The MacBook Pro is a neat little piece-of-kit. I guess that was true of this product line even before the unibody manufacturing process became the standard. My own unit is an early 2008 model. All silver, pure aluminum; backlit keys. When you are working on a MBP, you feel like it is something that must have been designed by Porsche or Ducati. If only you knew, at that point in time, how much of a pain in the arse it was going to be if you ever decided to do any type of internal upgrade. Well, I found out. And it may be the one feature that causes me to abandon the Mac line of products for computing platforms.

The upgrade of my MacBook (my originally owned MacBook, not my current MacBook Pro) to 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive was seamless, on both the hardware and the software side. I made the error of believing that the MacBook Pro would have been the same. Boy, was I wrong.

I frequently commend Apple for an incredibly forward thinking design approach when it comes to a new design. It is even more amazing that this is true across every one of their product lines. But that slickness comes at a cost.

Way, way back in the day, I was a complete Apple naysayer. I commented on the increased cost over similarly spec'd WinTel PCs and declared Apple's prices and expectations of its customers way out of bounds. The key difference was that they were simply not as fast. I don't care what any Apple fanboy out there says, the old G-series based Macs were not as fast as their WinTel counterparts in the same price-ranges. And so Apple, back then, was asking you to pay more money for a machine that had less performance than another competitor's in the same strata.

When Apple migrated all of its hardware products to an Intel architecture, I pretty much had to drop that old argument. Apple's new hardware makes the comparison apples-to-apples (no pun intended). Granted, not perfectly so, but more so than it used to be back in the day. It was this similar-to architecture that allowed me to make a new assessment of the value of a Mac and eventually come to a conclusion that they were worth it. I then purchased my own Mac, the aforementioned MacBook, and so became an Apple aficionado.

The second most frequent criticism I used to have of Apple, was their attempt to lock you into their hardware platform. This is one that I can not dispense with like the latter. The truth is that, today, when you buy an Apple computer, you had better plan on staying in it, with the configuration you walk out of the store with, for quite a bit. Processor, video card, optical drive; for all but the most experienced gear head, you may as well consider those items (standard upgradeable items on a PC) off the table. And I am talking about the desktops; more so the iMac than the Pro, which at least allows you to add hard drives and sometimes allows video card upgrades. With a laptop, there are certain things that I expect to not be able to monkey with for the life of the laptop. But the hard drive is not one of those.

Apple is determined to make it as inconvenient as possible for you to install and operate any hardware other than their own in the appliance that you have likely just payed more than $1500 or more for. Let's even try to consider the possibility that Apple is not actually evil and this reality is not intentional. Then the fact remains, in the case of the MacBook Pro, that a design trade-off of making the MBP so slim and lightweight, is that the chassis is assembled in such a way that results in little or no unused space. It also means that it is bolted together in a way that clearly indicates the expectation that no one is going to access its internals unless it is some catastrophe.

Unfortunately, for compu-nerds like myself, we absolutely intend on accessing it.

I should also comment on Apple's misguided pricing tiers at this point. While I am now willing to champion their reasoning and defend the prices for their entry-level configurations as being fairly priced, the costs for their options (like a larger hard-drive) are completely ridiculous. Why do I mention this? Because before I let loose with my rant about the MBP case, that rant is further justified by the fact that there is no way that a consumer should pay one red cent of the prices in the AppleStore for having Apple upgrade your model above the factory baseline. So, the culminating point of ire is that: Apple does not make it easy for you to upgrade your hard drive, which I could accept if it was a reasonable cost to order a Mac direct from Apple with the upgrade already done, but Apple's price scaling is only exceeded in its lunacy by Dell.

So, why the rant? Because you essentially have to completely dismantle the case in order to access the area underneath the keyboard tray on a February 2008 model MacBook Pro where the hard drive is in order to upgrade. This is ridiculous. In most laptops, access to the hard drive bay is via four screws on the bottom of the chassis. And there is little threat of doing actual damage to a standard Windows laptop by accessing the drive bay, unlike the threat present in disassembling a MacBook Pro.

I am not sure if it is a similar algorithm for dismantling one of the new, unibody MacBook Pros. Eventually I will pull the thread on it, and here's why. If I find out that the new line of MBPs are equally difficult to perform a hard-drive upgrade on (or a RAM upgrade for that matter; my current MBP bump up of memory was also no picnic), then I will be walking away from the MacBook Pro product line, and likely for good.

When I upgraded my Gateway P-6860FX hard drives, the two bays were pop-and-stop simple to access. It took me all of 10 minutes to do the addition and then I was up and running with 640GB of storage. I invested the same amount of time in the MBP mod as I sometimes do to upgrade a desktop Motherboard and CPU, and I still had the OS re-install to do after.

