It’s MacHeist time again.  Big bundle of Mac apps, low price, lots of charitable contributions from the guys running the thing.

Go have a peek.  It’s definitely worth a look.  If you use 2 of the apps, it’s a worthwhile deal.

I’ve lost count of how many trips I’ve taken on the Acela Express.  99% of the time, it’s been heading south to DC.  But on those rare occasions that I take it to head north, it’s always incredibly frustrating.

The state of Connecticut seems to be the land of a thousand dead spots.  I’m forever dropping calls, my laptop’s 3G connection doesn’t stay up for the whole trip either.  Going south, the only spot I lose signal totally is the tunnel you pass through at Baltimore.  Being underground, this is not unexpected.

But on a clear, sunny day, riding the rails through Connecticut, it is a big ball of suck.

First, to the eeePC fans, it was fun while it lasted.  My eeePC 1000 has moved on.  Joining it in the “no longer mine” column is my old friend the MacBook Pro.  Having purged both systems, I’ve replaced them with a single one, the latest & greatest MacBook.

Apple made a point of being tree-hugger friendly this time out, calling to attention the fact that these new units use 35% less packaging, and are all around more eco-friendly.  No joke there.  If they keep this up, we’ll wind up with a generation of computers that come with no packaging.  Bring your carrying case of choice to the store with your wallet…

I opted for the 2.4 Ghz model, which retails for $1599.  Working for a company that has an Apple Employee Purchase Program, I wound up out the door for about $1500, plus tax, less than the total I got back on the eee and nearly 2 year old MBP. First impression?  It’s fast.  Really fast.  Due in no small part to the CPU clock speed upgrade (marginal upgrade – 10% for me), but also to the swap out of DDR2-667 for DDR3-1066 RAM.  This thing really flies.  256MB of the stock 2GB is consumed by the onboard graphics chip, the new Nvidia 9400M chipset.  The 9400M chipset does much more than just video in this system, it handles all of the other stuff the former Intel chipsets were doing.  I may spring for the 4GB memory upgrade at some point, but thus far haven’t felt the need to do so, though in truth, I’m only on my 3rd day of having this thing.

The neato things here are the LED backlit screen, and the new “all button” glass trackpad.  It’s got multitouch, with lots of neato gestures that can even be used to activate Exposé or switch applications.  It’s also easy on the battery.  Stated time is about 5 hours, though I only saw 4:35 before I was on reserve power – pretty great by all accounts.

My knocks?  Not thrilled with the lack of Firewire onboard.  I can always pick up a USB to FW converter, but it’s yet another cable.  Only other knock was not including Xcode in the box, though again, I can understand why they’d leave that out — not exactly what you’d expect Joe MacBook to be downloading.

I’ve got my Pantech UM175 working as well, though it’s using Mac OS X’s dialup networking, rather than the WWAN extension.  I’m still a bit tweaked over that, but I’m sure Apple will catch up in an update sometime before too long..