I need to learn to be content and happy with my tech gear. My latest saga with the MacBook Air (see the last 5 posts) is proof of that, and it appears to not be over yet. As I stated in my last post, I finally just got myself a new MacBook, which in reality is just slightly better (spec wise) than the one I just bought last year, and yesterday morning, Apple announced a very expected update to the MacBook Pro, and to me, a very unexpected update to the MacBook.

So here I sit with a perfectly good 9 day old MacBook and I’m within my 14 days to take this one back and get a new one, but should I? The new machine has a faster processor that is 45nm vs 65nm (yeah… I don’t know what that means either!), a new instruction set (are any apps written to take advantage of it) and less L2 Cache (am I going to notice?). Do I return it? I think I’m going to be. It’s so close to when I purchased it that it seems silly not to get the latest to maximize the upgrade I did.

Sigh… I’ll turn over a new leaf next week

Sorry for the flood of blog posts today but with all the mom health issues and MacBook Air drama most of the posts were saved as draft or written in TextMate and today I finally had time to post them all.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was having some issues with my MacBook Air and it’s fans. I set up the latest MacBook Air and putzed around very little with it. I was very happy that it seemed I had finally gotten a good one , that is until Sunday evening. Sunday evening brought some free time and Pinoyboy and decided to do a video chat with iChat. It started nice enough, but then my processors hit 78%, each. I was only running iChat and Finder. That’s crazy. Next the fans kicked in, and sure enuff, one processor core shut off and the other railed until… it shut down. Grrr.

So this afternoon, I drove all the way BACK to Ardmore and this time I decided to just return the MacBook Air and get a new 2.2 GHz MacBook. After three times, I just didn’t feel I’d get one that would be perfect. They were very nice and returned it with very little fuss and they were super apologetic. I have to say as nice as the new MacBook is, I miss the Air. I really enjoyed that MacBook Air. I just wish I could’ve gotten one that wasn’t jacked up. All in all I would still recommend the Air. I also think I will definitely buy one again, maybe after the first revision? I guess we’ll see.

I know I still haven’t posted a full review of my MacBook Air, but my mom has been having some major health issues and I’ve been a bit preoccupied with that. As I mentioned in my last post, I had to take my MacBook Air back to the store and get a new one. I was very worried that returning one with minor cosmetic issues would backfire and that I’d get one with a real problem and sure enough, I was right.

The new MacBook Air I got appears to have some sort of fan issues. Whenever I watch a video in Flash (YouTube, Yahoo! Live) or do a video via iChat the fans on the MacBook Air will spin up to full speed, 6200 RPM even if the processor temperature is not that high. Inevitably, the fans would cause one of the processor cores to shut down to keep the processor from overheating and this would cause the one processor left running to get RAILED, and the MacBook Air would die a slow death. The first one certainly did not have this problem. So now I’m on my third MacBook Air. Hopefully, three times is a charm.

Well I decided to take the MacBook Air back to the store and get a new one. I was expecting a fight but the Apple Store in Ardmore once again treated me a fantastic Apple store experience and a good Genius Bar visit, which if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I’ve had quite a bit of trouble finding those.

The new one looks great and I’m really excited! And I got to unbox a second one! I’ve taken some shots. I’ll post them soon.

I’m sure most of you are not surprised that I pulled the trigger on the MacBook Air, I’m not either. I admit it. I’m a sucker for new technology, and I have to say that I’m not disappointed or sorry at all.

The when, how, where and why goes like this… My sister’s iBook G4 finally croaked, she needs a new Mac. She’s 5 months pregnant and not in the best position to buy a new one, so the trickle down begins. She buys Shawn’s original MacBook Core Duo, he gets my barely 1 year old MacBook C2D 2.16GHz, and I get the Air. It all works out, trust me.