The point is, after paying $2000 for a laptop, I should not then need to be a certified tech to do something as simple as upgrade the hard drive.

So how much of this is my fault, and not Apple's? The fault in the difficulty is entirely mine. I should have read up on what it takes to do this upgrade before I ordered the hard drive and sat down the one night to start it. I maybe even should have pulled this thread before I bought my MacBook Pro, since I myself had been part of the media that held the criticism of an unviable upgrade path over Apple's head for years. I should not have just assumed that things had gotten better.

So I do not blame Apple for this. If you are interested in seeing what I had to go through, you can peep a tutorial here. I am only stating the facts.

The issue is, with these facts now being known, I would not have chosen, and will likely not choose in the future, to buy another MacBook Pro. I have upgraded the hard drive in probably about 50% of the laptops I have ever owned. It is a simple truth that sometime in the two years that I hope to actively employ a laptop, the next tier up in hard drive sizes will become available at an incredibly cheap price. I do not upgrade the hard drives all of the time. I just need to know that I can. While performing the upgrade on the MBP is certainly doable, and within my technical capability, it is more than I want to invest of my leisure time. It now mirrors the effort and risk involved in going to water cooling on a standard desktop PC, which is just too little gain, for my use-scenarios, for the effort required to put in.

And before anyone criticizes me about being lazy, let's put it in these terms: for less than the cost of the MBP, I could have purchased a similarly spec'd machine, whose RAM and hard drive I could have upgraded for less time and more convenience. So less money expended for less hassle seems to be a no-brainer math problem to me.

What is on the flip-side of that argument is what the MBP provides for the money spent and the hours put into it. I will admit that I am now a proponent of the OS X Operating System, and have been for over two years. I do concur that there is an intrinsic value-added to the operating system and the apps that come embedded as part of the OS that exceeds the value in a standard Windows package. There is no question in my mind that the cost of the MacBook Pro series of product is at an acceptable price-point; again, at least where the entry level configurations are concerned. And, other than the access issues, the design of a MBP is sharp. The whole reason that I equip one in the 'WERKz is so that I can carry the lightest, thinnest platform with a 15" screen that I can play games on when I go on travel.

The question here is whether or not the product is now the right fit for me as a user. You have heard me comment many times on the the fact that pairing a user with a device is not simply a matter of cost and performance. It is also, and perhaps predominantly so, a matter of whether or not the user will employ the device in a manner designed and expected (or at least accommodated) and whether or not the device fits in the use-space the consumer needs it for.

So, given that I am a user who expects and needs my device to be able to accommodate a hard drive upgrade sometime during its service life, the MBP may not be the device for me. After the venting that has alleviated my anger and frustration, I think I am coming full-circle to just accepting this as an impending parting of the ways between a geek and a gadget that had found harmony, at least for a time.

I just downloaded the user's manual for the newer (mid-2009) unibody MacBook Pro's, and the upgrade path does seem easier. You still have to remove ten screws from the bottom of the case, which is still a tad excessive IMO. But once that is done, you have immediate access to the hard drive and memory modules. Perhaps my love affair with Macs is not over, after all. At any rate, after having completed this upgrade on my MBP, it now has a designated service life that takes it out to 2011; mid-2010 at the earliest. By then, Apple's MacBook design may be different again, and hard drive access may have gone up or down in its level of complexity. For now, the blood has already been spilt. But I will always remember the experience. Apple, I will be watching you.
- Vr/Z..>>

Movie: Year One
Video: Boston Legal, Season One (DVD)
Album: Jon Secada, Greatest Hits
Inner Rockstar: Axle Rose
Karaoke Song: Everything You Want, Vertical Horizon
OnLine Game: Call of Duty 4 (360)
OffLine Game: Field Commander (PSP)
System: Motion LE1600 TabletPC

Interesting Link 1: There is a lot of hub-bub going on about the state of hardware for the console generation. As a Cold War kid, I grew up expecting a standard 4 - 6 year timeline for console generations. I am in that camp that can not believe that not a single code-name has leaked from any of the manufacturers (I really only think of Microsoft as being within the reveal window; although Sony might want to call a do-over with the PS3). Peep Edge magazine's analysis of just what the heck is going on and why.

Interesting Link 2: Having just bought a Palm Pre to replace my iPhone this article from CNET is timely. While the Pre is the only practical consumer alternative for the iPhone on this list, the point is that there are alternatives. Peep the deets and make sure you are making a choice when you go to an iPhone; not just following the crowd.

