More great Mac system tools

I stumbled onto this while browsing the web yesterday, "30 Free System Tools for a Better Mac". I plan to test drive this stuff and see how it works in my Mac arsenal.

Status Update for my MacBook

Two and half years after getting my first Mac, here are is a status update:

No viruses.
No reinstalls.
No system slow downs.
Higher personal computer satisfaction.
More multimedia without fear of hiccups.
VMware Fusion works great.
Parallels work great.
Firefox, Safari performance is awesome.
Multimedia multitasking is rock solid.
Working with my computer is akin to using your kitchen refrigerator.
Open source support is awesome.
WiFi works better than Windows XP, Vista, and Linux.

It just works. I am quite happy I got a Mac. I still use Linux and Windows but prefer a Mac.

Suggested improvements, longer battery life (8 hrs vs. 5 hrs), larger display, add a DVI port for third monitor, larger SSD, multi-touch, and support for 16GB onboard memory. Oh, I think all that is right around the corner.

Boxee and Hulu Battle Continues

In the past month, the entire Boxee and Hulu fiasco is really discouraging. What appeared to be a very promising future for Boxee has been blocked by Hulu's techno war-like behavior. I really like Hulu. Boxee's technology and upcoming gadget looked like a no brainer for me. Now, back in the confusopoly stage. I hope it all plays out where I can get a device that does not require a computer and allow me to stream video from Hulu directly to my large screen digital video display device (aka HD-TV).

AppleTV and Boxee

Want to turn AppleTV into a video streaming device, then you have to see Boxee. "How to: Max Out AppleTV's Potential With Boxee". This is exactly what I was looking for and considering purchasing a Mac Mini for the family room but the combination of AppleTV and Boxee makes more sense. I need to continue watching this to see how it evolves. This is what AppleTV should have been all along.

Boxee is a freeware cross-platform media center software with social networking features that is a fork of the open source XBMC media center software with some custom and closed source proprietary additions. Marketed as the first ever "'Social Media Center", Boxee enables its users to view, rate and recommend content to their friends through many social networking features. Boxee is still under development and is currently only available as Alpha releases for Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger), Apple TV, and Linux for computers with Intel processors, with the first Alpha made available on the 16th of June 2008. A Microsoft Windows Alpha version of Boxee was released in January 2009, but is currently available only by private invitation.

Picasa 3 Beta for Mac

Google has released Picasa 3 for Mac OS X beta. This now makes Picasa 3 available on the Mac on par with Windows and Linux.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 available for the Mac OS X

OpenOffice.org 3.0 has been officially released. The native Mac OS X version is now available. I downloaded and installed it with no problems. It works flawlessly. I have since removed OpenOffice.org 2.1 which required X11. I still have my NeoOffice installed but will probably decrease my use of it and use the official OpenOffice.org 3.0 Mac version.

Performance of NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch 4

I just installed the latest NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch 4 and noticed that UI responsiveness and load times for documents is vastly improved. Not just slightly better but noticeably better. What used to take about 10-15 seconds now happens in about 2-4 seconds (like loading a .doc). Wow!