Aug
15
You wouldn’t think there would be a lot more to tell since this afternoon, but there IS! There are a few developments I will explain in a little more detail below.
Mobile Internet
So today I was quite frustrated with my new silver toy. The source of my frustration was a very limited two USB ports on this laptop. In today’s world, that’s a bit slim. It just so happened that today I was online with my USB EVDO Modem, as well as listening to my music in iTunes from my 60GB iPod Video. The problem came along when I was trying to transfer a few files from my desktop to my laptop with my 1GB USB Thumb drive. My options were to either disconnect from the Internet, chat and email or eject my iPod and stop listening to music. Now neither of these is a big deal really, but when you realize how common this problem could be, something had to be done.
With a quick bit of research I found out that Verizon does in fact have an express card version of the EVDO Rev.A modem I needed and they were fantastic enough to swap it for me at no charge. I got home, cracked open the box and took a look at the manual to find something really interesting. OS X not only has the drivers already, but can even dial up the EVDO network with it’s built in dial up networking. That means no VZAccess dialer and I can use a location to switch connections easily in OS X. How sweet is that?!
Slick Meeces
In a related problem, my wireless mouse was a Microsoft USB wireless mouse that required a dongle. No, that will never do on a sexy laptop that has Bluetooth built in. I picked up a slick little Logitech Bluetooth mouse so I can keep wireless navigation when I am plugging devices left and right. Perfect!
More Bluetooth Fun
I was looking at desktop widgets and I found a widget that would allow me to send text messages with my mobile phone via Bluetooth. Once I married my Cell to my laptop an amazing thing happened. iSync automatically grabbed all of my contacts and synchronized them right into my address book. Now I can manage my phone contacts with my computer instead of my 10 key keypad. Fantastic.
What else can I say? I want to finish up with a few more words about Parallels. The screenshot above is a view of OS X running with Parallels in Coherence mode with Windows XP Pro. Notice the Windows task bar at the bottom and that Word 2007 is running in a window on the Mac desktop. On a related note, Office 2007 Ultimate Edition installed in a Parallels VM in 12 minutes. So much for hindered performance. Parallels loads XP in less than 30 seconds and runs along swimmingly with only 512MB of dedicated RAM.
I really am glowing about this thing and I apologize for that, but I seem to find something about this thing new every hour or so. I am sure there will be more to come.
Incidentally, I am writing this on the MacBook Pro, but in a fullscreen Parallels VM with the latest Beta of Windows Live Writer which looks pretty sweet. The app has the new Office 07 look and they have cleaned up the interface quite a bit.
