O'Reilly plus Microsoft redux

Wow so this is the future of the Microsoft Press under O'Reilly? Note the AppleMacbook and Iphone front and center. Not sure if the brand clash is intentional but pretty sure someone is angry in Redmond.

Party Pack!

My UPS notification came on Thursday. My "party pack" is on its way! The contents of which are intended for my Windows 7 party.
The alleged items in the box;
win 7 ultimate "Steve Ballmer signature edition"
Win 7 64 bit upgrade disk
Win 7 playing cards
10 Win 7 tote bags
Win 7 napkins (no table cloth?)
a Win 7 puzzle
Win 7 balloons
and a poster.

There may be some other stuff as well. If there is it slipped my mind.
I had originally intended for my party to be a "Win 7 does music production party".
Instead I think I will make it more a Win vs Mac party. I have a mac mini running 10.5.5 and my Lenovo laptop running Win 7 RC. They both have the same Intel 945 chipset, almost identical cpus and ram. The laptop has a much bigger faster hard drive though.
The laptop shreds the mac mini! It can't be just the hard drive. The Mac mini is'nt just slower, its agonizing!
I think it will also be interesting to see the differences and similarities between the two.
BTW I snagged the photo of the box from another fellows blog. Interesting story. He went to the Win 7 House Party website and tried to sign up as a host. Apparently his tiny Carribean nation was not represented! He wrote Microsoft about this (or emailed I am not clear) and was sent a full party pack! So even though he isnt officially hosting a party he seems to be among the earliest folks to receive their party packs!
It also bears mentioning that some people are selling theirs on ebay. Not very sporting, but not surprising.

H4N, Windows Party

So I made it to the finals for the windows party. Then because I completed the "finalist" steps immediately after receiving the confirmation email, I was apparently confirmed as a party host just by virtue of my promptness.
The theme of my Windows 7 release party is "Windows 7 for Audio Production: ready for prime time?" I will be running my RTM candidate version of win 7 with Sonar 7 and Cubase 4 audio applications.
check it out if you are interested. Feel free to bring some chips and dip.
http://www.houseparty.com/party/183483

In more annoying news I noticed just recently that ZOOM/Samson does not offer a Macintosh driver for the H4N portable audio recorder. So if I decided to upgrade to a Macbook I would have to boot to Windows in order to access the device? This is annoying as I had hoped to use Logic on a Macbook. Part of my long range plan for upgrading my audio production facility. So now if I want to rock Logic on a Macbook I will be buying a 3rd audio interface!