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I guess I never blogged about it. Did I? Well I bought a new MacBook this Feb. The new one. The specs are 2 GHZ Core 2 duo, 2 GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 9400M and DVD RW. Indian price was a bit on the higher side compared to other notebooks of similar configuration. However lets not forget its a Mac. The a$$hole at the local Imagine shop suggested installing Windows Vista and MS office. I dont understand why would anyone want to use Microsoft on a Mac. Microsoft is the only reason people switch form all other hardware vendors to Apple. The guy, without my permission was trying to install Microsoft office (Mac version). I had to explain him that Microsoft was the very reason I was buying this expensive beauty instead of a Dell or HP. Well you might suggest using OpenSource or in other words Linux as an alternative. But lets be honest how many people find proper drivers to use all the hardware properly on Linux. I wasa big fan of Lnux. I’m still a fan of the Tux. However for someone who is looking for a little Moive, browsing and occaisional Blogging its not worth the trouble. So here I’m writting this post on my MacBook, with a smile. 
I’m floored!! Its amazing.. Had never browsed the Net before using a hand held device over Wi-Fi. Came back form office few hours ago and thought of browsing the Net using our recently configured Wi-Fi access point. My shitty Compaq laptop gave up. It wouldn’t detect the network itself my roomie’s was browsing quite happily using his HP. Thats when I found the his iPod Touch lying on the bed. It instantly caught my eye. Wi-Fi on an iPod. Yippie.. There were no hiccups at all. It detected all the available Wi-Fi networks around and quite comfortably connected me to the Internet. Browsing is a piece of cake with this device. Although writing emails or posts could be a difficult task due to the touch interface. However I could browse almost any site using it. Including WordPress. I could read and write posts too. In fact I wrote one post, but something got screwed up while posting it. Anyway the Compaq is working fine after a few configuration change so writing the post using it. I wish I had posted this using the Touch. The screen has a brilliant display. Watching Youtube and following the Maps were a real pleasure to the eye. I can’t help it anymore. I’m ordering one for myself before I get a Macbook.
We have a varying number of laptops in our room at a given point of time.. Number of friends come in, go out.. We have a DSL connection from Indicom, pretty bad service but quite habituated with it now.. Anyway I’ve been thinkin about sharing the connection over Wi-Fi for quite long time. My tryst with Wi-Fi started 8 months back when two IITian dudes came to live with us. They had 2 laptops with Wi-Fi. I was able to set up a network and they could connect to it. I could even share and transfer files over wireless with one of them. However I never was able to share the internet connection using XP(I wish I had a mac). Today my rommie’s girl friend came in with her Vista based HP notebook and connected it to the Indicom cable. Thats when I thought of giving it a final try. I took her laptop and set up a network connection and shared the Internet connection over wireless. Of course I did use an authentication method (WEP), cuz today in the morning itself I was browsing the net over a wireless connection that was unprotected. Probably one those bunch guys living in the ground floor had kept his Wi-Fi on and was using an Internet connection. Poor guy probably has no idea what it is and how vulnerable his laptop is!! Anyway the Vista based set up worked like breeze and I’m actually writing this post using the Internet connection that’s been shared by another laptop somewhere around 6 meters from my laptop and is in another room!!! That gives me a lot of satisfaction.. Finally I went wireless on my laptop(legally) cuz anyway I’ve browsing the net on my E62 phone..
The free email service will always be a fight between the three biggies. Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. All big brands with loads of features. But off late I’m starting to hate Yahoo mail. I’m not able to read many mails because Yahoo’s ads cover one fourth of them. And no doubt its slow like Hotmail. But Yahoo has one thing that Gmail doesn’t have. The neat folder view. I’d been wondering why Gmail doesn’t have a handy way of organising emails into folders like Yahoo or Hotmail. But as always this time also Gmail has not just something but something better than the others. Yes after couple of minutes RnD on the Net I found out how to organize your mails without using folders. And the answers is “Labels”. What we normally do is create folders with names according to the content that’d be stored in it, following our Windows mindset or any other OS mindset. So if you have a folder titled “Honey” or “Darling”, you store all mails from your girlfriend there or use a filter to do so automatically for you. If there is folder “XXX” or “Bad” or “Censured”, you probably store all your dirty mails there. But what if there is a mail from your girfriend which is really dirty!!! You’re in fix now. Where to store it?? But Gmail has the answer. Create your own labels as you want as many you want. Your labels will show up just below the quick contacts on the left pane. When you apply a label to your mail the mail is shown in that label view. So you just use the label as a folder. Just apply both the “XXX” and “Honey” labels to your girlfriend’s dirty mails and you can now access the mail from both your “XXX” and “Honey” label ooppss Folder, if still have the old Windows mindset. Cool.
