Zen of Tofu

Great news! I just got a free iPod Touch 8GB since a family member bought a brand new MacBook. This thing is beautiful! It wasn’t easy to get my hands on it since FedEx decided to be off their game. After sitting through a rainstorm, I finally got my package and then went home with my brand new iPod.

Not only is it my first iPod, it’s the break of my longtime motto that I’d never become part of the iPod crowd. But I can’t help it when they bring out a touchscreen iPod that basically doubles as a PDA! It’s thin, sleek, black, and shiny. I got my name engraved on the back, and I couldn’t figure out what to get engraved on the second line until I was waiting in the car for the heavy downpour to cease. The line every iPod Touch should get engraved on the second line: “Don’t touch me.”

I’ll take some photos of it tomorrow with my dSLR and we’ll see how those turn out.

written by tofu \\ tags: Apple

Recently my hard drive went to the grave, and I popped in a brand new Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm 16mb cache SATA drive.

I was just happy to have my MacBook up and running again so I didn’t think much of the upgrade/replacement. Then today when I was running on battery power, I noticed that my “time to live” indicator showed that my battery still had another 6 hours and 20 minutes left of juice! I was baffled! Could the new hard drive be saving me that much battery life? After some research, it’s indeed true! Efficient hard drives save battery life!

So if you find yourself with some extra bucks, think about upgrading that 2.5″ mobile drive and compute your way to longer battery lives! Long live the battery!

written by tofu \\ tags: Tech

Today I got the pleasure of calling in to Linksys tech support to help get a router set up to work with a portable Internet service. Quite tricky business. The portable modem wasn’t letting the router access the Internet because the router was a stranger to it. I had the basic firmware that came with the router and I tried tricking the modem by renaming the router the same name as the PC on the network. No go. So then I called in to Linksys and got a tech support agent to help me get this modem set up.

The tech support was great! Very informative, good English, and understanding. The agent was clearly trained properly and wasn’t just following some laminated sheet in front of her *cough* Bell *cough*. The problem was the firmware, which after updating allowed me to clone the MAC address of the PC so the modem would be tricked into thinking it was letting the PC access the Internet, and not the router! Overall, I’d give Linksys tech support a 9 out of 10. I’ve had bad tech support in the past over the phone, and it’s very easy to see when the other side knows what they’re doing or not.

For example:

• When a tech support agent tells you to reboot your computer and 5 seconds later asks if you’re ready for the next step, you should call back and hope to get a different agent!
• When a tech support agent can’t even pronounce an IP address, you should call back and hope for another agent!
• When a tech support agent knows that you too know a little of what you’re doing and are not completely hopeless, get that agent’s name and clearly say in the recording, “Thanks so much for your help!”

written by tofu \\ tags: Tech

Front pages have been made, podcasts are abundant, and investors are uninformed.

The keynote of the year has settled into the industry and everyone is clambering around to take advantage of opportunity. One company is already making “manila envelope” laptop sleeves for the new MacBook Air, just like the envelope Steve Jobs pulled the world’s thinnest laptop out of.

Just about every tech blog or general news blog have reported on the announcements to bits, and my news reader is quickly filling up! Podcasts haven’t been as abundant as the blog entries or articles, but I’m sure they’re in the production process.

One interesting thing I’ve read is the reaction of the investors to the keynote, and how tons of shares were sold due to investors thinking that the announcements were a “disappointment.” It was obvious going into Macworld that very little could top last year’s iPhone announcement, but with the great sales numbers, new applications, and now the MacBook Air the outlook in reality is great for Apple this year. In fact, properly informed investors are saying it’s the perfect time to buy Apple stock since the price has come down, and should be going back up throughout the year. It’d be interesting to see how things play out this year for Apple financially.

written by tofu \\ tags: Apple, Macworld, Tech

The keynote was definitely not disappointing, albeit not as groundbreaking as when the iPhone was announced. Despite the upgrades that only affect iPhone and AppleTV users, those devices are definitely a lot more attractive now.

The most exciting announcement was the world’s thinnest notebook — the MacBook Air. The price point of $1799 is not surprising considering how much technology was packed into such a small notebook, but it would be great to see how much more powerful Intel can make processors of similar size. The idea of having a thin and light notebook to do all your little tasks and leaving the big jobs to the desktop machines is a great idea. I hope PC laptops start to take notice of this methodology and bring down the prices on the thinner and less powerful notebooks.

2008 will most likely be another great year for Apple and I’m sure all the Apple stockholders will be ecstatic.

written by tofu \\ tags: Apple, Mac, Macworld, Tech