Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Reviews category. Noteworthy entries are filed topmost.
L’Burger – The Gourmet Edition
I have not written any burger reviews in ages, probably since the review section of electroplastics.net was taken offline. Also, I have not been eating very many burgers at restaurants and at home I tend to BBQ steak when T eats her veggie burgers. So, there was a lack of motivation.
Recently we started going to the Healthy Haven to buy groceries; cannot afford to get all of our food there, but it is so much better than at the grocery stores. One of their proprietors is the Healthy Butcher, providing organically and locally raised meats.
On our trip there last Sunday I noticed that their burger patties looked really good, so I got myself their standard beef burger, and a maple duck burger. I enjoyed them so much, that we went there again today, so I could get some more and write a review.
T will join in for the veggie burger section.
Preparation
Of course you cannot forget your drinks: Today’s gourmet theme calls for something more sophisticated, so we chose a nice Lebanese red, the 2000 Heritage Grand Vin Bourgeois. It is the 2000 version of the second wine on this page.
On the sound track side we were lazy: The Prodigy – Invaders Must 
Die happened to be in the CD player.
To facilitate quick assembly we prepared our other ingredients before throwing things on the BBQ. The sauces today were Heinz organic tomato ketchup, chilli mustard from the Monschauer Senf Mühle, Willie’s Zucchini Relish (made by Strub’s) and Hellmann’s olive oil based mayonnaise. At the last minute we upgraded the mayonnaise to Pesto Mayo, by adding some leftover homemade Pesto and fresh ground pepper.
The locally grown organic tomatoes were cut and the organic lettuce washed. We nearly forgot to cut the thin whole grain buns.
While the BBQ was heating, the veggie burgers, Money’s Gardenburger (in the original variant), were rubbed with oil, and we un-wrapped the real burgers. This time I had gotten a slightly different variant of beef burger and an intriguing veal burger.
Cooking was a short lived chore: When the BBQ was at 300F, we threw the patties on. Four minutes per side for the veggie burgers, so I did the same to my meat burgers. The buns got to be on the heating rack for the last two minutes. One of the things that I always notice is that when you get high-end burgers they do not shrink very much during the process. Yay!
Assembly time called for quick processing to make sure the patties stayed warm. See the Construction Plan section for details.
Construction Plan
I find that the way you layer your burger can have some impact on what it tastes like. I generally prefer the following style of setup:
- ½ Bun – bottom
- Ketchup and mustard spread on bottom bun
- Burger – veggie or meat
- Relish spread on burger
- Tomato slices (2 for the small veggie burgers and 3 for the real ones)
- Lettuce
- Pesto mayo spread on top bun
- ½ Bun – top
T’s Tasting Notes
In my long experience as a vegetarian Money’s Gardenburgers have stood out as superiorly yummy and full of flavour, I prefer them over all the rest. Their veggie burgers are a balanced mix of veggies and grains, and they do not try to pretend to be something they are not. The condiments today were a perfect combination. The Pesto Mayo and the chilli mustard were a wonderful addition and mixed well in with the rest. I love L’s Pesto Mayo. The flavour combo was awesome, and the chilli mustard added a nice little kick afterwards. I enjoyed the thin buns as they hold the burger together well and they are the right amount of bread. Willie’s Zucchini Relish is my new favourite and a must on all burgers. This was a delicious, healthy alternative for the Sunday BBQ.
L’s Tasting Notes
First some general notes on the current burger variations:
I was very pleased with the buns; even though they are very thin, they provide excellent support and enough flavour to frame the burger’s taste. The distinct flavours of both the Pesto Mayo and the chilli mustard were present in the taste spectrum. 
I have also immediately grown fond of Willie’s Zucchini Relish; it is just so much more than a standard relish. Even though the thin buns did a very good job of holding the burger’s structure together, the third tomato slice tried to get away in both of my burgers. From a flavour standpoint of view, it was a necessity though to be able to balance the intense flavours of the meat. Sadly the amount of lettuce I provided did not actually seem to sway the sum flavour.
