Daily Archive for November 7th, 2007

Wine Tonight, Beer Tomorrow

Published on November 7, 2007 in Review and Wine. Closed

Had to add a new category for this one. I probably won’t be using it very often because I don’t go out of my way to drink wine, but tonight I had a bottle I was given for helping someone with her computer. I told her she didn’t have to, but I got a bottle of wine anyways.

The wine was Toasted Head Merlot Vintage 2000. I have no idea how it rates as the wine sites are snobby and require you to pay to look up reviews (I’m thinking Wine Spectator). I don’t know a whole lot about wine except that it’s made with grapes. The bottle said it has cherry, vanilla, and spices in the flavor. I noticed the cherry and a slight hint of oaky vanilla, but not the others. Perhaps those flavors mellowed out into the rest of the flavor as the wine has been aging for 7 years. I really don’t know. I did know this. I am not a huge fan of Merlot. This Merlot was excellent. I was very impressed. Usually, they’re kind of dry and have a bit of a bite to them. This one lacked all of that. It was fruity, full bodied, and very smooth. It had an excellent mouthfeel and taste (though again, I couldn’t really detect many of the flavors). Anyways, if you like wine, this one was a good one. I wish I could say more about it, but I don’t know anything about wine (I tend to prefer reds though, Cabernet is probably my favorite style followed by Pinot Noir).

Gmail “2.0″ made it my way

Published on November 7, 2007 in Google, Internet and Technology. Closed

I noticed some odd differences in my Gmail account the other day.  I couldn’t figure out what it was.  Today I decided to check my Contacts and it’s completely different.  It’s a lot nicer and easier to use than the way it used to be.  I’ll have to play around with it, but I think I like the change.  Nothing else really looks different, though.

Anyone waiting for the new version to make it to them will probably be getting it soon (I tend to get cool new stuff last for some reason).

A Couple Days with the Apple

Published on November 7, 2007 in Apple, Hardware and Technology. 26 Comments

I’ve now had the Apple for a couple days. While I am still not used to certain things, here are some thoughts that I’ve had while using it, along with a major frustration.

I really like the computer. The keyboard on the laptop has a really nice feel to it. The keys are like a rubbery feel instead of hard plastic like most laptops. However, for whatever reason, Apple decided to make the touchpad “wide screen”, meaning it’s the same scale as the wide screen monitor. While it might sound nice to have so you can go over the whole screen without picking up your finger, the balls of my hands hit it periodically when I’m typing, clicking me to another window. While there is a setting to prevent false taps, it doesn’t work very well. It’s not that much of an issue, but I do prefer the smaller square touchpads of PC laptops. The trackpad does have a nice feature with gestures. 2-finger scrolling scrolls windows and 2 finger tapping brings up the “right-click” context menu. I love that feature, especially with the lack of a right mouse button.

I really like the ambient light sensor. My HP had one and it worked great. This one also adjusts the brightness of the backlit keyboard, which is pretty cool.

The best part of the laptop is the battery. It has a power meter on it so you can tell how much juice it has when the computer is off (or even when the battery is taken out of the computer). The battery life on this is killer. The first day I had it, I used it for about 4-5 hours, which includes installing Leopard. It didn’t even have a full charge. The magsafe charger adapter is a nice touch. I thought it’d be flimsy and fall out easily, but it’s nice an strong.

The optical drive leaves something to be desired. I feel like I’m going to scratch the discs I stick in it because it’s a tight fit. I also don’t like how I have to shove it just about all the way in before it’ll grab and pull it the rest of the way. It’s really noisy as well (most optical drives make noise, but this is particularly noisy when it’s reading a disc for the first time and when it sucks it in and ejects it).

The keyboard, aside from feeling nice, has some things missing, like a forward delete key (the opposite of backspace, which is what the delete key does), regular sized arrow keys (these are tiny), and a home and end key. What I don’t get is why there are 2 enter keys, one where it should be and one where the right option key should be located.

I had some issues with Parallels causing my keyboard not to work, but after installing the Parallels tools on the Vista VM, it seems to have stopped (that was fixed when I wrote the first paragraph).

Overall, I like using OS X, and I like the way this computer was built. I’ve basically stopped using my XP machine at home in place of this one so I can get used to it. There are some things that bug me, like tabbing in Firefox and having it skip over drop down menus and check boxes. Apparently, that’s a Leopard/Firefox thing and not a real issue though. We’ll see how it goes. I wish MS would release a compatibility update for Office 2004 so I can open all the newly created Office 2007 documents without using Parallels, but such is life. I’ll write more as time goes on…