reesesWeb

because I'll order it and they'll rev it the next day.

I was dithering over the past few weeks about replacing the Core2Duo/2.0Ghz FrankenMacMini I've been using for a while because I keep bouncing against the 2GB limit. I was thinking about getting the 2.8Ghz iMac because it can hold 4GB and hey, I'd get a free 24" monitor out of the deal.

I went back and forth in my head, wishing that there were something similar to the "high end" Psystar OpenScam^H^H^H^HMacs, but made by Apple. I have a long chain (6TB!) of firewire drives, and I'd kind of like to get some of those moved inside the machine to kill the noise. Not possible with the iMac.

There's lots to like about Leopard, other than the usual OS X update firewire suckage. The best new feature is about eighteen years late -- the date in iCal's dock icon is finally correct.

Any of you have a recommendation for a Mac-friendly non-iPod video capable portable media players that handle video? I'm disqualifying the iPod for now as its codec support is pretty minimal. Otherwise, it has almost everything I'm looking for.

Other than that, I'm looking at the Creative Zen Vision W, which looks great on "paper" but is ugly and doesn't love the Mac. In fact, the only way to get it to work with a Mac is to use xnjb, an open source MTP application. Suck. That's so far from iTunes integration that it makes my head spin.

I went to look at the new MacBook today at the Apple store. I feel this desire to replace both my G4 PowerBooks with another Macintosh laptop.

Now that I've validated its functionality, I'm ready to migrate the Mac Mini to be a home theater pc, and I miss the dual screen functionality afforded by having a laptop with screen-spanning ability.

That said, the MacBook non-Pro will not be replacing anything at my house any time soon.

The good:

• The keyboard is much nicer than it looks. I expected a Mattel Aquarius experience, but it types almost as well as my PowerBooks. It took about three femtoseconds to adjust.