My faux pas of the day: I am not sure anymore which of the patties went into which one of my burgers, so I am at a loss to figure out the reason for the flavour difference between my two building blocks of modern cuisine. I would like to believe that the second patty was the veal patty, and will go with that assumption. So, the beef patty in my first burger provided a well balanced burger experience. All of the ingredients seemed very well balanced, and I really enjoyed that burger. Then I tried the second one!
The second burger, which I believe was the veal burger, was a whole different experience. Yes, the supporting flavours of the other ingredients were present, and I believe they provided a good balance, but the meat provided so much more flavour! It provided the right meatiness, with an extra taste of black pepper. It totally made my day!
The Players
T – Vegetarian, and first time burger reviewer. Kind enough to provide photographic support.
L – Omnivore, and veteran burger reviewer.
Disclaimer
This review was developed under the influence of above mentioned wine, DJ Food – A Recipe For Disaster and The Herbaliser – Blow Your Headphones.
Soon To Be Available – Blade Runner: The Final Cut
I have always liked the movie Blade Runner, it has quite the atmosphere and some very nice use of setting the shots. Not to forget some pretty decent acting as well.
Anyhow, I have never gotten around to picking up a copy for my library, and maybe I was right to wait. The review I just stumbled over for the final cut makes me think I know what I want for Christmas 
.
A few years later, in 2000, an effort was mounted to produce a legitimate Director’s Cut of the film, and to give it the elaborate DVD special edition treatment its fans had long sought. Some work was begun at this stage, but a variety of business and legal obstacles prevented the project from really gaining momentum. Eventually, however, the Blade Runner Partnership and Warner Bros. were able to come to an agreement that cleared the way for the effort to move ahead, just in time to celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary in 2007. An incredible wealth of material related to Blade Runner’s original production was unearthed from the vaults, including some 977 cans of original film negative. Much of this footage was scanned at 4K resolution (some of the 65mm effects footage was even scanned at 8K) and an extensive restoration was begun. Restoration producer Charles de Lauzirika worked closely with Warner and Ridley Scott to assemble the director’s ultimate version of the film. The result is Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which makes its debut this Friday, October 5th, in a limited theatrical run in New York (at the Ziegfeld) and Los Angeles (at the Landmark). It also arrives on DVD, Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD from Warner Home Video on December 18th (click here for all the details on the various versions that will be available on disc).
Sun Ultra 20 M2 Impressions
Lately, a few people have emailed me and asked what I think of the Sun Ultra 20 M2 (particularly the base model) compared to other AMD-based systems. I thought I’d collect my thoughts on the Ultra 20 M2 here, especially now that I’ve been using it for the past few months.
If you do decide to buy the base machine, you’re going to want to upgrade the video card (the onboard video is okay, but the quality isn’t great and it’s obscure enough that I’ve had problems with it and Linux). You’ll probably want to upgrade the RAM, too. Watch out, though — the Ultra 20 M2 takes unbuffered ECC RAM, which is expensive and hard to find.
If you want to add an extra drive to the Ultra 20 M2, it looks like you have to buy the drive from Sun; the Ultra 20 M2 uses proprietary drive sleds, and I don’t think you can order sleds separately. There are only two drive bays available in the Sun Ultra 20 M2, too, which will be an annoying limitation down the road (the Power Mac G5 has the same limitation, which at first didn’t seem like a big deal, but is incredibly frustrating now that both drive bays are full).
What do I like about the Ultra 20 M2? Well, I really like and appreciate the case; the Ultra 20 M2 has a well-designed case that’s a pleasure to work with because there’s a lot of room inside of it. Some of the standard features (like dual gigabit ethernet ports) are unexpected (especially on a machine as inexpensive as the Ultra 20 M2). Being able to install Solaris on an x64-based computer without worrying about hardware compatibility is great.
