What iPhone?

What? iPhone day? Really? Should I go get it?

There's a great story to it, but I'm a little busy and will have to tell you all later. In the meantime, I will enjoy holding this for a while! Woohoo!!!

I will say I got it in Phoenix!

HDTV Update

OK, I got my new Samsung all setup. The hard part was finding some new furniture to accommodate the display as well as the rest of my gear. I also finally setup my surround sound speakers, which I've haven't done since I lived at Licho.

So how is it you ask? Well the HD content is simply spectacular. Viewing high quality channels like Discovery HD is stunning (like looking out a window). I decided to keep HBO for now since it offers some great movies in HD (like Star Wars shown here). HD Net and Universal offers HD channels with a good selection of movies as well.

Watching commercial HD channels like Fox, NBC, CBS and ABC is also a treat. It's only too bad that I bought my set during the summer rerun season, but it's still nice to watch The Office in high def with crystal clear Dolby Digital surround sound. My set upscales 720p content beautifully, I honestly can't tell the difference between that and 1080i content.

What's not so great is standard definition programming. Compared to HD it looks pretty bad, although some SD channels look better than others. If all you watch is SD content, your eyes get used to it, but switch to a HD channel and its painfully obvious SD just doesn't cut it with these new sets. My advice is to wait a bit if all you watch is standard def and stick with your current set. Once the federally mandated NTSC cut over occurs this problem should go away.

Unfortunately the Wii is not really optimized for HD but some games do offer progressive scan and wide screen content, but Nintendo made games like Wii Sports and Wii Play don't offer either. This is when I wish I had a Xbox 360. I plugged in my original Xbox and played a bit of Halo 2. Although it supports true wide screen it's essentially a 480p game so the graphics look really dated. There also seems to be a graphical glitch where the textures are slow to render. I'll have to look at why later.

My older second generation DVD player couldn't display movies across the entire screen (plus the quality looked real bad) so I upgraded to a $80 Samsung 1080p upconverting DVD. What a difference it made! It's not quite HD but it's good enough to tide me over until the Blu-Ray/HD DVD format war is over.

All in all, its a great set and movie watching is so much more enjoyable now. What's really nice (besides the increased resolution) is the wide screen mode. On 16x9 movies, the black bars are completely gone. With the wider aspect 2.35:1 ratio, the bars are there but are smaller then on a traditional 4:3 set. There are ways to eliminate them but it compromises the quality of the picture or cuts off sections outright, so I just leave it in 16x9 mode.

I just ordered a calibration DVD which will help me optimize the contrast, brightness and colors for my living room conditions, so by next week I should be ready for a Kruddler Gears of Warfest. I'm dying to see what that game looks like on this display! Perhaps he can bring his new iPhone so we can drool over it (I heard the drool easily wipes off).

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Update - I adjusted my display using some suggested settings from the net and got SD to look much better, so now it's more than acceptable. Still not as good as a standard 4:3 set but SD looks good enough for me not to regret my purchase. Also I figured out how to configure the Wii to use true wide screen mode, I can also go 480p (progressive) but it requires component cables.
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Pulled the Trigger!!!

I did it! I finally released the trigger and purchased a 17" MacBook Pro! Estimated shipping date is next week! Now watch...Apple will release an update next week!

What a labor intensive decision. It wasn't the hardware but the cost! I managed to get everything out the door for a shade under my budget, but still pricey for a laptop.

I justified my decision in that I basically bought TWO computers. A Mac OS X and Windows Vista/XP machine. Now the next decision...do I install Vista or XP? Hmmmm.

Memory Prices

Last weekend Mark mentioned that he upgraded his PowerMac (or was it his Dell?) to 3GBs of RAM because the prices had become so cheap. I looked it up today and sure enough, RAM prices have dropped dramatically since the last time I upgraded. Here's my purchase history from ZipZoomFly and what the price is today:


10/11/2004
1GB PC2-4200 Kingston RAM: $262.00

08/10/2005
1GB PC2-4200 Kingston RAM: $107.14

06/06/2007
1GB PC2-4200 Kingston RAM: $41.00

I hadn't planned on investing any more money into my HP because it still performs great and my next machine will be Mac based, but the prices seem too good to pass up. Might as well max out my workstation to 4GBs.

