I’ve been a pretty loyal user of Apple’s Macbook Pro line for the last few years. I purchased my first one after Northern Voice in 2007, mostly because the laptop that I recently had Vista installed on failed to work for me during a presentation. Since then I’ve probably been through three or four of them, often upgrading every year or so to keep up with technology. The first few were the 15″ model, and the last Macbook Pro I purchased was a 13″ model. Macbook Air While the Macbook Pro is a great computer, the Macbook Air has always intrigued me. Most of my uber techie friends have one, ...

One of the hardest parts about traveling with technology is lugging all of your gear around with you. Once you arrive at a destination and rent an apartment, you can store some items and only carry along a few things at a time. But when you’re in the process of traveling to or from a destination, you have to have all your items on your person for a period of time. I’m actually using the MEC Pangea 40 litre backpack as my main travel bag. For small trips I only bring the backpack with me, but for my major travel between destinations that I plan to live at for more than a week, I store everything ...

A friend of mine on Twitter posted a question today asking if anyone had done any world travel, and if so, what they thought of taking a laptop with them. Since I just got back from four months of world travel, I thought I would write an entry detailing my experiences with backpacking with a laptop. I spent the majority of my time in the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina. I brought along my 13″ Macbook Pro, which is valued at around $1,500 in Canada. There is actually a lot of petty theft in Buenos Aires, so I avoided taking my laptop out for the first six weeks or so. But eventually that became ...

One of the biggest questions people always ask me about Buenos Aires is whether or not it is a safe city. Buenos Aires has an international reputation (at least lately) of being riddled with petty crime. Prior to coming here, I did quite a few scans on the internet and there is no shortage of sites talking about people’s personal experiences with crime in Buenos Aires. In fact, many of the locals talk about it like getting something stolen is almost a rite of passage in this city. Upon landing in the city for the first time, you’re immediately bombarded with stores covered in iron bars and ...

I’m up at Cultus Lake now, doing some weird cross between camping and working. I honestly wasn’t too sure if I’d get 3G up here, and had planned to head back into town during the days. But given how I have four bars on my phone, and that 3G is working great, I might just work from up here. To that end, I went back home a while ago and picked up my 15W solar panel and my 75Ah deep cycle battery. Right now my laptop appears to be drawing about 25W, which is fairly awesome considering I’m charging it and also working on it at the same time. At 120V, that means it’s currently drawing roughly ...

I pulled my laptop out of my case tonight and fired it up. I was immediately greeted with this: $1000 worth of fail As you can see, my LCD has a wicked crack in it. I did a quick scan in the forums, and replacing an LCD via the Apple store runs about $1000, which is rather insane. Thankfully I found a few companies on eBay that are selling the raw LCD screens for around $200, so I put in an order for a replacement. Hopefully I’ll be able to install it myself when it comes in the mail. So as of right now, I’m without a laptop. Thankfully I have an iMac at home as well, so I’m not really ...

Today Apple officially unveiled the new Apple MacBook and MacBook pro laptops. Not a whole lot of excitement with the announcements, since many people were expecting a new form factor, but it looks like there are a few small improvements. Of note is the addition of the multi-touch track pad that is part of the Apple MacBook Air Notebook, more video memory, and faster CPU speeds. You can read more about it here. ...

Apple just announced an ultra-think notebook computer called the Air. Photo by Gnackgnackgranck on Flickr Looks pretty cool, but it doesn’t have a DVD drive, and is sealed shut like a big iPod. Based on my experiences with my Macbook Pro and Leopard, I think I’m definitely pulling myself out of the “early-adopter” crowd with Apple and waiting a while this round to see what happens. ...

Wow. I just spent the last 30 seconds walking around my apartment looking for my laptop so I could pack it up and take it to work like I usually do. Then I remembered that I no longer have a laptop, as it’s in for servicing. Which means I can leave my big bulky bag at home today. Which is weird, and honestly, sort of feels a bit freeing. I can walk to work today and actually just enjoy the nice sunny day with my iPod. I tried finding a nice sunny autumn shot for this entry, but this Central Park Shot came up from last year, and it made me miss New York. So enjoy. PS – My new iMac kicks ...