MacBook Air 11.6″ — A Steal At $999, But For Whom?
Much has already been written by now about the newest revision to the MacBook Air. Apple has seemingly once again done a number that has managed to get everyone talking about them and their crazy gadgets, and now that I’ve had the chance to play with one, I understand why. It’s no secret that Steve Jobs seems to have his finger on the pulse of what people want, but I wasn’t convinced that I’d want the new smaller, more diminutive, less powerful MacBook Air. But I do.
MacBook Air Late 2010 — the Good, the Bad and Why It Will Sell
So yesterday Apple had their event at the town hall on their campus, and among other things that they announced, the world seems to be focused on the new MacBook Air. Of course, in another few months that focus will change to the OS X App Store, and then a little further down the line it’ll change to OS X 10.7 Lion, and somewhere in between all of this will be Facetime for OS X. Whew, there were a lot of announcements! Oh, and let’s not forget iLife ’11, but then, I don’t really care about that one right now, so we’ll ignore it for the time being. What I really want to do is talk about the MacBook Air and why it’s the perfect computer for most, and that even though I love small form-factor systems, why it’s not right for me (and probably a few of you, too). (more…)
Broadcom Crystal HD Video Accelerator Tested in Dell Mini
The Broadcom Crystal HD (BCM70012) is not exactly news, but we’ve not paid a whole lot of attention to it here because it’s taken so long for it to come out. Also, never mind that nVidia’s Ion solution is, well, pretty damn good. However, for those of you who have a netbook and would like to enjoy HD video on it and don’t have the good fortune of having a Ion chipset, you may be in luck because this $30 mini PCI-e card may breathe a little life back into your netbook.
Intel Atom D510 Review, Performance, Etc. Round-up
It’s been a long time since we’ve looked at what Intel is up to these days and counted the Intel Pine Trail updates among those things. So, in honor of it being almost a year since talking about what Intel has been planning for their ever expanding netbook and nettop line, let’s look at what is finally on the verge of coming out in the near future to a netbook or nettop near you.
Atom Patch for Snow Leopard 10.6.2 = Happy Netbook
Once again I find myself in the position where I’m unable to test this for myself, namely because I’ve had problems getting Snow Leopard to install on any of my netbooks, but some people are reporting success with this. Therefore, with the intention of disseminating information and possibly helping some folks out, allow me to redirect you to Insanely Mac where there’s a forum thread with a patch and some translated instructions. (Scroll down to post 7 for short and sweet instructions.)
If it works for you, let others know!
OS X 10.6.2 Is Out And Nixes Atom — Netbooks Beware
I hesitated to post anything about this when it originally came out in one of the developer seeds that OS X 10.6.2, the latest update to Snow Leopard, had removed (or intentionally sabotaged unofficial) Atom support. It looked like that was certainly the case, and then a few days later another build had Atom support restored. However, 10.6.2 is officially out today and the various sites are reporting that Atom support is in fact gone.
Guide: Install OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on Asus Eee PC 1000HE
This is going to be yet another one of those really quick posts where I apologize for not highlighting this sooner and also telling you that someone else (or a few, really) has done the leg work and that I’m going to point to their work as an excellent starting point. So, if you’re looking for info on installing and running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on your Asus Eee PC 1000HE, then do I ever have links for you!
First off, once again the folks from the smallcomputing.net forums have come through in a big way and have a thread already going that’s full of info, troubleshooting, and kexts that should be of great help to anyone who may not know where to start or is having trouble in the process. So, here’s the good stuff: