Category: Companies

  • Blogoshpere’s Vista verdict? Blech. VmWare Fusion? Yum.

    Apparently I’m not alone in finding Windows Vista a less than compelling upgrade over XP. Bloggers all over, including more than a few on my daily or weekly reading list like Philip Greenspun and Joe Wilcox, seem to be finding the same irritating flaws. Those pro reviewer reviews that come out on the first day…

  • Blaspheming in the temple of the Mac: Boot Camp

    Ah, the crazy things we do to play a silly computer game known as Civilization, or in this case Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword expansion. Each and every version of Civ comes out first for Windows and some months later for Macs. And so, each and every time, I have to obtain, borrow…

  • Hardware updates galore

    I happed to glance over at the “Tools I use” link that sits on another part of my web site this morning and I realized that it was horribly out of date. Using a few minutes snatched from my lunch break, I’ve deleted the verbiage about my trusty old Powerbook G4 and added a description…

  • Netgear’s confusing power play

    I was reading the latest issue of the excellent Mac newsletter Tidbits this morning when I came across an article comparing the performance of a wifi network to one of the new powerline networks. Ah, I thought to myself, I remember when I hoped that powerline, which runs ethernet over the electrical wiring in your…

  • Doh, hit by a MacBook Pro revision

    So after advocating avoiding the first iteration of new gadgets and programs, I finally ponied up for the latest revision of Mac laptops, the Macbook Pro with Intel’s Santa Cruz Core 2 Duo chip. It also happens to have a new generation of video controller chips, Nvidia’s GeForce 8600M GT. Ho hum…or not. One reason…

  • Don’t rush out for an iPhone (really)

    (Updated 6/21) With the release of the undeniably super-cool iPhone just around the corner, I have a plea for gadgetistas everywhere: Please don’t camp out, queue up or generally make a fool of yourself on the evening news in front of an AT&T wireless store next week. Like I’ve said over and over, there’s no…

  • Curious Aaron solves iPhone voice-over mystery

    It was driving me a little crazy — no, make that A LOT crazy. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus on reading the paper, couldn’t think about washing my hair in the shower — WHO was the voice behind Apple’s compelling new iPhones ads? You know the one where the guy is watching “Pirates of the Carribean”…

  • Not all EMI content available sans DRM yet

    With one day left in the month of May, Apple and record label EMI made good on their promise to start selling higher-quality digital music without annoying copying limits (so-called digital rights management, or DRM, technology). The new files are $1.29 each although buying a whole album of these “iTunes Plus” files doesn’t cost any…

  • Imperfectly building my imperfect PC

    Had a couple of free hours last night after the kids went to bed so I went up to the attic to sling together my latest and greatest cheapie Windows box. This one, based on an ASUS T3-M2NC51PV all-in-one, barebones case and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane processor (actually running at 1.9GHz ),…

  • Refreshing our look with Mandigo

    After years with the basic WordPress default theme, I decided it was time for a spring wardrobe update at GravitationalPull.net. I wanted a new theme compatible with the latest version of WordPress as well as the plug-ins I rely on like SpamKarma and Automattic’s wicked cool sidebar widgets manager. Some of the theme preview sites…