This discovery made my wallet dance.  As some of you may know I am getting a Dell Mini 10 as a writing laptop.  I plan to dual boot it with Ubuntu and Win7.  The Ubuntu side will make a it a lean, mean, writing machine with very little destractions.  The Win7 side will be for the sake of the show to get myself knowledgeable for our discussions.  Low and behold I saw today on Dell’s site that the 10 can now come with Ubuntu installed.  No more sending money to Redmond for the initial purchase.  Oh joy.  Oh Rapture.  (ok. a bit over the top. sorry).

I’ll let you know when mine comes in.

Check out the Dell Mini 10 here.

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OK, here we go.  Apple announced a bunch of new hardware today.  Let’s take a look at each one together shall we?

New Mac Mini

Here are some thoughts.
nVidia graphics bump is a nice feature.  Not sure I’d be playing too many hardcore games on it though.  Might bring WoW to the Mini…gee there is an aspiration for you.

Processor speed is right where is should be.  Especially for this price point.  

Lots ‘o USB’s ….. can you say media hub…now where’s my boxxee?

Price point leaves a little be desired but performance is ok.  Could be better.  But hey, they left the power switch were it’s supposed to be (that was for Rachel).

iMacs

Well….um….yeah.  The iMac.  With these upgrades across the board and some the upgradability features (like 8 gigs RAM, two hard drives) it’s harder to make the argument now that a PC tower is upgradable to better specs.  The downside…well…this isn’t as big of a jump from where we were before with the iMac.  Again, I like what I see on the graphics side of things.

The MacPro

Well we didn’t get our 16 core machine did we?  Shucks!  Oh well, you can always upgrade to 32 gigs of RAM (yikes)  

The big news is obviously the Nehalem processors.  Not a real sexy spec, but keep in mind that these are dual Quad-core monsters that do not utilize a northbridge and southbridge.  So faster and more efficient data transfer all around.  

But dude, the slide out tray.  AWESOME!  You see, you don’t really appreciate a MacPro until you open it up.  My MacPro I purchased in May of 2008 and even that one is just a sight to behold on the inside.  I know you are looking at me funny right now.  Just get up and go to your Apple store and have them open one up for you.  THEN you will see what I mean.

As always, we welcome your thoughts.

 

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Looks like there may just yet be some Apple news as early as tomorrow. According to Macrumors:

Hardmac posts what it claims are the product numbers and rough descriptions of the iMac and Mac mini which are expected to be released tomorrow:

The new iMac models and their corresponding references:
- MB417: Entry level model
- MB418: “Mass market” model
- MB419: high-end model
- MB420: ultimate model
The entry level model should come with a 20″ display, while the three other models will feature a 24″ panel.

For the Mac mini, the references are the following:
- MB463: entry-level model
- MB464 high-end model

Update: OneMoreThing.nl also “confirms” that the iMac and Mac mini will be released tomorrow and provides the following specs (translated by Sijmen):

Mac mini
- 5x USB
- 1x FireWire 800
- 1x mini DVI
- 1x Display poort
- Nvidia chipset (like the newest MacBook)
- starting at Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz
- 1 of 2 GB DDR3 memory (max 4 GB)
- 120 GB hard disk (max 320 GB)

iMac
- one 20″ model, three 24″ models
- Intel Core 2 Duo (not a quad core): 2.66 Ghz, 2.93 Ghz and 3.06 Ghz
- 1x Display port
- 20″ 2 GB DDR3 memory, 24″ 4 GB DDR3 memory (max 8 GB)

Anyone else tingling with anticipation?  (Rachel excluded of course….)

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Ok folks, I didn’t get a chance to post on this last Thursday but here it is.  The new Dell Mini 10 is now available for preorder. They start at $399 and have almost a full size keyboard.

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Wow! Who would have thought that a blog post rebuttal would cause this much trouble.  We talk about the three app restriction with Win7 starter, the possible new Mac Mini, and the whole rebuttal….thing.

Episode #80

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Beau tells us all about his new Mac Mini, Rachel goes over the upcoming Windows 7, and Cal and Rachel go off on the MacBook Pro’s non-removable battery.

Episode #73

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Well here it is…ENJOY!

Video quality wasn’t as good as I’d like but I’m running out of time to do a really good version as I’m trying to get a major project done for a client right now.

It’s the start of the holidays and so it’s time to talk about what to give (or not to give) the techie in your life as a gift.

Links to some of the items discussed:

Western Digital Drive $60.00

Dell Inspiron Mini 9

Flip Mino

Xbox 360 (if you like black screens of nothing)

Drobo

Apple Care

JBL OnStage II

Hide-a-pod (this is a joke folks…it’s not real)

Episode #66

Mac Mini’s Murdered in cold blood.  Vista Sucks….battery life.  Plus WE GOT BUTTONS!

Episode #65

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A big thanks to my friend Shawn.  In disscussing the fate of the Mac Mini he stumbled upon an open soruce media center for OSX called PLEX.  I have to say, it’s very sexy and functional.  And best of all…it’s FREE.

Check it out at plexapp.com

Posted by Cal