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16 Jan 2008

Macbook Air and other new toys

filed under: journal  :: mac

I can remember a time when just the thought of an ultra-thin, light, elegant laptop like the Macbook Air would have had me running for my wallet to pull out my credit card as fast as possible. But since I'm saving up for a Big Lifechanging Event (which I'll write about here when I'm ready to) and have been watching my spending, I only had a mild upwards blip of the heartrate.

It's sexy, yes. That it supports Touch technology is what made my heart flutter a bit (besides the form factor), though I guess we have to see how well applications will utilize it. It has no Firewire which is a bummer. It would be great if I spent a lot of time hanging out at coffee shops or on grassy campuses. (I can see it doing great amongst students.) I'm going to stick to my plans for a new Macbook Pro soon though.

Otherwise, I thought the Time Capsule looked very interesting. Backups are boring yet necessary thing to have, and a wireless 1TB little box for $499 is not bad. (Yes I know, wired would be faster, but wireless is fine for incremental backups; as it's supposed to work in a Leopard running Mac environment it's all good.)

The iTunes movie rentals...ho hum for me. It doesn't seem quite cheap enough. 1.4 gb per movie is a massive file size too - better compression algorithms, anyone? Plus, I'm also trying to cut down on my TV watching time. But I will have to keep an eye out to see if they can massively increase their rental inventory of obscure and older movies. I have very little interest in renting recent releases.

The whole iPhones parts are not of interest to me since using an iPhone in Switzerland is still not possible, and even when it is it's likely that the provider will be Schisscom Swisscom, and I'm perfectly happy with my current provider, Orange. I actually did upgrade my phone recently to a Nokia 6110 Navigator, and I have been thoroughly enjoying the built-in GPS. It's bulky and all that but hey, it can pinpoint my exact location. That is so cool.

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