"Hitachi 250GB Notebook SATA Hard drive for $89.00 after rebate
250GB Hitachi TravelStar 5K250 5400RPM SATA w/8MB Cache - now $119.00
But making it even better, purchase one or more of these from us between now and 3/12/2008 and Hitachi will kick you $30 back per drive, up to 5 drives per household, via a super simple mail in Hitachi Rebate.

If you need more hard drive space for your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or Mac mini Intel - this is the best deal ever on a 250GB notebook drive. Drives are brand new with 3yr Hitachi Warranty.
This and other deals are of course found on the XLR8yourMac Reader Specials page!
Best Regards,
Lawrence R. O'Connor
Other World Computing "

" I saw the note about font problems in Powerpoint 2008. (Yesterday's news page post on Powerpoint 2008 Font Issues (3rd-party fonts)) That is not the only problem. Word 2008 is not compatible with Endnote, a reference manager used for scientific publication and grant writing. Without a reference manager Word 2008 is completely useless for publication work and has absolutely no advantage over Pages or Neooffice for which reference managers are lacking anyway. Cite while you write is an absolute must and the single reason why people in education/science with Macs use Word. That also means that there is currently no intel native word processor for Mac OSX suitable for academic work.
Also no VBA support in Office 2008 so Excel PC compatibility is broken too. Look at the price of this crippled office suite. I think MS will stop support for Office Mac very soon entirely since the returns for this rip off will be disappointing - intended or not.
-Chris "

I doubt they'll do that but that's just my opinion... I read the other day there's an update to Mac Office 2008 due next month... I wonder if the update will address issues some have seen like Fonts, Importing from some older Entourage versions and surprisingly poor performance for some Excel tasks. (ref: reader's previous article here on Mac Excel 2008 vs Excel 2004)
Here's another comment on the lack of VBA support:

" Although I didn't know about the font issue in PowerPoint, my big, enormous gripe with Word 2008 is that it won't run VBA macros.

I do a fair amount of document editing, and have a couple of off-the-shelf and custom macros that help me clean up extra garbage in preparation for export to InDesign (or Quark, if needed). None of these macros work in Word 2008, and they're pretty critical time-savers for me, so I'm back to using Word 2004.
What a pain.

And, for what it's worth, I don't think the new versions of Word or Excel load or run particularly faster on either of my Intel iMacs than their Office 2004 equivalents did under Rosetta.
-Marc C. "

See doc linked above on Excel 2008 (native/univ.) vs Excel 2004 (running under rosetta) performance... surprising, but maybe they'll address some of this in future updates. (Not taking MS's side but first releases of most any software has its problems - but again for my (light) needs, much lower-cost options have sufficed.)

"OWC ANNOUNCES 4GB UPGRADE KITS FOR NEW MACBOOK & MACBOOK PRO CORE 2 DUO MODELS
Upgrade to 4.0GB for Less than 1/4th Cost of the Apple Factory Option
February 27, 2008, Other World Computing (OWC) http://www.macsales.com, a leading Mac and PC technology company, announced today that it is offering 4GB Memory Kits for Apple's newly announced MacBook and MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo models, which began shipping yesterday, February 26, 2008. OWC is providing memory for these new MacBook 13" 2.1GHz/2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Models and MacBook Pro 15" & 17" 2.4GHz/2.5GHz (including 2.6GHz optional configuration) Core 2 Duo models. OWC memory is available in modules and kits of up to 4.0GB for these models as well as the previous MacBook Pro models.

OWC is an Apple Developer Connection Premiere member and its memory upgrades meet Apple's electrical and mechanical design requirements. OWC maintains an active state-of-the-art test lab to ensure the highest product quality and reliability and provides a lifetime of high-performance reliable operation backed with a Money Back Guarantee and OWC's Lifetime Advance Replacement Warranty.

OWC's 4.0GB Memory Upgrade Kits are available immediately, priced at $95.99 (configured as two 2GB memory modules). Additional savings are also available for customers who take advantage of OWC's trade-in program which provides $20 cash back for the trade-in of two 1GB modules.

For more information on OWC MacBook & MacBook Pro Memory Upgrades, see:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/MacBook/DDR2/Upgrade
For information on OWC's full line of memory upgrades for Apple Computers see:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/
And, to see OWC's memory test benchmarks on multiple Apple models using realworld applications..."

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