JamesX

Well I never, another new product has managed to sneak (unannounced) onto Apple’s website - the MacBook. The smaller brother to the MacBook Pro, it’s basically a suped up iBook. And by suped up, I mean five times faster. But what’s really cool is that it now comes in black as well as the old frosty white.

Interestingly enough the black one has better specs than the white counterparts, placing it in the middle of the notebook family. Either way, they look really cool and for the price, it might just be worth buying one. I’m not quite sold on the keyboard and the new glossy screen - designed to make viewing colours more vibrant. I always find that those glossy screens on notebooks cause a lot of unnecessary reflection.

Along with the product release, the MacBook Pro had minor speed upgrades to 2.0 GHz. I’ll probably get one in the next year or so, depending on how long my poor old dying PowerBook can last.

It’s been a long time coming, but there’s finally an been an update to the PowerBook range - the MacBook Pro. Sporting the new Intel Core Duo processors, the MacBook Pro seems to be a nice piece of work. I think the new name might take a little while to grow on me, but the machine packs some great new features. The best part being that the new laptop is four times faster than the current PowerBooks. The Intel processor has also been launced in the iMac range too, with 2x speed improvements.

As if the announcement of the new hardware wasn’t enough, there are also some great new features in the software line-up too. Both the iLife and iWork suites have been updated with a vast array of features. The newest software to join the iLife suite is iWeb, a simple web editor that looks like it can create some really nice pages. I’m interested to see how it generates the CSS to outlay some of the things you can do, particularly the image placement and rotation. But I’ll know more about that when I get the software in my hot little hands.

The real question now is what to buy. So I think I’m just going to have to get one of everything. :)

This post is a continuation of Happy New Year…

July
War of the Worlds and Live 8 were making headlines in July and semester 2 and GigManX continued to roll along. Around mid July, grandma returned from the UK and Richard and I began to move into the Widget arena with the new assortment of ISP Usage widgets. Stu M managed to injure his back (obviously *cough* working too hard!) and Muppets Inc. was born in my Organisational Behaviour class. We celebrated birthdays for Ed and Gronow and capped of a relatively busy month with System Administrator Appreciation Day.

August
Uni was powering along well and my results were higher than ever. Podcasting was starting to make it’s debut and the ski season provided a perfect opportunity to get away for a weekend. Houses were burning down, the weather was crazy and the WordPress Tiger Style caught my attention.

September
September was a time for many developments. JamesX 5.0 was launched and rekindled the blogging spirit. September also saw the return of The Bitch Box and the surprise release of the iPod nano. eBay acquired Skype and my thoughts turned to how much snow would be awaiting me at Perisher. Returning just in time to expand my gadget collection with the Harmony 880 and RAM upgrades on the table.

October
October was quiet as the uni year ended (for RMIT anyway :)). James Blunt was in our ears and we had new iPods to listen with. Addo’s blog made a comeback along with my gallery. And that was it for October, but not before the clocks went forward and my new office was ready.

November
Spring Carnival fever hit Melbourne in November and it was Cup Day and Stakes Day that kept me busy this year. Dennis got older and I finished exams. The question now was what to do next. Two days at home and I had my gadget fix - TomTom GO 500 was here at last! Of course, November is always an exciting time for me, but this year was extra special for it was my 21st!. The party was huge and is still a fun topic. But it was tiring and some serious resting was in order!

December
December was seemingly busier than most with enrolments and concerts, birthdays and Christmas it was as packed as it could get. But I did get some toys along the way, new plates for the car and iPAQs for work. Then came the K600i to wrap up season, just in time for organising Boxing Day, it seemed it would never end. But it did, and it was time for a break, escaping to Bright for the last few days of 2005.

And so there you have it. The whole year in one (well two if you want to be picky) little package. For those who were here for the journey, thanks for your support. 2006 looks to be a promising year.

2006! Happy New Year!

