2008 February Archive at Geek’s Anatomy

Archive for February, 2008

Internet Explorer 8 Beta Leaked?

February 28, 2008

As I’ve been working on the design of my blog lately, I decided to go and check my traffic stats to see just what browsers I should focus on for compatibility. After taking a look at the Internet Explorer stats, I was surprised to find this:

Hello! What do we have here? Either my blog has captured the interest of the IE Dev team (not that I think it isn’t possible!) or Internet Explorer 8 Beta is starting to make the rounds on the net (albeit slowly, it seems). Looks like we might have some interesting times ahead of us.

Responsiveness: Vista SP1 vs. Vista RTM vs. XP

February 26, 2008

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Vista says: Yay! Nick White has provided us with an update on the latest tests for overall responsiveness between Windows Vista, Vista SP1 and Windows XP at the official Windows Vista Blog.

Microsoft has once again commissioned Principled Technologies to do some testing on its latest OS to see just how much of a real world performance gain it provides over it’s predecessors in both home and office environments. To be honest, there isn’t all that much to write home about.

Some of the key findings listed by the company note that the increase in overall responsiveness of Windows Vista SP1 over Vista RTM and Windows XP, if any, are nothing more than fractions of a second.

The tests conducted ranged from various typical home user tasks such as opening up a program or editing and saving a file, to various business oriented tasks such as running system searches, creating Excel, Word and other various office files, saving and sending emails as well as launching and using Adobe and Quicken applications.

Overall, I wouldn’t be bragging about any performance gains. Any increase in responsiveness greater than a second was a rare sight in the company’s findings. On most of the tests conducted, differences ranged from zip (or “natta” if you prefer) to roughly half a second.

The only situations in which there was any noticeable difference in results, were mostly with Adobe and Quicken applications while running on Windows Vista SP1, which at times were up to 6 seconds faster over Vista RTM and Windows XP.

So what does this all mean for you? Well, if you’re running Windows Vista SP1, the next time you launch Microsoft Outlook, cheer up and know that it is taking approximately 0.31ms less to load than on Windows Vista RTM.

Have a look at the full reports right over here.

Apple Releases Penryn MacBooks and MacBook Pros… Wait, what?

February 26, 2008

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Penryn MacBook It’s yet another great Tuesday for Mac lovers. Strangely, we got a little more than we were expecting today. Without much fanfare, Apple has released the much (and I mean MUCH) anticipated Intel Penryn based line of MacBook Pros. But wait, what do we have here? New MacBooks as well? Wow, for the first time in a while, Apple has surprised us with a nifty little upgrade to a product line that didn’t manage to get out to the rumor sites before hand. Well, at least not until yesterday.

In addition to the updated Penryn processors, the MacBook Pros are now the latest MacBook line to feature the Multi-touch trackpad, as found in the MacBook Air. Unfortunately, the MacBooks were not lucky enough to receive this feature this time around (but hey, next Tuesday is right around the corner). The MacBook line has, however, been updated slightly in terms of pricing. The prices the selves remain the same, but Apple has decided to be a little more generous in terms of hard drive space as well as RAM. The three models of MacBooks are now equipped with 120GB, 160GB and 250GB hard drives respectively and the two higher models now come with 2GB of memory standard (as oppose to having to pay $250 for an extra 1GB).

The pricing and base specs for the new MacBooks are as follows:
$1099. Macbook 13″ 2.1GHz / 1GB / 120GB / Combo Drive/ White
$1299. Macbook 13″ 2.4GHz / 2GB / 160GB / Super Drive / White
$1499. Macbook 13″ 2.4GHz / 2GB / 250GB / Super Drive / Black

On the Pro side, a major highlight of this release is of course the integration of the new Multi-Touch Trackpad, allowing additional hand (finger?) gestures to be used as oppose to the standard two finger scrolling found on the MacBooks. But that’s not all, the two higher models are now equipped with 512MB of video memory to go with those nice 8600M GT’s. Last but not least, last year, Apple refreshed it’s 15″ MacBook Pro’s to incorporate new, brighter, thinner and more power efficient LED backlight LCD display panels, however the 17″ model was left out. Well, good news, the 17″ model has finally gone LED. Now if only Apple would put some LED into those MacBooks.

