I had been reading some of my favorite blogs and saw that the second generation Jawbone Bluetooth headset had been released.  I haven’t really been a fan of handsfree headsets.  Using Skype more and more on my computers, it has quickly become only second to my iPhone.  I’ve just been using the built-in mic and speaker on my computer, but I figured I should get a headset for better call quality.  I had read a lot of good reviews of the original Jawbone and since they claimed the new one is better than the original, I figure I’d give it a shot.

I decided it was time to upgrade my Sony home theater in a box.  They were a decent set for the price, but I was looking for something better so I picked up a Harman Kardon AVR-247 and a set of Aperion Audio 7.1 4 Series speakers.  I had read some really good reviews from CNET about Aperion Audio, even though I had previously never heard of the company.  They are a small company based in Portland, OR.  I gave them a call about what I should select and I was able to talk to a real person, not some computerized recording.  I don’t mind automated systems, but a lot of the time the computer tries to figure out what you want and fails.  In some systems it doesn’t let you call the operator and you are just stuck.  With Aperion Audio being a small company,  I was able to get to a representative right away and they were very kind and helpful.

When I’m out traveling for an extended period of time, I need a bag that will hold all the gear I use to create my office away from the office.  I’ve used Booq’s products for a number of my machines now and I’ve been really happy with every purchase I’ve made with them.  They’re always made very well in my opinion and each bag seemed to be well thought out.  Booq bags are slightly pricer than some of the competitors, but I think the quality justifies this difference.

When Leopard was released, I wanted to transition from my current backup solution which was SuperDuper to a network based external hard drive to Apple’s Time Machine.  Before switching completely to Macs I had always put together my own hardware from buying parts and putting a PC together to buying external hard drive enclosures and sticking my own hard drives in them.  This isn’t a bad way to do things.  You definitely get more for you money.  The main reason for my transition is I wanted support.  If something failed I wanted to just send the entire thing in and not have to worry about it.  So this is one example of that.  I went with Western Digital drives because they were relatively inexpensive and they look nice next to my Macs.

I’ve been using the Macbook Air for a couple of months now.  I decided to convert my Macbook Pro into a Windows Vista machine.  I’ve been having wireless problems in Mac OS X, but for some reason I don’t have the same problems when running Vista on that machine.  I use that machine for testing websites and running Windows only applications.  For the most part the Macbook Air is plenty of machine for what I need to do and I figure in times where it can’t I can pack the Macbook Pro and the Macbook Air into my bag when I travel and still keep my bag under 10 pounds.