Overall, though, if you’re looking for an AMD-based computer to an operating system other than Solaris, you might want to give Dell-based AMD systems a serious look. They’re not as pretty as the Sun, but they’re cheaper and easier to expand (thanks to the fact that you can drop in components from your local computer shop).
Drobo Review
Engadget’s got a great review of Drobo, Data Robotic’s storage array / external hard drive enclosure. If you’ve already watched the Drobo demo video, this review might answer some of the questions the video raises (but doesn’t answer):
However, Drobo isn’t without issues. As advanced and advantageous virtualized storage is, for most users it’s going to be a pretty confusing experience, and that may never change. The guy who thinks his Drobo can handle having two drives yanked out at the same time is going to be in for a sad surprise. We thought our 1/3rd-full 1TB array would be totally happy about us yanking the smallest drive and upgrading it to something a bit larger — and it was, 7 hours later after rebuilding. Unfortunately, only adding new drives to empty bays is a fast process — upgrading existing ones can take a while, and be nerve-wracking if your array doesn’t have enough space to keep things redundant during the rebuild. And that’s when you’ll most notice the bright, blinking lights on the front of the unit, which can’t be shut off, even during normal use.
Overall it sounds like Drobo is a great first-generation product; really nifty, but not without its share of problems and missing features.
MacBook Pro Impressions
This summer I made some changes to my lifestyle and career direction and as a consequence of those changes I needed a new computer. My existing machine had been a 1.33 GHz 12″ PowerBook G4 and the one before that had been a 600 MHz 14″ iBook G3. My PowerBook had been a substantial increase in performance at the time, the G4 being a generation newer and more than twice the frequency, it wasn’t hard to choose between it and the iBook of the day for two reasons:
- The video card. At the time, the PowerBook was supported for CoreImage and the iBook was not.
- The size. My iBook being 14″ and 6 pounds heavy, it was quite the machine to lug around. At the time, I had been lugging it back and forth to class so the prospect of losing a couple inches off the frame and the accompanying 1.4 pounds was quite enticing.
So when I was looking at a new machine I seriously considered the MacBook, and it certainly has its pros and cons. The biggest confusing factor for is that the MacBook and MacBook Pro are just so damn similar, and yet there is a CDN $550 price difference. The CPU, Hard Drive and optical drive are all the same, and the size and weight are no longer that different.
Ultimately when I went to the store with the intent of settling for the MacBook (mostly for monetary reasons) my salesman friend Mark advised me to go for the MacBook Pro. It was a decision I’m glad I let myself be talked into.
Deciding: MacBook vs. MacBook Pro
Things aren’t that different today than they were when I bought my PowerBook. I still need a laptop that’s light, and I still want a laptop that is supported for all the features of Mac OS X (and will be for the next release or two).
Chances are that both the MacBook and MacBook Pro will fit that last requirement. Most of the features (2 GB RAM limit, 2.0 GHz CPU, DVD+/-RW) are the same, in fact the MacBook and MacBook Pro are only separated by a few features besides the video card. The screen, construction and size are the few that matter to me.
To start, the screen on the MacBook has a glossy finish. This style seems to be all the rage these days with proponents constantly telling me that the glossy screens are brighter, clearer and more colour accurate than the satin finish screens that still ship on the MacBook Pros. I tend to agree with people, that the screens are brighter, clearer and more colour accurate as long as there isn’t light shining anywhere near them. I like to work in my living room by big open windows and in coffee shops and outside under trees. In all of these situations there is a lot of light and a lot of glare and a lot of reflection off those glossy screens that renders them near useless, at least for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I hope they make an LCD one day that is brighter, clearer and more colour accurate than the current offerings, I just don’t think we’re there yet.
Another sticking point for me was the fact that the MacBook is made of plastic rather than the metal which encases the MacBook Pro. It’s not that the MacBook feels cheap, indeed compared to most PC laptops it feels incredibly sturdy and incredibly sleek, but compared smooth metal that I’ve become used to with my PowerBook the plastic MacBook just seems, well, cheap. Sure, it’s a metal frame and it’s sturdy as hell, but there is something about the aluminium case of the MacBook pro that just feels better and more professional.