Interesting Link 3: OK. So I never used a Palm PDA before the Smartphone era. In fact, I thought the gov was ludicrous for forcing them on government employees when WindowsCE/PocketPC OS based devices were clearly more powerful. But...I did rather enjoy my Treo, which was my third smartphone, but really the first one that I had a decent selection to choose out of. So, now I champion the little guy, and hope that the Pre is just the first in a series of resurgent device rollouts from Palm. Peep the deets here on what might be next, brought to us by PC World.

It has been a long week. If you have kept up with my Twitter feed, you've seen some of the highlights. The week started off with restoring my girlfriend's old Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop. I am not sure what the deal was with the machine, but it did not have the PC Restore application on it that the documentation claimed. With no restore CD, I was forced to use one of my own copies of Windows XP Home to install and get it back into working condition.

That restoration is complete. I still have to install some basic apps, MS Office, and security apps, but then it will be on standby for any other family members who come due for a PC. In addition to that, I also wiped and re-installed my own Acer Aspire ONE for delivery to another family member. Hopefully it will serve them in good stead. After those two tasks for other people were complete, it was time to be a bit selfish and do some things for myself.

I think I posted earlier about the fact that it was time for the mid-year GearWERKZ upgrade. First on the list was a new laptop bag. Everyone knows that I have a fetish for booq bags. Two of the ones I have, however, I am not all that happy with. I've put off doing anything about it for a couple of years.

The first one that needed to go was my booq Powersleeve L. A nice looking bag on the outside, it was too slim to hold a power supply. So anytime that I took one, the bag had an unnatural bulge to it. Its replacement is a booq Taipan Slimcase M. It is a good compact bag, and accommodates power supplies and all of my normal daily gear (Motion LE1600, Keyboard, portable hard drive, iPod, thumb drives, and wireless modem).

Next on the list was a pair of Bose In-Ear Headphones. I am glad that these headphones feel more so mine; the last pair of everyday work headphones I had were not ones that I really chose; they were an emergent Circuit City purchase made while I was on travel. The Bose are good, but I do not feel that they are so great that they live up to the Bose hype. I need to actually sit for a spell and use them interchangeably with the last set of earbuds and get an immediate assessment of whether or not they are that much better. I will say that not having done that yet, I can definitely tell that the sound is warmer and richer, and that is at least a little bit of a plus.

Upgrade number three was another headphone replacement, specifically my noise-canceling headphones. Like my previous earbuds, these were an emergent on-travel purchase; a set of Maxell's from Wal-mart. These were not so much purchased because they were the only things that I could get my hands on to fill the bill. Rather, I picked out the Maxell's because I was not yet sure that I bought into all the hype about noise-canceling. I wanted a cheap set that I could use to weigh the benefits before I plunked down coin for a more expensive set.

Over the year of use, I decided that I did believe the hype, and that it was time for something mo' better. I settled on a set of Sennheiser PXC250's. I will have to report on these later as I have yet to put them to use.

Not planned as part of the normal upgrade package, I had an emergent upgrade get tripped because I was out of room on my MacBook Pro's hard drive. Since I run Boot Camp and the MBP is my primary iTunes machine, I knew I needed the same 500GB of storage that I had in my old MacBook, which used to fulfill the role of primary iTunes manager. I went with an Hitachi TravelStar 500GB. Since I would have to open up the case to get to the hard drive, I decided to also go to the 4GB of RAM that I had been thinking about so that I would not have to ever go back into the case ever again. It turned out to be an incredibly smart move. If I had had half a clue and thought to look up the tutorial on what how to upgrade a MacBook Pro Hard drive, I would have just bought a new laptop. Something like this MSI unit from Newegg. I've got some serious issues to discuss after this particular upgrade. More on that in a later post.

The last upgrade was driven by the earlier mentioned task of prepping my old Acer Aspire ONE for my girlfriend's sister, who was in need of an up-to-date PC. In the meantime, that left the 'WERKz down one machine. Specifically, I was missing the ultra-portable device that normally occupies that space. I considered several different striations of small form-factor laptops to replace the Aspire ONE. This was a machine that I had been very happy with, primarily due to its cavernous hard drive. It was one of the first netbooks on the market to feature a full 160GB hard drive. Going into something smaller was going to almost unbearable, and even just maintaining the 160GB level was a bit unnerving.

