I just saw this movie…and one thing’s certain: the dog was a better actor than Will Smith.

I’m not really sure why Will Smith is still making movies…he has managed to make the most complex characters one-dimensional…Disagree? Have you seen “Ali?” I rest my case.

Popularity: 12% [?]

I’m currently evaluating Virtual Machine engines for my new MacBook Pro. I’ve exhausted my evaluation copy of Parallels and am now running VMWare Fusion. A few things:

- I don’t know what intarweb reviewers are smoking…but with my 2GB MBP, Parallels is definitely faster and more responsive than VMWare Fusion on running Windows Vista
- VMWare’s Unity is integrated better with OS X than Parallel’s Coherence
- If you’re switching from Parallels to Fusion…bite the bullet and reinstall the OS. There is a migration tool from VMWare but I just learned the hard way that it is DEFINITELY slower than a fresh install.

I am probably sticking with VMWare only because Fusion is only at 1.0 and it almost kicks Parallels’ butt…and I’m already familiar with VMWare products…and I heard Parallels’ customer support is a nightmare.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I returned the Linksys router due to 102.11n issues with the MBP and bought an Airport Extreme Base Station as a replacement.

I’m not sure if I’m happy with this router, either.

Connection is rather easy compared to Linksys router. That’s not saying much because connecting the Linksys isn’t that difficult as long as you’re not using their stupid “helper application.”

First of all, the Airport Utility needs to be replaced (preferrably with something http-based…you know, just like any other freakin’ router in the market!). One would think that this utility was outsourced to Microsoft or something. It’s counter-intuitive: Reserving DHCP addresses is a pain (it’s automatic with the Linksys), you have to dig through a lot of crap before you can list the devices attached to the router.

The thing that annoys me the most is that NAT-PMP is broken. NAT-PMP is a awesome for passive FTP’ing and bittorrent since you don’t need to monkey around with port forwarding and all that crap. I thought it was just me, but after googling a bit, a number of Apple forum threads confirmed my suspicion: the latest firmware (7.2.1) breaks NAT-PMP. A few were so frustrated that they downgraded their firmware.

I’m probably going to keep this one anyway.

Update 03/20/2008: Looks like the new 7.3.1 firmware version has corrected this issue.  Yes!

Popularity: 14% [?]

I just installed a brand new Linksys WRT150N on my network. An issue I have encountered while using the MBP was that wireless internet does not reconnect after a sleep.

I have a PowerBook G4 that works fine with wireless even after a sleep.

I figured that since the MBP is using a 102.11n wireless card, that the latest OS X Tiger/Leopard update messed up the driver for it. So the temporary solution is to force it to use 102.11g. So far, it worked for me…I outlined the solution here (search for posting by “bubuli”).

Update: I just realized that by forcing the router to use 102.11g/b, it sort of defeats the purpose of getting an n router.  Apple may decide to play well with the router in future update(s), but that’s not guaranteed.  I decided to return the router and just exchange it with an Apple Airport Extreme base.

Popularity: 20% [?]