Western Digital Scorpio Blue 750GB or 1TB drive in a Macbook Pro

I know there must be alot of other people out there like me who are wondering, will WD’s new big drives fit in my notebook? The problem is most modern laptop drives are 9.5mm high, while WD’s new WD7500KEVT (750GB) and WD10TEVT (1TB) drives are in the older 12mm high standard size. So, the short answer is no, they won’t fit in a lot, maybe most, notebooks.

So will it fit into the Macbook Pro? The answer is yes, but with some important caveats. And sorry for redirecting you, but I'm trying to move away from blogspot.

On the Jawbone 2 and the Plantronics 925

Jawbone 2, I can't help but look longingly at your sleek, handsome design...I pored over reviews of your clever noise-cancellation technology, but ultimately, Jawbone 2, we were destined to split. And I can honestly say it's not me, baby, it's you.


Sure, it started out well enough. Your designers had wisely choosen to abandon your predecessor's terribly brittle metal earloop design which were constantly snapping in two in my pocket when not in use, upgrading you to a presumably more durable plastic loop. And things were great in the beginning. I loved your slimmer profile. I thought your sound was even clearer that the Jawbone 1. But to my surprise I quickly discovered you had the same fatal flaw. Beneath that plastic veneer, you had a brittle metal prong as well, no more durable than your predecessor. I tried to overlook this obvious flaw, as I quickly went through the four differently sized earloops that came with you, despite the fact two of them didn't fit me at all. But ultimately you were just too high maintenance. I couldn't handle the repeated trips to Jawbone's site to order more packs of $15 ear loops, and I had to put you out.


But what's this? there's a new silicone in-ear replacement to do away with the loop? I was thrilled; we could start all over again. We got back together, and again things were good...for a few days. I tried to make it work, I really did...but the way you just kept falling out of my ear mid-conversation, well it was just plain rude. I did try all the sizes, but we just didn't seem to fit, baby. It wasn't going to work out.


It may sound crass, but I admit I immediately went looking for a replacement. An upgrade. and I found it on Amazon. The Plantronics 925.
She was slimmer, lighter, sleeker. She may not have quite the sound quality you had, baby, but she could stick with me through an entire conversation. She could go all weekend on a charge. She came with a clever battery-powered charging case for my pocket, and perhaps best of all didn't use an earloop.


I'm not looking back. We had some good times, but I've moved up in the world. 925 and I are very happy together, even now, months later. I gave you to my father. Perhaps he'll be more understanding of your flaws.

Using Dual Displays with the new (4-2009) Mac Mini

I just made a very cool discovery about the new mac mini that got delivered today: you can use both the mini display port and the mini dvi port simultaneously, each driving its own monitor. Full-sized desktops have been doing this for years, of course, but for some reason it didn't occur to me the mini would be capable of doing it. Anyway, haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, so I thought I'd put it out there for the general good.

Using a Unibody Macbook with Dual External Monitors

So you want to drive two external displays from your shiny new unibody macbook pro...well, I've got good news and bad news. The mini-displayport doesn't have the juice to drive multiple external monitors, even mated to a solution like the Matrox Dualhead2go which worked so well with the previous DVI-equipped macbooks. Enter theTritton SEE2 Xtreme. Though it's very choppy when dragging windows on the screen, generally the video quality is very good, and it's only GPU-intensive motion that causes issues. The device works with a few hiccups, such as issues when waking from sleep on the usb-driven monitor, but it's the only solution available, so... There are other usb to DVI adaptors on the market, but no other can handle 1920x1280 resolution. If you're driving a pair of 24" displays or larger, this is the one you have to get. Also, Triton, the company behind this device, released a updated driver recently that solves the previous issues that occured with the OSX 10.5.6 update.

The Apple Dual-link adaptor: Apple did the Mac community something of a disservice when they named this item, as it's extremely misleading. This cable DOES NOT allow you to connect two external displays to your macbook. Rather, it uses two cables (one USB and one mini-displayport) from your computer to boost the power available from the mini displayport so that you can drive 30" monitors. It's really a shame that the mini-displayport doesn't have the juice to power the largest monitors (or, indeed, to power dual external monitors), but such was the tradeoff for the MDP's small size, I guess. One other use for this cable is, if you have the Matrox Dualhead2go, this will boost the output of the mini-displayport enough that you can run dual external monitors from it...BUT it still doesn't have the juice to run dual 1920x1280 externally; it can only run them at 1680x1050 each. Unless you really want full-motion video (or action game graphics) on both external monitors, you should go with the See2Xtreme, above.



The Matrox DualHead2Go Digital Edition an excellent device, but alas, as mentioned above it will provide no joy on its own if you have a computer with a mini-displayport. What sets this apart, both in performance and price, from the See2Xtreme above is that it basically contains an external graphics GPU within itself, and it doesn't rely upon USB to output to your display (though it does use a USB to draw the power to drive itself). If full-motion graphics are your requirement, rather than ultimate resolution for still graphics, this is the device you want. You will need to pair this with the Apple dual-link cable above to get the required juice to run two monitors, and then only up to 1680x1050 apiece, but the matrox won't hold back your frame rates the way the usb-based solutions do.