In June I started to notice problems with the connection speed between my MBP and Time Capsule.
In the beginning I thought the problem was to do with my Time Capsule, so after a bit of trouble shooting involving formatting and changing of settings without any change I did a bit of a comparison on speeds with @PatMahon.

Still no joy so it was time to give Apple a call and get some use from my Applecare policy.
After going over a few details of my issue with them we decided it was not a Time capsule issue as first thought but it was in fact a problem with my MBP, specifically the Airport card.

Getting to this conclusion was now quick or easy by any means, apart from the obvious ping tests and testing on a clean user account etc I did a archive and install of the OS, then a complete clean install…

Still no improvement.

So off my MBP went to Apple to be fixed, all boxed up and off it went.
A few days later I received a phone call from Group 8 (the company carrying out the repairs) they asked me a few questions and decided to replace the Airport card.

I happened to be on holiday so I had a bit of a wait until I got the MBP back.

Unfortunately once I had reinstalled my account from my backup I noticed that it was not in fact fixed, it was to tell the truth now worse than before.

Back on the phone to Applecare and I explained the situation was now worse than before, I had one more test to do…

Boot from the instal DVD and ping test, this confirmed once more that it was not a software issue.
I was sent a program by Apple that gathered some info and this was sent to Apple for the engineers to take a look at.

So here I am waiting for a reply from them to find out what is to happen next, I imagine that my MBP will be returned and ill be back to using my iPhone for a while.

It’s a nice piece of tech for sure, only let down a little by the detachable white plastic back-piece which is used to store the USB cable inside the mic housing when put together.

The Snowflake appears well built and solid, once detached from the plastic back-piece and placed on the top of my MBP the small pads on the inside of the body prevent any damage and stop the mic from sliding across the top of the screen if the MBP is moved.

Now for the sound…

Strange though it may seem, I can’t actually comment on the quality of the audio from the SnowFlake.
I’m the only person from the list of people I’ve spoken to so far that hasn’t actually heard my audio from the Snowflake, saying that all the comments are positive so far, with the SnowFlake delivering clear and good sounding audio.

It seems that the SnowFlake can be placed at some distance from you while still delivering excellent results, which turned out to be rather a funny tale while trying to explain the placement of the mic during a recent Mac20Q roundtable discussion.

That story aside for now I would say that the SnowFlake can still deliver excellent results even while placed 3 feet away.

So my investment in the SnowFlake seems well worth it so far, I’m hoping to hear some of the audio soon so I’ll be able to tell for the first time just how good it actually is.

Not the cheapest Mic available for the Mac, but I’ve read nothing but good reviews about the SnowFlake.

The best deal I found was from Dolphin Music.
At £10 cheaper than most other online retailers I feel I got a good deal.

Features

. Unique design fits on your desktop or laptop.
. Plug ‘n’ Play – no software needed.
. Perfect for podcasting, internet telephony, voice recognition software, movie narration & music.
. Mac & PC compatible.
. Includes USB cable.

As I was saying, I had decided to get myself a new MBP and give my Son the one I have now.

I was happy with this decision until I saw a few tweets from @Gazmaz about his predicament, he considering a iMac buy then started considering the idea of a Mac mini and a 24″ Apple display.

So this got me thinking once more, shall i get the cheaper 15″ MBP and a 24″ Apple display to give me way more real estate along with duel monitor set-up…

Then along came @DonMcAllister with his explanation of how he went from deciding to buy a Mac mini and ended up ordering a Mac pro…

So, so far I’ve gone from a Mac Mini to a iMac for my son.

Then to a new 17″ MBP for me, and giving my Son my old 17″ MBP.

Then to a new 15″ MBP and an Apple 24″ LED display.

But it didn’t stop there however, I use my MBP to make home movies with Final Cut Express, and organise my pictures with Aperture 2, and I’m starting to use pixelmator and a few other apps more often that require some serious hardware to get the best out of them.

So getting the 17″ MBP with 4GB of Ram as standard would be the way to go as it gives me the option to upgrade to 8GB and put in a SSD in the future.



Now this along with the 24″ display, Apple keyboard and AppleCare is going to cost a little more than I have available at present to invest.

So my plan is that in a few more months, I shall take another look at the 17″ MBP along with the 24″ Display and see how the finances are….

You can be sure that I’ll be posting my final decision once the time comes

Wait until the Mac Mini was updated by Apple and buy one for my Son who is using an old desktop PC with windows XP Pro installed.

The PC is about 5 years old and over the last 12 months it’s started to show signs of its age, and as I want to eventually switch all the family over to using Mac’s I don’t see any point in spending money upgrading the PC.

So when Apple finally updated the Mac Mini I was all ready to buy, until that is I had reason to visit the Apple Store in Liverpool to have a repair done on my daughters Macbook.



I took the chance to get a good look at all the new Apple hardware on display and have a bit of a play.

I was immediately impressed with the 24″ Apple LED displays.
With the LED backlight the images on the screen seemed to pop out at you, and the size…. Well, a bit overwhelming after sitting in front of the 17″ display on my Macbook Pro.

Even though the spec’s of the Mac Mini were given a serious rev, I still wasn’t sure how long my Son would get full use out of it as he likes his games on the PC, and for this reason XP will be getting installed on his Mac.

