I’m a big fan of docks, stands, and in general, organization. I’ll spend a ton of money on getting everything in my workspace situation just right, then inevitably, something will change a few weeks later and I’ll tear it all apart again. One thing that I’ve always wanted for my Mac that my wife has for her Dell is a dock. Most PC docks look clunky and weird, and I always hoped for one that would be more Apple like, that would fit the theme of the device. Well, answering my hypothetical request is Zemno, with their DeskBook dock.

It hits many of the dock basics, with lots of additional ports, and even expandability. The ports also come out the rear of the device, which hides them in the process – a nice feature. Those two panels on the front of the DeskBook hold what they call ModBays, which can hold a hard drive, battery, or any number of other components that you can think of. Soon they’ll even have an internal iPod and iPhone charging dock for a bay.

But as neat as it is, it’s also pricey. Pre-orders list the thing at $599 for the DeskBook, then $179 for a 500GB drive and $149 for a battery. If you bought every accessory, you’d be at $927, which is just $72 under the price of a new MacBook and $272 under the price of a 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s also … ugly. PC docks are nice because you can push your computer into it and the wedge design keeps the keyboard accessible if you prefer to use it. This lifts the MacBook up a bit, making it look ungainly. The DVI port on the back doesn’t do much good either, because it uses USB to carry the video signal. And the biggest problem to me anyways, are the ModBays. From what I can tell on the site, they stick out a good two inches from the face of the DeskBook. Even if you wanted to type on the keyboard, you’d have to avoid these mammoth boxes.

If you really want a dock, and you have money to burn, this might be a good option for you. In my situation, as much as I want a dock, I’d rather spend that money on another computer instead of a computer accessory.

The revolutionary sound system has arrived! It has a name, it has a subwoofer, it has tweeters, it has wireless-integrated technology, it has superior sound, it has pure qualitative quality: it is the Sonos “ZonePlayer S5” music system.

In an age that has adopted digital music, the Sonos “ZonePlayer S5” cannot be overlooked, or go unheard! Sonos makes listening to digital music simple. For a party, turn on the “ZonePlayer S5,” and control the swinging songs via an iPhone or computer that is safely stashed away from the swaying party dancers and the clumsy fraternizers.

Sonos seems to bring to its company many of the amazing attributes that have made Apple so successful over the decades, minimalist design, functionality, quality, innovative technology and intuitiveness. As one opens the “ZonePlayer S5” packaging, that same mystique surrounding the minimal but attractive packaging of any Mac product takes over…yet it’s a Sonos.

The music player is sleek and small measuring less than nine inches tall, less than 15 inches wide and less than five inches from front to back; it fits almost anywhere. The “ZonePlayer S5” is a shining silvery gray, reminiscent of MacBook Pros and iMacs, and the minimalist design echoes the distinctive speaker set-up within, which contains five speakers: two tweeters, two speakers and a subwoofer.

There is no need to hook up a mp3 player or iPod to the Sonos music system, because the Sonos integrated program, for Mac’s and Pc’s, will allow a listener to access any music folder that is on a computer network, or iPhone. Simply install the software and plug in either a “ZonePlayer S5,” or a Sonos “ZoneBridge” to a router via an Ethernet cable (which is provided). The software disc quickly logs a user into the network and projects the listener’s music to the “ZonePlayer S5” (which is also backwards compatible with all Sonos products).

Once the “Sonos Controller” App is downloaded for free in the Apple Store, the iPhone, or iPod Touch, becomes a customizable remote control. One can access all of the music from the network, make play-lists, tweet their friends, change the volume, or access Internet radio from the palm of the hand (all of this can be done from a computer also).

Sign in to Pandora Radio, and listen to high quality customized radio stations for free on the Sonos “ZonePlayer S5” seamlessly. The Sonos Player is preprogrammed with Pandora Radio, and the album art from Eric Clapton’s “After Midnight Live” album will leap onto a display, along with the song title, song length, artist, and Pandora radio station name.