The sadness of it all is that in buying this MacBook Air, I’ve decided once and for all, that I will at all costs avoid the Apple Store in King Of Prussia. Aside from the three previous visits this week, what they did to me on Saturday was the very last straw. Very long story short… I called Saturday morning, asked them to put a MacBook Air aside for me and they said no problem. I showed up an hour later, got passed from inept employee to inept employee, stood in line for 20 minutes to be told finally that no one set one aside for me and they were of course sold out. I headed over to the Apple store in Ardmore, PA and had a very good, very positive experience, the experience I’d expect from Apple actually. Please if you are a person in the area who can or does visit King of Prussia… avoid them. Boycott! Go to Ardmore, they are so much nicer.

Now, about the MacBook Air. I must say I love it. It’s way thinner and lighter than I expected, even after fondling one in the store, until you hold it yourself, put it in your bag, use it on your lap you can’t imagine how thin and light it is. I’ve not done too much with it, but iTunes, iPhoto, Safari and iChat seem to be more then peppy enough. I am loving this thing… a lot. There is only one complaint, there is something wrong with the bezel around the screen. On the right of the screen, the bezel does not seem to be adhered correctly. I’ve applied some pressure to it and got it mostly adhered but there is a bubble still. I don’t know if I should live with it or return it. I’m leaning toward the latter.

*Sigh* I heart this Mac.

That’s right boys and girls, I broke down and bought a MacBook Air. It’s fantastic. More to come….

Sigh, my world is crashing around me and now my MacBook’s hd just died… AGAIN. Grrrr

This week, my beloved car is in the shop for a few things, it’s 30,000 mile checkup, inspection (we Pennsylvanians need to do that once a year) and to get a ding taken out of the driver side door. Long story short, it’s going to be there for a few days. One of my friends is also a sales manager at my Volvo dealership and that has it’s perks, and one of them is that I usually get a pretty cool loaner car when my car goes in for service, usually I get to try out a car that I’m interested in and this was no exception. This week I was given a new blue 2008 Volvo C30, complete with a Swedish flag painted on the roof a la Mini Cooper.

My lease is up this year, which means looking for a new car, and I’m definitely a Volvo enthusiast. Seriously… I love my Volvo, and I’m not looking to switch marques, however I was not sure if the C30, which is significantly smaller than my current sedan, would be a good fit for me. It’s basically a three-door, hatchback version of my sweetie’s Volvo S40. The car is a bit pricey for a hatchback, but it’s a Volvo and it’s a whole new type of car for me so I wanted to keep an open mind. I have to say that first and foremost, the car is a blast to drive. A very peppy 227hp, turbo-charged, inline-5 makes for very quick starts and a nice broad power band. The loaner has an automatic (natch) with a “manumatic“, which allowed me to sorta manually control the engine but I think I’d opt for the six-speed manual.

The size of the car actually did not bother me at all. I enjoyed the smaller car. It was easier to park, had a much tighter turning radius and the trunk actually worked for me. The loaner had a cool “hard cover” in the trunk to cover up the contents and I liked it. It was easy to pop out if you had to. I only had two minor complaints about the hatch. First the opening is very high, seriously it was about at my crotch. That’s HIGH to pick something heavy up and put it in. Second the opening is narrow. I won’t get much wide in there but with the seats folded down and the hard cargo cover out, it was SUPER large in there. Another thing I really enjoyed was that this C30 had the new Volvo iPod/USB music player adapter. The adapter is a bit pricey after the almost two hours they quoted me to install it but it’s amazing. Plug in your iPod, and the system scans it, once it does, the whole iPod interface is available, all your playlists, artists, genres, etc. It’s nice to finally have a full iPod interface, it’d be a definite must have for me.

I have to say all in all, I really liked the car, peppy, fun to drive and really cute! The only down side to the driving the car this week was that this was a “demo” so it was covered with advertising for the dealership! It wasn’t that bad, about 7 people actually stopped and asked me about the car. I hope one of them will call my friend and buy. But after a week with the little blue boy racer, I have to say… it’s on my short list.