Because of the price increase in the Mac mini I started the think that after a few upgrades to the basic Mini, that the iMac was starting to look a pretty good deal.
And this is how the whole process started to get out of control, but more on that later.

I was so impressed by the service I received from the guys at the Apple store, even though the Macbook was out of warranty, I left the store and made my way home feeling quite good.

It was on the drive home when I started thinking about my options and how best to address the need of my Son and his new Mac.

At present I have a 2007 MBP with a 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 3GB of RAM installed.

It’s an extremely powerful machine and way out performs his current desktop PC as you could imagine.

So that got me thinking.
Why not get myself one of those new MBP’s and pass my current MBP along to my Son.

Good idea, I decided I would do this.

To be continued……….

It was a 3½ hour drive from my home, not the closest Apple Store but only an extra 30 minutes drive and I hadn’t been there before so I thought for the sake of 30 minutes I would visit a store I’d never been to before.

The reason for the visit was to have my daughters Mac Book looked at by an Apple Genius as she had a power problem.

Her battery was not charging and when the power cable was pulled out the Mac Book would instantly turn off.

It was an interesting drive, we experienced all weather conditions from blazing sun to snow blizzards.

When we got there we headed for Starbucks for a drink as I had about an hour to kill before my 3 pm appointment.

Once I got to see the Genius that afternoon I spent a few minutes telling him about the problem, I explained that the Mac Book was no longer covered under the 12 month warranty and I did not have Applecare for it.

The Genius swapped out the battery for one of their own and it instantly started charging so we knew it was a battery issue.

He plugged in a iPod Nano which he said had a battery diagnostic program on it and booted up the Mac Book.

A few seconds later a graphic appeared on the Mac Book screen with all the information about the battery.

My eyes were drawn straight to the bit that said “Battery BAD”…

All the graphics were red and reading through the rest of the information it was clear that there was to be no hope of a fix.

At the bottom of all the information displayed on the screen was a code number generated by the diagnostic program.

The Genius took this number and told me he was going to look up a few things and see if there was anything he could do.

A few minutes later he returned and told me that the code that was generated was unable to allow him to replace the battery free of charge especially since the Mac Book was out of warranty.

It wasn’t the news I wanted to hear from him, but all was not lost.
He said that because the Mac Book was only a month or so out of warranty that he thought the right thing to do was to replace it free of charge in the interests of customer service.
He would adjust the paper work accordingly.

I was once again a happy chap.

So off I went completely satisfied with Apples customer service in the same way I have read about from so many people in the past.

On the way out of the shop I stopped to have a look at the new 17″ MBP just to see how nice they were in the flesh.

I don’t know if it was just me or the fact that I was in such a good mood about the customer service I received but I decided that I would be buying myself one as soon as Snow Leopard is released.

This is not a selfish act from me, I was planning on buying my son a iMac to replace his PC as it hasn’t got much life left in it.

He wanted a laptop so he could move around the house with it, but for the money I had to spend he would be getting a 13″ screen which he was not looking forward to.

So it got me thinking, the new 17″ MBP, I could put a little extra money into the pot and buy the new 17″ MBP and give my son my 17″ MBP.

It was in some part down to the service and I’m sure if I had walked out empty handed I wouldn’t have stopped to admire the MBP.

So you could say by the Genius giving me a £90 battery for free, Apple will make another £2000.00 from me.

WOW.. is it going to work out as a £2000.00 battery

The decision should have been simple, buy a Mac Mini for my Son (his first Mac) and buy a Mac Mini to use as a media center.

So I was all ready and just needed Apple to update the Mini and I was sorted.
But along with the update came the price increase…..

Now there’s a spanner in the works, two Mac Mini’s will cost me £1000.00 Hmmm.
A 20″ iMac for my Son will be a little less than that and he gets a monitor keyboard and mouse thrown in.

I’d have to do without the media center but I could live with that (I think).

Or do I wait a while and try to get two refurbished Mac Mini’s from Apple?

It’s something I’m going to have to think about for a few weeks.

On a side note… Have Apple increased the Mac Mini price so it’s not so appealing as an alternative to the Apple TV, as the UK price difference between the 160GB Apple TV and Mac Mini was only £130.00 now its £240.00……..

The scroll wheel feels a little cheap and plastic when scrolling with the ratchet type feel scroll enabled.

Being able to store the dongle into the mouse for safe keeping is a nice little feature, as is the way the mouse switches on when you eject the dongle from within the body of the mouse to start using it.

I haven’t installed the Logitech software I was supplied with the mouse yet as a few people recommended SteerMouse as the best 3rd party application to use.

I’ve installed SteerMouse and have been customizing some of the Logitech buttons to my applications, one of the reasons I installed SteerMouse was to be able to assign specific buttons on the mouse to do different things depending on which application I was using.

So on the whole I am pleased with, and enjoying the combination of VX Revolution and SteerMouse…

APART… from the fact that I only found out after a couple of uninstalls and reinstalls of SteerMouse, that if you have TextExpander installed on your Mac the Application Switching feature does not work.

After raising the issue with SteerMouse Support I received a e-mail confirming that they have been trying to resolve this issue alongside the makers of TextExpander but have yet to come up with a solution.

Hopefully this is a issue that will be sorted in the future, but it’s something I can live with for now.