The third and probably most important thing to me when considering laptops is the size. Not to put to fine a point on it, but I like my portable computers to be portable. This is the reason I’ve never seriously considered a PC laptop. Sure, you can get them small, but they often lack features that I want or need. Apple manages to make laptops that are small without sacrificing all that much in the way of features, and I like that.
My 12″ PowerBook was near the perfect size: 4.6 pounds light and fit into a shoulder bag with out much fuss. Today things are a little different in that I don’t need a machine to be quite that small anymore, but more to the point the MacBook doesn’t offer as significant a drop in size and weight over the MacBook Pro anymore: just under half a pound (vs. almost a pound before) and only an inch less wide and deep (vs. a couple inches narrower before). So while the MacBook Pro is a tad smaller and lighter, it isn’t the major selling point that it once was.
The one feature that really sets the MacBook and MacBook pro apart but isn’t of major concern to me, is the video card. The MacBook features an integrated Intel video card with shared memory while the MacBook Pro features a powerful ATI standalone card**.
The integrated card in the MacBook is a fairly powerful one (on paper one of the more powerful integrated cards ever released) but it’s still integrated and while I realistically I probably wouldn’t be using the ATI card to its full potential* it’s more likely that the ATI card will be supported for all the shiny new whiz bang features Apple will be introducing into Mac OS X now (such as CoreImage in Tiger) and in the future (such as CoreAnimation in the upcoming Leopard).
But, even knowing all this, I had still gone into the store with the intention of leaving with a black MacBook. I was going to settle, and that wasn’t sitting well with me. Luckily, Mark is a pretty good salesman and even more luckily for me he had a deal that I couldn’t resist. So instead of leaving the store with a shiny new black MacBook I left with a 2.0 GHz MacBook Pro with a 100 GB hard drive and 1 GB of RAM (which I upgraded to 2 GB almost right away, but that’s another article).
Aesthetics
The appearance of the MacBook Pro is pretty much exactly the same as the previous generation of PowerBooks. Aluminum case, rounded edges, ports on either side. Compared to my 12″ PowerBook though, it feels much more solid. I am not sure exactly what it is but as I mentioned previously this machine just feels like it’s put together better. There is little or no flex in the case when I pick it up and the aluminum has a smooth, sleek feel to it that somehow my PowerBook lacked (or maybe it was just the 18 months of my hands resting on the PowerBook).
Aside from how it’s put together though, the machine just looks cool. Everything from the way the Apple lights up on the back (which is more evenly lit than my PowerBook was) to the backlit keyboard (which looks a hell of a lot cooler in practice in a dark room than it ever did on a showroom floor). Indeed, the MacBook Pro is every bit the head turner that the PowerBooks were before it.
On the sides of the machine, as per usual, is where the ports are. The mere fact that the ports are on the side is one of the many little things that has always had me convinced that Apple thinks a lot harder about what they’re doing then most other manufacturers. Putting the ports on the side instead of the back makes them easier to access and simply makes more sense than having them in the back as the Titanium PowerBooks did and many PC laptops still do today. Many PC manufacturers have started putting ports on the side as well, but they generally speaking still have important ports like the power connector at the back which I find annoying and inconvenient.
The MacBook Pro 15″ lost the FireWire 800 featured on the 15″ PowerBook, and I’m sure irked some people but I haven’t missed it since neither my 12″ PowerBook nor my Windows machine has one either. If I had to complain about the ports I might say that this machine could do with a third or even fourth USB port, but it’s not a major issue.
