Macintoshes are the BMWs of the computer world. Everyone wants one (okay, not everyone), but not everyone can afford one. They look great and generally work very well. When you look at things like “total cost of ownership”, a Mac may actually save you money in the long term, but not everyone can pony up the upfront money so that they can save in the long term. Even if you can, it’s nice to save a few bucks if you can.

Apple exercises tight control over Macintosh hardware prices, so you won’t usually find a new Mac discounted by more than a few dollars. But you may well find decent rebates and bundles and special pricing from Apple itself. Here are a few of the things I’ve seen that may be helpful to you.

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It’s been so long since there was a new Goldfrapp album out… “Felt Mountain” is clearly one of my favorite albums ever. I enjoyed Goldfrapp’s followups “Black Cherry” and “Supernature” slightly less than their first album, but they’re still full of great music.

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Apple’s MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard” has been out a while now, and I hear about more and more people hitting an installation snag that causes them a lot of grief.

You boot up the Leopard DVD-ROM, start walking through the install process and when it gets to the dialog asking where to install it, there’s nothing. No disk partitions show up at all.

I’ve encountered this on several computers so far. I can’t tell you exactly what causes it. I’ve seen it on both Intel and PowerPC machines.

We tried all the obvious things: reset the PRAM, repair the target disk, repair permissions on the target disk… no luck.

The solution is simple:
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Iain M. Banks has a new Culture novel coming out in February: “Matter”.

I couldn’t tell you today when I first heard of Iain M. Banks (the “M.” is for science fiction; he writes non-science-fiction without the “M.”) or first read one of his books, but I remember clearly that it was “Player of Games” and that I was immediately hooked.

Banks’ Culture resembled the US as I most often thought of it in the 90’s: large, powerful, its tail sometimes unaware of what its head was doing, able to do great damage simply by shrugging, sufficiently aware of itself to have a sense of guilt.

The Culture is almost an anti-Federation: no laws, machine Minds, hedonistic, guilt-ridden. Very gray.

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Macworld is coming up in a couple of days, and although I will be on a plane during the breathlessly awaited keynote, I still have some thoughts on what may be coming up… about 95% of people writing online have thoughts on it, too.

After last year’s fantasy-fulfilling iPhone announcement, expectations are high for this Macworld. It seems very unlikely that Apple will top that, but here’s what I think you may see.

We’ll see hardware refreshes. Now that Apple is using Intel chips, we know a lot more about the release schedule of the processors they’re using, since Intel publishes a processor roadmap and is very vocal about new chips. Intel is in the process of pushing out new CPUs, the “Penryn” line, mobile, desktop and server, and I think we’ll see some new Apple machines using them - specifically new MacBook Pros and likely MacBooks as well, and an iMac speed bump.

The iMacs just had a significant refresh last summer and I can’t see Apple doing any major changes to them beyond giving them new CPUs. The MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, however, haven’t had any significant changes in a while. In fact, Apple followed a very clever strategy when they switched to Intel chips - they didn’t make major changes to the appearance of the machines. An end-generation PowerPC iMac or PowerBook doesn’t look much different from a first generation Intel iMac or MacBook Pro. This was a great way to subtly tell people that they were still the same machines.

The MacBook Pro/Power Book has looked the same for a long time now, and while it’s still a great looking machine, I expect that Apple will update it to bring it more in line with the appearance of the new iMac.

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This is an update of last year’s post… it wasn’t a great year for mainstream comics. Both Marvel and DC have gone down the path of satisfying long-time fans by brutally killing old characters. Both have been running long crossovers like Countdown, World War Hulk, 52 and Civil War which have ultimately served more the purpose of selling comics than telling satisfying stories.

This year’s major comics-related films have also garnered less than stellar reviews.

Given that, I don’t have a lot of new things to recommend, but there are a few things the comics fans in your life might enjoy.

Do you have a comics lover in your life who you’d like to get a holiday gift for, but haven’t got a clue what to get them? Read on, true believer.
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This week instead of offering 99 cent rentals, Amazon is offering free rentals or purchases of downloads of 24 “classic” films. These movies can be played under Microsoft Windows, compatible portable devices, and on networked Tivo Series 2 and Series 3/HD boxes.

First, the films you can outright purchase for free. If they behave the way other films from Amazon do, you’ll be able to re-download them again later and they won’t expire once you’ve downloaded them.

Click on the title to see the movie’s listing at Amazon.

Charade
His Girl Friday
House on Haunted Hill
Love Affair
The Man With the Golden Arm
My Man Godfrey
Penny Serenade
The Snows of Kilmanjaro
Till the Clouds Roll By
Under Western Stars

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Amazon has six more cheap (99 cent) movie rentals for download this weekend. These prices are good until midnight Sunday November 4th. They’ve both reduced the total number of cheap movies they’re offering and reduced the amount of horror now that it’s post-Halloween.

As usual, you can direct the download of these movies to a Tivo that’s been associated with your Amazon account, or you can view them on Microsoft Windows or a supported portable device.

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This “Living Dead Doll” pencil sharpener has got to be the coolest pencil sharpener ever. You stick a pencil in its eye socket and shavings come out its mouth. Now if only I still used pencils!

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One complaint some users have about the new release of Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is that the cool R2D2-like hologram effect for iChat and Photobooth that was present in beta copies is missing in the final releae.

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