Kevin Henrikson » Apple

UPDATE: Macbook PRO EVDO v640 card problems

kevin — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 17:48:50 +0000

Ever since I’ve been on Verizon’s EVDO with my MacBook PRO my Mac won’t sleep as quickly. Sometimes it won’t sleep at all and lets the battery drain completely. What’s worse is when it does sleep it needs a reboot to reconnect to EVDO after waking from sleep. I’ve been looking for a solution for sometime.

I’ve now removed the VZAccess software from Verizon and am running with the native EVDO drivers that ship with OSX 10.4.7+. Found a few pointers that recommend this. There is a good summary page here.

What you will miss by Uninstalling

* Logging of each connection, connected time, data transfered
* Graph of current usage along with fastest upload and download speeds
* Manual Activation

You’ll now get a nice signal meter and connected time in the top title bar (see image below).

EVDO – Speedtest – Bellagio – Las Vegas, NV

kevin — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 17:17:09 +0000

Took a couple tests from our room in the Bellagio.

Macbook PRO EVDO v640 card problems

kevin — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 03:00:38 +0000

EVDO on my Macbook PRO works just fine… Well the first time after a clean boot. If the computer goes to sleep the EVDO connection/card fails to reconnect. No amount of ejecting or restarting the Verizon app will make it work. You have to actually REBOOT. Searched the web for some solutions but came up blank. There has to be some process or command that will trick the card into working after coming back from sleep.

Ideas?

MacOS X 10.4.6 – wget

kevin — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 07:15:00 +0000

Well my MacBook Pro arrived. Couldn’t find a binary version of wget for MacOSX 10.4.6 so decided to build it for myself. wget makes easy work of downloading HTTP/FTP items. I needed this to grab some of the certs when trying to get Gmail’s POP over SSL to work on my Nokia E61.

Here’s the copy of wget I built on Mac OS X 10.4.6

MacBook Pro getting closer…

kevin — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 07:04:31 +0000

Date/Time

Activity

Location

Details

Jun 7, 2006

2:18 AM

Int’l shipment release

INDIANAPOLIS, IN

Jun 6, 2006

2:02 PM

Departed FedEx location

ANCHORAGE, AK

12:48 PM

Arrived at FedEx location

ANCHORAGE, AK

11:04 AM

Left origin

SHANGHAI CN

11:02 AM

Picked up

SHANGHAI CN

8:55 AM

Package data transmitted to FedEx

Time to switch? – Thinkpad vs. MacBook Pro – Part IV

kevin — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 05:24:13 +0000

The wait is over. I’ve decided to order my MacBook Pro. See the details below. Lenovo decided to drop Linux as a focus for the Thinkpad line. The lack of a well supported Linux/Unix distro further adds reason to move to Mac.

Order Details
Product Name		Product Number	Unit Price	Qty	Subtotal

MBPRO 15/2.16 CTO		Z0DL	$2,899.00	1	$2,899.00
With the following configuration: Processor 0656552 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo Memory 0656107 2GB 667 DDR2 2x1GB SODIMMs Hard Drive 0656106 100GB Serial ATA drive@7200rpm Optical Drive 0656096 SuperDrive (DVDRW/CDRW) Display 0656520 Widescreen Display Modem 0656201 None Apple Software Solutions 0656200 No optional SW Keyboard/Mac OS Language 0656553 BkLit Keyboard/Mac OS Country Kit/AEX 0656102 Airport Extreme Card andBT
Estimated Shipped By:	JUN 07, 2006
Estimated Delivered By:	JUN 12, 2006

Recycle Fee			$8.00	1	$8.00

APPLE PORTABLE POWER ADAPTER85WUSA		MA357LL/A	$79.00	1	$79.00
Estimated Shipped By:	JUN 05, 2006
Estimated Delivered By:	JUN 07, 2006

Time to switch? – Thinkpad vs. MacBook Pro – Part III

kevin — Fri, 12 May 2006 05:42:43 +0000

Well the 17″ MacBook Pro’s are starting to arrive. From the reports I’ve read the 17″ MBP lack the whine which appears in many of the early production 15.4″ MacBook Pro models. There are a few things that are popping up for the first time. Like the lid stays closed better, staying cooler and then there are those who think the 17 inch MBP is still stupid big. Hey what’s to lose… you get more for your money than with the 15″. Not to mention an extra 2 inches to help let all the heat out. Personally not sure how much fun it will be to travel with what amounts to a surf board of a laptop. I think it’s clear that the Thinkpad is out. Going to be either a 17″ or 15″ MacBook Pro. Few more mentions.

Time to switch? – Thinkpad vs. MacBook Pro – Part II

kevin — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 05:02:39 +0000

Apple released the 17″ MacBook Pro last Monday. In Part I of my Apple vs Thinkpad post I mentioned a few reasons why I’m strongly considering the MacBook Pro. The 17″ model adds Firewire 800, 8x super Drive, and obviously a larger screen. If Apple had just added the option for a speed bump in the Core Duo it may have just been the tipping point.

A few more reviews.

On a side note the MacBook Pro is seeing more and more applications get ported to native Intel and/or Universal support. Just one more feather in the MacBook’s hat.

Time to switch? – Thinkpad vs. MacBook Pro – Part I

kevin — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 06:47:01 +0000

I’ve been an IBM Thinkpad user for the last ~7 years. By and large they’ve been good to me. I think in those 7 years I’ve had 6 different Thinkpads. On average one a year. Only two failures to speak of; the first a hard drive failure on my T20 which had been whining for weeks so I had good backups. The 2nd a screen failure when an airport screener (one of those new anal post-9/11 types) dropped it taking it over to the bomb residue tester. So for 7 years of heavy laptop use not a bad record. However more and more I’ve got my eye on making the switch to Apple. Thinking back; my first ever computer that I did any *real* work on was an Apple IIe. Wrote some LOGO programs in an after school computer class.
Today my first reason to consider the Mac is that my day-to-day work can all be done(I think) without the support of Windows or Linux as my primary OS. Using Windows as my primary desktop for more than a decade has I’m sure left some scars. However most of what I do these days can be moved to just about any modern OS. Let’s see… Web based AJAX email, calendar, and contacts client. Thunderbird for offline IMAP mail. IDEA for software development. Firefox for web programming and surf’n the net. FTP, SSH, WinZip, etc. Lots of little productivity tools that can be replace in any OS. So for the most part being internet connected a bulk of the time let’s me do most things on the web.
The second reason is a common one echoed by geeks around the blog-sphere and the net. OSX is more secure, it’s Unix, it s *real OS*, it’s got nice UI candy, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing new there but for the most part I agree. The third and key factor is that Mac laptops have finally caught up speed wise with Apple’s switch to the Intel chips. For years the even the highest end Apple laptops suffered severe lags in performance compared to their IBM counterparts. For a developer or someone who uses a laptop for more than just a word processor and internet kiosk this is a huge deal. Before the MacBook Pro it just wasn’t feasible to use a Mac laptop as your primary machine if you wanted to get the most performance. The forth and final reason I’ve identified is that in my space and geek space in general an Apple is just cooler than a Windows machine. Ok so this is hard to prove and it’s a bit of a religious topic but I had to add it. So with that my delima begins. To Mac or not to Mac? Stick with Thinkpad and the new Core Duo T60′s or leave IBM (ahem.. Levono) behind and take the plunge with MacBook Pro?

I’m obviously not the only person looking at this issue.

What do you think?