Oh the Insanity!!

Oh the turmoil! Apple recently released the Santa Rosa MacBook Pro with some pretty convincing specs. I got the green light from the boss to make my purchase! I'm going for the 17" MBP with the 7200 RPM HD and the high-res glossy display. I updated my cart, signed into my account then saw the amount....$3,049! Dang! I backed out...thought to myself...for that amount what will a Mac Pro get me? Now I'm at a quandry. I have buyers remorse and haven't even purchased anything!! HELP!!!!!!

When I was in San Fran during this trip...

So, I waited till now to say anything because I wasn't ready to shell out that much money on buying internet services while on the road in the hotels I've been staying in, but this hotel has free service, so there ya go...!

When I was on the leg in San Fran, I felt the power of Jobs deep within that city, and so off I went to the Apple store near Moscone. It was a most rewarding trek as I walked out with this nifty little toy to hold me over till I got my iPhone! I'm still trying to decide whether or not to give it away to Ashley, as I originally planned it that way, but the more I carry it around, the more I wanna hold onto it 'cause it's just too cool! It also happens to be the exclusive Red Nano! Oh yeah, I'm hardcore. Maybe I'll just buy her her own and keep this one...!

Speaking of toys, I still can't find a Wii even on the road all over the place where I've traveresed. Bummer.

Well, I'd say more, but I must go, duty calls!

It's coming!

So the official date as of now is June 29th! I'm hoping that I will get an email or call from AT&T about when I am able to purchase/pick up my new iPhone! However, if I don't get any info on it by the end of this week, I'm calling them!

On another note, I will be back in town Thur/Fri, but back on the road Mon or Tues, so not home for very long. I do have to work for our event still while here, as the official opening is June 11th, but I should have one or two days off before the 11th.

I'm pretty sure I'll be doing family dinner on one of those days, but I'm hoping Marcos get's his new HDTV so I can invite myself over and bring my 360! :) Congrats on the purchase, cuz!

HDTV Coming Soon

I finally pulled the trigger and purchased my very first HDTV, the Samsung 52" 1080P LCD. Like I posted on my last blog I really wasn't looking to buy just yet because of the high cost of the model but Annel told me about a special no interest for 18 months deal Sears was having on any electronic purchase over $399. The only caveats were that the special financing ended today and that Sears was only offering $200 off the retail price of $3,999 so I figured I would try to price match another local store.

I ended up finding the best sale at Fry's for $3399 but it was still $400 more than what I could have bought it for on the internet. I wondered if Sears price matched internet prices so I checked their Price Matching Plus Policy online, and sure enough they will as long as it's from a local retail store (including shipping costs) plus they give you 10% of the difference. I checked Frys.com and lo and behold they had it on sale for $2,899 (plus $136 for shipping)! I immediately printed out the info and took it to my local Sears store.

You should have seen the salesman face when he looked at my printout and compared the price to the Sears price. After about a minute he said, "let me speak with my manager about this, I need his approval first" then walked away. I was gearing up for a fight but felt confident this would hold up (I read their price matching policy several times and had a copy in hand). The salesman came back five minutes later and said it was fine and the manager came by as well to approve the purchase. That extra 10% of the difference took an additional $90 off so I only had to pay about $2900 for a display that normally costs $4000 plus I have 18 months to pay it off. Unfortunately they didn't have it in stock so I have to pick it up next week which is OK since that gives me time to sell my old TV and buy a new stand.

Just for kicks I checked the Fry's online price when I came back home (that same night) and noticed the TV was out of stock and the price shot up to $3999!!! Perhaps it was a mistake on their end and people snatched up all the sets or it was just a good deal that only lasted for a few hours, either way I'm glad I printed it out when I did.