It’s that time again. I bought a new laptop for my business when my home-made desktop died in 2004. It was in the middle of a project, so I needed a new computer immediately. I went to Costco and bought an HP Pavilion dv4000 – which I have been very happy with. It was a good price, and it’s been reliable, has good battery life, excellent graphics… Now it has become slow, there are several glitches in my software, and a crack in the top of the case on the back of the display. So it is almost 5 in human years – what is that in computer years? According to this web calculator – 20 years. So I could wipe the thing and rebuild it and probably get another good year out of it. That would take me a couple of weeks probably – I could be functional in a day or two. But being a pregnant mother of two kids under 5, I have to work in increments of an hour or so…

So I am considering now as the time to finally become a Mac shop. I’ve always loved Macs, but have always been too cheap to own one. Way back when I did tech support for ARCO, 3 or 4 of us could man the phones and support our whole company using Macs. When we converted to a PC shop, we had to double our staff on the phones and still had trouble keeping up. We thought it might be just the pain of the transition, but the phone support traffic never died down  – even on into a couple of years past the migration. Macs are reliable.

And they are hard to beat when it comes to graphics.

They are slick in design, sleek in software, almost impervious to viruses…

Mac users are almost cult-like in their loyalty. Which means they love them. There must be good reason, surely?

So why have I waited so long to switch? It’s not just the expense – it’s also the software. I have already purchased the software I need for the PC platform. And there are tons of free apps out there that I use that aren’t written for the Mac.

But now the time has come where I need to upgrade my laptop AND my software… So I can make the jump.

Here is what I’m considering:

• 2.4GHz MacBook Pro 15.4″ with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz / 2GB RAM / 250GB Hard Drive / NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT / SuperDrive / iSight Webcam / Bluetooth / Extreme WiFi / Mac OS X Leopard- $1,849 from JR.com
• Switch my Adobe CS3 Design Premium to CS4 Web Premium for $440 (offer lasts until April 30, 2009) on a Mac platform – or just pay the fee to switch my current CS3 to the Mac platform ($?)
• Get iWorks 2008 $79
• Switch from Microsoft Money to Quicken online for free
• Use something like Billings 3 Professional from http://www.billingsapp.com for $39.99 (this is a Mac application)

I’m not sure if I’m thinking of everything I need, but that is the basics to keep me going. So that total is about $1,968 (or $2,408 if I upgrade to CS4).

If I were to upgrade my current situtaion and stay PC:

• A new HP Pavilion 2.4GHz / 4GB RAM / 320GB Hard Drive / Geforce 9600M GT / Blu-Ray / Webcam / 802.11AGN / Bluetooth / Vista Home Premium 64-Bit from JR.com would run me $1,150.
• Upgrade to CS4 for $440
• Upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007 Professional upgrade $270

Total $1,860. If I don’t upgrade to CS4 or Microsoft Office, then just the $1,150.

Found a few tricks when using Kimili Flash Embed to embed a Flash Movie… If you want a skin on there and you want to be able to use the full screen mode:

1. In your Flash player, go to Window/Properties/Parameters, and set your skin to the absolute path. For example,  http://www.vcfm.net/backup/video/SkinOverPlayStopSeekFullVol.swf

2. On Scene 1, Frame 1 (or wherever is appropriate for your movie), put the following actionscript allowing it to access the skin:
Security.allowDomain(“http://vcfm.net/backup/video/SkinOverPlayStopSeekFullVol.swf”);
//this is the parent domain of where your SWF file is located
//this is going to allow access to the domain specified

3. Republish and repost the SWF

4. If this is a default skin, go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS3\en\Configuration\FLVPlayback Skins\FLA\ActionScript 3.0\ and locate the source file – in my example, SkinOverPlayStopSeekFullVol.fla (if it’s not a default skin, be sure to give your custom skin permission as in the following step).

6. Open the source, and insert the following code in the ActionScript:
Security.allowDomain(“*”)
//You do not have to allow all domains. If you know the specified domain you are trying to access simply insert your url

7. Publish and copy the new SWF to your location

8. If  you want to be able to use the Full Screen mode, you’ll need to tell Kimili you want that – in my example:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.vcfm.net/backup/video/kevinifmf.swf"  allowfullscreen="true"/]

Thanks to Nicole for this tip: http://nicole.cfwebtools.com/index.cfm/2008/8/1/Error-2044-Unhandled-skinError-textError-2121-Security-sandbox-violation