One of my newest toys is this cool piece of running technology from Garmin. Basically it’s an oversized wrist watch, with builtin GPS, and lots of useful features for running and other sports.

For all its clever features, there’s really only one that I use – the Virtual Partner feature that lets me run against one of my previous runs. I just pick a previous run as my Virtual Partner, and the Forerunner shows me how far ahead or behind my ghostly other self I am. It’s definitely a weird feeling when you’re only 10 feet ahead or behind your Virtual Partner.

I pretty much exclusively run alone, and having a Virtual Partner is good motivation when I’m out on a run. And he doesn’t mind if I’m feeling fast or slow that day – I can just run at whatever pace I want and he doesn’t complain. When I am slow, at least it’s only myself on a better day that I can’t keep up with.

One important tip – if you own a Forerunner, resist the temptation to set a really fast run as your Virtual Partner. It’s only odd days that your body is up to running a personal best, and attempting to stay with a hard pace on a normal day will be unpleasant and possibly dangerous. A fast but comfortable run seems work for me.

If you’re a regular runner and enjoy your gadgets, it’s worthy of your consideration.

At the start of March, I posted my thoughts on the new Intel Mac Minis. I finally gave into temptation, and purchased the Core Solo model with 1Gb of RAM a couple of weeks later.

Having used it for almost a month, I’m ready to give my considered opinion. Please bear in mind that it’s being used in my living room for media playback, rather than as a desktop system:

Negatives:

• Price – it’s just a little bit too expensive, especially when you add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and more RAM. Either drop the base price, or the price of the upgrades
• The WiFi isn’t brilliant. I’m getting better results using a Belkin bridge connected to the Ethernet Port on the Mac mini
• The Front Row remote is a little bit too simple, and I’m not convinced that it’s particularly well made
• For compressing video content, the Core Solo processor is a little on the slow side
• The 40Gb disk is very easy to fill up. Unfortunately my wifi network doesn’t quite seem to cope with playing remote DivX files via VLC
• Front Row seems like a bit of a hack at times. No way to randomly shuffle a specific music playlist is a grave ommission, and I’ve also managed to crash Front Row a couple of times by turning on Visualisation through Salling Clicker while Front Row is running
• The DVD Player doesn’t have full aspect ratio control, and VLC (where you can control aspect ratios) currently has less than perfect DVD playback
• The Apple Bluetooth Mouse that I bought doesn’t seem to track very well. Might have to find a replacement

Positives:

• It’s incredibly silent and the form factor is amazing
• The DVI output into my Pioneer plasma TV looks fantastic
• FrontRow is a joy to use, despite its occasional bugs
• Much as I like my Squeezebox, having full iTunes on a plasma TV is great
• iPhoto Slideshows on a plasma TV with the Ken Burns Effect are gorgeous
• iTunes visualisations look great on a large screen
• Salling Clicker turns my Dell X50v into a killer bluetooth remote. A total bargain for $23.95 (assuming you own a compatible PDA or phone)
• 1Gb seems to be enough RAM for use as a media centre

In summary, although it has a few issues, and is far from cheap, I’m pretty happy with my Intel Mac mini. 1Gb of RAM and the Core Solo were the right choice to make, although I wish I’d bought a slightly larger hard disk. My Squeezebox will soon be on its way to a new home (to be fair to Slim Devices, I wasn’t really using all the advanced features that the Squeezebox offers).

Once Apple sort out PVR functionality and HD content via the iTunes store, they’ll have a great media product in the Mac mini. The current Core Duo system also makes a lot of sense as a premium desktop, assuming that you already own a monitor.