It’s time once again to look back upon the year that was 2005…

January
Work started early on in January in preperation for the new school year and it wasn’t long before the heatwave hit Melbourne. January saw the least blogging by people and it was time for me to rant about it. It was also the month when I finally managed to get my eBay blue star, we celebrated Marc’s 20th birthday, and that horrible deer roadkill was unleashed upon the world. We continued to slug through the mountain of boxes at work and it’s also the same week that the RodentJet was born.

February
By February, uni was starting to appear on my radar and the timetabling gods seemed to be on my side. Either way, it didn’t phase me much as before long, the great South Pacific adventure had begun. It was one of the best, if not the best, holiday I’ve been on and by the end of it, I had taken almost 1,100 photos! The AFL footy tipping season was about to begin, Richard finally cracked the RMIT wireless problem and a new game was on the horizon…

March
Yes March is where it all began, World of Warcraft was taking centre stage at it began to occupy more than a little of everyone’s time. Our family friend Jean was over from England visiting and in between all of this, work and uni were plodding along nicely. As if it wasn’t already enough, No Worries, the latest play at work was a huge success.

April
It was a time for new things when April came around the picotux, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the list of 200 things, “never have I ever”, and the release of Tiger (although I didn’t get it until later) were enough to keep me busy. I also got to celebrate Oscar’s birthday and I uncovered the mystery behind the Graphinc Calculator application.

May
May Day was when Tiger arrived on my Powerbook and brought with it a host of new features to help convert those who still believe Windows is a better OS. Hitchhikers hit the movies, and a day later it was Andrew’s birthday. Then came Remember Ronald Ryan and the fifth season of Big Brother began in earnest. It was also the time to launch the new backend on the site. It would still be some time before it all tied together, but having grandma away for 7 weeks was sure to help.

June
It was semester one exam season around the time that my relations were visiting from England. I took them to the football and showed them around Melbourne - including Phillip Island. June was also the month that GigManX was born. It had been a long while since my last gadget purchase and it was time for something new. FOXTEL iQ entered the household and it hasn’t stopped recording since! Exams were over and reports were printed just in time to finish the month with dinner at Han’s.

So that’s the first half of 2005. The second half can be found in Part 2.

Well it seems just as quickly as I managed to get my hands on an HP iPAQ 6325, I also managed to grab a new phone. Keeping with my Sony Ericsson past, I’ve opted for the SE K600i. This phone is one of the new generation 3G mobiles that have been poineered in Australia recently by Three.

I was originally going to get the phone through Three, but after a trip up to my friend Moseen at the Optus World in North Melbourne, I realised that Optus now had a 3G network and their own offerings of 3G plans. As a long time, happy Optus customer, naturally I wanted to stay with them so it was no surprise when I came out of the store with three new phones - one for me, one for Ed and one for mum. Now Ed and I can make video calls to each other, and to our many friends who already have 3G phones on the Three network (you can make video calls between carriers even though I was told it wasn’t possible yet!).

I’m quite happy with the new phone. It does everything the old one did… and more! Plus it synchronised straight away with iSync so it was no time at all before I had all my contacts and calendars imported onto the phone.

The newest addition to the gadget arsenal is my HP iPAQ 6325. It seems that handheld devices have come a long way since my last iPAQ 5400 series a couple of years ago. This new baby packs integrated GSM/GPRS, wireless, Bluetooth, infrared and even has a built in camera. Compared to the old ones, it also comes with a fair few accessories, including a leather case, snap on keyboard, dock and various connectors.

The iPAQs came as a thank you from our suppliers at work for being such good customers over the past year. As you can imagine, the office is looking slightly gadgeted out and there’s been a struggle to see how many different applications (and games!) we could find for the little beasts. Needless to say, we have more than anyone could ever be bothered installing.

The built in phone is handy as it is a good replacement for my current work phone and the wireless will mean that mobile network admin will be possible from outside the office on the go. It’s a welcome addition with a promising future. :)