AuburnCom Weblog

With the rapid rollout of LCD tv’s, I thought we’d catchup on the simple information about HD, 1080p, Blu Ray and all that Jazz.

Back in the 90’s, our early early computers had screen resolutions of 640×480, that literally meant that there was 640 vertical lines(left to right) and 480 horizontal lines (top to bottom) displaying the image our eyes could see.In those days we never discussed how many lines a TV had because those TV’s were analog, light shining on glass that was rarely measured and never discussed, the resolution at a rough estimation of these TV’s was 320×240, about half of what Computer monitors were displaying, which is why, when you plugged the video output from a pc into a TV it looked blurry and enlarged, because the stadard TV couldn’t display the text and images at a sharp enough resolution.

Computer monitors started accelerating their resolution improvements and quickly jumped to 800×600 and then 1024×768, TV screens followed suit, and the better CRT models got their resolution up to 640480 too, this is what is called (Standard Definition, this didn’t occur in any major sense until 2005, when Plasma screens were already well entrenched (despite their price tags in the low teen thousands) and LCD Tv’s were beginning to gain raction in the consumer market place.

Today, 1080p indicates that a screen can display 1920×1080 resolution and comes standard on 40 inchand 52 inch tv’s, (I like the Samsungs best), 720P is about normal for the 30 and 32 inch models, but, how do Macs stack up against these impressive figures, and, can a Mac show you a picture much better than these TV’s?

Judge for yourself: 20 inch iMac: Resolution: 1680-by-1050 

24 inch iMac Resolution: 1920-by-1200 

 So, before you choose to watch all the upcoming HD movies, like 

Wall.E , Indiana Jones, Journey to the Center of the Earth or the Mummy 3, be sure to carefully pick out what’ll serve you best.

Slightly Obfuscated question from a client:I have a G5 that needs a little work. I would like to update the operating system – currently has OS X, version 10.3.9. I would like to upgrade to Tiger or Leopard. I would also like to have MS Office Suite added to the system.Details about my G5 I purchased G5 4 years ago. It has a 1.6HHz processor and 1.25 GM DDR SDRAM memory. It has OS X, version 10.3.9. The hard drive It’s got a 75 GB hard drive and I also have another 100 GB external hard drive. It also has an airport to connect to wireless network - DSL. What can you recommendThe G5 computers are true milestones in Apple’s history, they’re fast, handle video and media really well and look good. Do you have a PowerMac or an iMac?OS X leopard retails for $129 from Apple and that’s what I sell it for too, it IS available from Amazon for $119 with free shipping, MS Office 2008 sells for $149 at the Apple Store or through me, from Amazon, it is $129 If you can, I would highly recommend using Apple’s iWork 08 over MS office, you can read more about it on my website, it’s $79 from Apple or $69 from Amazon If you require my direct consultations or work on your Mac, you can come to our office at 660 Alabama Street (that’s near 19th street), 94110.

  Do you like it when your Mac saves time for you?

Have you ever had Safari stop filling forms automatically?

In case you have, here’s a brief descriptor of how it works and how to fix things if they get screwy.

Inside Safari Prefences, there’s a section entitled “AutoFill”, you’ll need to ensure that the Checkbox next to “Uing Info from my Address Book Card” is checked,

and then run to Address Book and do the following

Open Address Book, Find your own name/card, highlight it and then go to the Menu Bar, Click “Card”, then, Click “Make this My Card”.

ET Voila, Safari will now fill forms with info from your card,

Some Cool new stuff on iTunes today: Wall-E Soundtrack, Celebrity Playlists  Star Trek, The Original series  and elsewhere: NBC has an iPhone optimized nbc.com page, go there from your iPhone or iPod touch and you can watch full episodes of The Office, 30 Rock and more… 

Well, grab NetNewsWire, always was the best Newsreader, then it graduated to V3.0 and became free! in two weeks, ther’ll be a free version for the iPhone that’ll sync up pretty ducking well.

Great writing from Cringely…

That’s the key to what Steve Jobs does all day: he sits around and asks questions like, “If Porsche made a media player, what would it be like?” That’s it — you are now qualified to replace Steve Jobs at Apple on days when he’s away making trouble for Disney.

Thanks to Tim for reminding me to let everybody know the best place to go for Web Site hosting.  The company I and most of my clients use, is Dreamhost.The reasons for which include:

and a lot more, if you’re curious, head over to http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?145127 and check out their prices and plans, you’ll find that as long as you host more than one site with them, you’ll get better value than any other webhost out there!

P.S. You can use the promo code RECLAIM for big savings (two year hosting for about $100…

Comments welcome..

From O2: 

Existing iPhone customers can upgrade early to the new 3G iPhone for free*To thank you for being an iPhone fan, we’re offering you an early upgrade to the brand new version when it launches on 11th July 2008. You won’t have to wait until the end of your existing contract, all you’ll need to do is agree to a new 18-month minimum term contract.*Best of all, the new 8GB iPhone won’t cost you a penny on our £45 and £75 Pay Monthly tariffs for iPhone. And it’s just £99 on our £35 tariff and new £30 tariff. This special early upgrade offer is only available online at o2.co.uk anytime from 11th July until 11th October 2008.Take a look at our new Pay Monthly tariffs for iPhone.Then just register your interest opposite and we’ll drop you a line in early July to tell you what you need to do to be one of the first to get your hands on the new 3G iPhone.Don’t need 2 iPhones!We want to make sure you find a good home for your existing iPhone once you upgrade. If you’ve a friend or family member already on an eligible O2 tariff, they’ll be able to transfer to one of our new tariffs for iPhone. If they’re not already with O2 or on an eligible O2 tariff, they could get one of our new iPhone Pay & Go SIM cards.

This is so amazingly brilliant for customers, Apple and O2, the new phone is free, and, O2 will help you setup your old one for a friend really simply. Has there been a greener easier upgrade path ever before? Generally, it’s “toss your old phone in that ‘recycle’ can on your way out with your new Nokia, this is unprecedented, Congrats UK users, and I can see Irish, German and French users getting similar care…

Apple has initiated it’s 2008 Back to School campaign today on their site 

The bottom line of the promotion is that students who buy a Mac between now and the start of school get a free iPod touch, that’s a $299 value.

(In prior years students only got an iPod valued at $199)

In addition, students get much better pricing on their computers, MacBook Airs are only $1699(saving $230), regular MacBooks are $999 and the savings continue up to the MacBook Pro and iMac lines.

The site is nicely designed, located at http://apple.com/backtoschool and features some of Apple’s slogan writers better lines, like :

and, my favorite