Really though, the port worth talking about is the MagSafe power connector. I’ve only had this machine for a few weeks but the MagSafe connector has saved my ass no fewer than three times. I know you’re probably thinking “what the hell kind of moron is this guy?” Well, I’m the kind who just moved into a new space and has a mess of cables that get caught on chair wheels, feet, and boxes falling over. My PowerBook had sustained damage to the case where someone tripping on a cable brought the whole thing down off the surface it was sitting on so to say I appreciate the MagSafe connector is a bit of an understatement. Realistically it is an incredily simple little feature but it’s just one more thing that highlights just how much the hardware design team at Apple pays attention.
The 15″ screen on on my MacBook Pro is bright and sharp, and while I do miss the size of my 12″ PowerBook I must confess that I’m now unsure how exactly I got by with only a 1024 x 768 pixel display for the last five years (iBook and PowerBook). The bigger, wider display has increased my productivity in the last two months by a factor of about a million. Well, it’s not like I can really tell.
The keyboard is relatively unchanged from my PowerBook (or even the iBook before it) except that it’s backlit and it feels a little tighter. I haven’t had a chance to play with the new style keyboard on the MacBook, but I am accustomed to this one so to me it’s no big deal.
I will say though that the backlit keyboard, which I’d never before seen in action anywhere other than a showroom floor, is incredibly cool, and the photocell in the machine responds reasonably well when the room gets dark in automatically turning on the backlighting. My only complaints about it are that when the backlighting comes on I prefer it to be on 100% all the time rather than the variable rate that the computer calculates, and that sometimes the photocell gets a little bit confused in low light situations and it ends up turning the backlighting on and off and on again (and for those of you who are about to tell me, I already know about the keyboard buttons that control it).
In short, the outside of this is a beautiful and incredibly functional computer which boasts a few very nice feature updates over its predecessors (as in both the PowerBooks that came before it and my previous machines).
Performance
The Core Duo processor that powers the MacBook Pro represents a substantial increase in performance over the G4 in my PowerBook, but unless you’re living under a rock (or in denial) you already knew that. But what would an article on Geek Patrol be if I didn’t use it to pimp out Geekbench?
I Geekbenched my PowerBook G4 and my MacBook Pro and also found a G3 machine equivalent to my iBook (which yes, I still own but died just over a year ago) in the Geekbench result browser***.
Core Duo vs. G4 vs. G3 performance graph. Click image for bigger
When I upgraded from my iBook to my PowerBook, you can see that represented just over a 100% increase in performance. At the time it was great, but in retrospect the three year gap between my iBook and PowerBook should have represented a much greater increase in performance. Doubling the performance is a lot, but not when you consider the amount of time past and the fact that the PowerBook was only about double the frequency. For contrast, there was only 18 months between my PowerBook and my MacBook Pro and that upgrade represented a nearly 200% increase in performance with only a (roughly) 50% increase in CPU frequency.
The only thing holding this machine back now is that some of the apps I use all the time (ie: Adobe Photoshop) still aren’t universal and likely won’t be for some time, but even that is not as big a concern as it could be.
Rosetta performance graph. Click image for bigger
Even running non-native code, the Core Duo performs almost 50% better than my G4 did, and scores just under our 1.6 GHz G5 baseline result. In other words, I’m still seeing a respectable performance gain over my old machine and that ain’t bad.
Issues: Known, silly and Otherwise
So far my MacBook Pro has been basically issue free. Some programs run slow but I am sure that has more to do with those programs (ie: the non-universal ones) than anything else because most programs run blazingly fast.
It does get hot but this honestly isn’t surprising to me. This is my third Apple laptop and the third one that gets hot enough that it isn’t comfortable to use directly on my lap when it really gets going. The fan controller does seem to work a little more efficiently than it did in either of my previous machines; where the fans in my iBook and PowerBook rarely came on and when they did they did at full tilt, the fans in my MacBook Pro come on relatively often but at reduced speeds cycling up and down again as needed. As I understand it this is how my PowerBook was supposed to work but never did (even after the motherboard was replaced because the first fan controller died).
