Who would have thought that extending your wireless network would be so rewarding?
Here is a picture of my mess upstairs (via built-in iSight), but that’s not the point. The point is, it’s full reception upstairs! I finally realized why the reception on the third floor is so strong (with the help of the second floor bridge) — it’s because the third floor isn’t made out of cement! We added it ourselves, it’s just wood and steel.
Okay this entry is boring to everyone except me.
-BOB-
It’s about the same deal as the parents’ house and in Kunming, but this is what I’m dealing with over here in China. Granted, it’s about 10x cheaper for internet than in the States. The DSL here is fast (enough), but when browsing international links (video blogs, YouTube pages, CNN, Yahoo, basically everything except for Google sites) its very, very slow. When browsing Chinese sites, it’s very fast.
ADSL Guide reports:
Result: Slow!
DSLreports (on a Chinese server) reports:
Result: Fast!
But they don’t take into account for the P2P, which averages over 100-200k/second downloads, or the mysterious 150k/sec uploading to the thompsonjazz.com server.
Bob
Is a terrible one. After installing Boot Camp and XP, I spent about 40 minutes trying to get Windows to find my wireless Airport connection. I finally gave up and started playing a game of Hearts (Michele is a real pain in the ass!) until I restarted in OSX after being assaulted with the “TAKE A TOUR OF WINDOWS XP!!!” / “YOUR COMPUTER MIGHT BE AT RISK!” pop-up dialogs.
Then I installed Parallels, which is basically Virtual PC 2. It’s a little bit faster, but then again so is this computer. Because it’s such a terrible OS, I doubt I will ever use XP unless I need a keygen or something.
Hopefully I’ll get some DSL in the new place, have it all rigged for wireless on all floors (cement houses are new for me — the norm in China — and tend to limit reception.)
bob
First, as HT flies home now, just wanted to say, great trip with Helen, perfect weather, amazing pictures, and a bunch of good conversations. We all had fun, and ate well.
Second, this is a screenshot of the how fast this sucker can rip a DVD (benchmark for speed). It was over 65 frames per second, compared to the G4 which averaged 10-18 FPS. Rosetta apps are basically the same as my old G4, so I’ll have to wait for programs like Final Cut, Adobe products, and Sibeius before I see the increase in speed. It’s interesting how some companies like Digidesign (Pro Tools) released a Universal Binary update for free within weeks of the new Intel chips, and other companies just aren’t there yet.
Third, good news, we should be able to move into our new house in the next week. It looks great, some small details to work out. I can’t wait to get in there and start producing.
Fourth, I’m downloading Bootcamp to see how Windows XP Pro will work on this computer. I hope this isn’t jst 10 GB of wasted space. And I also hope there is an unistaller.
Lastly, Hel and I took over a thousand pictures, so I’ll post a gallery soon, and make a movie with iMovie (my version of Final Cut Pro isn’t universal yet) to see the results on this MBP.
_BOB_
Note: Make sure no applications are open except CCCloner when you do this.
1 Download Carcon Copy Cloner for the Mac
1.1 Install it.
2 Get an external hard drive ready and plug it in
2.1 If the network NAS drive causes problems, just connect a firewire drive locally.
3 Enlarge this photo in a separate window
3.1 Select the “source”, or the Internal inside Ma’s computer
3.2 Select the “target”, or the destination firewire or NAS drive
3.3 Click the lock and type in the admin password
3.4 Click “Clone” and wait a few hours.
4 Check to make sure the files are there (do a file size of comparison and random checks in different directories)
5 Format and reinstall OSX on her computer
6 Take Helen’s G4 specs, find out how much RAM you can add, and add at least a 1 GB from Crucial.
BOB
Skype (video beta for Mac) automatically found my Panasonic video camera. Yeah whatever, right? It found it attached through the FIREWIRE connection! Before my Mac would only allow the USB connection, and you had to set the camera to “web cam” mode.
I don’t know what happened since then (about two years ago) but now it automatically finds the camera through the Firewire port. That is crazy.
-BOB-
Tom’s video on his daily v-blog is hilarious! I love how he counts like 1… 2… 3.. (and it’s like 10 seconds already.) The 2 jigawatts made me laugh, I knew you were gonna say that. Then the gloss, yes, the gloss.
Can’t wait to get this thing. Thank you Tom for ALLLL your help!
the gloss,
bob
Nice.
This thing is pretty cool. I mean, it’s a keybaord and that’s about it, but it sure beats the $3.00 USD black knock-off I was using. It has arrow keys and the numeric keypad, as well as the F1-12 keys. Much better than trying to do all that on my laptop.
Hopefully, this will be the beginning of the end of the posture problems. Chun Mei said get the wireless one so we can control the computer across the room when we watch movies. Hehe.
Bob
I want to buy a Mac Mini. I basically deleted this blog entry because just got off my lazy a** and researched. The answers are:
- No, you can’t use the Powerbook screen as your monitor
- No, the Mini won’t recognize any drive except for the internal drive in Target Mode (hold T)
- Yes, I have to buy an LCD monitor
Still wondering about hard drives. People say LaCie sucks, people say LaCie is good. But damn, that Mini/LaCie drive looks too good to be true — 500 GB, small, fits with the mini, 7200 rpm, bunch of firewire/USB ports. I’m scared it’ll just break one day, it’s only $299.
Update:
Okay, the Mini was a good idea, except…
If I get a Mini 1.66 gHz, it’s $799
+$235 for 2 GB RAM
+$295 for more hard drive/ports.
+(at least) $300 for an LCD monitor
——–
$1,529 for non-portable, slower computer.
Then look at the Macbook 13″ 2.0 gHz.
+$235 for Ram.
+$0.00 for additional HD/ports
+$0.00 for LCD.
——–
$1,534 for portable. Faster.
Okay, screw the Mini.
-bob-
VIEW DEMO