Last summer, I blogged that I jumped on the netbook bandwagon and picked up an Acer Aspire One. I went through hell and back to get Windows XP installed on it but after using it, I had quite a few issues with it, so I sold it to a friend who needed a lappy and was completely enamored with the Aspire One. My three biggest complaints about it were the unreasonably small SSD hard drive (4GB), the trackpad buttons were on the left and the right of the pad and lastly, it was almost impossible to upgrade, so it went.

But, I missed it. I liked the small form factor and the weight and I wanted another one, but this time… I did some research. This time I wanted to get one that could boot OS X and one that would have an actual hard drive so I decided on an MSI Wind U100. And lucky for me the hubby picked up one for me for Christmas.

The Wind is a nice machine. It is a bit thicker than the Acer was but is much easier to upgrade the RAM and it seems that the Hard Drive is actually easily accessible looks a cinch to upgrade.

It came with Windows XP Home and it ran pretty well. I want to try to install OS X on it next and maybe even Windows 7. I’ll report back on how it goes.

I saw this today on The Brothers Brick and I think it sums up how I feel about this very emotional, very historic day.

I know that I’m a Mac guy and that you might be surprised to see me blogging about Windows, but at work, I still live in the Windows world so i’m at least mildly curious to see what Microsoft has up it’s proverbial sleeve. To that end, last weekend I decided to download and install the Windows 7 Beta that was announced at the CES last week. I installed it on VMWare Fusion and I have to say I’m down right impressed by it. I have been using Vista for the past few six months or so and although I have no major problems with it, it feels very cluttered and slow to me. I still feel more comfortable with XP.

I didn’t expect to feel much different about Windows 7 but I really do like it. It doesn’t feel cluttered or slow and some of the windows management features actually make me ache for Windows 7 to come to my work machine ASAP. For example, if you take a window and drag it to the top of your screen, it automatically maximizes the window and when you drag it away from the top of the screen it restores the window to the original size. An amazing new feature that I truly adore is that if you drag a window to the left of right size of the screen, it automatically resizes the window to 50% of the screen. This makes it exceedingly easy to review two documents at one time, something that I do a a lot at work. Another neat parlor trick is Aero Shake, where you grab the window of the Application you’re using, shake it left and right on the screen and all the other windows hide themselves. It’s pure fluff but it is really nice.

I enjoy it so much that I’m thinking of replacing my Vista VM with a Win 7 VM. I’ve even gone so far as to install Windows 7 on my MacBook via BootCamp so I could take a good look at the Aero Glass functions. The install went so smooth and so quickly, I’m hardly believe it was a Windows installer.

If you have a chance, check it out and let me know what you think!

Today, when I was unpacking my MacBook at work I noticed a small nick in the top of my MacBook right next to the Apple. I’m not sure how it happened but I was thinking to myself that it might just be the right time to look into one of those hard cases that I’ve seen to get some protection for my MacBook. It’s been awhile since I had a Mac lappy with a metal shell. I’ve been spoiled by hard casing of my iBooks and MacBooks of late, and I forgot that Aluminum cases can (not terribly easily) get nicks and scratches in them.

I had a Genius Bar appointment today to have my iPhone headphones looked at so I took a look at the hard cases they had in stock. Two of them tickled my fancy, the Speck Products SeeThru and the Incase Hardshell Case.

I was happy to see with this new version Speck dropped the odd cuts and different heights of the original SeeThru. The store had only two shades of Red and Clear of the new SeeThru. The Incase version was in Black. Of the two I was heavily leaning toward the Incase Hardshell Case as it had a sorta soft finish and it was black. However, it was not for the new MacBook, it was for the original. So I decided to go with the Red Speck SeeThru.

I got home and unpacked it, it comes in two parts, a top case and a bottom case cover. I cleaned off my MacBook well and used the included cleaning cloth to wipe it down. The top cover snapped on quickly and easily. The bottom case went on just as easily. The fit is very nice and the cover has cut outs for the ports on the left and the SuperDrive on right. It even has a button to trigger the battery status lights!

It’s odd and cool at the same time that all the lights that shine thru the case turn orange. The Apple on the lid, the sleep light, even the battery lights turn orange. The case adds little in the way of size to the MacBook, mine still fits in my Incase Neoprene sleeve but what I did not expect was the weight that is added. I’m sure it’s not all that much but boy does it feel like it. My once amazingly light MacBook feels more like my work Dell Latitude. It even feels heavier than my hubby’s last gen MacBook. It’s very noticeable when you close the lid. So far heat has not been an issue, it feels about as hot as it did without it on.

So far so good. I’ll update as I find out more.

Once again yet another pair of iPhone earbuds has started going bad on me. This is easily the 8th or 9th pair that has gone south on me since my original iPhone purchase.

It always seems that 2-3 months into using them the left ear bud starts to go bad. It becomes about half the volume of the right and doesn’t quite seem to fit. The rubber around the ear bud always seems to warp and bubble as well, which I’m sure doesn’t help the sound as they don’t fit as well.

Apple has regularly replaced them under warranty but seriously, this is getting annoying. I’ve bought other buds but it seems like the trend in the market place is towards buds that go in your ear canals and those just really aren’t for me. I get such a headache from them and they seem to come out all the time. I have my eye on a pair of Altec Lansing over the ears ones, but I doubt they’re gonna be as comfy as my iPhone ones are to me.