September 2010
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Category: Technology
iMac part two: First impressions
Written by Jeff
Friday, 27 August 2010 20:04
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Getting my new iMac setup was a breeze.  I had it restore using my TimeMachine backup from my MacBook.  It did take a couple of hours to restore from backup, but every thing just works, and it took much less time then installing all my software.

First impressions are that this machine is much faster then my 6year old MacBook Pro.  Very nice.  The screen is pretty much all that everybody seems to say.  Bright, clear, and beautiful.

I did order the wired keyboard with the number pad along with the new trackpad, and the magic mouse…. So far I seem to go back and forth between the track pad and the mouse, which is interesting.  Not sure if it will stay like this or if I will gravitate to the trackpad.  The keyboard is comfortable to type on, and the keypad was a good choice for me.

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New iMac
Written by Jeff
Friday, 27 August 2010 18:31
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My primary system has been getting flakey lately. The SuperDrive stoped working, the trackpad also stopped working, forcing me to use a mouse. Since I make my living off my computer, I had to replace the system before it stopped completely.

I knew that I could not afford a new MacBook Pro, so I started looking at my options.
I could get a windows laptop running Windows7.
I could get a Mac mini.
I could get an iMac.

Admitedly Microsoft’s Windows 7, looks pretty slick and they seem to have made major improvements to security. But it would cost around $800.00 to get the equivalent windows versions of the software that I need for my work.

Mac Mini sounded like a good solution until I realized that it would cost more money for a second monitor(not even sure if you can hook up a second monitor through the hdmi port).

This led me to the 21 inch iMac, I can hook up a second monitor with ease, plus for the price, it is probably that fastest solution available….

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First impressions: Firefox 4 on Mac
Written by Jeff
Monday, 26 July 2010 16:02
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Image representing Firefox as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

I Moved from FireFox to Google Chrome as my default browser as soon as plug-ins became available on Google Chrome.  I tend to only use plug-ins that enhance productivity in web development, but those same plugins seem to slow FireFox to a crawl.  I just checked and these are the Google Chrome Plug-ins that I use.  They are very similar to what I used on FireFox.

Unfortunately FireFox is much slower then Google Chrome both in starting up and rendering pages. The difference in speed is so pronounced that I decided for my own sanity to try Google Chrome, and never came back.

Now it looks like FireFox 4beta will be a real attempt at catching up with Google Chrome in speed and even wisely adopting the top tab layout to better support how web apps appear in the browser.  Unfortunately some of the layout stuff like top tabs are not yet available for Mac, though they say coming soon.  The good news is that there is a marked improvement in start-up times and page rendering.  Not as fast as Chrome yet, but much better then the current stable version of FireFox.  Things that I expected (since this is an early beta) without being disappointed are incompatibilities with some of my plug-ins.

I think that FireFox 4 holds some promise in the near future, but it still needs some time in the oven before it will be ready for another poke.  For the moment Google Chrome is still secure as my default browser, but the folks at google had better look out.  FireFox is starting to catch up.

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