With my iTunes archive being about 32GB of tunes, and about 69GB of video, constantly having to pick and choose the video I wanted onboard for any single trip was a bit bothersome. In the search I considered the following genres of devices:

• MacBook (since I want to keep a Mac in the lab at all times, and it was not certain when I might upgrade the MBP, a MacBook was on the list for this upgrade; it fell off due to cost. I was letting go of a netbook that cost me $350. Replacing it with a MacBook for 4 times as much became questionable. Plus, I just struggled with what I would use it for that my MBP could not do...especially in light of the upgrade mentioned above)

• Ultra-Portable Laptop (any 11 - 13" Windows laptop; in this area the Samsung Q310 was the strongest contender)

• Razer-Portable (this is a new category I have defined for myself; in this stratum are ultraportables that are less than an 1" in thickness, and typically thinner, making compromises to minimize weight and thickness; however specs remain greater than those of netbooks

• Netbook

• TabletPC (I wound up not going this way because cost was a consideration; I would have only been able to pull a used one, like a Dell latitude XT or a ThinkPad X61, vice a new machine in a different genre)

• UMPC

• MiD (with so few models actually readily available in stock with any vendor, the prospect of going this route turned out to be quite dubious)

In the final elimination rounds, it came down to a Razer-Portable, a TabletPC, or a MacBook. Tablets were ruled out first because I wanted something new, not a compromise with a used model. Dropping the MacBook was tougher. The new models announced at the recent WWDC make these quite a buy, even the low end white MacBook. Despite the notes above describing my thoughts, I felt compelled to investigate multiple avenues of procuring a new MacBook as my replacement machine of choice.

I looked at refurbished models from the Apple Store, as well as new superceded models they wanted to get rid of. Still, with the MacBook Pro occupying territory in the 'WERKz, I could not bring myself to not look at something else.

Even then, an Apple product made it into the finals. Most of the Razer-Portables on the market were too much. Lenovo's and Samsung's offerings blow through the $1500 mark, with Lenovo being as high as $3k; preposterous. Ditto for Dell's Adamo. Acer has a new product-line on the way wearing the Aspire Timeline moniker. A 13" model occupies the low end, but the final verdict on their quality was not out on the street, and I was not even sure I was seeing them as being in stock with anyone.

MSI is producing its new X-Slim series, and the unit I was ogling had to be considered in comparison to a superseded Apple MacBook Air, some of which are going now for less than a grand. Again, cost was king, and the XSlim X340 offers a massive, 320GB hard drive in a package that is only 0.75" at its thickest, and still comes in cheaper than a used MacBook Air.

I'll have more on the X340 as I put some more time into it (whenever that is). Until then, that's a wrap at the 'WERKz. I also need to tell you guys about my switch to Sprint and a new pair of cell phones, but that will have to wait for another day.

- Vr/Zeuxidamas

Movie: Resident Evil: Degeneration (Blu-Ray)
Video: Smallville (via CWTV Video)
Album: none, downloading iTunes V8.2
Inner Rockstar: n/a
Karaoke Song: n/a
OnLine Game: Ace Combat 6 (360)
OffLine Game: Half-Life, PC
System: Motion LE1600 TabletPC

Interesting Link 1: Oh...my...gosh. It has been a long time since an Apple press event was genuinely exciting. In fact the last one was the announcement of the original iPhone. But today's was pretty sweet. I could comment on a lot, but I plan on covering my feeling's on this in another post, so, for the time being, just read the Engadget synopsis and OpEd here.

Interesting Link 2: I was not part of the generation that fell in love with the original God of War from the series's start. I have since gone back and picked up the original that was developed for the PS2 to play using my PS3's backwards compatibility. And I can say that I realize what all the hub-bub was about back then, and that it was justified. I can not say that there are any PS3 titles that have ever really gotten me excited; at best they have led me to say, "Hmm...that's interesting." GoW III is the closest that has made me more interested than that, and there is some decent hands-on time reflections over at GameSpot.

Interesting Link 3: Wow. Is it already time to be taking stock of holiday releases on the horizon? I guess someone thinks so. One of the titles that is in that mix will be Tekken 6, for both the 360 and the PS3. Gamespy has some intro info on the new characters available. Get ready to get your fight on and see who's who.

It was an ok week. I have been enrolled in a Java Programming course for the last two weeks that runs until the end of July. Despite the impingement on my free playtime due to class meetings two nights a week, I actually got a little time to myself this week.

I spent the beginning of the week doing two things: gaming and keeping up with gaming. I have plugged a good chunk through the original Half-Life, which it seems like I have started about 59 times, but never finished. Now well more than halfway through the story, I am not sure why I ever stopped. It may be that the game does not have great middle-game. The beginning is all shiny and new, and the ending is picking up, but the middle I guess seems like somewhat of a trudge. Slightly ridiculous puzzles may have been what turned me off. I tend to like my shooters 99% shooter and only 1% puzzle, and Half-Life is definitely not designed in this mold.

Still, ten years after its release, the game holds up well. I have felt no zen for something more recent to more fully tax my nVidia GTS 8800 that is rockin' in the main tower. I guess that longevity is the true proof of this title's quality.

