They're trying to cover up the Vista snafu, but it doesn't seem like it will work:

Under the Hood, Windows 7 Is Vista's Twin

Bottom line: So far, Windows 7 looks, behaves, and performs almost exactly like Windows Vista. And it breaks all sorts of things that used to work just fine under Vista.

I saw a Vista commercial yesterday about how people were amazed that they could schedule times to be logged into the computer for their kids. What? That's been on a Mac for how long now?

I still run Windows XP on my PC at home. I love my Mac SO much more. I saw someone get mad at their laptop last week that was running Vista. Printer driver problems. The consensus is that Vista sucks.

Yeah, they're trying to catch up to Apple and not doing too well, it seems, even with a redux of Vista. At least call it something besides "Windows 7" since Apple is up to 10.5. Duh.

-T

Does anyone else notice what a memory hog iTunes is? I think it has a memory leak, too. My available disk space will go down to 600MB and then I close down iTunes and I get another GB free after doing that. Crazy.

It would be nice to leave iTunes running, but I can't afford the disk space.

-Tony

Well, for a week now I've had to deal with not having my contacts synced up on my iPhone. It was a huge pain [I wasn't alone apparently: [Apple Support Thread]. I rebooted today because the phone was acting weird and contacts are now back.

I used to know everyone's numbers in my head - remember those days? I saw someone else the other day who still knew people's numbers and was amazed. I guess we depend on technology too much now - what do you think?

-T

Well, I've had my Samsung HDTV for a few months now and still really love it. It's so cool watching shows in HD and it's great seeing more and more HD channels appearing. In the last month or so, both channel 27 (WKOW) and channel 47 (WMSN) have gone HD. I don't like that I have to use my own antenna to get local HD stations with the satellite. I don't get why Dish Network doesn't include local channels in HD and I think their advertising is a little deceptive that way, but it's working for me (with a few blips sometimes - especially when my dad comes over for some reason).

So I've got HDTV on Dish Network, local over-the-air HD channels and HD DVD - thanks to the Playstation 3 (that almost rhymes). But there was a VGA port on the back just calling to me and I thought that I could use the MacMini as an Apple TV and also as a computer (to use iTunes with that cool visualizer going) if I could just hook that up - but how? After a little trial and error and online research, I found a good solution - which I'll get to.

Some other things I had to consider were:

1. The MacMini was hosting my printer, backup drive (for Time Machine) and webcam.
2. I wanted to set up the backup drive so that both my MacMini and iBook would use Time Machine and automatically back themselves up in the background, all the time.
3. I wanted to share my music and video libraries over all computers on the network.

Here's what I did. I:

1. Purchased the following:
   1. Apple Wireless Keyboard
   2. Wireless Mouse - I went with a wireless USB mouse instead of bluetooth to save a few bucks.
   3. DVI to HDMI cable (go to Best Buy not Circuit City if you want a good selection of cables)
   4. USB hub
2. Got the wireless keyboard and mouse working on the MacMini while it's still hooked up to the old monitor.
3. Got the backup drive and printer working on the Airport Extreme while it's still hooked up to the old monitor. See my Airport Extreme Printing blog entry.
4. Set the resolution on the MacMini a bit lower - like 800x600... but this was because I first tried using a VGA cable, wasn't happy with the resolution and then later went and got a DVI to HDMI cable - so you may not have to do this since it appears that resolution information does get sent through the DVI/HDMI interface.
5. Moved the MacMini, mouse and keyboard to the living room and plugged it all in. I'm now using all 3 HDMI ports on the TV - so if you're in the market for an HDTV, know that I've already filled up all HDMI plugs that my TV came with and you might want to get a TV with more than 3 HDMI connections if you're like me.
6. Hooked the audio output of the MacMini up to the stereo.
7. Turned it all on and it worked beautifully almost:
   1. This kind of bugged me for a bit... I didn't set up the wireless connection on the MacMini and was wondering why I had Internet but could not connect to music libraries on other local computers - it was using someone else's open wireless Internet and not mine because when the MacMini was in the other room, it was connected via ethernet cable and I wasn't using wireless. Duh.
   2. I played with the resolution on the MacMini for a bit and here is what I did:
      1. Turned off "Overscan" - this was my choice, you may want it on but I could not see the dock.
      2. Set the resolution to 1344 x 756 which puts about an inch of black space on the sides of the screen but it's easy to read text from a little farther away. The resolution on my 40" HDTV can go up to 1920 x 1080 interlaced or else 1600 x 900 non-interlaced/progressive.

Be sure to get some good music going in iTunes at night, turn off all the lights and then rock that new visualizer full screen. You'll trip out - it's great!