Mike Wilks' Blog

I haven’t really spent too much time using Windows 7 Beta but that time I have spent has been good. My impression so far is pretty much the same as my initial reaction, it is like a cleaner, faster Vista with less clutter.

I guess it is quite an achievement that Windows 7 Beta works well on my MacBook under VMWare Fusion. The only problem I have had with this setup is when I have external screen connected. I can run Vista quite happily when I have another screen attached, either full-screen on the laptop or the external display – but not Windows 7. The Beta gets very upset when there is an external screen attached, especially when you try and change resolution or move Fusion from one screen to the other. The symptoms of this are bluescreens and frozen VMWare.
I can’t imagine I’m going to continue with Windows 7 after the Beta expires but you can never really tell. I have a Vista install that I use for anything that needs Windows and this will probably be enough. That said I have a handful of OSs running in VMWare on my MacBook including various Linuxes.

I’ve been playing with the idea of getting an AppleTV for a little while but some of the restrictions put me off. As soon as I knew Boxee could fix the playback of other content I ordered an AppleTV.

I wasn’t expecting to be blown away by the AppleTV itself because I saw it just as a way of getting Boxee – but I was wrong. The unit itself is everything you’d expect from Apple, well designed, visually pleasing and well designed. Before I installed Boxee I booted the machine up to make sure everything worked. After setting up my network I paired it with iTunes and things got very interesting!

What I hadn’t realised is that you can stream from your Mac to your AppleTV without needing to sync. Once you have paired them you can play your podcasts, movies and music on the AppleTV from your Mac – that is very cool. You can still synch for those situations where your Mac is not turned on or isn’t in the house. I have a wireless N1 network so there is no issue with wireless speed but I guess that could be an issue on slower networks.

Installing Boxee was fantastically simple. I’d already prepared an ATV boot USB key so all I needed to do was:

• Insert the USB Key.
• Power the ATV on an off (no switch so it was a case of turning the power socket off).
• Wait for the install to finish.
• Remove the USB Key and cycle the power again.
• From the new launcher menu select update Boxee.

That was it, Boxee installed and working. Once the launcher is installed you can SSH to the ATV as well as SFTP content to it. Boxee will play pretty much anything you throw at it either by SFTPing it to the ATV or playing from an SMB share on the Mac. I’ve been using Filezilla to upload to it. I bought the small capacity one (40Mb) but there is nothing to stop me plugging an external harddrive in the back or streaming content from my Mac or even a NAS. It seems a lot of people have ripped their DVD collection to a NAS and use the ATV to play them. I have had hit and miss results with 720p, some works some doesn’t I guess because of the load on the CPU.

The other thing Boxee does is allow various web sources to be played including BBC iPlayer. You can also play Hulu if you are in the US (or have a US IP Address at least). If they added MLB.TV in time for the start of the next season I would be very happy, I spend an awful lot of time watching baseball on my laptop.

All in all the ATV is fantastic but it has limitations which Boxee solves very nicely. The ATV is effectively a cut down Mac so once you have SSH access you can install many things not just Boxee, that is very cool. Hours of fun ahead playing about with the ATV as well as watching content on it.

I’ve been looking at Apple TVs for a while but always felt they were a little too restricted for what wanted. I’ve been vaguely aware of Boxee for a while now but never really understood exactly what it was. Today I downloaded it for my MacBook and I’m completely smitten. So much so I have ordered an Apple TV and have a Boxee patchstick ready to go! More when I’ve got it working.

I spend a fair amount of time using both my MacBook and iPhone on public wifi networks and this has always nagged at me. I’ve looked at various VPN providers before but never signed up for one. I came across Witopia today while doing something completely different (playing with with Boxee). For $40 with a free PPTP  VPN (for use on my iPhone) too I thought I’d give it a go. Installation was dead simple as they email you a personalised install package (presumably with the certificates contained), a quick reboot and it was done. Configuring the iPhone was a little more manual but not especially onerous, I just don’t like how the VPN dropped out when the iPhone turns of Wifi to save power when the screen goes off!

Witopia also has the advantage of having a US IP address – which is apparently which it is so popular in the Boxee community … can we say Hulu? I suspect they would also be popular if they had UK IPs as well because of BBC iPlayer for people outside of the UK. I suspect there is an entire cottage industry of providers supplying IPs from different countries which has never really occurred to me previously.

Anyway I haven’t had much time to play with it yet but I’ll probably blog about it when I do.

Well it finally arrived and I’ve been playing with it a lot since. I really like OSX but it is taking some getting used to. VMWare Fusion is also fantastic for running the few Windows bits I still need. It’s going to be a while until everything is setup and configured but it is getting there.

There have been lots of complaints online about the screens but the one I have seems fine. The only disappointment is the Wireless Mighty Mouse I bought with it, sub-standard and overpriced in my opinion. On the other hand the external keyboard I bought to use with the external monitor is fabulous.

I ordered my new MacBook at the online Apple Store straight after the keynote and received a delivery date of 3/4 Nov. Slightly annoying but I was going to get one any quicker, right? Well wrong it seems, lots of other online etailers have them in stock not to mention the Apple Stores. I guess I could have cancelled and got one from another source but mine was BTO which you can only do at the Apple Online Store.

Currently the order status is not showing any tracking or courier information but does claim it has been dispatched. I’m going to the Apple Store later to stare longingly at a MacBook, nearest I’m going to get for a few days yet.

Well I resisted until about two hours after Steve’s announcement before I ordered one. 13.3″ 2.4Ghz, 250Gb on its way to me but not for a couple of weeks. I even upgraded the RAM to 4Gb now that Apple seem to have got slightly more sensible about their memory prices. Delivery is going to be a couple of weeks which is a bit of a pain. If I’d realised that I could get the memory upgrade I would have tried to get one at the Apple store.

Gorgeous looks and a pretty good spec aside Apple need to get new batteries for their USD to GBP calculator. There has been much discussion about the prices of new macbooks but the UK prices are even worse than the US ones. It didn’t stop me ordering and I suspect it won’t stop others either – maybe that is the plan.

Roll on the 3rd of November.

Well it seems that the predicted Macbook announcement is coming next Tuesday afterall. I have been drawn towards Apple after buying an iPhone. Coupled with the facts I am getting completely sick of windows and I have discovered that VMWare is a real alternative way of running Windows and Linux means they will have to be really bad to stop me buying one.