The Live Indian Entertainment Blog

An apparently genuine MacBook Pro prototype that includes a built-in cellular modem has made its way to eBay. The laptop, circa 2007, reportedly has Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) installed, and the seller believes it will work with Lion (and it probably will). Unfortunately, although there's a SIM slot and the cellular modem shows up in the OS, the seller can't seem to get it to connect to data.

The seller, abhw752579, has 197 auctions under his belt and 100 percent positive reviews. The auction already has 64 bids and is currently up to $6,400 with 4 days left on the auction.

The machine was originally purchased by abhw752579 for parts, but after opening up the case he noticed that "this was no normal Macbook Pro: the circuit boards inside were bright red as opposed to the normal blue! [Apple prototypes typically use red circuit boards]"

"Further inspection found multiple differences from the stock version, most notably a feature never seen in a Macbook laptop of any kind: what appears to be a fully integrated cellular modem and SIM slot. There is an extendable cellular antenna located at the right top side of the display assembly (The antenna is marked with "Tyco Proto / #006" when slid out), and a standard size SIM card slot located underneath the memory cover on the bottom of the machine."

That said, abhw752579 then repaired the machine. It has a new 320GB hard drive, 2GB of new RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz Dual-Core Processor, and a NVIDIA GeForce 8600m video card with 256MB Dedicated RAM. The MagSafe power adapter is also new, and so is the battery, although is is a third-party battery.

It's not 100 percent certain that the Dynastream ANT2USB device shown in the actual is the cellular modem, though. Searching for that on the Web turns up posts from around the right timeframe, but referencing Garmin hardware. Clearly, however, there is a SIM slot, so perhaps someone with the right drivers can get it working.

Either way, how much would you spend for a one of a kind prototype like this?

There comes a time in each parent's life when they have to have "the talk" with their children. Sometimes, this video shows, the talk it not necessarily about the facts of life.

In this case, the video below shows "the talk" about desktop video cards. The foolish son is looking at an NVIDIA card when the video begins, but the father wants him to use an AMD Radeon HD 6990 video card (which has 2 GPUs and super-keen overclocking potential, the video says) instead.

"I thought I raised you better than this," the father says. In addition, don't forget, that "using an inferior graphics card can make you go blind," the video warns.

Interestingly, despite the fact that overclocking is made part of the video, in a "keen" way, the video ends by warning that damage caused by overclocking is not covered by a user's AMD warranty, even if the overclocking is enabled by AMD software.