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PC world mag tested the iPhone for scratches and crashes.. here’s that they came out with : 

Apple’s iPhone is still scheduled to hit stores this coming friday (June 29th) . And USAToday had their hands on an iPhone and did a short review about the most anticipated device . Here’s the video :

We’ll be watching the release closely . so stay tuned .

I Have always been a supporter of Open source software and as usual this is another open source software review. I know most of our readers have shed the Microsoft curse and are using products like NeoOffice and AbiWord. OpenOffice.org have just released an Alpha edition of their OpenOffice which is ported to Aqua. This edition is not meant for full time deployment, rather, it is a test release to iron out kinks and performances issues. After using this product for several hours I have found it to be quite unstable and at times temperamental. It does, however, looks good and is faster then NeoOffice when it comes to load times. What was very weird is that the cursor is far away from the last letter typed and it is very hard to know if it is a space or just the letter between the cursor and the letter. When I quit the program it crashed but that is noted on the release notes. Over all, the OpenOffice suite looks great but needs some time to come a long and iron out all the kinks and quirks in it. If you are the adventures type I suggest you give it a test drive and see how it fairs on your Mac. A word to the wise though, don’t use it for critical documents because it is not yet mature enough.

Some Known Issues:
* You cannot print
* PDF export does not properly work as thetext won’t show on the page right
* Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
* Copy and paste does not fully work
* OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
* Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
* Impress will not recognize multiple monitors

Sources:

NotebookReview.com has an excellent review article dealing with the newly released Macbook Pro 2.2 GHz laptop. It has some benchmark scores for the Macbook Pro as well as several other laptops. What makes this review interesting is the fact the the reviewer is a switcher and this is his first Macbook Pro. People considering switching to Macs should take a look at this review.

Click here to read the review.

Source:

Parallels is a virtualization engine that allows your intel based Mac to run Windows, Linux, or any other intel based operating system. This is especially good if you can’t let go of Windows or you have special Applications that only run on Windows.

Features:
• Easy Installation
• Allows you to run Windows in OS X
• Easy Drag and Drop between OS X and Windows
• Coherence Mode
• Full USB 2.0 support
• Full Networking support
• Boot Camp support

Parallels is fairly easy to install. All you have to do is double click on the Parallels icon and it installs in seconds. After you get you key and registration set you need to configure a virtual machine to install Windows or what ever other OS you want. The wizard make it so easy, simple clicks and you are on your way. If you have a Boot Camp partition set up on your Mac then all you need to do is click on the Boot Camp option and you are all set. Parallels starts the Virtual machine and installs the necessary drivers. If you are an avid gamer then the Boot Camp partition is the way to go. It would allow you to set enough space for Windows for your games as well as those simple tasks that you need to do in Windows from within OS X like check your bank account and other windows related stuff without having two separate Windows Installations. Parallels, unfortunately, does not allow Windows Vista and Boot Camp to work together. So if you have Windows Vista on a Boot Camp partition and you want to use Vista on OS X then you need to set it up in its own virtual machine. Hopefully Parallels 3.0 would have this feature but as of today, nothing is shown on the Parallels site.
Parallels 3.0 is going to be released sometime in the coming weeks. It features support for 3D gaming and better support for USB 2.0 devices. It also has a feature called “SmartSelect” which allows you to open any file from either OS X or Windows by binding that file to a specific program in either operating systems. Another feature allows you to browse the virtual machine files without even starting the virtual machine it self with an application called Parallels Explorer. Other features include better Linux support as well as shared printers for cross platform printing. Parallels is also offering this upgrade at a reduced price, $39.99, if purchased before June 6th. After that date the upgrade price jumps to $49.99. If you have purchased Parallels sometime after May 1st, 2007 then you are eligible for a free upgrade.
Since we here at q8mug always try to find you free alternatives, I have come across a piece of open source software that does what Parallels does and its free. It is not of the same quality or caliber as that of Parallels but hey its free. It sets up a virtual machine in minutes and is as fast and as responsive as parallels. It has none of the features of Parallels but does a good job. VirtualBox is an excellent piece of software that is quite easy to setup and use. Give it a shot and see if it is what you need or you could always go with Parallels. Take a look at the images of VirtualBox running Windows and Ubuntu Linux.
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If you have two or more Macs then you gonna like this piece of software genius. Let us say that you have a desktop Mac and a laptop Mac. Your sitting on your desk, and working on the desktop’s keyboard but then you want to check something on your laptop, like email, so what do you do? You can move your hands to the laptop’s mouse and keyboard but you can also use teleport from abyssoft to control both from one keyboard and one mouse only.
Installation of the software is pretty simple. Unpack the file and double click on the .pref file to install. Thats it. You need to do this on all of your Macs. Then head on to the Mac System Preferences and configure your selected option and click activate.
There are a decent amount of options that are simple to configure but the most important one is encryption. With this option turned on, the text you send from the controlling Mac to the controlled Mac is encrypted so no one on the network can see them. Another feature that is interesting is its ability to copy clipboard contents and small files. I have tried that and for some reason, it doesn’t work for me.
Over all this software is excellent. It is very easy to use, understand, and configure. It also saves your arms from going all over the place and trying to figure out what computer you are using.

To download click here