As a recommendation, the Sonos “ZoneBridge” is a near necessity to have with the “ZonePlayer S5,” as it allows one to take the player anywhere. The tiny four inch square device, the Sonos “ZoneBridge,” is an additional $99, and without it there has to be at least one S5 player hooked up to an Ethernet cable from a router (essentially keeping the player by the router); the entire Sonos system is based on this wireless technology. Though it might seem a drawback, with a single “ZoneBridge” in place, all of the actual players are then free to roam anywhere there is space and an open outlet.

The extraordinary tunes that soar from this unique surround-sound-like device cannot be put into words. The Sonos engineers put all of the necessary home audio components into a single cabinet design with the “ZonePlayer S5” and the result is a home run! The music sings, as though Sonos wishes to battle with Bose for speaker superiority, for the S5 has outstanding sound that stuns.

Where one player is a must have, two or more “ZonePlayer S5” devices is an effective way to provide top-notch audio throughout the home, without the mess of speaker wires, audio components, or even audio cables, because its completely wireless. It is true that the Sonos “ZonePlayer S5” is a bit pricey, retailing at $399, but this pays back tenfold once it is up and running, five minutes after opening the box. It is of the highest quality sound, and if one has a family, or multiple spaces where different music needs to play then multiple S5’s will truly provide a priceless experience.

When the Sonos “ZonePlayer S5” is in multiple rooms, then any iPhone or computer logged in to the Sonos devices can access all of the vast treasures of music and Internet radio. One can control the volume and songs of each room, individually, so go ahead and control an entire house, castle, mansion, or backyard with the palm of a hand!

Grade: A

Today’s Show: Adobe CS4, iPhone University, and “The Brick”

You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or…

you can listen to the episode right here: right here

In addition to that, you can also download the Apple Gazette Daily Widget and listen to every episode of the show right on your Dashboard. Click Here to download.

Boy do I hate the transparent Menu Bar in Leopard. Luckily, I got rid of it, and you can too!

All you have to do is click here to download a nice little freeware application that will wipe that transparent bar out of existence and give you the glorious return of the bar in all its Opaque glory.

For prolonged use, place your MacBook Pro on a flat, stable surface. Do not place your MacBook Pro on your lap or other body surface for extended periods of time. Prolonged body contact can cause discomfort and potentially a burn.

I would say that this should be a normal warning with just about any other notebook computer. Any electronic device should give off some heat, after all. However, the MacBook Pro is different in that it was designed to dissipate heat through the metallic body itself. IMHO, this is not a very good design idea, especially for a computer that’s supposedly assumed as frequently being used on the user’s lap.

The second generation, the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros, are supposed to run cooler than their first generation predecessors. But still, there is a tendency to be too hot for comfort. And I would say it would be a long time before Apple marketed their notebooks as “laptops” again.

A couple of colleagues of mine also went on their respective laptop shopping sprees almost the same time as mine, and snapped up more powerful Core Duo and Core 2 Duo machines. They wouldn’t go for anything with integrated graphics. It had to be discrete (from either ATI or NVIDIA), and it had to have at least 256 megabytes of video RAM. They chose to go with buld-to-order ODM/”whitebox” models rather than the major brands. To them, it’s a choice of specs/performance over brand/design, and they preferred to have full control of what peripherals their laptop featured.

I could understand that it’s because of our respective needs. I’m a writer, and my colleagues are developers and designers. They’re quite the avid gamers, too, hence, the need for discrete graphics. I could probably find a need for blazing fast graphics with a discrete GPU and non-choke multitasking with two processor cores sometime in the near future (meaning when Power-hungry Windows Vista comes), but I couldn’t bring myself to justify the added cost right now. Hey, I got the Presario for less than half the price my friends got their higher-end laptops. And the Mac? The cost is almost negligible–I practically just resurrected the Pismo from the dead. Now it runs Tiger pretty decently. So I can say I pretty much got a good deal.

Get a Mac

Thing is, I’d been goading people I know to go for Apple computers (especially laptops) for the longest time, particularly considering the price of the MacBook–which his even tad cheaper than the Windows-based laptops my good friends bought. Sure, comparing the specs, the MacBook would be lagging behind. But with some added RAM and perhaps a hard drive upgrade, it would already be on par performance- and price-wise, except probably for the discrete GPU (here’s where the more expensive MacBook Pro would excel).