During the whole week I kept relatively apprised of the goings on at E3. The triumphant return of the hyper-blown industry show format that the series was known for seems to have been greeted with relative aplomb by most of the gaming community. Nintendo basically had nothing to say, and everyone seemed pretty pleased with what Sony has coming down the pike, despite the snobbish refusal to cut their prices...in a recession...we'll see how smart that is. Oh, and they revealed the PSP Go. I am not sure why Sony and Nintendo insist on just rehashing already deployed technology in different form factors. I have not intention on dropping coin on a new handheld system until it is actually something new.

Microsoft had a lot to say, and everyone seems happy with them, too. But I am confused and concerned. They had sequelitis, as just about every title announcement was wrapped in a franchise or a spin-off of a franchise. Very little new IP, if any. Again, I monitored E3, but did not dig into the details so there may have been title announcements that I missed.

What really concerns me is the approach towards a trend I warned about a couple of years ago. Consoles that have network connectivity are great. And we have all noted the concern over the behavior that connectivity incentivizes in the gaming industry since they know that they will be able to patch any mistakes they made in game title after it is already delivered to store shelves.

What concerns me more is the desire to continue stuffing the console and its corresponding software suite with features that add little value and will potentially result in operating system bloat. The more features that are rolled out, the more things ther are going on in the operating environment that can break. I personally do not need Facebook and other social apps intersecting my console space. The 360 and Xbox Live already have a social networking interface, and it is enough. (Shrug).

It is the last month of the quarter, which means it is well nigh time for an upgrade to the 'WERKz. I picked up his and her iPod Shuffles (3G) for myself and the GF last night. There are some things about it I like, and some I don't. I'll divulge more in a separate post. I will say that it is a joy to work out with. My iPod Shuffle 2G bought the farm due to me sweating profusely into its sensitive parts and I went to a 2G Nano (fatty). I love the Nano, but I hate the armband I have to use to work out with it. The Shuffle relieves me of that obstruction.

I'll round out the upgrades via orders to NewEgg and booq next week. I plan on picking up new earbuds and Noise Cancelling Headphones. My current NC Headphones were cheapies I bought from Wal-Mart just to see if I even felt like NC was worth it. From booq, I am planning on a Mamba Sling, which is a bag I have wanted for a long time. I'll get rid of the PowerSleeve that came with my booq Python XL. I have only used it once with the Python. I carry it sometimes as its own bag to transport the Acer Aspire ONE, MacBook Pro, or the Motion LE1600, but if I carry a power supply, the bag bulges in a way that makes it not look like a sleeve. I guess they expected you to use it as an on-the-go bag when you would not carry your power supply. But I never go anywhere without my power supply. Right now, although I am not crazy about the color of my Mamba Pak, which is also brown, I am eyeballing the brown or blue Mamba Slings. For some reason, booq is selling them for $20 less than the black. Supply and demand I suppose. I originally wanted a black one, but twenty bucks saved is twenty bucks saved.

Finally, as part of the 'WERKZ' Technology Roadmap, the current floor-model HDTV in the living room is going away; most likely via a refuse removal service. I have resolved that I am willing to live without a living room TV for a few months until I make a final decision on what exactly to do to replace it.

OK, that's the journal for now. Be safe this weekend; keep your gadgets cool and your beer cooler.

- Vr/Zeux.

It is the summer. Time for things to return. The blockbuster movie. Ice Cream cones. Bikinis. E3 in its regular format. WWDC and Computex. It is also apparently time to revisit some of my favorite tech topics, as I've been getting a lot of questions about TabletPCs and Smartphones.

One of the neatest things compounding the effect of the rekindled interest in my own tech that the questions generate is the fact that it is also the time of year that new tech announcements are also creeping out. So while I am (somewhat) busy pulling past blog posts and conducting current market research, I am having a good time catching up on the state of the portable market that I have become less observant of in the last few months. I will not be covering the gamut of opinions this topic covers, but over the next few days will be commenting on different pieces of the pie.

First and foremost on my mind as of late has been revisiting why I believe in the TabletPC platform, and how I use it.

I have been using pen-based computing devices for nearly ten years now. So much so that, perhaps unfortunately, I consider them a necessity.

Whenever a co-worker who is going back to school or a parent with a kid on the way to college asks about how confident I am in a TabletPC being the right thing for them or their kid, I am almost incredulous that anyone would ever ask.

Since I have decided to put off PHd work for a few years, I am taking a few courses to get more current in my present job. For the summer, that meant taking an entry-level course in Java Progamming. Back in school, my incredulity at the above question has been reinforced. Why in the world would anyone taking an academic course use anything but a TabletPC?