There is one issue that has cropped up which is purely cosmetic: the paint directly below the keyboard can be easily scratched off and is now a touch patchy. Now, I buy computers to use and not to look at so I personally don’t really care about paint scratching there. I will probably scratch the remaineder of the paint off that thin little strip and it should end up looking pretty much the same as it did before except a little bit shinier, in contrast to the slick matte finish of the rest of the machine that we’ve all come to know and love.
The area beneath the keyboard on my MacBook Pro with the spots where the paint scratched off highlighted. Click image for bigger
The last, and biggest, issue I have with the MacBook Pro is the lack of a dial up modem. Now, this isn’t a huge issue really because I spent most of my time in Vancouver and in Vancouver I have high speed internet almost everywhere I go. I do spend time in places other than the city though, and some of those places still only have dial up internet.
I know you can get an external USB modem for $60 CDN, but it seems somehow premature for a modem to not be included in a laptop. Say what you will about desktop machines, but portable machines are meant to go places and not everywhere has the best access to the internet. Feel free to dredge up arguments about the iMac and the decline of the floppy disk, but in my mind there is a difference between an antiquated storage medium that is barely big enough to hold the files that are being passed around and the antiquated networking method that’s still the only way to get online in the boondocks some of us have to visit.
Final Thought
I’ve been using this machine for over a month full time now and so far I freaking love it. Say what you will about “Rev A” hardware from Apple, but despite the very minor problems mentioned above this machine has been rock solid for me in basically every way.
My only concern really is that Apple might replace the Core Duo CPU with a Merom Core 2 Duo CPU sooner than later and that might sting a little bit; the performance difference aside, the jump to a fully 64 bit CPU would be a nice addition to the other features that make this machine future proof. Realistically I doubt it’ll be an issue though, as I’m sure this machine will last me well into the future. In fact I bet it will last me longer than the 18 months my PowerBook did.
In closing, the 15″ MacBook Pro is a fantastic computer and despite the threat of upcoming changes and the fact that I spent more than I originally intended to, it is a purchase I don’t think I’ll ever regret.
Notes
* I have a desktop PC I use for gaming and such.
** Aside: since ATI and AMD recently merged like two hippos in heat, will we continue to see ATI cards in Intel powered Macs? I’ve no idea, but it’s worth thinking about.
*** The iMac G3 I found isn’t exactly the same machine as my iBook G3 but it is the same CPU, the same bus speed and almost the same amount of RAM (my iBook had 640 MB vs. this iMac with 512 MB, but either way Geekbench only uses 100 MB). In other words, it’s not the same machine but it’s close enough for the purposes of this article.
The Geekbench results I used for this article can be found here:
- iMac G3 600 MHz Geekbench Results
- PowerBook G4 1.33 GHz Geekbench Results
- MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz Geekbench Results
- MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz Rosetta Geekbench Results
Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0
…wherein Micheal reviews Microsoft’s Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0.
SubEthaEdit 2.0.1
Have you ever wished you could work on a document with someone else at the same time? Do you think it would be better if you could not only do this easily on a local network, but over the internet as well? Then SubEthaEdit, by The Coding Monkeys is probably for you.
SubEthaEdit 2.0’s icon
SubEthaEdit is a redezvous enabled text editor. In a nutshell, it allows multiple people to view and edit a single document at the same time. How is this useful? Think of collaborative development projects, or of collaborative writing projects, or of any other project that could benefit from more than one person working on it at the same time.
Fourty-two Heads Are Better Than One
Programmed with emphasis on speed and effeciency, SubEthaEdit was a big hit when it originally debuted as Hydra. Being one of the first programs to utilize Rendezvous, it won the 2003 Apple Design Award for Best Student Product and O’Reilly’s 2003 Mac OS X Innovators Award.
Legal issues forced the name change from Hydra to SubEthaEdit (an homage to Douglas Adams) and Apple’s WebKit capability was added fairly early on. The essential features of SubEthaEdit have remained the same since version one: It’s a lean, mean text editing machine.
