Whither OS X 10.2 - The same CompUSA with no PowerPC Macintoshs for sale, and a too small Treo case had a new pretty sign promoting "JAGUAR" today. and lots of copies of OS X 10.1 for sale at $129. No copies of 10.2 however; maybe they had sold the one copy they got in.

The case for a Treo Hard finding these. Handspring wants $25 for a $5 quality canvas padded case, that fits so tight it activates the buttons. Not wanting a discharged Treo every afternoon, I got a refund, 2 minutes after I bought it at CompUSA today. I found 2 that work. An $8 leather Targus case at Target, and a $15 Canvas and Leather case by Samsonite for Palm Pilots at MicroCenter. Same kind of issue with handsfree kits. The Treo comes with an ear bud, which always seem to fall out of my ear. I read on Usenet that Handspring uses a unique plug that only their handsfree kit works with. Not so. Any Nokia 8000 series handsfree kit works great. BestBuy wanted $29.99 for one, but I found one at Target for $5.90 on closeout, and it has a microphone and an over the ear hook.

You can't buy a Power Macintosh So there I was in CompUSA in Sugarland, Texas; and like the MicroCenter I was in on Thursday and the Fry's I was in on Friday, there are no new Power Macintoshs for sale. Just a single dual 867 MHz model on display at CompUSA. I was considering buying the prior model dual 1 GHz which benchmarks faster than the new dual 1 GHz. So at Fry's I ask if they have any at the new $2199 price. The salesman says yes, they just got one in from the Austin store. I say "New in a sealed box?", He says: "yes". So he goes off for 5 minutes, comes back and says "Let me try the other side"; 5 minutes later: "Let me try up front"; 5 minutes later "Yes it's up front in the Service Department, its an open box, but we'll sell it to you." I say "I wouldn't touch an open box at Frys unless I got 25% off"; he declined my offer, and I left the store, buying only an ADS Firewire enclosure.

Is AOL the next MCI or Enron ? AOL stock price, below 10 recently after being above 50 last year, takes another pounding after it was reported today that they may take another huge (11 figure) writedown of assests.

New DDR Macs are slower : It gets worse every day. Today its reported that in real world tests the "new" DDR Dual 1 GHz PowerPC Macintosh is slower than the "old" SDR 1 GHz PowerPC Macintosh. Could it be that halfing the amount of L3 cache is making itself felt, and offsetting the "faster" RAM ??

Apple selling Overclocked Macs? Another good reason not to buy a new PowerPC Macintosh has now been divulged. Apple is using 1 GHz chips and overclocking them where it thinks it can get away with it.

PopUp Stopper = Browser Stopper: Earthlink got some free publicity from Reuters this morning, in an alleged news story that looked more like a cut and paste of a press release. Earthlink will now provide Free PopUpStopper software. On paper a good idea. This example in practice is not ready for prime time. PopUp Stopper's web page, like Real Player hides the free version, and tries to sell you a pay version, and other software too. The default is to get on their SPAM list. Then the program doesn't work too well. My default Start up page in Netscape http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^IXIC&d=c&k=c4&t=1d won't load. Thus I give the program the moniker of Browser Stopper. PopUp Stopper also stops Blogger's Spell Checker from showing up. Time to uninstall !
P.S. I do like my Earthlink dsl service, so much more reliable than Warner Cable.

Treo 300: As I already stated, I'm not buying a Macintosh anytime soon, in January I'll re-evaluate the situation when again new PowerPC Macintoshs come out.
I did buy a Treo 300 to replace my Samsung I300. I like the Samsung I300; I love the Treo 300. Its lighter, smaller shape, but bigger brighter screen, and the neato keyboard. I've had a few folks tell me "Nahhh you're not really on a cell, you sound so clear", so apparently it does better than the Samsung on that regard also. Sprint has a new system for what had been their "Wireless Web". now that they are rolling out their 3G, they have a "Vision" Plan, that charges you (IMHO) way too much on a per Byte basis, so I won't be using that until the price comes down. I assume Sprint is trying to stick it to early adopters. When I ordered the phone on the Handspring Web Site it said the phone came with 3 free months of Vision. I guess Sprint has a different idea, as they refused to give it to me.

More on the missing OS 9 Double talk in an email just received from Steve Jobs. "We do supply Mac OS 9 on every hard disk." Yes, but you are not saying I can boot into OS 9. Maybe the story about not booting into OS 9 is "Simply true".

