PortWiki has been gaining enough momentum that I have decided on giving it a new home at www.portwiki.net. This makes accessing the wiki easier therefore increasing the activity and hopefully boosting the image of the site throughout the internet community.

I hope this will also allow you, the contributors, to spread the word easier by not having to share a bloated url!

Well not being an Apple fan you could complain that this article is not showing the ‘good side’ of the MacBook Air but frankly – there isn’t one worth writing about (if you beg to differ – add a comment).

“You could hear the collective sigh from the crowd” (Forbes, Jobs Fails To Wow At Macworld). The MacBook Air dosen’t set any standards, instead has been descibed as a “anorexic fashion model, [the] MacBook Air has made too many compromises for the sake of being skinny” (apc, MacBook Air: 10 Things Wrong With It). And so true that is. Below I have extracted from the above linked article 10 reasons why MacBook Air isn’t anything special:

1. 80GB iPod hard drive being used as a system drive. It’s 4200 RPM slow and after years of encouraging people to amass a horde of digital media, how can Apple really expect people to fit their iTunes library, digital videos and so on onto 80GB? With notebook hard drive capacities topping 500GB in a single 2.5″ drive, surely Apple’s customers would have preferred a slightly thicker form factor with a beefier drive?

2. Non-expandable memory: 2GB of RAM soldered onto the motherboard… sure, that’s a lot of RAM today, but if I were buying a notebook worth between $2500 and $4300 (AUD), I’d sure as hell want the ability to add some extra RAM in later to cater for future Mac OS X upgrades, virtualisation and memory hungry apps like the Adobe suite. (To be fair, other subnotebooks also have soldered RAM, and sometimes have only 1GB, but still… looking at this from the perspective of someone looking for a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro, this is a significant limitation.)

3. 64GB flash-memory as an option in place of the hard drive is nice, but for $1400 (AUD)more, it seems unlikely many people will take it up.

4. One USB port: not only is the MacBook Air expansion-limited on the inside, it can’t connect to many things at once on the outside, unless, of course, you carry a USB hub with you, which kinda defeats the purpose of having an ultraportable notebook to begin with. And since it’s a recessed design (a flap on the side of the notebook has to pop open for you to access the port), quite a few USB accessories aren’t going to be able to plug in there without the use of a USB extension cord.

5. No wireless broadband: if anyone’s going to buy this notebook, it’s the regular traveller who is tired of toting 3KG of extra cabin baggage everywhere. These people are also exactly the same people who find wireless broadband really, really useful. But despite the fact that HSDPA modules can be manufactured as small as a postage stamp, Apple didn’t include one. Guess what you’ll be using that one USB port for? A soap-on-a-rope style wireless broadband dongle, or a fat broadband stick. It’s not a very elegant accompaniment to the world’s thinnest notebook.

6. Underpowered, last-gen processor: despite Apple claiming the MacBook Air has the ‘latest’ processor in it, it’s actually a slow old 65nm version of the Core 2 Duo, topping out at 1.8GHz. Presumably Apple’s legal eagles would argue that since Intel made a special version of the processor that has a smaller chip casing than others, it is literally using the “latest” release from Intel. But in this case, “latest” certainly doesn’t mean “better”.

7. No microphone port: sure, it’s not the most essential feature given the proliferation of USB microphones, but again, I’ll point out: one … USB … port.

8. Non-replaceable battery: you have to send the entire notebook back to Apple for replacement of the battery. Which will have attrocious battery life within about two years. Note to Steve Jobs: this is not an iPod.

9. Thin but not that thin: Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is thinner at its thickest point than competing notebooks. But the Fujitsu Q2010 is only 19.9mm thick at its thickest point, and that’s 0.5mm — yes half a millimetre — thicker. However, in the Lifebook, you get integrated HSDPA/3G/GPRS, an ExpressCard slot (34/54), SD card slot, two USB ports, inbuilt VGA out, Ethernet, Firewire, fingerprint sensor. I’d say that functionality is worth an extra half millimetre.

10. Oh, and no Ethernet port: yeah, OK, you can order the optional USB Ethernet adaptor, but that one time your router stops working wirelessly and you really need to log in via Ethernet to fix the configuration… hope you’ve got that USB adaptor with you.

 Now you have to agree too, this latest Apple product definitely is not worth the price tag.

As I mentioned above, if you find this article ‘offensive’ or ‘biased’ as your a Steve Jobs fan you can comment below and correct my (and others) points on what is wrong with the MacBook Air…

Now that I have been using both SP3 for XP and SP1 for Vista for over a week now and I have to disagree with reports firstly of the up to 10% increase in performance for XP but also differ with Vista SP1 providing no performance boosts – it is running faster than XP.

