I am a very big fan of Androids. I have used at least 6 different android phones within the last 2 years.
Currently using the EVO 4G and the Google nexus one classic. Androids are great on phones and not so great on tablets that's why I choose to go with Apple's iPad when I was shopping for a tablet to fill that void that didn't really exist in the first place.

Apple's tablet is a great piece of hardware and I have to admit I love it, but just like every Apple device I know of, you tend to be fully boxed into the platform.

• need itunes to copy files
• no usb port
• no memory card reader
• no 1080p video
• no camera
• the list goes on and on.

Being a Google fan, the options were very limited with the Samsung galaxy tab not really offering me the experience I craved on a tablet medium.
Enter Google's Honeycomb and the new Motorola Xoom and I think the tides may have changed.
While I don't own one just yet, the reviews I have seen online say this is a pretty amazing alternative to the iPad and because I love the whole "free" concept of android this will probably be the gadget for me.

Below are a few videos I found via Youtube showing the Motorola Xoom

Just what is Apple up to again ?

Ok so here I am surfing the web like i do, checking a couple of websites just to keep updated and guess what I stumled upon ( all pun intended).

I came across the image above, apparently when you visist www.apple.com right now this is what you get.
It appears Steve and his boys at Apple still have something awesome planned for us this year. This year has been such a success for Apple as they have enjoyed amazing success in all their new releases this year.
What's surprising about this teaser though is that absolutely no one saw it coming, Apple remains the king at keeping it's releases top secret.

What do you thing Apple will be announcing this time around ?
A new Macbook lineup ?
A new Imac range?
 A new server range considering they just scrapped their Xserves?
Some sort of cloud service?
iPads with usb drives, full flash support, 1TB storage, native support for divx and mkv file formats, HD camera with dslr capabilities ?
We can't be seeing 10.7 so soon can we ?

Only time will tell, let's just wait and see

11.6-inch MacBook Air detailed

So, we've just been discussing the rumored, and long overdue, MacBook Air refresh with a trusted source. This person recently had a working model in their possession for a few minutes and managed to glean quite a bit of detail that would seemingly confirm Apple's plan to announce an 11-inch MacBook Air at the "Back to the Mac" event later today. Here's what we've been told to expect:

• Smaller 11.6-inch display.
• 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (with a 2.33GHz option possible).
• 2GB of memory in the base configuration.
• No optical drive, naturally.
• Mini DisplayPort, USB, and SD card reader along the left-hand side and USB and power on the right (that's 2x USB).
• The trackpad has been updated to match that of the new MacBook Pros.
• Although smaller due to the 11.6-inch display, it's still about the same thickness as the current MacBook Air.
• A black power key now sits immediately to the right of a smaller eject key on the MBA's keyboard -- the round aluminum power button is gone. A design decision that might support the MBA's rumored instant-on capabilities though our source didn't see this functionality exhibited (possibly because it was running OS X 10.6.4).

Unfortunately, our source couldn't identify the graphics or the storage related to the rumored "SSD Card." So where does that leave us? Well, it looks like a smaller (and presumably, cheaper) MacBook Airoriginally rumored by AppleInsider is in the bag for a Steve Jobs announcement later today as is arefresh to the 13.3-inch model we broke last week (pictured nekkid above). So check back in a few hours and watch the reveal live, won't you?

Its not news that i am a big fan of virtualization technologies with special emphasis on server solutions.
I have run Vmware ESX and Citrix virtualization solutions in the past in my test lab on relatively cheap old hardware and everything ran without any hassles. You can read on of my last post on how i got ESX to run off an old used and very cheap d530 desktop.
With the release of Windows Server 2008 which comes bundled with Hyper-V, Microsoft's enterprise ready virtualization solution a new challenge faced me, how to get Hyper-V running in my test lab.
For this machine i needed a relatively powerful server grade machine and didn't want to shell out money for any HP or Dell servers, i had to make do with what i had.
The most powerful computer i currently own ironically isn't a Windows based machine but an Apple, an 8-Core 2.8GHZ, MacPro desktop with 22GB ram, and 4TB SATA HDD.
The installation ran smoothly via bootcamp and performance was simple awesome.
I initially had some issues with booting up the Hyper-V but soon figured it had to do with Apple computers not have roms but EFI instead, very easy work around for that, boot into the mac first , then from within the mac set the startup drive to the Hyper-V drive and everything works perfectly.
So for those of you out there, looking at virtualization Hyper-V and looking for decent performance, you can't go wrong. The answer is that Hyper-V will run on the MacPro, no issues.

PS: I also heard a friend was able to do same off his 15" macbook pro laptop. If this 2 machines work, i really don't see why you can't get an imac to run as well

Hope this helps someone out there.