Features, Features, Features
SubEthaEdit may be lightweight in size, but it is a heavyweight when it comes features and speed. Version 2.0 has been completely re-written, adding many new features in the process. One of the key features is ability to have other users on your network (with Rendezvous) or remotely (over the internet) join in and work together simultaneously on a document. Seeing each other’s changes in real time and the ability to invite people to your documents by simply dragging their name from the Rendezvous or Internet windows to your document make collaboration simple and effective.
Sharing is done now with the newer “SEE” protocol which is 300% more effecient then the previous “Hydra” protocol. With the new protocol, it is even easier to get someone to join a document using custom URLs which look like this: see://hostname:port/document name. With greater integration with iChat and Mail to share documents more easily, split view and per mode preferences, version 2 allows people to work together more effectively.
SubEthaEdit includes a powerful extendable feature called modes. Modes let SubEthaEdit know what syntax you are coding in. If you choose HTML for example, then tags are highlighted accordingly. What’s new is that modes are now self contained, meaning new ones can easily be installed as they become available.
In order to make SubEthaEdit more versatile for diverse users, The Coding Monkeys have included full support for Unicode and Cocoa Services allowing you to expand what SubEthaEdit can do with such services as AntiWordService(allow the opening of Microsoft Word documents in any Cocoa application) or CalcService. Coupled with the ability to split the view in a single window and see multiple views on different parts of a document in different windows, SubEthaEdit has made it easy to enhance and see multiple parts of your document.
Also featured is SubEthaEdit’s support for Apple’s WebKit to display HTML pages as they are being created. New in version 2.0, you now have better control over the display, by being able to choose a refresh rate for the "delayed" preview, meaning that SubEthaEdit will update the Web Preview after approximately 1.5 seconds of inactivity.
Geeky Enhancements
Under the hood, SubEthaEdit has undergone a substantial change to make life for power users and developers easier.
Regular Expressions, abbreviated regexp or regex, are strings (in this case lines of text) that describe whole set of strings according to syntax rules. This adds the power to search your documents for, and replace, entire strings quickly and easily.
SubEthaEdit now supports the POSIX, POSIX extended, Emacs, grep, GNU, Java, Perl and Ruby flavours of regular expressions making it easy for any regular expression regular to use the regex mark-up flavour they are used to.
The new network protocol used by SubEthaEdit is based on the "Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol" otherwise known as "BEEP"or "bxxp", an open standard known for "connection-oriented, asynchronous request/response interactions based Internet applications".
With line ending conversion (a feature I personally like very much) I can now switch between the way lines are ended, thus being able to avoid weird characters showing up at the end of lines, which occasionally happens using other editors on other operating systems.
Lastly, blockediting, a more advanced but vastly useful feature, allows a user to change multiple lines of text at the exact same spot. The Coding Monkeys have an excellent video demonstrating blockediting on SubEthaEdit’s FAQ page.
Conclusions
SubEthaEdit in it’s entirety is extremely versatile, well written and exceptionally useful. Group collaboration may only be fully grasped when seen in person, just like wireless internet; it will change the way you work (or at least want to).
It’s not perfect for every situation, I am not sure I’d want to write a thesis using a straight text editor, but for programming in any language or writing anything collaborative it’s hard to beat SubEthaEdit. The biggest complaint I have is that in group collaboration when someone is working “above” you in a document, as they add or delete lines, it causes what you are working on to shift in your window. Also, some features that worked in version 1.x no longer work in 2.0, such as the cocoa word completion list key-command, option-escape.
As text editors go, SubEthaEdit is certainly a workhorse. It includes many features that the average user would want and many more that the average programmer needs, and at the same time it is not bloated. SubEthaEdit gets a 9 out of 10.
Links & Info
Free for Personal Use, $35US for a Corporate License
Requires OS X 10.3 or later
4 MB Hard Drive Space
SubEthaEdit Homepage
The Coding Monkeys