The pricing and base specs for the new MacBook Pros are as follows:
$1999. Macbook Pro 15″ 2.4GHz / 2GB / 200GB / 256MB Vram
$2499. Macbook Pro 15″ 2.5GHz / 2GB / 250GB / 512MB Vram
$2799. Macbook Pro 17″ 2.5GHz / 2GB / 250GB / 512MB Vram

Both the updated MacBooks and MacBook Pros are available via the Apple Store starting today.

Time for a makeover… kinda

February 25, 2008

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After working with Ryan from BlueScreenOfDeath on a new theme for his blog (which is still in the works), I’ve gotten in the mood to do a bit of work on my own blog as well.

I never got the design quite how I planned it as I was eager to push the site out. So over the next few days, I’ll be working on the design of Geek’s Anatomy a tad.

Should something go wrong, please ignore it, I probably already know

Total: An Arm and a Leg

February 22, 2008

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After reading over a recent thread at AeroXperience regarding Apple’s product pricing, I decided to do a little browsing around the Apple Store myself to see just how much it costs for various systems and upgrades. After recently upgrading the RAM in my own MacBook with some 3rd party OCZ memory, I went to have a look at the prices for “official” Apple memory. When I finally came upon the memory shop, I was shocked to see the listed prices. A warning for the faint of heart, the following image may not be for you:

Whaaaaat? And this is no special memory either, after taking out the stock memory of my MacBook, it turns out the memory used is of the Hynix brand which is manufactured by Hyundai Electronics. Wow.

Time to compare now, I browsed over to TigerDirect (a major North American computer part retailer) to see what kind of prices they have on some of the top notebook memory available. First stop, Corsair Apple Certified 667MHz memory. Yep, this memory is actually fully certified by Apple and is guaranteed to function with your Mac. Now, 4GB (2x 2GB) of this memory goes for just… how much did you guess? $500? $1000? Even more?! No, it’s just $129! That’s right, just $129 for 4GB of fully certified Apple memory. To put that into context, that means you could get about 30GB of this memory at the same price which Apple sells 4GB.

Now, to get this out of the way (since not everyone has read my profile. Read: “The Geek Behind It“), I have nothing against Apple and as I mentioned, I have a MacBook of my own. But if I happen to find anyone knocking Apple due to their pricing, sorry Apple, but I can’t defend you there. Truth is, your prices really are absurdly high at times in comparison to other equivalent or better products on the market. Sometimes that shiny Apple logo just doesn’t justify the extra green.

Luckily, I’m making a stop over at an Apple Retail Store over the weekend, so I might just look into this while I’m there. Stay tuned.

Leopard users rejoice, Vista users watch with anticipation

February 11, 2008

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10.5.2 Running Mac OSX Leopard? Looking for improved system stability and a refined UI? Then do I have some good news for you! Mac users were surprised with a nice treat today, with the release of the long awaited 10.5.2 update for Leopard. And it seems like Apple really is a good listener (he’s single too, ladies), the update focusses on several complaints that users have been reporting regarding Leopard’s UI since day one.

Among the list of issues fixed/improved is Stacks, users can now select a List view in addition to the standard Grid and Fan views for heavily occupied folders, as well as choose to display the stack as a Folder, eliminating the cluttered look. Also on the roster is the Menu Bar, now with the added option to enable/disable transparency to solve some text visibility issues depending on the wallpaper. And Time Machine has now found a new little niche in the Menu Bar (via icon) for easily accessible controls and status updates for backups and such.

But it’s what’s on the inside that counts right? Included in the update is the standard “reliability updates” to several programs including Time Machine, Safari and iSync and adds support for additional routers to “Back to my Mac”. Of course, there’s much more where that came from.

Unfortunately, it appears a few things didn’t make it to the finals. The ability to choose between the 3D “Shelf” dock or classic styled dock appears to have been removed from the final release and it seems as though Safari 3.1 just wasn’t ready for the spotlight yet (funny, but not “ha ha” funny, pun intended).

So don’t wait any longer and get the whopping 343MB update over here.

Now the question is, will Vista users be this satisfied with SP1?