New Mac PowerBook

Don’t know if I’m really ready for a full-blown “switch“, but I recently bought from a friend at work his old PowerBook G4. (He joined practically every other Mac user I know in buying a new MacBook Pro, so I’m benefiting from his castoff.) I’ve been a Mac users off an on, but have never owned a decent one like this. There is no shortage of Mac users at work, so I’m getting the scoop on the “must have” software applications. This weekend’s trip to Gnomedex will be a good test as I go Windows-free for several days (which, for…

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Game Consoles Galore

When the Xbox 360 came out, I wanted one bad. For once, I thought, I’d be on the cutting edge rather than waiting. But, scarcity of supply and the outrageous premiums on eBay turned me off and I decided to wait and see what happens with the upcoming Sony and Nintendo systems in 2006 (2007?). Steven Frank (of Panic fame), a pretty hard-core Mac guy, explains why he bought the 360 in a recent blog post. He too was watching the results from E3 this year to see the future of console game systems. His take on Sony was great:…

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Delta Power?

While doing some research on APC uninterruptable power supplies, I was browsing their knowledge base when I discovered this surprising note: Never use a domestic model APC UPS on a ship In North America, one would expect to see approximately 120 volts when measuring from hot to neutral and from hot to ground. However, larger ships use delta power. That is, there are two hot legs (center tapped 120Vac) and a ground: no neutral. Each hot is 60 volts. One can measure from hot to hot (phase to phase) and will see 120 volts. When measuring from either hot to…

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The “Creative” Patent

I continue to receive periodic email newsletters from Creative, hoping that eventually they will update the firmware for my poor little Zen Touch MP3 player. Today’s email included a teaser subject that I couldn’t resist: Creative patents industry-standard MP3 player technology If you guessed that we have another example of patenting the obvious, you’d be right! Here are some choice excerpts from the press release (emphasis mine): Creative’s invention for the user interface for portable media players enables selection of at least one track in a portable media player as a user sequentially navigates through a hierarchy using three or…

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Zen Touch Playback Problems

For the past couple of months, I’ve been getting good use out of my Creative Zen Touch 20GB MP3 player. I’ve copied over about 20 of my CDs but use it mostly for podcasts during my commute. Overall I’m quite happy with the device, but have noticed a problem with certain podcast files which would play back at the wrong speed — usually 1/2 or 1/4 speed. Searching the web I didn’t find any similar problems reported, so I sent a detailed explanation to Creative technical support. Their responsiveness was okay, basically responding overnight to each of my queries. The…

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