placed in a different spot? I never thought the MacBook Pro’s function keys were that bad. Even if they are, the MacBook Pro has an extra programmable key that can come in handy. By the way, I don’t like the keyboard’s new blue glow, so I think my MacBook Pro’s white glow is superior.

A Decent Package

You got me. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are amazing machines and certainly worth the upgrade if you have an older notebook. I just think the upgrades are not substantial enough from the Santa Rosa models for anyone to rush out and purchase a Penryn-based notebook. The Santa Rosa platform has more life left than people think, and we have not even reached the memory caps (64GB) or hard drive caps (infinity) yet. Although, if people want to waste their money that’s fine by me. Just don’t forget to order the now optional Apple Remote for $19, while I enjoy my Santa Rosa MacBook Pro for a few more years.

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