Macbook heating problem! Yes, another big deal among mac user. This problem was solved after the late coming MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo, which is just about 3 weeks after I bought my Macbook, and mine was Core Duo! Argh… Why don’t just wait another month before purchase it!!!

Anyway, this problem was coming big time, even Youtube are having some home-made awareness video. But no worry, here I have a problem solver, there was this little software named SM Fan Control, where you can control how fast your Macbook fan spinning.

This is a very nice software with only 700KB size. I tried it and it really work well for me so far. I set 3500rpm as it will not be so noisy. Now don’t set it higher than 4000rpm, it will produce a very annoying fan noise, which scare me a lot. With this control, now I can used both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, with Mail, Safari, MSN, TextEdit without any worry about the heat of my Macbook.

In the same time, I set it as my login item so I don’t need to open it every time I login. Sweet huh?

Alright, maybe I’m too late to know this, since Mac OS X 10.4.8 update was months ago, I just found out this cool little feature recently. Look at the picture I took below:

This is actually Apple official site‘s ads. With some zoom in I can actually (Almost) watch it with the whole 13.3 inch screen! How cool is that, I got no problem on this little screen now, even if I watch YouTube, I could use the same zoom in feature as well. Look at picture below:

This zooming feature just came right on time. Once before, I told me friend that 13.3 inch is just way too small for me to even read the word or watch YouTube on it, my friend suggest me to use the browser zoom in key by pressing Command+(+) button, but it doesn’t help on watching YouTube on the browser. Until now, this update helps

All I have to do is press down ALT (Option) key and scroll up using my mouse, I can actually set how near I want it to be… The nearest I can get is this:

A little part of OS Ground web page. Don’t you think it just so cool. Nonetheless, I tried this zooming feature on Adobe Illustrator, well, came out result not so good. As most graphic designer know, Adobe Illustrator has no pixel at all, doesn’t matter how big or small you resize a the vector file (It will come pixelated on picture file though), but this zooming feature will cause pixelated on Adobe Illustrator file, so for graphic designer, get a 24 inch iMac instead.

Ok, booted into WinXP another time to test the Boot Camp fixed update on EFI firmware update previously.

No, I don’t see changes on the timing on both Mac OS and WinXP after boot. Timing lost at least 4 hours each other still. Or maybe I did not use the latest Boot Camp version? As I know I’m downloading version 1.1.2 beta, or there is actually a better version? Well, everything still works well though, especially when I use my Adobe softwares on WinXP in Macbook. It was amazingly well and speed was so far the fastest I seen, even faster than Mac OS to be honest. Although Mac OS X was built with killer graphic especially this Macbook which claimed to have ATI Graphic, but still, opening applications can’t compare with Windows. In terms of speed, I will still rate Windows as number one so far. Probably because these applications was built on Windows and then re-code to Mac OS, some mistake/bug/or whatever you called it might appear though, who knows?

Dual boot WinXP is actually very easy. All you have to remember is to select C:/ drive when you’re prompt to the blue-screen (Not the death one). It just like what I did with Wine on Ubuntu, for my point of view, Boot Camp works somewhat like Wine, which they will create a fake C drive and let Windows to install on it, of course in Boot Camp case, they use BIOS to boot up so Windows knows it, Macintosh boot with EFI.

Funny thing is Microsoft is going to remove the EFI support on the final release of Windows Vista, what the heck are they thinking? Windows Vista Beta and RC1 were both support EFI boot up! I mean, if Vista final release support EFI, I’m sure they will be a lot of Macintosh users will switch back to Windows? Especially those who are still new to Macintosh (Maybe me?)

While I was smoking outside the window, all of sudden my mind came out some questions. It’s quite interesting to know the answer though, but I can’t give a real answers so I just concluded myself here.

Bill Gates retired on 2008 how about Windows development?
My very first questions goes to Bill Gates. Who created the giant cooperate Microsoft. The latest Windows will be Windows Vista and how about the next version after the retirement of Bill Gates I asked myself. This is interesting for me though, as from my knowledge, Bill Gates are passionate about his development of Windows and who else actually developing with him? But I bet his partners will be retire sooner or later following him as well. So who is going to continue the development of Windows? Of course, I heard that there is some sort of Microsoft Certificate, where you can learn more about Microsoft development, but who?

Steve Jobs isn’t young anymore.
Yes, I think Steve Jobs is somewhat on the age with Bill Gates, so retirement is near for him as well. Let’s make it 30 years more, but after that? Who else going to continue the Mac OS X development? But since Mac OS X is Darwin base where developers around the world can develop it together, but what if Mac OS X fixed forever there? All the developers keep developing Mac OS X without any direction? What I mean here is, will those developers keep on develop Mac OS X only, or will there still be Mac OS 11?

Open Source Linux continue the rest?
So it came to my attention of Linux Open Source, where all developers still on the way developing newer version of each Linux platform. Ubuntu, SuSe, ReactOS and more to go. They never stop and we never know who are the developers. Every developers doing this for free, unlike Microsoft and Apple which require some paycheck to continue a newer version. I mean, once Microsoft stop develop, then it will be a war between Linux and Apple, and after Apple halt, Linux will bring to the future without questions.

Hence, learn all the operating system available now, so I’ll never got missed out any so called favorite OS. Don’t you think it’s a good thing to learn all kind of OS now?

Every platform use memory from the random access memory (RAM). These days, most people used more than 1GB RAM just to top up their computer to all the latest applications. RAM is another important aspect of a computer. Previously, I had a computer with Pentium 3 1GHz proccessor and 128MB RAM which cause me a lot of slow down in most of the applications I used, until some of my friends recommended me to upgrade to at least 1GB, so I go and upgraded to 512MB RAM (Money talks so can’t really upgraded to 1GB ), and hey, all applications works well and speed was normal.

In Windows XP, it’s easy to look for your memory, Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager. You’ll see something like this:

In here you can moderate your memory and applications, the more memory used, the slower your computer will be. So be really careful on how to use your memory and applications. Oh yeah, side news, Mozilla FireFox 2 will take a lot of memory. Anyway, in Macintosh, they do have the same problem. But a different way to look for it. You’ll need to go to Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor. Below is the interface:

I tested to open all the heavy applications (iTunes, QuickTime, Adobes etc) my Macbook slowed down. So… Lesson here, don’t open those application you don’t need.