I've never used a Boxee Box, but I generally find Boxee itself on a Mac to be rather disappointing. The plug-ins for Netflix and Pandora, etc, just don't work as well as I'd like them to, and I don't love the navigation system for my shared media.

What does the Boxee box do that Roku doesn't? Stream shared media? I haven't used a Roku since back when it was Netflix-only, but it looks pretty amazing right now.

Edit: I think if you got one of the high-end Rokus and combined it with this you could do pretty much everything the Boxee box can do: [link] It appears the Roku system has become much more hackable since I had one. If I didn't currently have both a Media PC and a Blu-Ray player that can stream video and netflix, I might have to buy one!

The one appealing thing Boxee does that Roku doesn't appear to do, is have a (limited) browser. So my thought being, I could always link to programs on the network sites.

Search for other private Roku channels. There's definitely some that let you view content from CBS, etc. Either box, you'll probably want to pay for Hulu plus.

The thing (yes, highly technical term) I used for unzipping files has expired.

Anyone know where I can download a free program that does this, that's easy to use for a person who refers to it as a "zip thingie."

Mac or PC? Most operating systems these days come with a simple zip/unzip utility.

I'm using 7-Zip [link] on Windows.

PC, and mine did too, but now it wants me to pay for it.

I'll look at that, Ginger: thanks.

Question: I've had my HP laptop for maybe four years, and it's started shutting down every couple of days, I guess because of some issue with the fan. (I can hear it revving for a while before it apparently overheats and shuts down.) It is worth trying to get it fixed, or is it just time for a new one? This is basically what happened with my last laptop, on about the same timeline. I don't have any other issues with the performance or anything.

7-Zip is great. It's one of the first programs I install on any new computer.

If you can replace the fan yourself it might be worth it (be prepared for that to take some time and caution), the last laptop fan I bought was only $40. I expect it might be awfully costly to have someone replace it though.

In celebration of getting a new job and still having almost all my severance left, I just ordered myself a Lenovo laptop. It's got one of those little nub thingies in addition to the touchpad. I always sort of liked that mouse-pointing method. Unfortunately, I paid a little extra for a 9-cell battery instead of the standard 6-cell and that will delay it. Since I don't intend to use it plugged-in, I figured it was worth a little more wait. The other customization was taking a zero cost option for 4GB as one DIMM instead of two DIMMs so I'll have a memory slot free. It's nice they give you a choice there.

I'm at our satellite office moving computers around and I have just discovered that one of our $8000 Final Cut Pro edit stations is connected to a trackball mouse.

I realize that we just had the "but it still works!" conversation in Natter, but DUDE. IT IS 2011. YOU CANNOT SERIOUSLY BE USING THIS MOUSE WITH THIS COMPUTER AND BE HAPPY WITH IT. (I have now requested 10 new optical USB mice for this office. When they arrive, the trackball mice are going in the trash.)

I am also now very nearly (just have to schedule the exam) an Apple Certified Support Technician, which means I will soon be officially authorized to press random buttons until shit works. Woo hoo!