iMac 24" Ready to unpack

Well it has been a crazy month of new things. Firstly the month has seen me in and out of the doctors with headaches, which we have concluded is down to stress, and a weak right eye which is being irritated by using a screen all day. So I now have two pairs of posh designer glasses to wear which has already made a big difference, meaning I can see my iPhone & netbook and all other screens alot more clearly.

To go with the new eyewear, I finally invested in a North Face hardcore waterproof with zip out fleece which cost me so much money it makes my eyes water thinking about it, but I’ve wanted the jacket and the fleece for so long, and I got a good deal on the pair so I now have them.

Perhaps the icing on the cake is our new top end 24″ iMac with maxed out Ram, Graphics and processor specs. Cost a hell of a lot of money, and the guys in the Apple Store Manchester where very helpful in sourcing & sorting us out with our new baby, so all our work is now being completed on the iMac.

Mixed thoughts so far, the hardware is amazing, and the screen is immense, however Snow Leopard sucks. Tons of system crashes, enabling Sharing makes everything start to crash,, and running CS3 or CS4 is impossible on Snow Leopard, Illustrator, Photoshop and Dreamweaver just crash whenever you try to open, save or print a document. It will also crash on copy/paste or infact for any reason at all. Also the guttenberg print drivers seem very sketchy, and there is a lot of banding and colour problems on my Trusty Epson CX3200. I finally had enough of the issues and downgraded to Leopard 10.5.8 which is solid as a rock.

So now all our badge orders, and all my Development work is being completed on the Mac, and I’m loving it. Speaking of badges, we are selling loads of Halloween Badges over at Koolbadges so be sure to head on over to check us out.

iMac in it's temporary home, before driving back to our house.

First impressions of the app Are mixed. The gps signal isn’t great on the iPhone, and the app isn’t as responsive or fast when compared with the tontom go. However the functionality is complete and the app has much more functionality than the recently updated tomtom go software.

Well I’m now in the second month of ownership and I still love the Samsung N110. This machine has completely changed the way I browse then Internet, and the fact that most of the things I do online are web based such as Twitter, Gmail, iPlayer and reading news and blogs, the Netbook is an ideal partner.

I was sceptical from the start with regards to quoted battery life, but I’ve got to admit, even with normal usage on battery with brightness adjusted to my lining and iTunes either playing music or downloading podcasts in the background, I still manage in excess of 8 hours battery life from a single charge. I now find that If I charge the netbook overnight, I can do all my computing on it the following day without the need for a power outlet. The powe consumption and battery life is amazing, and although the system may be limited from a processor power point of view, it is more than sufficient for editing photos in Picassa or Photoshop, and writing php in Dreamweaver.

Another fear when buying the netbook was the size. I wanted a laptop which was portable, and all the laptops I have owned in the past where far from portable because they required hoofing about in laptop bags, and always required the AC adaptors. The Samsung N110 was supplied with it’s own samsung netbook sleeve, and I tend to just throw it in the car or a backpack to take it anywhere I go.

The screen is only 10 inches, and the resolution is only 1024 x 600 but this is quite easy to get used to, and the synaptic scroll pad is great for scrolling down web pages. Most pages will fit horizontally without need for scrolling and with the adoption of good CSS standards, most content will shift to fit.

The keyboard was another worry, coming it at something like 93% of full size I’ve actually adjusted to the keyboard really well, and it is really nice to type on for extended periods of time.  The silver nano key coating is also welcome as it eliminates bacteria growth on the keys, and i far more hygenic than normal keyboards.

I have tried Windows 7 on the Samsung N110 and whilst it runs well, there are issues with shutdown taking a while. Also I’ve experienced far reduced battery life under Windows 7, and the netbook feels nowhere near as snappy as it does under XP, so I’ve opted to stay with XP on the netbook. To be honest I don’t really see a problem with using XP on a netbook as it is a very familiar operating system, and does a great job at providing awesome performance and superb battery life.

This netbook has really set me free with regards working from home. Coupled with the new iPhone 3.01 update and Tethering I can work online from anywhere (even got online from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland and was able to work and twitter). The combination of the netbook and the iPhone means I am now truly mobile.

I can’t see my life without a netbook in it now, and hopefully as processor development continues, and battery technology improves we can maybe hit the 24 or 48 hour battery life marks. By using the Netbook in place of the Desktop 99% of the time I’ve reduced my power consumption from 400-500 watts right down to 6-8 watts of power draw. This is a great benefit of Netbook technology, and may even persuade me to look into a net-top for home.

I’ll keep posting reviews of this netbook along with experiences and problems encountered so watch this space.

Downloading Carpool Podcast. Check it out at Llewtube or on iTunes

Everyone get out tonight and see what you can see.

We are also saving like mad to buy a camper van for touring round Europe in 2010. Hopefully going to spend at least a year on the road, and it should be a once in a lifetime kinda gig. There is a motorhome dealership a few miles away from our new home, and we have already tried and tested a few. Exciting times.

Well we have been living the good life since moving up to Scotland over a week ago. Walks on the beach in the evening, and even strawberry picking this morning. Love it. Checkout the pictures below for a taster of our latest shenanigans.

