iMac and the new MacBooks, worth it?

24Oct09

Ok, iMac and macbooks released, but here is the question: Are they well worth it?

Look at it this way:

MacBook:

1. The MacBook is now a SOLID machine, but a bit hard to maintain. It is just as powerful as the 13″ MBP, just cheaper
2. The MacBook has lost FireWire and lacks a SD Card slot, something even a 2002 lappy from sony had. $200 for Aluminum, firewire, SD card.
3. At the same $999 price point, it just doesn’t go down well with me. When will you compete with Laptop Hunter ads!?

iMac:

1. 16:9 aspect ratio is awesome, needed long ago, never the less, “better late than never”.
2. The screen is gorgeous. It looks much better and increases the want to buy factor. And THIS imac comes with the built in SD Card slot.
3. $1199, 3.06 GHz standard. Very competitive for a all in one I must add.

And Apple also gave some spec bumps to the MacMini and Time Capsule, releasing Mac Mini server edition with out a superdrive and comes with Snow Leopard Server edition and 2×500 GB hdds, and 2 TB time capsules. Apple also released the Magic Mouse, without buttons and does a few multi-touch gestures.

My Advice:

Go for the iMac, and not for the MacBook. MacBook can be bought next year perhaps when the give us the basic SD Card facility and the Firewire.

iMac is RECOMMENDED

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment

Dear Apple, get up!

19Oct09

Dear Apple,

Apple is not the same as it was like 2-3 years back. They have underperformed consistently over the last year. Even Zune HD decodes 720p videos better than the iPod Touch! Apple wake up! HTC Hero and Palm can do something that your phone can’t even do! It can multi task and have push notifications, push notifications are nice, but then, not the same as multi-tasking, you people claimed that multi-tasking reduces the battery life, but here is the bad news, It doesn’t, Android and WebOS have just proved that, Multi-tasking does NOT drain battery life. Better include it in 4.0 or you people are pretty much in trouble in the consumers eyes, Because a lot of them including me are considering a shift to HTC Hero, cause it is awesome, and does things you cannot, and more over, it comes with a much better camera than what 3GS offers.

People like me and the general public are quite disappointed that you haven’t made us stand in lines just for the sake of buying a phone, it would have been much better if you release SOMETHING revolutionary. I remember the lines which you had for the iPhone 2G and 3G in the USA and all places alike. The people made a killing by selling their spot for thousands of dollars. Look at 3GS, it lacked the same power. All these years, you released mind blowing phones and mind blowing high tech lappys. Today it is not the same, you have competitors, beat them. It is not just enough that you beat Dell in share prices, you must beat them even in manufacturing. And coming to your iTunes policy, can’t you people be competitive enough to accept applications that better your own? Like Google Voice for example, you must remember that when you know someone is better than you, you must train well enough to be better than them, not to assassinate them. Google Voice, I believe was assassinated without any reason, no cause whatsoever, and the general Public is of the opinion that At&T is responsible for all this mess, cause Google Voice can do free SMSes and VoIP, which At&T sees as a threat. Irrespective of which AT&T’s network coverage sucks.

P.S:Move away from AT&T, as the video says, “It’s a revolutionary device crippled by poor service…”

And support the campaign! Improve service and make our lives better!
Your Loving fan,
Ashvala

Filed under: Apple, Innovate, bad apple, iPhone, iPod, ippdtouch   |  Leave a Comment

What is HTC upto now!? It is down!!

15Oct09

HD2 is releasing!

OMG! Another Windoze phone! Cant you release an Andriod already!?

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment

Achievements for the blog! Yipee!

15Oct09

We are now breaking into one of the top blogs! Searches like “iPwn” “Ubuntu 9.04 macbook 2,1″ shows the blog on the first page on google! This pwns!

YAy!!!!!!

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  2 Comments

HTC Touch2 released. Rather, via the HTC India page.

15Oct09

http://www.htc.com/in/product/touch2/overview.html

Hmm! Htc touch2 is out!

HTC Touch2

Comes with winmo 6.5(*Immediately throws out the idea of getting the phone!*).

I recommend not to buy this cause it runs WinDoze (im)mobile.

Filed under: windows   |  Leave a Comment

MacBook Air Review.

14Oct09

MacBook Air, “the world’s thinnest and most functional notebook (for its size)” is all i can say in short.