After reading the release notes for SP1 for Vista some of the performance increases are related to the file system providing significant boosts when copying files across hard drives. Below I have quoted (source) the reported percentages of copying files in different situations and I can definatley vouch for faster times.

  25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
  45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
  50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system

Many other improvments are also listed in these categories below:

• Hardware Ecosystem Support and Enhancements

• Application Compatibility Improvements

• Reliability Improvements

• Performance and Power Consumption Improvements

• Security Improvements

• Support for New Technologies and Standards

• Desktop Administration and Management

• Setup and Deployment Improvements

• Interoperability Improvements

• Feature or API Changes

• General Improvements and Enhancements

• Windows Vista Alignment with Windows Server 2008

These improvments are avaliable for viewing using this link.

As for XP SP3 RC, if anything, performance is either equal or less than before. It is only the release candidate so there could be more changes but overall I am finding Vista SP1 RC to be more satisfactory and worth the update. Most people woudln’t think twice and say ‘ITS CRAP’ as soon as Vista is mentioned but personally I find it much better than XP… just because every one else tries to install it on a 800mhz or something…

My desk was overflowing with junk and there was a headset cord travelling right through the middle of it all, during a voice call to my friend in South Australia I moved my head slightly and half of the junk went on the floor – it wasn’t fun. The next topic of conversation was “are there Bluetooth headsets with a microphone?” and there is. The X5 Bluetooth Stereo Headset was the answer, but more so, it comes with a lot more features than expected.

The X5 is not only a headset, but a microphone and the package includes an Audio Streamer which lets you stream music from any device such as an MP3 player, a CD player, Computer or other device supporting the usual 3.5mm Headphone jack to your headset. But that is not all, it operates in stereo. You may think to yourself ‘so what – stereo’ this however makes all the difference, this headset supports what is called A2DP which is cd quality, stereo audio, over a Bluetooth connection and it definitely is noticeable.Physically the headset is in a ‘street’ style, with the headband passing over the back of the head and speakers hooking over the ears. The package comes with 2 USB cords and an AC adapter which can all be used to charge the headset and audio streamer (when using it on my computer, I also plug in the USB keeping it at a constant charge). The Audio Streamer also has a small magnet on its base which makes it easily stick to the side of your computer keeping things neat.

Along with the audio streamer function it can be used as a normal headset, just without wires! The headset supports up to 10 memory pairs so moving from my PDA to my phone is a breeze. Battery life is greater than 12 hours constant streaming and greater than 200 hours standby. The broadcasting range is specified on the BlueAnt website at 10m in open space however I have used it at 10m with several walls between me and the audio streamer providing me the freedom to listen to music on my computer and answer plus talk on any calls I may get on Skype or similar. The MFB (Multi-Function Button), sometimes in combinations with the other buttons (including volume up and down buttons), allows you to easily perform functions such as play, pause, stop, next song, previous song and replay last song in stereo mode while in voice mode you can answer call, hang-up/reject call and redial the last number.

One downside of the headset is that during voice mode (when the microphone is active) the sound quality is decreased as it is required to sacrifice the stereo capability to accommodate for the microphone stream. This however is only during microphone use (voice mode) which is easily changed back to stereo mode after a call with a single press of a button on the headset. The audio streamer would also be more useful if it acted as a Bluetooth radio/dongle when connected via the USB which is the only other let down.

Overall I highly recommend this headset to those who are looking for a wireless headset and microphone solution or just wireless audio streaming around the house or while riding your bike. BlueAnt integrate brilliant functionality that is definitely worth the $129 (AUD) that I paid for it at Dick Smith Electronics (even though it is quoted at $200 AUD on the BlueAnt website).

Release Candidate 1 for Windows XP SP3 has been released to the public, available hereI have just installed this on my XP SP2 machine and install was flawless – then again, there isn’t any significant changes in this service pack apart from updates I have already installed through Windows Update. Once this service pack is finalised and released, slipstreaming into my Windows XP SP2 will be my priority implementation of it.

As I have only had this service pack installed for a single day I am not too sure if I’m just experiencing the Placebo effect else my install does feel faster… (Reports said, when the first Sp3 beta was released, that there was up to a 10% increase in performance). None of the new features in this service pack will benefit me personally, e.g. the product key-less install as I already have a cd key. As per a report on Paul Therrott’s, SuperSite for Windows (see here), I would have to agree with his statement regarding how the security improvements in SP3 will never stack up to that on Windows Vista as the underlying XP structure since Oct 2001 is becoming outdated – everyone using Windows who would like to continue in a secure environment will need to move to Vista (Vienna if they are stubborn) sooner or later.

Overall, if I didn’t know Sp3 was installed, apart from this performance boost (assuming it’s not Placebo ), I wouldn’t have noticed any difference between SP2. On the hotfix side of things that means no more excessive updating after the Windows install of a slipstreamed sp3, for now anyway.