Archive for the 'PC' Category
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Apple has invoked a new campaign for switching to the Mac. The website details all the good stuff about the Mac, and its cross compatibility with many products and OS’s. There are also 6 ads, each available in small, medium, large and HD format. The ads have two characters, comedian John Hodgeman playing the PC and another actor playing the role of the Mac. They are entitled:
- Viruses
- Restarting
- Better
- iLife
- Network
- WSJ (Wall Street Journal)
I have watched all of them and I have to say they are pretty funny (and true!) You can read more about the campaign, and watch the ads on Apple’s ‘Get a Mac‘ website.
This is a really great idea. I wonder why no-one ever thought of it before. The idea is it occupies a standard SD/MMC slot and is the same size. As well as having a 1GB capacity, it also has a 802.11g WiFi chip embedded into it. This means no extra attachements for that Treo or other PDA. I really like the Treo 700w because I prefer Windows Mobile over Palm OS (I find it nicer, and it has more apps), however the no WiFi was a problem. This is a very good, and cheap solution at $100. I would definitely buy something like this if it ever came out (saves the WiFi CF card in my Axim X5). But we probably wouldn’t see it in the UK.
Another use of this is to wirelessly transfer our photos from your digicam to your PC or upload it to a server or service (such as Flickr or TextAmerica). However, I think that would be harder to implement as camera manufacturers would need to already have menus/support for it, which could be a problem.
Henner Malchert decided that the measly hard drive inside his new Core Duo Mac Mini wasn’t enough, so he fitted an external SATA drive. He took it apart and removed the 2.5″ HDD and fitted a SATA cable which he ran through one of the small venting holes on the bottom of the mini. He then ran that SATA cable into his NewerTech MiniStack v2 which has a 300GB Samsung drive. However he doesn’t recommend the MiniStack because the hard drive gets quite hot and the fan makes a lot of noise. Overall though, it is a very cool mod, and a good option if you want to keep your computer small, yet benefit a large hard drive.
Then came Michael Dell with the other side of the story. Why not put OS 10 on a far cheaper Dell Windows PC instead of a costly Mac? You’d get the best of both worlds and shell out far less.
In an e-mail to Forbes magazine, Dell said: “If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers.“
Apple’s response was quick and negative. Apple will not sell OS 10 for installation in non-Apple hardware. It will sell software to run Windows on Macs but not the other way around.
What else would you expect from Apple? But this may not reflect what happens, as we all know that Steve Jobs personally said that Apple won’t make a video iPod because “people don’t want to watch video on such a small screen“. As with other Apple rumors / ‘news’ we have to wait for Apple to make their move.
This is a detailed tutorial with many photos showing you how to modify your Xbox 360 to water cool it. XboxExpert, posted a topic on XboxScene forums showing what he used, and how he modded his 360. Be warned, this is for the pros only! And what price does it come at?
$209.99 – ThermalTake CL-W0042 Cooling System (The cooling system)
$35.49 – KOOLANCE GPU-180-H06 VGA Card GPU Waterblock (For the 360′s GPU)
$41.99 – KOOLANCE GPU-180-L06 GPU Chipset Heatsink (For the 360′s CPU)
———
$287.47 – And that’s without shipping!
So it isn’t the cheapest solution, but if you really feel the need to cool down that 360 to make it quiet then you might as well try. My 360 is very quiet, only during games is it loud and that is because of the DVD drive inside it. So this would be useless for me, unless my 360 was particlarly hot, which it isn’t.
This is a pretty cool device. It fits in between the 360′s HDD and the 360 itself. Then it links up to your PC via USB and you can move/transfer data that is not in use. It also has a blue LED’s on the side to give it that extra touch. It works with Xplorer360 (remember that software that initially allowed you to move data from the 360′s HDD) so anyone can ‘hack’ their HDD. And all this for £30, seems like a good option to me. You can then do whatever you want with the data, as long as it isn’t linked to your Xbox Live account (because then you won’t be able to share the file).
It’s not that I’m mulling over a platform switch—rather, this XP overload is part of Macworld Lab’s efforts to see how Microsoft’s operating system performs on Apple hardware now that software exists that enables you to boot into XP on an Intel-based Mac. With the help from our sister publication, PC World, we’ve been running the WorldBench 5 real-word benchmark suite on all of our Intel systems to gauge cross-platform performance. Even with Boot Camp, it still takes a couple of hours to set these systems up. But once running, they’ve been very stable. Here are some WorldBench 5 results, compared to three computers recently tested by PC World.
[Results:] As you can see, the Macs running Windows gave these PCs a run for their money, with the 2.16GHz MacBook Pro turning in the fastest scores on three of the five individual tests. The build-to-order MacBook configuration also tied the 2.16GHz HP Compaq in the sixth test, involving Roxio VideoWave.
Ever since Apple came out with their Boot Camp yesterday, more and more news of it has been posted. All sorts of things so I thought I’d make a collection of links to the various bits and pieces!
- Installation of Boot Camp Flickr Set
- Installation of Boot Camp Video
- Short Review of Boot Camp on a 20-inch iMac with Windows XP
- Boot Camp requirements, installation FAQ (Apple site)
- Gaming with Boot Camp
- Windows Vista works — Well the installer can be started up. Installation hasn’t been tried yet because the person testing it out borrowed the MacBook Pro from a friend, who insists on a full backup before doing the actual installation. – UPDATE: Installation went successful, but it won’t start up. [link] – UPDATE 2:It has been restested, and with a bit of modification, it works. [link]
- Windows Media Centre Edition 2005 has been installed on a MacBook Pro
- Boot Camp supports Linux installation!
That seems to be as much news as I could find. If there are any additions please add it to the comments and I will make sure it is inserted into this post. Have fun!
Apple has released their own solution to installing Windows on an Intel Mac – Boot Camp. Apple’s complete solution, though still in beta, provides owners of Intel Macs to easily partition their hard drive and install Windows XP SP2 (Home and Pro) with a cool GUI for changing bootup drive. When booting hold down the option (alt) key to select between OS X and Windows.
For your convenience, Boot Camp burns a CD with all the Mac-specific drivers for Windows:
- Graphics
- Networking
- Audio
- AirPort wireless
- Bluetooth
- The Eject key (on Apple keyboards)
- Brightness control for built-in displays
This CD also installs a Startup Disk control panel for Windows.
However, iSight isn’t supported, nor is the MacBook Pro’s backlight keyboard or the Apple Remote. Granted, these things are the ones we wouldn’t have expected to work off the bat. I, for one, am glad to see Apple do this, and I think it is a very positive thing, because now you don’t need to spend ages in getting Windows running using the hack (by Narf2006 and blanka) but you have an Apple distrubuted installer. This takes away all the pain, so now anyone can do it, relatively easily. Be warned though, you need to have 10.4.6 and Apple’s newest firmware update or you might end up like this guy, who already had is Blue Screen of Death (in Windows, that is).
So if you’re feeling adventerous the give it a whirr, it is a 83MB download (not counting the firmware update and 10.4.6 update) and tell me how it went!