You have to take notes. You will likely be doing your homework on a PC. These days it is even likelier that you will be doing it on a laptop. To me it is a no-brainer that it is most effective to do both on one device. Having a notebook with paper that becomes ragged after a few months of use vice a digital notebook makes little sense to me. Nor does it make sense to me to type those notes in the middle of a lecture and be further distracted while in class rather than using the more natural form of note-taking in written format.

A second reason that I find a TabletPC an effective platform is that it increases my level of organization. While using Microsoft OneNote (or other digital ink-based apps of choice) is not restricted to the TabletPC platform or OS, it seems more intuitive to use it with a TabletPC platform. With all of my notes, tasks, contacts, Side Notes, Meeting Minutes and so forth organized on one platform, predominantly in one app, my overall effectiveness certainly feels greater than it does without. With OneNote, I am able to keep all of my role-based knowledge (student, manager, engineer, person) organized in a single app and single file.

It may just be a matter of style, or personal like. I am certainly not going to say that every person is or should be like I am and therefore should be using a TabletPC. There are some cons to the platform and I will be commenting on those later this week.

I can only say that I would be lost without mine, both at work and at school. I've tried weaning myself off of the platform, and not using one for months at a time. I always come back and I am pretty much done fooling myself. It is unfortunate that there is not a check-out program where you could check out a demo. Actually, there is (over at Allegiance Technology Partners), and I wish more people would try one out before passing negative judgments against the platform without having use done.

There are a lot of nay-sayers to the TabletPC platform, even amongst the technorati.

I think most of the negative feedback is due to cost, when considered in comparison to the cost of a traditional laptop. For this detractor, I have no push-back. I do not mind the people who say that they will never buy them. I do, however, take difference with those who go past that line and declare the devices useless or of no value. Those are the people who actually need to put their hands on one for 48 hours and really use one before they attempt to declare them useless.

Even after that, they can say that they are useless all they want. Regardless, it is clear that there is a market for these computing platforms driven by their use when deployed. My two main drivers for always wanting one of these in my inventory are just the tip of the iceberg. Tons of people are out there using these things for both vertical market needs and everyday use.

My only regret is that I do wish more people would use them so that the prices would come down. (sigh)...the price of being a nerd I guess. Until next time, enjoy computing...

- Vr/Z.

It was good. A four out of five stars on the 'WERKZ Meter. I liked it. But I did not love it.

I like the new Spock. Great that he is a little less rigid than the original Nimoy character. But it does not work that he is not the ideological and philosophical foil to Kirk that he was supposed to be originally. If neither of them shows moderation in the face of decisions that could be emotionally charged, then where is the presentation of the two points of view? If Kirk does not mind letting Klingons die, will the new Spock be any different? I guess how this new dynamic plays out over the course of the franchise reboot remains to be seen.

The original Kirk was neat in some ways, limited in others. While this new one may be more likeable, his character is not as believable. While the Kirk of the show eventually grew into a maverick with little regard for regulation, he was not that loose in his first five year mission. I can believe that [the original progression] more so than a rogue who graduates from a training program and succeeds immediately to command.

When he and Spock's interactions are considered together, it is not that believable that a Commander (O-5) in any military force, real or fictional, would cede command to an O-1.

As a former military member, I'll leave out some of my minor irritations with things like rank and titles that are not really of any weight to anyone other than...well...me.

And I think that sums up my view of the movie in general. Most of the characters are just as likeable as the original cast and crew (with the exception of Checkov), but they fall outside the realm of believability. They are much more like the X-Men in character trait than any concocted military organization.

I give the movie a by as far as dorking with the original storyline. I am not one of those that say that if they change the original storyline at all that I will immediately deem the movie of zero value. So JJ Abrams gets a by because at least he explains why the timeline is different. Most movies just change stuff arbitrarily and say that it is just different for no reason; because the producer/director said so or something like that.

But after the explanation, there is this feeling that everything is a contrived macguffin to get the new cast in the right seat. That being whatever billet and role their original counterpart played. So my first question is was this even necessary? If you are going to dork with the timeline, who says then that everyone has to be in the same seat? Why couldn't Uhura have wound up as the helmsman? And Checkov could have been the science officer? At any rate, after the reason is given as to why the timeline is different, the whole thing seems contrived. So the action and cinematography is good, and the actors did a good job, but the script and story did not have the best elements.

While those things bother me, the new relationship between Spock and Uhura does not bother me, as I am sure it does some other hardcore Trek fans.

Best actor award for the movie goes to Keith Urban, who was DeForrest Kelley incarnate. I hope that they will build on the core story of the original that centered on the incredibly tight bond between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Things I do not want to see as the franchise moves forward:

• another Enterprise destroyed every other movie
• the relationship between Spock and Uhura getting annoying because it is played up too much
• characters that have been killed off coming back to life
• ejecting the warp core every movie; I mean, jeez, as often as starships have to eject it, you would think they would just start stocking a spare.

So, the franchise reboot gets a solid B, and I do look forward to the others. With no 5 year mission, I am not sure how the franchise will develop. If the movies are not too long in development and production, the cast is young enough that they should be able to Harry Potter-it for quite a few movies before they are looking like STVI-era Shatner/Nimoy/Kelley.

Oh yeah, here's a head spinner...let's not forget that everyone's timeline is now rent...including stories from the Next Generation, DS9 and forward. What might that mean for the franchise? Guess we'll have to see.

- Vr/Z.

Let me start out with a few things of note.

If I pick my guy action movie ratings from last summer, my list went like this:

Hulk

Hancock

The Dark Knight

Iron Man

Let's not argue that list right now, but just accept it for the sake of some assumptions.

The second point of note is that I do not agree with the current Rotten Tomatoes evaluation that Wolverine is a 36% rating movie. If I were to slot it into the list above, it would go below The Dark Knight, but above Iron Man.

Let me start again with the things that the movie does not do well. This is another Marvel Kitchen Sink Movie (MKSM). I define these movies whenever Marvel has a film where they try to stuff as many cameos as feasible into a film. It is the characteristic experienced when there are characters in off-center positions in a camera shot that are clearly some well-known (or obscure) character from a Marvel comic. It is also materialized when these characters sometimes have one-line, or are maybe even bit parts that go undeveloped. These cameos usually serve no other purpose than to piss us off because we can not understand while they chose to make some of the chumps in the film main characters, but then only give nods to these others. If anything, they become distractions to the main storyline as we become more concerned with playing the incentivized game of "Where's Waldo" than paying attention to the actual story.

The movie itself is not overly explosively exciting. There are some twists and turns, but by and large, it does not really grip you with the action unfolding on-screen. No one's performance is particularly entrancing. The movie goes through its paces, but it never really goes for the gold with any particular character or sub-plot.

These are the things that the movie is not. There are a few things that it is...are...whatever...

Despite the fact that it is a MKSM, it is not so much so that it is ever really that aggravating. I guess you walk into the movie understanding that this is about a whole race of super-heroes, so maybe I expected the whole roster's worth of characters that were presented. Also, I guess I would say that although there are the obligatory off-center cameos (Banshee), the movie stays pretty tightly focused on the main heroes and villains. So in this vein the movie exceeds Spiderman 3, which had characters in its cast just to be wasted and underdeveloped.

Hugh Jackman is as likeable as I reckon anyone would be with playing Wolverine. The movie diddles with the Marvel core timeline (the way things were before Marvel and DC had to spawn multiple universes and what-not to keep readers interested...feh...), but not so much that it is offensive.

The movie is entertaining enough that it makes up for the travesty that was X-Men 3. OK, maybe nothing really "makes up" for that. But..if there were supposed to be three passable, acceptable movies in the X-Men franchise, we finally now have our third. It's not as good as X-Men or X2. But then, I have never found the character of Wolverine all that appealing anyway. His popularity amongst the rest of the geek elite has escaped me in much the same way that the popularity of Stargate SG-1 has.

At any rate, the movie is entertaining, and not atrocious. You could waste your time in more egregious ways. On my own meter, it gets a 3 out of 5 stars.

- Vr/Zeux..>>

It has been a couple of weeks since I sold off half of the 'WERKz. The Backup Tower, COMPAL IFL-90, MacBook, Samsung Q1 Ultra, Toshiba Satellite M305,and Nintendo Wii...all gone. There is a serenity about the network now that has escaped my ability to articulate. My computer geek alter ego now seems to no longer be assaulted with the constant cacophony of thoughts that go along with trying to push projects on ten PCs. But the true vacuum that has been left is in terms of noise and heat.

My friend, B, is one, as an expert in acoustics, who has always been focused on keeping a set of gadgets and his own home-built frankenbox's as quiet as possible. B also gets concerned about total heat generated in his house by his electronics. As I saw this trend grow to prevalence amongst the technorati, it was never one that I got wrapped around the axle on. Noise was acceptable if it meant providing supreme computing power on my home network. Additionally, the first methods of combating noise involved stuffing your case full of cheesecloth and other baffle-inducing foam. This could lead to increases in heat, of which my boxes produced enough of already.

I did fall in-line with the concern about total heat generation. I resisted buying LCDs for the longest time, believing the widely held thought that early LCDs could not keep up with the frame-rates required in fast-paced games. So rather than fully converting to LCDs as some of my brethren were doing, I initially chose to set up my Main Tower of the time with just one LCD and a CRT. I was going to use the LCD for my primary working monitor, with the CRT as a secondary display. I would then shift over to the CRT for gaming.