MacBook Air was unvield at the MacWorld 2008. It was hailed as the thinnest notebook ever made.  And now it has a graphics chip(nVidia 9400m), 120 GB standard HDD. I will give my 5 + points and 5 – points as follows:

Positives:

1. The device by itself is very thin.
2. The device is very functional for its size
3. The screen is just awesome, very bright and very usable
4. The light sensors pwn.
5. The discrete GPU(nVidia 9400m).

Negatives:

1. The device is too costly.
2. The device has only 1 USB port. 2 would be better.
3. The device has no changable HDD or Battery, you need to return the device to apple incase anything goes bad on your machine
4. The lack of superdrive is worrysome. You need to buy that $99 superdrive that you should plug in as the CD drive. I can understand it   lacks it because of the thinness.
5. The device has no ethernet. It should be built in. Yea, but it increases the size, putting Dell XPS Adamo at first, it is likely apple wont do it cause Dell is their arch rival(considered “sinister fiend”).

Final Word:

It is a good travel lappy, and a very portable one(as opposed to the MacBook & MacBook Pro’s). I recommend you buy it IF you have the money and are willing to spend the extra buck for this cool machine.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment

Installing Ubuntu 9.04 on MacBook 2,1

11Sep09

I have had a MacBook 2,1 for the last 3 years of my life. It has a 2GB ram, 2.1GHz processor, 250GB HDD@7200 RPM. I wanted to perform a weird experiment: Installing Linux on the MacBook.

Tutorial:

1. Use BootCamp Assistant, create a partition of how much you want.
2. After it creates the partition, you can say Quit& Install later.
3. Download refit(http://refit.sourceforge.org)
4. Pop in the ubuntu CD
5. Reboot.
6. on the menu, select boot linux from CD(it is the little penguin called tux!).
7. Try Ubuntu without any changes to your computer.
8. fn+alt+f2, gnome-terminal. in gnome-terminal, do: sudo gparted
9. in gparted, make sure you delete the FAT32 partition and not the EFI partition. EFI partition is very important.
10. click on install,
11. in the guided partition window, you will see that it asks for the entire hard disk, select largest continuous space.
12. it will take 1/2 hrs to install
13. after you reboot, go to mac, delete rEFIt.
14. reboot
15. While rebooting, press option key and you press on windows(Boot Camp doesn’t recognize Linux )

And you have ubuntu running on your MacBook 2,1. It can also be done on several other machines. for more info refer:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam

–

Ashvala

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  2 Comments

Wolfram|Alpha. My analysis

16May09

Wolfram Homepage

Wolfram, a popular webpage where math nerds(:D, just joking) learn more math. Recently Wolfram released Wolfram|Alpha(http://wolframalpha.com). Here is a small comprehensive review of the new “Google Competitor”

First off, Wolfram|Alpha is a new baby in the market. It is a good thing to use to learn a lot of things. I will clarify, Wolfram Alpha IS NOT a search engine, not close. It is a knowledge base, one huge base containing a LOT of data.

The usage is pretty simple, try India/France GDP in the search box. you get a comprehensive result like this:

India/france gdp

Pretty Awesome eh??

I did enjoy doing some non-trivial math [trust me, I tried some calculus on this.]

differential of sin x^2 - cos x^4

Certainly non-trivial .

It does have problems with scaling. If you exceed test limit, here is what you land up with:

I'm sorry Dave. I'm afriaid I can't do that...

1 interesting thing is wolfram is that it does some domain research. search youtube.com in Wolfram|Alpha, here is what you get:

This is awesome. you get a full fledged analysis of the webpage!!

One of the things you must notice is that the search is interpretted as keywords, after searching the keyword in the database, it actually computes everything that one has to know.

My verdict: Use it. It is still not a search engine. It is a knowledge base.It is a little buggy. It will surely improve in the long term, will make a lot of people shift from google, and most certainly will not have the same future as Cuil(hopefully someone remembers cuil).

9.5/10! Go WolfRam!!

Filed under: Google, webpage, wolfram   |  3 Comments

iCast is here!

28Feb09

The iMac is dead! Introducing the new  iCast! A mod that just takes the old beloved iMac from the “I am useless” to “I kick ass!” . More mods like this can make a huge impact!

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment

My new Addiction: The Rubik’s cube!

28Feb09

I can solve the cube in less than a minute!!!

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment