Zit Seng's Superwall

When I got my brand new Apple 13″ MacBook Pro notebook, it wasn’t too long before I discovered that it “hung”. Nothing I did would revive it, so I resorted to a hard reset. It happened more than once. It happened in office, and it happened at home too. At the end of my second day with the new notebook, I was starting to get very annoyed with the several incidences of “hanging”. Something was seriously wrong. This is not something you’d expect to happen with an Apple computer. I decided to check out Google.

(more…)

I finally got around to connecting up a secondary monitor to my MacBook. More screen space is always nice. But even though I’ve had a spare monitor around for some time, both in the office and somewhat also at home, I’ve been a bit lazy to get them connected. The reason is that I tend to get comfortable with a certain setup and I don’t want that setup to change. With a dual monitor setup, I have to get used to the fact that I will not always have the secondary monitor available.

(more…)

Even though Apple has progressively upgraded all its MacBooks to aluminum unibody designs and rebranded them MacBook Pros, the white plastic wasn’t expected to die just yet. This has been reaffirmed by it’s latest upgrade in yesterday’s surprise product announcement from Apple. The plastic MacBook now features a polycarbonate unibody design, LED backlight screen, glass multitouch trackpad and a built-in battery pushing battery life to 7 hours.

(more…)

The cat is out of the bag. The latest version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, code named Snow Leopard, will be launched in September. Current Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) users can upgrade to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) for just US$29. That seems like a very reasonable upgrade price to pay.

(more…)

I upgraded my Safari 4 Beta to the latest refresh following the recent Mac OS X 10.5.7 update. A minor thing that was broken with it was still not fixed. The bug basically involved some Javascript issues when using the TinyMCE editor in WordPress. The bug made the Insert Hyperlink dialog, among other things, unworkable. I decided I have had enough with the Safari 4 Beta. There were some really cool features that I really liked. But I preferred to have a working WordPress user interface.

(more…)

After procrastinating for too long, I’ve finally gotten around to installing Windows XP into my MacBook. I’m impressed, Windows XP boots up in 20 seconds. It has never been that fast on my other previous computers. It’s not even running natively on my MacBook (i.e. via Boot Camp). I never really like dual-booting to choose and switch between two operating systems. I want to have both OS environments at the same time. Virtualization is the solution to what I need.

(more…)

I was at the Coffee Bean branch in West Mall this evening. Looking around, I saw 5 notebooks on the tables. Nothing surprising, people do get some work done or just surf the web while they’re sipping their coffee. What was surprising, however, was that all 5 notebooks where MacBooks of some sort or other.

(more…)

Apple has announced their refreshed notebook models for both the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. Much of the earlier rumours have turned out to be quite accurate, such as the one about new MacBooks being carved out of a block of aluminum. An interesting twist is that there are now no trackpad buttons, because the entire trackpad itself is the button. Cool for people like me who don’t use the button anyway.

(more…)

Yes rumours are circulating about the “Brick”. What is the “Brick” Apple is rumoured to be making a product announcement on October. Is the “Brick” a new MacBook? Or is it a totally new product line? Well, the latest information from the rumour mill says that the “Brick” is not a product, but refers to a revolutionary manufacturing process. New MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks will be carved out of a block of aluminum.

(more…)

Everyone wants to make their batteries last longer, both in terms of runtime powering our mobile equipment as well as charge-discharge cycle counts. There’s lots of information out on the Internet, but there’s just as much misinformation. Here’s my compilation of information from various sources to help you squeeze the most juice out of your notebook batteries.

(more…)