I tested the LCD for gaming a few times and its performance was passable. The big whoop was that upon it arrival, I almost immediately recognized the drop in temperatures and ambient noise in the computer room. Realize that I was running two desktop PCs each with a dual monitor setup, and all monitors were CRTs. Between the temp/noise drop and its gaming performance being passable, I quickly decided that LCDs were the way to go and that any drop off in gaming performance would be acceptable.

So it was ok to take measures to reduce thermals. My current apartment's cooling system was struggling to keep up with the heat generated by two desktop PCs constantly putting out heat, along with the USB hard drives and other always-on components. Still, I was not and do not plan on dealing with the pain and added maintenance required to shift to liquid cooling.

Since reducing the footprint of the 'WERKz back to its historic norm, there has been another drop in ambient noise and thermals. And it is good. I liked having the two towers, especially back when I was really hosting a good number of LAN events at my place. As that activity has dropped off, the need for two towers has lessened. And I'm not inside the main tower messing with its hardware all of the time, so a "You broke your Main Tower" backup desktop is not as much a necessity.

The three laptops are normally in standby when they are not actually in use, whereas the Main and BackUp Towers used to run all of the time. When I go out of town, I shut the Main Tower down and do not actually turn it back on after I get back until I am actually ready to use it, which can sometimes be weeks.

The funny thing about noise is that its impact is much like buying a new TV. It is frequently not until you finally buy a bigger TV that you realize how small your other one really was. In the like vein, it was not until I got rid of my second tower that I realized how loud my Xbox 360 and PS3 really are. But they get the legacy pass. The noise is acceptable because the two systems provide the best and most powerful console gaming experience on the market. And that is good, too.

Maybe Seth Rogen and his crew are not that funny. Or maybe they are just funny when they are with Steve Carrell or Paul Rudd. Without those two, things just do not seem to work.

40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up were hilarious. But Superbad, Pineapple Express, and Observe and Report have been representative of a steady decline by this particular comedic troop. Truthfully, I guess O&R was funnier than Pineapple Express; maybe not. They are both so close in being sub-par that maybe it is not even worth it to argue which one was better.

Just in some off chance that Seth actually reads this, genitalia are not funny. I will even go so far as to not lock that statement to male genitalia, although that is definitely the core issue for me. But, in general, human genitalia are not funny in and of themselves, and this seems to be a recurring attempt that Seth and his crew make. Superbad is an ok movie; the ending, centered on the issue above, drives it below the mediocre line. Seth tries the same lame attempt at humor with the culminating capture of the flasher at the end of O&R. It fails to work this time as well.

Observe and Report is just sad in some places. This is one of those movies that definitely meets the cliché that "you've seen every funny part in the trailer and commercials." The telling part of the flick is that you never really feel supportive of the protagonist. Likewise, in order for this kind of humor to work, you need to despise the antagonist, or at least think that they are a complete loser. You really don't get that from Ray Liotta's character, and the other "bad guys", the mall thief and the flasher, are not big or comedic enough threats to make the humor even relevant to the story line.

Most of the time, in fact, you feel like Rogen's protagonist is the loser. Without giving too much of the movie away, you wish the same thing that most of the other characters in the movie ask: for him to shut the heck up. The movie makes an attempt to play on the humor of him being a Don Quixote in modern times. However, you never feel that there is anything even humorously noble about the character.

The night that I went to see the movie, I had to pack for a road trip the following day. I wound up packing when I got home after the movie, and some more the following morning. Yardstick statement: I would have rather been at home packing that night rather than in the theatre for two hours watching Observe and Report.This movie gets a score of two out five stars from the 'WERKz. There was a good chunk of potentially funny material here. But most of the time, you just feel sad for O&R's Barney and actually really feel that he just has some severe psychological problems that make him a loo-paw. This is even when you suspend disbelief and try and say "it's just a movie." The extreme spectrum-ends of the climax, where severely serious incidents occur that are downplayed as slapstick just left me feeling jerked around between trying to find the funny amidst the deranged and then violent events occurring on screen.

The original ending of Clerks was going to be Dante getting shot. The directors realized that this type of abrupt, violently serious ending to a comedic piece just does not work generally speaking. I am glad that they changed it and ended with the Randal walk. Seth could have learned a bit from this and ended the movie with an culminating stroke of comedy instead of his actual approach.

If you need to see every Seth Rogen film ever made, you can wait to see this one on video. In fact, this movie is why I sometimes don't see a problem with so-called video piracy, because paying for this "entertainment" is questionable. If you were just looking for a decent comedy, please move along people. There is nothing to see here.