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After many years of owning laptops I decided to get a desktop. I needed more space and more memory. I got an iMac – the basic 21.5″ model with upgraded memory to 8GB.

After admiring the iMac for few minutes I started thinking about transferring the data and software from the MacBook.

The easiest way would be to restore everything from the Time Machine. This would add all the garbage accumulated over the years to the new system so I quickly forgot about that option. I think Time Machine is great for restoring the data on the same computer – not transferring to the new one.

Another option was given to my by Apple at the time I turned the iMac on – the Migration Assistant. I connected both machines to the 1Gbit network and started the process. The Migration Assistant allowed me to choose what to transfer. This option would also transfer old application settings and caches, shortly unnecessary garbage. I exited the application and skipped that option too.

I decided to build and install everything from scratch transferring only what I wanted. I used APF share as it’s faster than a USB hard drive. I also used MobileMe synchronization.

Once I enabled MobileMe synchronization on the new iMac it gave me few options to overwrite or merge the settings. I told it to merge the keystore (the file that holds all the passwords and security certificates) and overwrite the rest. It worked great for Safari and all the passwords. The iMail had trouble with exchange setup and was missing all local mailboxes I had on the MacBook. Another method was necessary.

I run the Backup program from Apple and archived iMail and iTunes. Restoring on the iMac was a breeze. iTunes worked as before. iMail had trouble with exchange again but local mailboxes were there. I had to re-create the exchange account and all worked great.

The rest of the software I moved manually. I downloaded new versions and only moved preferences files and folders using a network share. I copied the files from ~/Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Application Support. It worked for Skype, Adium, Eclipse and iMovie. I also copied Safari cookies from ~/Library/Cookies so all my web sessions were untouched.

As for the photos I moved them manually using network share and did a fresh Aperture installation.

I’m back online.

I had to buy a new TV last weekend.

Two and a half years ago I bought a 32″ Toshiba TV (32HL67) for over a $1000. It was a perfect size for my room and had decent connectivity options – enough ports to connect all devices I had and more. It had perfect reviews. It started breaking after a year and a half. The screen would go dark once a week but the sound was on. I could live with that. But after few months the screen would go dark immediately after turning the TV on. I would turn it off and on and all was fine. This worsened over in the last months so that I had to spend few minutes switching the TV off and on to get the backlight to light on. Some days it worked perfectly, but some other days it took 5 minutes. Recently I was trying for 30 minutes with no effect and that made me buy a new TV.

I searched online and found out that many owners had the same problem. It all happened after 1 year outside warranty coverage. Toshiba confirmed the problem, blamed it on a faulty board and wanted $400 for a repair. $400 now gets me a new 32″ TV.

I wanted to go with Samsung. I picked a model with great reviews and decent features. I search for problems people were having with it and I was shocked to read that the screen would go black after a year. I read a lot of reports that the TV would not last 2 years.

So I got a Sony KDL-32L504 – the newest model that came out for the black friday for less than $400. I probably shouldn’t have gotten the newest model but I did not see many reports of screen going blank with Sony TV units. I insured myself by getting a 2 year protection plan – just in case.

It took some tuning of colors for the Mac Mini. It’s connected over HDMI and set to 1380×768 – the native resolution. The colors looked washed out. When setting pure 720p resolution the colors were great but the screen area smaller than the screen. Setting overscan made the screen area go over the borders. Only 1380×768 fit the screen. I noticed that when switching resolutions the TV changed the picture settings so a correction was necessary.

Sony is also better as a TV. It found all free analog and digital HD channels from my cable connection. Toshiba would set almost all digital channels to program 0 – switching channels was only possible with + and – buttons. Sony does it better and all channels have a program number.

Let’s see how long will this on last.

Yesterday, on Sunday, May 3, 2009 I disconnected my cable TV leaving only an internet connection.

The reason behind it is mostly money. I’ve been paying $100 for HDTV service with DVR box and one foreign channel (TV Polonia). I was recently thinking about my watching habits and came to the conclusion that $1200 a year is a bit too much for what I’m watching. I watch shows on the network channels (ABC, FOX), NBC in the morning, and few shows from TV Polonia. I watch mostly recorded shows, almost never live TV. I also enjoy Discovery Channel.

Now, I can get the networks for free over-the-air (I will need either a room antenna or use the cable connection).  I can also watch the shows on abc.com and hulu.com. I can pay $7 for TV Polonia and watch it online, with a lower quality but I’ll live with that. The only channel I will miss is Discovery, but I’ll simply pay for Dirty Jobs on iTunes. All still less than $100 a month. And I know my wife will miss E! – no solution here yet.

And there is Netflix – mailed DVD’s and instant online viewing when there is nothing else left to watch.

I also hope that without cable I will turn off the TV unit more often. After a daily watching ritual, there will be nothing else left, except life over-the-air TV, which sucks anyway, so I hope to turn the TV off and read something.

More on life without cable coming soon…

This weekend I got my new media center computer – this time a Mac. The last media center I owned was a PC, a Shuttle box, that served me for the last 5 years. It needed to be replaced because it was becoming slow, especially with HD content.

So I got a Mac Mini – an older model (Intel 1.83GHz, 1GB RAM) – perfect for HD media center. The new model came out few weeks ago and J&R had the old one on sale. Perfect deal. Especially because the older model is easier to connect to HDTV – just a $10 DVI-to-HDMI cable and I was set. Just connected the cable to Toshiba REGZA 32HL67 and the Mac recognized it setting the resolution to 720p. The old PC gave me more trouble here.

In addition to easy connectivity it uses less energy, takes less space, and looks great.

Mac Mini comes with a remote control so I can play the content from across the room. I also configured my Logitech Harmony remote to play nicely with the new Mac. One click and TV switches to HDMI input and the Mac wakes up from sleep. I also use Apple’s bluetooth keyboard and mouse which allows me to browse the internet sitting on the couch. Small size of the keyboard allows it to be used as a remote for any media software as well.

Before getting the Mac Mini I always wanted to try Boxee but it did not meet my expectations and I’m still using XBMC. Boxee looks nice and is a promising product but some things just don’t work. I had trouble playing content from a network share. Boxee expects you to name the files in a certain way in order to get the metadata from the internet. That would cost me some time, but a lot of content I have is not from US and it would give me trouble anyway so I disabled that option. I added my remote shares to the media sources but can’t see any of it in Movies or TV category (due to disabled metadata pull), only browse for it in the directory structure. But even with browsing Boxee did not play saying that the content is not added to the media sources, although it was. Added SMB shares were showing up as not-connected but were browsable. Still buggy. Local content worked just fine. And I could not sort the content by date! There is one thing that makes Boxee a promising products: the plugins. I could watch my Netflix movies, Hulu content, CNN, and the others using my remote control!

XBMC works perfectly on Mac as it worked on a PC before. Remote content plays great over 1Gbit LAN, content sorting works. I also think that the menus and options are more usable than in Boxee. But it’s a personal preference. I’ll stick to XMBC for now.

I also love media content sharing in Macs. I share my iTunes and iPhoto library on my laptop and can browse them on my Mac Mini without copying the files. I love that feature.

There are also remote control applications for iPhone and iPod Touch users available. I can play iTunes music using Apple’s Remote app. I can control XMBC, Boxee, iTunes, VLC, and others using Rowmote and a small helper application! All over wireless LAN so not line of sight needed! Also Boxee has a remote control application, which has the best interface of them all.

I’ll post more on the Mac as media center as I get to use it more.

In search for wall decoration my wife and I got an idea to create a oil painting. After few months it finally hangs but needs a frame. It has two hidden and unintentional errors.