Oscot Daily
On October 14th, Apple refreshed its line of notebooks yet again. The year they made significant changes in manufacturing and power consumption. With new LED backlit displays that save 30% energy, dual video in the higher end MacBook pros, and Nvidia graphics chipset in all new MacBooks. The dual video card system will encompass a Nvidia 9400M and 9600M GT; this system will use the 9400M for everyday tasks, and tap the 9600M for the higher scale graphics rendering when needed. It is noted that the use of the 9600 M alone will reduce battery power by 1 hour when in use. | | Along with the hardware decisions, apple has changed it case design to make its manufacturing more efficient and even added a glass touchpad that resembles the iTouch/iPhone. The touch pad does not have a button as the surface is clickable like the iTouch/iPhone and will encompass new functions using multiple fingers to accomplish desired tasks. The case design is carved from a single piece of aluminum, so as to, result in lighter, more rigid notebook frames than building them the old way with multiple parts. |
 New 13 inch Macbook |  New 15 inch Macbook The “starting at”configurations are as follows: |
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Last December we started this site with a little article about the Internet Browser and Operating System Wars , and their statistics as of that day. Apple was heating up the market with its launch of Safari as a multi platform browser. Even then they were entering a market dominated by Firefox, yet there are some more people looking to get in and flex their cult like following with more services. Since then, other browsers have entered into the mix. Google Chrome , was introduced a few short weeks ago... amidst the June 17th launch of Firefox 3 and the record downloads in a 24 hours period , and Microsoft finally coming to the table with something worthwhile; Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 . We decided to put these browsers through and usual test and similate everyday experiences. We are going to install all four browsers into a Virtual machine using VM Ware on our Macbook Pro. The operating system of choice is Windows XP. Main reason for this is Google Chrome's incompatibility with Mac OS X fo the time being. | The virtual machine will be running on a Macbook Pro with the following specs:
 VM Ware Virtual Machine Specs Please note: This virtual machine build has limited programs installed and will respond faster than home brew builds because this currently is only a test bed. The machine does not have the daily funk that everyday pc's are capable of. For example; bloated cache and applications lists, small swap file ratio, etc. Among them, a slew of security applications to "protect" it are not installed either, only AVG Free Anti-virus, and nothing more than standard Windows Security.
| This following screen is the istat statistics for this particular Mac with VM Ware ( Virtual Environment Software ) up and running XP along with a few Mac OS X apps. You can see the machine is under a load, but has more than enough room to work with the tools we are using as our test environment.
 Macbook Pro istat Specs | Where To Download Each Browser:
Firefox 3 Internet Explorer Beta 2 Safari Google Chrome | Statistically speaking, Firefox is dominating its competitors. Firefox has controlled the web browser market much like Google controls the search market, however not quite to the same extent. Firefox has jumped from 36.3% to a dominating 43.7%. The word dominating ensues they are the end all. They might as well be, since Firefox is not in the Operating System business, people have to go out of their way to download that product. The only time 43.7% of people do anything about something, is when it’s really worth their time. Let's see what we found.... |
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| That simplistic looking wire that does it all from transfer our movies to portable drives and provide power for low consumption devices like our Blackberry’s, is getting an overhaul. After 7 years with no significant change, Intel has changed the future by unveiling its Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft specification revision 0.9 in support of the USB 3.0. |
Intel led the way with the UHCI back in the early days of the USB wars, and now they are leading the way to bring USB even more mainstream. Presently there are an estimated 2 billion USB devices available. Imagine how many of us have 3 or more devices that use that white/grey/black cable daily. Any of us that have purchased any new computer from the large chains recently, will notice that there are no more PS/2 ports, and plenty more USB ports. Most PC’s now carry a minimum of 4 in the back and two more front-end USB plugins for our iPods, Sidekick’s and Blackberry’s. | Needless to say, USB isn’t going anywhere and is getting a significant boost, with early estimates at 10 times the speed of 2.0. That’s going to put USB transferring speeds at 4.8 Gbit/s (600 MB/s). That’s one excessively large avi formatted movie file, a second. While in the near future, still in infancy as everyone from AMD to Microsoft is going to have it’s chance to review it now, and help to make revised xHCI 0.95 specification work and play well for easy adoption. The updated version of the specification will also be released uner RAND-Z licensing terms via an xHCI adopter’s agreement. | For those of us that just can’t wait a minute longer for our phones to back up, ipod to re-sync, and files to transfer for a friend… the age of seconds and not minutes is near. To read more about Intel, tune to Intel's About Section .
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Firefox 3.0 is here and it is bringing with it a slew of features that Firefox already has and so few people are aware of, and even less take advantage of them. Firefox has two distinct features that allow you to download and install multitudes of plugins and even themes to change its appearance. To learn more about all of the features of Firefox you can find more here .
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Add-ons Manager Mozilla has made it even easier to get Add-ons. You don't even have to go the their website anymore and can access everything right from the browser. You can review the listed add-ons with ratings, recommendations, descriptions and pictures. You can also view, manage, and disable third party add-ons. Simply go to Tools --> Add-ons in the program Menu: 
Voilà! The Add-ons Manager appears. 
Here we are going to list a few of the most popular and useful everyday plugins available for Firefox 3.0: |
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| Laptops generate significant heat; that’s not a secret. As they become more powerful and move to technologies that consume less power, this will change. However till then, there are items that help us cope with the heat. Recently we acquired a Belkin Laptop Cooling Pad . |
| The MacBook Pro that we use to write and produce some of the content you see here is so hot at times that it will literally burn up your finger if you hold it there long enough. My favorite was when I used to leave a palm print on the bezel. Now this is my everyday computer and I was skeptical of cooling fans/pads. We have owned some before that were literally a waste of the manufacturing space used to make them. However I think Belkin has done something worth at least 68% of people’s time, according to Newegg . |  |
Comfort is something that changes from person to person, so building a product that suits all is hard sometimes. We can’t all make an iPod now can we. However Belkin has done something right. Check the print screens below for the difference this piece can really make.
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Laptop on a wooden dining room table, running for one hour while running the following applications: iTunes, iPhoto, iChat, Cyberduck, Firefox, Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, and Preview.
|  Kinda hot in here isn’t it? |
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