When I first got my MacBook Pro, I mentioned that one of my primary, first priorities was to figure out a good solution for running Windows on it. Now that its been a little over a month and I’ve had a chance to play around with multiple different options, I think I’ve finally landed on a very workable solution to my Mac + Windows needs:

read more »

A while back my friend Jeremy told me about a little tool he used for importing music from his iPod into his iTunes library called Senuti. He mentioned it as a way of getting around iTunes content DRM issues. When you buy media from the iTunes store, the DRM it comes with will only allow you to transfer it a certain number of times before it disables it. Well, I’ve transferred my stuff enough times that I was beginning to worry that I might be getting close, and I had a need to transfer my stuff again, so I decided to take a look at Senuti.

So, since I got my MacBook Pro, I’ve sort of put off the task of trying to get all of my media transferred to the new laptop. The idea of backing up my iTunes library on my old PC laptop, and then importing it all (over 15GB worth of data) over the network into my iTunes library on the new laptop just did not sound appealing at all. So then I remembered about Senuti, and how it would let me import everything directly from my iPod. My only question was whether or not it would have any issues with the fact that my iPod was formatted for Windows and not a Mac. According to the FAQ, there had never been any reported issues with this. Apparently it would work just fine with Windows formatted iPods. Sweet! So last night I gave it a shot. I was very pleased with the outcome.

read more »

WARNING: What follows is a rant. If you don’t feel like listening to me complain about my problems with Windows Vista, you should probably just skip this one.

I’ve been using Windows Vista for…oohhh…I dunno, about a year now or so, something like that. The experience has been…uuummm…OK. There are some things about it that I like, and definitely some things about it that I don’t like. One thing that I will say for certain though, is that there is one thing that I don’t like about it SO much, that it may just end up being the deciding factor of whether or not I continue using Vista or not.

read more »

For what its worth to anyone that might read this, my recent experience with the purchase of my new MacBook Pro through MacMall has been fantastic. The process of ordering the computer was quick and easy. The people I’ve talked to (yes, I was actually connected directly to a human when I called, after a single level of voicemail system where I told it what I was calling for - to place an order) have been friendly and helpful. The experience has been great. I think the thing that I noticed most, that prompted me to write this at all, was the fact that I just received a phone call from the account rep that I placed my order with, in which she reminded me to not forget to fill out the mail-in-rebate forms so that I could claim the rebates that I was offered with my purchase. The thing that stands out to me about that is the fact that, in my experience in the past, the whole point of mail-in-rebates is the hope that at least a percentage of people will either be too lazy or will not remember to fill them out. For a company to make a point to call a customer to remind them to fill out and send in the rebate forms to me is remarkable enough that its worth telling people about.

So, if you’re ever in the market for any Apple products, be it a computer, an iPod or iPhone, whatever…I can personally, highly recommend MacMall.com.

So…my new toy arrived yesterday afternoon, and I got to play with it for the first time last night. Obviously, its too soon to gush too much, but I will say that, without a doubt, the out-of-box-experience was nice, and the first six hours with it were very nice…and maybe most importantly, stable. I was able to watch videos, listen to music, read documents…SCROLL…all without a single problem or crash. VERY refreshing indeed.

read more »