I got itchy fingers again and I had the laptop in bits, this time to remove the stupid optical drive and to replace it with a standard hard drive. I now have 128 G SSD and a 160 G spindle drive.

The SSD is perfect for the OS and apps, it makes the machine uber fast. The spindle drive is more suited to my iTunes library and photographs.

The loss of the optical drive is irrelevant to me, I hardly ever use it. I can use the optical drive on another Mac or Windows computer on my network, plus I do have a USB DVD drive that I can use.

The original plan was to remove the optical drive, bodge up a cable to go from the very proprietary Apple connector onto my SATA hard drive, and fix the drive in place with a hot glue gun.

However I discovered that purpose built caddies are available to fit the MacBook that take an HDD and are pin for pin replacement of the slot optical drive. Not as much fun as hacking but probably a better, more elegant solution.

The optical is a so and so to remove, being buried under cables, Bluetooth and WiFi aerials and sundry other ‘stuff’. Once out it is relatively simple to put the HDD in the caddy, it just clips in place, and then reverse the disassembly process.

I was mightily relieved when the MacBook passed it’s POST with the customary ‘bong’ and the two drives appeared on the desktop.

This is a serious mod, not for the feint of heart or those concerned about warranty. It is completely reversible if needed. It took me about an hour to complete. Small pozi and torx drivers are required plus tweezers and needle nosed pliers. Static mat is a good precaution. I photographed the items as I removed them as a aide memoir when reassembling.

(This was easier than disassembling an iMac to clean out the fans of cat hair.)

The MacBook Pro with the Optical Drive removed.

The Optical Drive caddy with the 160 G HDD fitted ready for insertion.

This is a big improvement, I now have working sound! WiFi is more stable.
Looks like the 10.7 Lion is now at a point where I can recommend the upgrade.

This particular model just dropped in price again so it’s a good buy.

I use it for reading books, music and as a BIG calculator.

The Andorid OS is a little dated but I will investigate hacking it and putting the Ice Cream Sandwich on it in due course.

If you are considering installing on an existing Mac? WAIT until the first update has been released.

If you have a MacBook with the earlier style of trackpad and separate mouse button then you will not get the best mousing experience so maybe wait until you upgrade your computer. Lion needs a multitouch trackpad or Magic Mouse to work really well.

There are two issues that I have. These are reported elsewhere on various forums so it’s not just me and I have submitted bug reports to Apple.

1) The sound controls do not work on the internal speakers. There is a work around in place. Plug in an iPhone headset into the headphone jack, wait a few seconds and unplug. Speakers then work correctly.

2) The WiFi does not always come back on after sleeping the computer. The work around for this is not to sleep but to shut down the computer.

Hopefully Cupertino will get these addressed ASAP.

Otherwise it’s a nice OS and so far I am quite happy.

The killer feature is the auto save. It’s worth the asking price for this function alone. Launchpad and Mission Control are very clever, The Finder is improved so it’s all good.

My preferred method of ‘upgrade’ is to clone my hard drive then nuke and pave. In English: Format the drive and do a clean install then add my apps and documents back in. Often faster with less problems. If it all goes wrong then you can just reverse the process and clone the drive from the clone.

I finally took the plunge and bought a Crucial M4 SSD. The price has really dropped on SSD but they are still 3 times the price of a spindle drive.

Just to make it more interesting I decided to install Lion at the same time that I went solid state. There is method in this madness, if it all went down the pan the whole thing is reversible by refitting the old drive.

On the day that Lion was released I downloaded the app. I made a bootable flash drive from the app, then (deep breath and throw the warranty out) opened up my MacBook Pro and swapped out the drive.

Booting from the flash drive was easy, a very fast format of the SSD and I was installing Lion. It took about 20 minutes.

Once installed I used Migration Assistant and Time Machine Backup to pull over my personal files. I downloaded all my apps off the web so that I had the latest 10.7 compatible versions.

I am good to go. All quite painless.

The MacBook Pro boots ridiculously fast with the SSD.

From cold to fully operational is 20 seconds. If I let Lion reopen all my apps it slows to 25 seconds.

Awesome! Go do it people, SSDs rock!

This is a vast improvement over the Blackberry Curve.

Both QWERTY keyboard and a touch screen.
Battery lasts for days.
3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB. All the connectivity one could wish for.

And one killer feature: I can tether it to my MacBook Pro and share it’s internet connection. This was the winning feature that had me signing up for a £20 per month contract. A permanent dongle in my pocket for internet on the move on my Mac.

The only downside so far is I can’t find a case for it anywhere. I want a flip case with a magnetic catch but no one seems to make one. I think it may be too new!

The RIM website claims 19 days of standby and 4.5 hours of talk time on the Curve.

I ordered it from O2 and a few days later it arrived.

I charged the new phone, set it up and put it on my desk. A few hours later the battery was at 5% and the phone was getting all upset. I thought it was just a new battery and it needed a long charge, so I plugged it and left it on all night.

Next day after six hours it was down to 5% again. I must be doing something wrong here I thought so read all the instructions, turned off all the apps, turned of Bluetooth, 3G, the backlight, push email. So now my Blackberry was as crippled as a standard phone.

Fully charged it lasted 8 hours.

I called O2 and complained. O2 promised a replacement phone by the next day. The following day it duly arrived.

To save my typing just re-read the first few paragraphs.

Replacement phone sucked like the original.

A quick search on the web reveals that ALL smart phones suck and the battery life is terrible.

So where to the manufacturers get these standby and talk times from. Are they just making it up?

I have invoked the 14 money back guarantee that O2 offer and the phone is all boxed up to go back. Which leaves me with just one problem.

What phone do I get?

Big news story: Apple Mac have had a skirmish with some malware.

The doom and gloom people (Translation: The people who sell anti-virus software) have been predicting that the Mac platform will drown under a tsunami of malware any day now, and this is just start.

Well they have been saying that for ten years and I am still waiting.
Truth is that a Mac malware is so rare that it makes headline news.
A Windows attack is so common no one notices.

There has been one attack per year since OS X was launched, so that about 12 items.
Windows runs at 12 Million and counting.

Draw your own conclusions.

Meanwhile Apple have patched the problem so it’s business as usual.

So I installed the update. It really hacks me off that several of the sites I maintain will not do automatic updates. The manual process is tedious on a slow connection.

But we are all up to date. All NINE sites!

NINE – WTF! How did I get to be webmaster of nine sites.

The interesting feature is that she got infected while searching for a recipe for couscous. Pretty innocuous search. So it just goes to show you can get caught looking for the most innocent stuff.

What I find annoying is that she has McAfee installed, all up to date and protecting her from malware. NOT.

This particular infection wrote three entries into the registry, subverted downloads to 127.0.0.1, changed the home page on IE and made IE the default browser. It also stopped McAfee from running and blocked my attempts to install Spy Bot.

I thought Windows Seven was good at stopping this type on nonsense? It asks permission to do almost anything on the PC, boxes pop up if you try to install new software – “are you sure you want to do this?” But somehow all this protection was completely bypassed.

I am very disappointed Microsoft, and livid at McAfee.

You know the answer to the problem by now I am sure.