However, the tech evangelist that I am, I have a low batting average when it comes to convincing people to get a Mac. One reason they cite for sticking to PCs is that they’re power users, and that Macs just wouldn’t satisfy their need to control just about everything that goes under the hood, in terms of hardware.

They reason that while Macs today can run Windows (which gamers would require, since most popular games today are Windows-only), one would be limited when it comes to having a choice of processors, hard drives, graphics adaptors, sound cards, and even the motherboard itself. You have a plethora of manufacturers and parts to choose from when you’re building, upgrading or modifying a PC. With a Mac, you generally have to stick with Apple-provided or approved hardware.

Defining the Mac “Power User”

So does this this mean that Macs are, indeed, not suited for the power users?

I wouldn’t exactly say so. This is because in general, Mac and PC users have different definitions of what it is to be a power user. Here’s something I found on LEM that’s been up for a few years now, but which I think still hits it right on the mark when it comes to defining the “power user” from a Mac and PC perspective.

We tend to define “power users” differently in the PC and Mac camps. In the Mac world, we consider power users to be the people who do a lot of Photoshop or video editing, and sometimes the serious gamers with tweaked out systems. We define power users by their applications more than their hardware.

In the PC world, power users run fast Pentium and Athlon processors, which are overclocked more often than not. They choose their hard drives, video cards, and other components based on performance. The goal seems to be having the best hardware, not productivity.

Using cars as an analogy, PC hardware users build tricked out hot rods while Mac users buy production cars and trucks to get the job done.

(Emphases are mine.)

It’s all about the applications, and it always has been so. It’s in how you use your computer, and not how powerful it is, that makes you a power user. You can have a top-of-the-line four-core Mac Pro, but if all you use it for is some web mail and document editing, then I doubt if you can be called a power user. In the same light, you can own a G4 Mac Mini, but if you use it to edit videos, manipulate photos, and even manage your servers using the command line, you would be considered a power user.

Dumbed-Down Computers?

Also, there’s this argument that Macs are for dummies because Apple computers through history have been comparatively easier to use than PCs (what an understatement, huh?). When PC users were running programs through a DOS command line in the 1980′s, Macheads were already using point-and-click graphical user interfaces with mice! When Windows users had to learn to tweak their registries and use DOS commands to fix their computers when they screwed up, Mac users could still count on the GUI to do all that.

However, with the introduction of OS X, this changed because of the UNIX-like nature of the operating system. Mac users thus began to enjoy the best of both worlds–the cool, intuitive graphical interface on top of a BSD core. And if ever there’s a need to tweak the innards of OS X, then there’s always the command line. Now beginners won’t have to deal with tweaking registry keys, and advanced users have that familiar command line to play and hack with.

It’s All About the Person

I would say that being a power user is also about the productivity. If you can get the most out of your computer in terms of work done, no matter the specs and the speed of the machine, then I would say you’re a power user. But if you have the fastest and most powerful machine in the world, but don’t know how to make heads nor tails out of it, then sorry–your computer is just another white elephant.

Still, command-line or not, Windows or Mac, I would say the definition of a power user should always be based on the person and not the computer. To expand on LEM’s car analogy, a power user would be like a race between Michael Schumacher driving a Volvo station wagon and an inexperienced driver on a Ferrari. Schumey has the driving prowess and skills to finish the race and get pole position at that (all while enjoying the view), while the newbie will most likely crash his speedster less than halfway through the race.

So who’s the power user? Look not under the hood, but behind the wheel!

According to our sister site, ForeverGeek, Apple has reduced prices of their low-end notebooks and iPods.

A White 1.83GHz MacBook with 512MB of memory, a 60GB hard drive, and a Combo drive can be had for $949; its cousin the White 2.0GHz MacBook with 512MB of memory, a 60GB hard drive, and a SuperDrive for $1,099; and the Black 2.0GHz MacBook with 512MB of memory, an 80GB hard drive, and a SuperDrive for $1,299.

The company’s supply of refurbished 4GB iPod minis has also shrunk, consisting of just Silver, Blue, and Green models for $99 each. Apple’s refurbished 6GB iPod mini is only available in Silver or Blue for $129 each.

Why go brand new if you can get almost the same thing for less? You still get the same one-year warranty (you can extend this with AppleCare). In some cases, after all, “brand” is more important than “new.”