[crouton] Nathaniel Trost: A Song of Intel and Apple

[crouton at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by Nathaniel Trost:
A Song of Intel and Apple
http://crouton.powerblogs.com/archives/archive_2006_02_12-2006_02_18.shtml#=
1140229735


   Inane construction supply company banner =E2truism=E2 of the week: =E2The
   end result of kindness is that it drawns people to you=E2.
   Although I haven=E2t used it for much beyond =E2World of Warcraft=E2, I =
am
   very very much in love with the [1]iMac Core Duo . It=E2s really the
   first time with an iMac that Apple has stuffed everything happily in
   the base model: Airport, Bluetooth, iSight, dual-layer Superdrive,
   dual-head capability and a video chipset that isn=E2t anemic.
   The thing that makes me geekily giddy is Front Row and the remote
   control. Yes, it=E2s just playing a DVD, but the visual presentation
   makes the user experience just feel so good. I want to hit the button
   just to watch the menu transition effects. I am disturbed by how much
   I like it.
   Since the iMac had built in 802.11, I decided to finally kill two
   birds with one stone and bought a [2]high end D-Link wireless router .
   Once upon a time I had a cheap Orinoco wireless access point, but A)
   it didn=E2t support WPA and B) started getting really flaky so I retired
   it. In addition, the D-Link had robust router configuration
   capability, which meant I could finally replace my existing
   router/firewall=E2=A6
   =E2=A6a prototype rev B. iMac from 1998 running OS 9.2.2 and IPNetRouter.
   Don=E2t laugh, good luck cracking into that box! Open port? What=E2s an
   open port? The iMac had served faithfully and was still cranking away,
   but it did have two small limitations that the D-Link wouldn=E2t. One
   was recovering from DSL hiccups, I=E2m running on the edge of stability
   for my bandwidth speed and it does blink from time to time. However,
   I=E2m too used to the 3.0/384 to downgrade. The iMac would usually
   recover the PPPoE connection, but IPNetRouter wouldn=E2t reset. This got
   annoying. Another issue was QoS/bandwidth throttling. The D-Link will
   do prioritization for things like games over=E2=A6other higher bandwidth
   uses.
   Big thumbs up for the D-Link. It=E2s a bit pricy, but it does indeed
   handle massive connection and bandwidth load without freaking out, and
   lets me play WoW while doing so!
   Goodnight iMac rev B, thou hast been a good and faithful servant.
   Hopefully the iMac Core Duo will prove a worthy successor.
   I=E2ve finally gotten around to reading George R.R. Martin=E2s [3]Song of
   Fire and Ice books, and I understand why they are popular. Damn I=E2m
   enjoying them, and I=E2m not usually a big fantasy fan.
   More later, I must get into the writing habit again.

References

   1. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=3Dur2&tag=3Danit=
rouscrout-20&camp=3D1789&creative=3D9325&path=3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com=
%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB000BNNGUC
   2. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=3Dur2&tag=3Danit=
rouscrout-20&camp=3D1789&creative=3D9325&path=3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com=
%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB0006TIA02
   3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=3Dur2&tag=3Danit=
rouscrout-20&camp=3D1789&creative=3D9325&path=3Dexternal-search%3Fsearch-ty=
pe=3Dss%26index=3Dbooks%26keyword=3DSong%20of%20Fire%20and%20Ice