Monthly Archives: October 2008

Apple Notebook Event

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 Apple today held an event at One Infinite Loop (their campus) that had in it’s "spotlight" notebooks. As all the major tech/gadget sites have pictures and live coverage and you can now watch the keynote video here I won’t bore you with a copy of the same stuff. Let me just summarize what we have seen and then add my comments:

  • New manufacturing and construction technology to build notebooks
  • Unibody approach allows lighter but more rigid contstruction
  • New MacBook Pro
    • New build design
    • New keyboard
    • Nvdida 9400M onboard
    • Nvidia 9600M GT dedicated aswell
    • SSD drive option
    • Similar pricing
  • New 24" Display
  • Upgrades to MacBook Air
  • New MacBook
    • New build design – close to new MBP
    • Nvidia 9400M graphics
    • SSD drive option
    • Similar pricing

Now when you take a look at these points and think about it – I think the big thing today is the new MacBook. Not only do we have an entry level notebook with pro features but it’s also priced the same way as earlier MacBooks. If you compare the changes in the MBP – they are mostly evolutionary. But the new MacBook is a massive upgrade to that line and anyone in the market for a new consumer notebook should definitely have a look.

I recently bought the February 2008 MacBook Pro and currently I do not see a reason to upgrade to the new line. The performance gains are noticeable but not really game changing. On the other hand if I had a plastic Macbook from early February 2008 I would definitely be considering an upgrade.

On a final note – I followed the event on Technologizer.com as former editor of PC World Harry McCracken had a really nice live blog thing going there where I could get the exact words of Steve the moment he uttered them. If you don’t know his Technologizer blog I recommend taking a look. 

OpenOffice 3.0 out with a hiccup

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The open source office suit OpenOffice has been released today in it’s 3.0 iteration. For a full feature list go to here but to list a few basic things

  • New nice GUI
  • New ODF (Open Document Format)1.2 specification
  • Microsoft XML document support
  • General performance enhancements
  • And more

Now I don’t know how you see it but the way I think of this is that these heavy office suites are starting to really get sluggish, slow and although their feature set compared to the online office suites is vastly superior I am beginning to think they are really unnecessary for common users. Let’s be honest who really needs all of those extra features? I don’t. So I will give the new OpenOffice a try but my general feeling is that I don’t really need a heavy office suite.

The other thing is that OpenOffice.org announced the release of the new suite by email and the minute I received it I went to their site. What I found was that the site was unresponsive at the beginning and later completely down and it is still down as I am writing this. Doesn’t it remind you of an earlier open source projects release?