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As a follow on from yesterdays MacBook Pro vs DELL Notebook comparison where we discovered that the MacBook Pro was slightly cheaper AND faster than the closest comparable DELL system I decided to take a look at the more popular consumer MacBook.

Apple announced a new MacBook this week so I decided to take a look at the high end model (where presumably Apple make the highest profit margin) and up the spec here and there, for example increasing the RAM to the full 4GB. Now for the purposes of this comparison I let Apple do the upgrade at the factory but in reality I would do myself as it always works out cheaper to buy the RAM from Crucial, fit it yourself and sell off the old RAM on eBay…

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Filed under: Computing
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I bought my existing MacBook Pro almost 2 years ago and I love it. It’s a fast machine and I have no need to buy the latest version. But 2 years ago I did a price comparison between the middle/high spec MacBook Pro (that I bought) and a Dell Latitude notebook, on a like for like spec and found the Dell cost about £50 more…

Is that still the case?

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The ticket price for entry into Apple laptop ownership in the UK hasn’t dropped as most people forecast, even though in the USA the popular notebook has dropped $100 (about £40).

In the UK the price has actually *risen* by £20 from £699 to £719.

The culprit? The value of the pound which has taken a battering in recent weeks falling from a lofty $2 per £1 to around $1.65 per £1…

Filed under: Computing
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While touting the new aluminium clad MacBook, a firewire port was conspicuous by its absence.

As per the Macbook Air, the new Macbook is also lacking a firewire interface.
While most consumers probably use USB hard drives for their external storage needs, those who want to edit their home movies using iMovie will be flat out of luck…

http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.html

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As part of our general clearout to make some space in the office and a need to get rid of older technology to make room for the new, we’ve thrown a load of stuff up on eBay.

Although some stuff has already gone we’ve got plenty more hard drives, ram, software & peripherals and almost all of it is Mac compatible (or even Mac specific as we’re a Mac house don’t you know?). And speaking of which, we’ll have a rather nice Macintosh system up for sale in the next couple of days.

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As in Woopra? (pronounced Wu-pra)

Woopra is an online website stats package that is currently in Beta. Hold on, no need to fall asleep! ( I saw those eyes glazing over!) Woopra makes monitoring your site stats fun (yes really)!

Sure it has all the usual graphs showing the most common web browsers that have visited your site and which sites are linking to you and so on. What makes Woopra stand out is that unlike other packages that only update their stats perhaps once a day, Woopra stats are live. Thanks to a world map you can actually see where each visitor is surfing from and you can see which pages they click on (including links that take them from your site) as they click! In fact you can even strike up an Instant Messenger type conversation with them (might freak then out though to think you’re watching them…).

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Filed under: Web Design
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We have been registering domain names on behalf of our web design customers and hosting their web sites for some time now. We have never offered domains and hosting as a stand-alone service, only as part of a web design package.

Well that has now changed!

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There have been a lot of questions raised about the accuracy of the iPhone GPS receiver, the size of the antenna, the update frequency and so on have all been called into question.

So I decided to try a simple test as I am currently learning how to develop iPhone applications that make use of the GPS. Using a 3rd party application to log the GPS co-ordinates from the iPhone, I cycled a 3.5 mile route through a suburb of London and exported the co-ordinates as a KML file and loaded the path into Google Earth. I then manually drew an accurate path in Google Earth of the same route.

As I was cycling, bear in mind that I made use of the pevement in places, as well as the road.

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Next month will mark the 8th birthday of the Apple iPod, the mp3 player which revolutionised the music industry. In less than 8 years Apple sold over 160 MILLION of them, 60 million of which was in the last 18 months alone…
They began with just one model, available only in white and with a 5GB capacity it required a Macintosh computer in order to use it. Retailing at $399 it was considerably more expensive than mp3 players from the more established competition such as Samsung, Creative Audio and so on. But unlike the mp3 players which came before it, it was far easier to use. Transferring music from your computer to the iPod was practically automated, just plug it in. And navigating through 1,000 tracks required an easy to use interface that broke away from the CD player like controls found on most players.
The 3rd generation player of 2003 saw the introduction of Windows compatibility and with the trademark white earbuds becoming a (accidental) fashion statement sales really took off. TV and billboard ads capitalised on this, using silhouetted dancers sporting bright white earbuds.
As the years and generations have passed, battery life has increased massively and so has the memory capacity. However the physical size of the device continues to shrink and become more refined and elegant. The feature list continues to grow, first came music, then photos, then video, then games and now we have 3rd party applications, full web access and email.

The chart below highlights the different generations along with the price (at launch), storage capacity, battery life (max battery life is for audio use only, minimum battery life is for video playback where available), colour selection (all colours available during that generations lifespan)

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More than 10 years after the Internet first really invaded British homes, many businesses in the UK are either completely ignoring it or failing to fully utilise it.

At first I was amazed to read that just over 1/3rd of UK businesses have absolutely no web presence whatsoever (according to figures from the UK Federation of Small Businesses). Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Then I sat down and thought about all the business owners that I have spoken to over the last 12 months and remembered that a large proportion of them admitted (with some uncomfortable shuffling of feet and gazing at the floor) that they didn’t have a website. Now, when you ask them if they use the internet themselves to find or buy stuff, almost 100% say yes, either buying from eBay, booking their next holiday, buying car insurance and so on. Yet they let their own business stumble along, a decade behind the times, getting all uncomfortable when asked if they have a website.

Of those that do have an online presence, only 18% actively sell things online according to the FSB.

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