No new Macintosh for the Terablogger Maybe my expectations were raised too much by the rumor mills, but too many features I know to be technologically possible are missing from these new Macintoshes. No 8x AGP; no faster SuperDrive, no faster Firewire, no USB 2, no faster Airport, and I still don't know for sure about OS 9. I'm still upset that Apple pulled AV capability 3 years ago. The Apple Store says about OS 9 "Does not come with it, that will be $99 extra". The Apple Web site is horribly vague about OS 9.

Email to Steve Jobs: How does the new PowerPC Macintosh boot into OS 9, if you do not supply OS 9 with it. As far as I am concerned you lied to me, and you have LOST an Apple Evangelist. Thanks for saving me over $3 Grand.

Microsoft: End of Summer = November 15 Microsoft, never known for keeping to promised introduction dates, has just announced a delayed introduction date for XBox Live

Netgear 802.11a Equipment Review. I'll give it (NetGear HE102) an A for functionality and a C for setup. It works just fine and gives me upto 50% faster download speeds than my 802.11b equipment it replaced. It probably could have gone faster but bumped up against the limit of my dsl connection. Same ftp source on a 22 Megabyte file: 802.11b 88 KB/sec; 802.11a 118KB/sec.
I've set it up to only accept the Mac address of my Netgear PCI card (HA311), so drive by hacking is ruled out. I am disappointed in Netgear because the Access Point defaults to the lowest frequency in the 5 GHz range that it operates in. By changing the frequency to a higher one, the Access Point broadcasts with 5 times the power, a fact not explicitly stated but buried in a table on page 8 of the 30 page manual. No tips on the 180 degree rotatable antennas either.
Anyone want to buy a "gently used" Apple Airport and a Lucent Wavelan/Orinoco PCI card setup?

Wireless Networking 2002 I gave up waiting on the vaporware Linksys and rumored Apple 50 megabit wireless Networking gear, Linksys is 802.11a; Apple supposed to be 802.11g. I have ordered (due to arrive today) Netgear 802.11a Basestation and PCI card. Will report back tomorrow on how it compares to
Apple's 802.11b Airport / Lucent wirelsss at 11 megabits/sec maximum speed.

Bumper Sticker Spotted in Houston on 8/11/2002:

If they outlaw teaching Evolution
Only Outlaws Will Evolve

Who is Lying to me ? I've been trying to find out about these early morning pornography infomercials on TechTv. I enquired of DirecTv and was told they merely pass on the program and do not slip in these infomercials. TechTV writes me: "Local carriers or satellite providers have segments of the schedule for their own use. We tend to stick with tech associated paid commercials and have no control over the other. ".
So each one blames the other, but seems not to care how bad it looks their carrying this slime.

EMAIL from Steve Jobs: This rumor is simply not true. (Can't boot into OS 9 in coming Macintosh computers)

Steve

I hope Apple isn't this arrogant. I've been waiting already 6 weeks for August 24, when Apple is to introduce new Power Macintoshs. Now I may not buy one. E-Week is reporting that Apple will fix its new Macintosh Computers so they can't boot into OS9.
If they do that I won't buy one until a couple of weeks later when a hack is developed to allow that. I love OS X and version 10.2 is supposed to be great. But there are cases when one will still need OS 9. How about using my Apple Scanner? I'm sure others can quickly identify many other situations that still require a full fledged (read boot into) System 9 for functionality.
Apple: No System 9, No SALE.
You know my 2GHZ DDR Dell 4400 is starting to grow on me. Microsoft Windows XP doesnt require I pay extra to use Backup Software, or to optimize my Hard Drive, and it doesn't greatly prefer OEM Optical Drives, or make it hard to use floppy drives.

TECH-TV gone BAD I often like to watch TechTV on DirecTv being somewhat of a nerd. I especially like their "ScreenSavers" show in the evening, which has new stuff and useful tips. However it is obvious to me that Tech-TV (formerly ZDNET) is not long for this world. They (or did DirecTv do this without telling them) must be hurting for money in a bad way. They're running informercials in the middle of the night (i.e. 4 AM CDT). Today it was for videos from a softporn distributor that it would serve no useful purpose for me to name. Terribly sad to see them descend into the morass.

A push for HDTV ? It's reported today that the FCC may start requiring TV makers to include HDTV tuners in their HDTVs, as a means to help speed the move to HDTV. Me, I'm all for that! The manufacturers are complaining about the increased cost, but with everyone equally affected it will be a level playing field. These are the same manufacturers that 30 some years ago complained about having to include UHF tuners in their TVs. That hurt no one.