I sorted through the various versions of the GIMP bitmap editor available for the Mac last week. This week, I report on what I found after playing with GIMP on my slightly underpowered Macbook. The results were good. In fact, very good IMHO.

I wanted to install a free (Open Source if possible) image editor on my MacBook. After looking around, I returned to look at GIMP whose multi-window interface always bothered me. Here's what I found about GIMP for Mac OS X 10.5.

Watch NBCOlympics.com video from the 2008 Summer Olympics on your Mac or iPhone. You will need Microsoft Silverlight on your Mac. But, your iPhone (or iPod touch) is ready to roll as-is without any changes.

Microsoft patched an Excel 2008 remote execution problem. So, you might want to go get the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.2 update.

VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2 looks good when used with Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. I ran into problems when testing it with Fedora 8 though. It is a Beta release, however. So, I'm not passing judgement on it until I see the Release Candidate and production release.

Did you buy AppleCare for your Apple __Fill_in_the_blank__ hardware product? Was the decision to buy or not buy difficult? This is an easy decision for two groups of people. These people sit on either end of the extreme for this decision. One group says, "I always buy extended warranty from Apple." The other group says, "I never buy extended warranty from Apple." However, for those of us in between those two extremes, to buy or not to buy AppleCare for a new Apple product can be a difficult decision to make. I looked at AppleCare prices as a percentage of the product price and came up with a few rules of thumb.

Electricity costs where I live are skyrocketing (49% in the past 12 months). I've always been interested and concerned about conserving power. But, I've really been taking a closer look over the past year. So, do you know how much power your Mac uses and what it contributes to your total monthly power bill?

For me newly upgraded iPod touch shows that a phone-less but connectable PDA has an important place in the mobile ecosystem. It delivers on what the old Windows Mobile Pocket PCs promised and brings us full circle to the original PDA - The Apple Newton. But, the thing that makes it work is the Apple App Store. That is the real killer App.

The last stores in the world to open up to sell the iPhone 2 were in Honolulu, HI. I visited one of them to check out the line.

I don't think the Mac-LEGO Mindstorms NXT connection gets enough web-print. So, I finally took the time to play with LEGO Mindstorms NXT and an Intel-based Macbook connected using Bluetooth. The result was a lot of fun! :-)