If you remember my last post I was discussing whether or not I was going to cancel cable, well I have decided that I will be once I get around to it. Is Netflix going to be to be the next service I disconnect? Maybe. Amie and I rented “No Reservations” the other day on our Apple TV straight from the TV and it worked flawlessly. We browsed through the rental choices, viewed the trailer, then purchased. Within about 5 minutes or less the Apple TV informed us that our rental was ready to be played. We had one hiccup where it stalled and buffered, but that was right at the beginning so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Overall I have been very pleased with the Apple TV, I just wish it would play Xvid/DivX files seen as 90% of my previously recorded shows with BeyondTV are in that format.

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I’ve been thinking for awhile now that maybe I could get rid of cable TV and just live off of OTA HD and streaming, well I think it’s finally time to give it a go. I just bought an Apple TV which I’m in the process of converting my previously recorded shows using BeyondTV to formats supported by ATV. The thought process was that we only really care about three or four shows that are broadcasted on the local channels, so why pay for all that extra crap that eats away $60 a month? Obviously I’ll have to give up my Modern Marvels (Amie’s happy I’m sure!) and other Discovery Channel shows that aren’t available via iTunes, but oh well, maybe we’ll spend less time in front of the TV?

I’ll post again in the next few weeks regarding how well it works out for us. Tomorrow I’m going to pick up an antenna while at Best Buy for OTA HD and hopefully in the next week or so the new ATV update will be available and we’ll have access to on-demand movie rentals.

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The online event known as MacHeist is almost over. Over the past few weeks they have had these online scavenger hunts in a similar manner to where in the world is carmen sandiego and it has come down to the last “heist” soon to be posted. The bundle of great Mac OSX software is available for sale and has raised over $65k USD for charity! If you are a Mac user and have not checked out there software bundle go and do so now, a little over 2 days is left until the bundle will not be available any more.

http://macheist.com/

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[thumb:1860:l]Amie got me the best wedding present ever, although I question as to why she got it. She always says I spend too much time on a computer so what does she do? She buys me a new one!! She got me a MacBook Pro 2.16ghz, 1gb ram, and 120gb hard drive. I can’t wait to start doing stuff with the iLife 06 suite, especially iPhoto for the wedding books. You may have noticed my post earlier about Apple’s product called Boot Camp, well I have that installed already but I haven’t installed Windows XP, I’m still debating between using Boot Camp or Parallels.

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[thumb:1856:l] Ever since Apple made the switch to the Intel processors everyone has been wondering whether or not you could run Windows XP natively on the machines and not require the use of Virtual PC, well Apple has released beta software that allows you to do just that. Boot Camp allows you to easily setup a new partition on your drive and installed Windows XP Home SP2 or Pro SP2. Setup was very straightforward, put your Windows XP CD into your Mac and then using Boot Camp Assistant you reboot your computer into setup mode. Once XP was installed it was a snap to get the drivers setup thanks to Apple provided a CD image that you can burn. The only hardware devices that will not work are builtin iSight cameras and the backlit keyboards, but those are not show stoppers by any means.

All the applications I tested ran without problems and ran just as well if not better than they do on my Dell Inspiron & Latitude laptops. This is a big plus as you will no longer need to run a very laggy Virtual PC.

So what does this mean for the future of Apple and their market share? I would much rather pay the $1500.00+ price tag for a MacBook that can run both Windows XP & OS X than pay $1500.00+ for the MacBook and another $600.00+ for a PC laptop. Plus I only need to carry one laptop around.

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