I’ll try to come up with good stuff to post, that won’t bore the pants off you, I just need some time to do something notable

well what have I been upto. On Friday we where in Manchester to see the Defenders of the Faith II tour and one of my favourite bands Lamb Of God. It was an amazing night, but a punch in the guts in many respects. For one, the train cost a fortune. As we couldnt get a return to manchester from St Helens (go figure) we essentially had to get 4 single tickets. This cost us £30 for a 30 mile journey. To put it in perspective to go 30 miles in the other direction to liverpool would have cost us £7 return. After going days and days without spending a single penny, this cost was excessive, and almost enough for me to write it off and come home without going to the gig, but hell, we work hard we deserve a night out.

So into Manchester, and what a shock. It was like venturing into a parallel universe as opposed to the city we lived in for 7 years. The people where all about the fashion, it was so overcrowded, and the money being spent was insane.

The cost of everything got to me that day, the cost of a 2 minute taxi ride and entry into a club to meet our friends £10, a light snack £4, a pint of beer £3. The cost of city living has skyrocketed and it’s only when you step back and away from it you realise how absurd the whole thing is. We both hated the city for that day we spent there, we have either outgrown it or it has outgrown us! The only saving graces where that the bands where great, and Lee & Rachel where awesome, and their appartment was superb. Lee also grabbed us meal deal vouchers for Pizza Express so we all had starters, main courses and beer, and the total bill came to £40 for 4 people. Awesome.

I’m still not spending, and now I’m 41 days in give or take, it feels no different. I was almost tempted at the prospect of building a media centre PC. I resisted, dug out my old xboxs, and a few old Hard Drives and set them all up with XBMC. So now I have 3 working Media Centres, all networked and ready to go. Result & recycling!

I’ll start posting again properly for the next few weeks, just been a crazy busy time of late.

Thursday saw us taking a train to Liverpool to see some ‘capital of culture’ culture. When we lived in St Helens when I was younger and more handsome we would take the train to Liverpool all the time, but since moving to Scotland & Manchester for the better part of 7 years Liverpool fell out of favour with our more ‘Cosmopolitan’ tastes in cities. Vicki & I both remarked on the train that it must be 6 years since we took the train to liverpool, which is a long time for someone who used to spend every day in the city.

We where pretty shocked that the train fare hadn’t chaged in all these years, and was still £3.60 return which is excellent. On arrival at Liverpool lime Street we quickly moved out of the cold and into the Walker Art Gallery. I was really impressed with the collection they have, but can’t help feeling a lot of the stuff in there has been sent to bolster the collection for the capital of culture crap. Anyways we saw the really famous painting of Henry VIII which was a highlight to me as I always remember that iconic image from History texts. They had some pretty good sculptures in there too.

Next we moved onto the Liverpool Museum which was amazing. All the time Vicki lived & went to University in Liverpool, the museum was behind a shroud of scaffold and wood. It has now re-opened with a pretty amazing collection and an equally impressive building. Notable parts of the museum where the aquarium and the insect house. All in all it was a good museum and on par with anything we have seen in London r New York.

After the museum Vicki treated me to a chicken ramen at a noodle bar. She has a chicked curry and we had a great meal and a nice relax before jumping on the train and heading home. The whole day including the meal cost us £25 between the two of us. We took our own snacks and a ton of water in our Sigga bottles which saved us a fortune on the usual expensive snacks.

Today, my friend Steven Almond drove me upto his workshop. The workshop is a couple of miles from where we live and is located on a working farm. The workshop is looking pretty damn impressive with a terrific array of machinery and materials. Ste is starting a furniture restoration & manifacturing business, so it was great to see where everything will be made. I feel a website coming on! Anyway the trip out was good, and it was nice to relax in a tranquil agricultural setting for a while. Check out the pictures below, taken on the iPhone so not the highest resolution, but still good. That was another free trip and made a nice change.

Right enough for today. i’m still not buying stuff, and its actually getting easier. If I hit any bmps int he road you readers will be the first to know. Now the pictures.

Hall Street Depot - Transport Museum

Well I’m as good as a month into the project and it’s already getting a little tough. I need new socks badly, which I should have bought before starting the project. I’ve read most of the books I had backlogged so it’s a library job for them. We are also getting a little bored not spending money. Vicki by default isn’t spending, probably in sympathy, but as a result we have become like hermits, only leaving the house to go for a walk or to grab groceries. There is our daily journey to the post office to post out orders from Koolbadges but apart from that we do nothing. We where going to start going swimming as we live oposite a huge park with a leisure centre in the middle, however they have a problem with the filters int he pool and refuse to fix it so that is out of the question.

We also spotted the St Helens Transport Museum when we went to the walk in centre a few weeks back. We where going to go along today to see the old cars and buses ad have a small day out, but alas the website says they only open at the weekend so that will have to wait. If you want to check out the museum it definitely looks worth a visit.

In other news, the not spending whilst boring and not ideal, has improved our bank balance no end, and whats more we seem to be earning more money now we aren’t spending than we ever have. Our balance seems to be staying well in the black as they say, and I really do attribute this to the not spending. The money seems to be snowballing now which is positive, especially for me the eternal student

Also, after reading about my escapades and the running out of DVDrs, My cousin Adam donated 25 blank discs to me. I’m using them wisely at the moment as I don’t know when the next batch will be donated/stolen/borrowed.

We have a day out to Liverpool planned for tommorow which should be good. Go and see some free museums, Tate (the free exhibitions) and enjoy a picnic down by the docks. Will post up some pictures tomorrow. Also, if you not already on Twitter, get your arse over there and sign up! I’ll be closing my Facebook account shortly as it has come to my attention that they are selling data to third parties. So sign up to Twitter and follow me at http://twitter.com/jodsclass