Reviews

I had a great time over the weekend at the 10th Vintage Computer Festival, which took place in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

In addition to the exhibits of vintage computers--including the largest collection of Radio Shack Pocket Computers I've ever seen--and the marketplace, where I managed to avoid buying any slide rules, Vectrix video games, or Cray supercomputer circuit boards--there were several notable presentations.

On Saturday, Tim McNerney spoke about his work to reimplement the Intel 4004 microprocessor, which led to a 130x-scale working model of the chip composed of individual transistors on a large … Read more

Mail has always been one of my least favorite applications on Mac OS X. Generally speaking, it has always been underpowered and lacking in some of the functionality that I have come to expect from an Apple product.

But with the release of Leopard, Mail is finally a useful and I can now justify using it as my main mail application.… Read more

Spaces was one of the wild cards in Leopard that I wasn't too sure about going in. But now I can say, after using it for the past twenty-four hours, that it is one of the most useful and logical additions to Leopard. In fact, I might go so far as to say that Spaces is my new favorite app on Mac OS X.… Read more

One of the nicest additions to Leopard is the incredible improvements to Finder. And while the OS still allows you to navigate through your computer in the old style (column view was always my favorite), Cover Flow just works.

Now, before we get into just how nice Finder really is, why can't we view the menu options beneath cover flow in column view? So far, Apple only allows you to view desired paths in list mode. And while it gets a little annoying, it's not a deal breaker by any stretch of the imagination.

Sure, it may be … Read more

Last night, I finally got around to hooking up my external hard drive and started using Time Machine. And while I had hoped for a bit more options, it's one of the nicest additions to Leopard.

By default, Time Machine is set to off. But as soon as you hook up an external hard drive and flip the Time Machine switch on in the new System Preferences pane, the system will start backing up your hard drive in twenty minutes after you first set it up.… Read more

Over the course of this weekend, I will be covering just about everything you ever wanted to know about Leopard. From its installation (this post) through my final impressions, this weekend will be dedicated to all things Leopard here on the Digital Home. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and enjoy some Leopard.

As I write this, I'm currently running Apple's newest OS--Mac OS X Leopard. And while I will fill you in on some of my thoughts in the posts following this one, I can tell you, without a doubt, that Leopard (so far) is a … Read more

Ted Landau October 2007

As I write this, the release of Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) is only 48 hours away. The anticipation among Mac users is mounting as they eagerly await the arrival of Time Machine, Spaces, Boot Camp and the assortment of more than 300 other new features. Those of us with a special interest in troubleshooting can especially look forward to the redesigned interfaces for file sharing, firewalls, and network settings?as well as new options for Accounts settings, an intriguing new utility called Instruments, and much more.

I'll be offering my take on … Read more

Playing music and movies really loud is a lot of fun, too bad most of you are missing out on that part of the experience. Obviously, the speakers built into TVs aren't up to the job, and that's the way 80% of you experience TV. HTIB owners are likewise out of luck. Yeah, they may boast of having "1,000" watts on tap, but if you believe that, well, puhleeze! That 8 pound amplifier may, on a good day, squeeze out a few hundred watts.

If you really want to feel something when you're watching … Read more

Granted, home theater and multichannel sound go together like peanut butter and jelly, but music, even now in the twenty first century is pretty much a stereo-only affair. Ergo, if you listen to more music than watch movies, ditch the hassles of the 5.1 channel, satellite/subwoofer model and get yourself a decent stereo receiver and a pair of really nice speakers.

Outlaw Audio's RR 2150 "Retro Receiver" sounds spectacular with music and better yet, it's a refreshingly simple to use alternative to all of the stupidly complicated seven-channel A/V receivers I've used.… Read more