The Western Digital HD Media Player Set-top box!
Pirated copy of Planet Earth, meet huge HD LCD TV!

The Western Digital HD Media center is essentially a gateway for your digital entertainment files.

Whether it be photos, music, or videos, the WD TV will deliver in up 1080p goodness. It features both HDMI and SPDIF out for true HD sound and video. The part of this product that really makes it stand out from the rest is its likable list of supported audio and video formats:

Video

• MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264),
  MTS, TP, TS (If your curious, almost all HD downloads use some form of H.264 and/or .MKV)

Audio

• MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA

All you have to do is connect an external USB hard drive or thumbdrive. The slick and elegant user interface will help you navigate your drive in order to find your media.

You can pick on up to day for as little as $89.99 Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player

Quick tips for keeping your battery in tip-top shape:

• For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. (This means not leaving it plugged in 100% of the time
• Fully charge and discharge your battery at least once a month.
• Have a spare battery you don’t use to often? Don’t store it with more then a %50 charge. (if you store it fully charged for an extended period of time, the battery may experience some loss of battery capacity)
• Be sure to store your notebook and battery at the proper temperature (Between 50 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit)

Looking for more info on battery management? Try Apple.com/Batteries

My laptop comes with me everywhere I go. I wake up in the morning, toss my laptop in my bag and head out. Often I don’t get back home for another 5-6 hours. This means I need my battery to last me all day. I do take the charger with, but I often never have time to stop and plug in. Here are five simple tips I follow to make sure my battery lasts me all day.

1. WiFi – Don’t get me wrong, I love being connected but it’s not necessary 100% of the time. I like to blog on the go, but when I write I make sure to switch the WiFi off until I am ready to publish my post.
2. Screen Brightness – I will admit that a nice bright screen is very fancy, but at times, its just not all that practical. You can skip this if you have the automatically adjust screen brightness checked in system preferences. If you don’t have that checked, you can easily forget that you have your screen blasting as bright as it will go.
3. Keyboard Brightness – Handy as it may be, it’s just another drain on your battery. Keep it off unless you need it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple just can’t help itself. If something can be better, they make it better. Earlier this morning Apple quietly upgraded the older style white MacBook.

What Changed?

The biggest and most noticeable upgrade would be the move from Intel’s GMA X3100 GPU to NVIDIA’s new 9400M. That in and of itself is a great bump. But they didn’t stop there. The next move they made was upgrading the FSB from 800MHz to 1066MHz. They also upgraded the bluetooth module from 2.0 to 2.1. and bumped the standard memory from 1GB to 2GB.

Thanks to Apple, your 1000 bones will take you a lot further now.

Although Apple claims they can only support 4GB max, those shiny new MacBook and MacBook Pros can support up to 6GBs of DDR3 memory. For the casual user, installing a 4GB and 2GB module in your MacBook or MacBook Pro may seem like a bit of overkill. Especially with a $600 price tag. But if you are looking for shear performance on the go, its good to know you can always add another 2GBs. Keep in mind though, that as of now, 6GBs is the absolute limit. 8GBs apparently gives the system issues.

Why on earth would Apple choose to adopt a new interface when we already have standards like HDMI? It costs $100 to adapt Apple’s Mini DisplayPort back to Dual-Link DVI, bad news for people wanting to connect their New MBPs to older Displays. Look at the bright side though;

• The mini Display port is 4x smaller then a standard DVI port.
• Mini DVI and Micro DVI can only support resolutions up to 1920×1200, whereas mini DisplayPort can push resolutions up to 2560×1600
• Unlike HDMI, DisplayPort is 100% open which means no license fees for using it in your product. This means Apple can pass the savings on to you.
• The DisplayPort specifications allow for daisy changing multiple monitors

It’s not all gold and roses though, lack of audio support from the mini version of DisplayPort and difficult conversion to HDMI makes for some slight headaches when trying to use your new Mac with older technology. It’s not perfect yet, but continued support and development can produce a solid interface.