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Walgreen’s is running a $10 off $40 for today and tomorrow (Direct link to coupon). Good, but essentially becomes 25% off IF you buy as close to $40 as possible. The more you go over, the less you save.

However, combine the deal with the September Free After Rebate deals (pick the items you want or pick them all), which you can submit online, and the deal becomes a little better.

The list from slickdeals for this month is posted after the jump:
Read the rest of this entry »

I originally posted this on my other blog in February, 2008, but figured it was interesting enough to repost here. The original entry follows:

After some careful consideration (and the fact that I’m getting very tired of my desktop), I have decided to enter morally ambiguous territory and build a Hackintosh. What’s a Hackintosh?

Running a patched version of OS X on a generic off-the-shelf PC.

I started out reading Adam Pash’s Lifehacker guide on how to build a Hackintosh for around $800 (referenced below). It seemed easy enough. When his second guide appeared which relies on Kalyway’s 10.5.1 installation, I was convinced that this was the way to go for me.

I can hear you now: “But if you love Apple so much, you should just buy a Mac desktop!”

True, but I don’t want or need the small form factor that a Mac Mini provides, given what it sacrifices (processor, hard drive, video card, basically everything). And I can definitely do without the octo-core Mac Pros that start at $2799. Even if you knock out one of those quad-core processors, it only drops $500. So the middle option is the iMac, which is a great computer (I bought one for my sister), but I don’t need the all-in-one approach.

I’m basically filling in a missing product line: the headless intermediate Mac desktop. Not overkill like the Mac Pro, but not the underpowered (for my purposes) Mac Mini, either. i want a Mac Pro, Jr.

I recently sold one of my MacBooks and picked up a MacBook Air, which is a great secondary computer. But I’m missing the extra power that a more full-fledged Mac would provide.

OK, here is where it gets a little dicey. Given the current state of OSx86, your Hackintosh experience relies mostly on two things: motherboard and video card. Based on the research, it seems you’re in the clear with most nVidia cards 7300GT and higher. For motherboards, a lot of people use the Intel BadAxe 2 or the Asus P5W. Given the advice that I read on the Anandtech forums from Kaido, I settled on a DFI motherboard.

Here are the parts that I purchased:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz (Q6600, G0 SLACR)
Memory: 4GB (2 x 2GB) Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 SDRAM
Hard Drive: 150GB Western Digital Raptor X 10,000rpm
Video Card: nVidia 8800GT 512MB
DVD: 20x DVD Burner
(Motherboard: DFI LanParty DK T2RS, Case: Antec Sonata III)

Price: < $1,100.00

Add-in Mac OS X 10.5 for ~$35 (I already paid $171.99 for a family pack with five users to use with my other Macs) and iLife '08 $16 ($79.99 for a family pack). If you add those costs to the Mac Pro Jr. (which you should!), you're still talking about <$1150.00 for a powerful Mac with the great software that is normally included with a Macintosh.

Hopefully, in the near future, I want to overclock the quad to 3 GHz+. But I'll be happy if everything just works tomorrow.

As of right now, all of my parts have arrived except for the motherboard, which should be arriving tomorrow. I'll try to document the installation process step-by-step for anyone interested.

Resources:
InsanelyMac Forums
Build a Hackintosh Mac for under $800 (Lifehacker)
How To: Install OS X on your Hackintosh PC, no hacking required (Lifehacker)
My experience with Hackintosh (Anandtech Forums)

Personal note:
No one was in line today at the security checkpoint at LAX Terminal 2. It was blissful. I’m sitting at the NWA WorldClub in LAX, which is probably one of the worst WorldClubs in, uh, the world. Fallout shelter comes to mind when thinking of words to describe the lounge.

MacBook Air Update Update:
Still haven’t gathered enough courage to run the update since I love CoolBook too much. Seems like Apple has limited the proc speeds to 800MHz during heavy load to prevent overheating and eventual core shutdown. Can’t say that solution sounds too appealing to me.

Olevia Woot
The Olevia 65″ LCD HDTV for $2300 from Woot looks like such a sweet deal. Do want. Badly. Just not sure about the support… The whole bankruptcy thing kind of scares me. Still, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Olevia and was seriously considering picking up an Olevia back in the day. Not enough time for me to do adequate research. I’ll have to pass and wait for maybe a woot-off or a super deal at Sam’s Club.

iPhone 3G battery life…
…sucks. Yes, I do have bluetooth/wifi/3G turned on which does drain the battery, but isn’t that the point? “Hey, my iPhone 3G with 3G/wifi disabled gets 1,000,000 hours of battery life.” After about 9 hours, I drop down to 20% battery life. The dreaded red. From there, it just gets worse. And that’s with pretty normal usage. No videos, no music. Just occasional web surfing. The bluetooth connection must be staying active and just killing the battery…
UPDATE 11:09PM: I must say, the iPhone 3G has charged pretty quickly. I went from the dreaded red (10%) to fully charged in around 2 hours. I was using it during that time, too (voice calls). I’m GTG for my flight which is taking off in one hour. Maybe it’s time to look at a battery pack.

Dial-a-human
Saw this on Lifehacker today. It’s just a list of phone numbers and the key prompts to press to connect to a real-life operator. I’m just throwing this link on here to bookmark for myself. Hopefully you’ll find it useful, too.

Dial A Human via [Lifehacker]

That’s all for today.

Hopefully YES, as Apple has released MacBook Air Software Update 1.0 which “addresses issues with video playback and processor core idling.”

I discovered the problem after playing YouTube videos (or any videos, really) or just using my computer on my bed, thus blocking the air vent on the bottom of the computer. Basically, one core out of the two would shut down to prevent overheating and as a result, my MBA would become super slow, as in unusable. To remedy this problem, I picked up CoolBook which undervolts the processor. I used Rob Randtoul’s (via Paul Stamatiou) settings to undervolt the MBA. Since that time, I’ve experienced no core shutdowns. Seems like Apple has fixed the problem, while also recommending the uninstallation of CoolBook. While not mentioning it by name, Apple does include this tasty morsel:

Third-party software that modifies processor operating characteristics such as frequency and voltage is not supported and should be removed before installing this update.

Normally, I love playing guinea pig and trying out these new updates, but since CoolBook has been so effective, I think I’m going to wait this one out and see what the other MBA owners have to say.

I’ve been iPhone-less for the past month or so. In the meantime, I’ve been using the Nokia N95 and having a great time. I love using Skyfire and the Sling app. But I have missed the iPhone so dearly. Since I have a FAN account on AT&T, I haven’t been able to go to the Apple Store to wait in line and pick one up. My only option has been the AT&T store which has been sending its allocation of iPhones to direct fulfillment customers (people that come into the store and order the phone and wait for it). I’ve read on various forums that the wait time for direct fulfillment dropped down to a few days. Plus, the Boy Genius report stated that AT&T stores were to begin receiving shipments to sell in-store which means that supply is finally meeting demand.

I walked in to the AT&T store on Monday and ordered an iPhone for my sister and an iPhone for me (one white 16GB and one black 16GB). My sister’s white iPhone arrived the next day (yesterday) and my black iPhone arrived today.

Both came loaded with the 2.0.1 firmware. Now I have to get rid of the N95… Sling, please release an iPhone client ASAP!