**Update** – We have been digging deeper and it is now appearing that the AirPort Extreme Gigabit model is picky about patch cables. After further testing we were able to narrow it down to the patch cables causing the AirPort Extreme not to link at 1 Gb. We tried both custom made Cat 5e patch cables and pre-made patch cables with and without molded ends.

Cable Specs that we had issues with only 100 Mb Link Speed:

• E204816 CM UTP 24AWG 4PR ETL Verified to TIA-568-B.2 Category 5e Patch Cable
• E154502 24AWG CMR Verified Category 5 Patch Cable AWM FT4

Cable Specs that connected at 1 Gb Link Speed:

• CSA Type PCC FT4 LL80671 ETL Verified to TIA/EIA 568A ISO/IEC 11601 Cat 5e
• CSA 219561 FT1 Verified Category 5e UTP TIA/EIA-568B.2 CM 4PR

All cables have 4 pairs of wires terminated and are configured as straight through patch cables (not cross-over cables).

I plan I hooking the patch cables up to our cable tester to see if there are any differences shown by a cable tester…

While at the local Apple Store today to purchase a new iMac I bought two of the refreshed AirPort Extremes with the “Gigabit Ethernet” specs on the box. The Apple Store Employee actually had to go get them out of the back as they were not on the floors yet. Probably to clear stock of the 100MB version for the people not aware of the hardware refresh.

The specs on the outside of the box clearly state the following:

Interfaces

• One Gigabit Ethernet WAN port for connecting a DSL or cable modem
• Three Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports for connecting computers or network devices
• USB port for connecting a USB printer or USB external hard drive
• 802.11 wireless

First thing I noticed different is the icon that shows up in the AirPort Utility as seen below:

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So, we sat down last night to do some testing on the final release of VMWare Fusion. For the test, we used a Mac Pro Dual 2.66 with 5GB of memory. We wanted to do some speed test to find out how VMWare Fusion performed against its more mature cousin Parallels. The test was done with Windows XP Professional SP2 and included the following items:

Time to install from first boot to the desktop showed up for the first time.
Time to reboot with a clean OS install
Time to suspend the machine with a clean OS install
Time to boot with a clean OS install
Time to wakeup from a suspended system with a clean OS install

Keep reading to see the results

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Apple today released iTunes 7.3.2 not much detail on the Apple site as to what has been updated. Below is the information from the readme file in the 7.3.2 dmg.

What’s new in iTunes 7.3.2
With iTunes 7.3, you can now activate iPhone service and sync it with your music, TV shows, movies and more. Also, you can now wirelessly share and enjoy your favorite digital photos from any computer in your home with Apple TV.

iTunes 7.3.2 provides bug fixes to improve stability and performance.

Download seemed slow through software update, so I tried downloading right from iTunes software download and it was much faster…

Microsoft will delay the release of Office 2008 for Mac until mid-January 2008, representatives of the company’s Macintosh Business Unit announced Thursday.

The long-awaited Intel-native Office, featuring programs such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage, was originally scheduled to be released later this year. Instead, Microsoft said it hoped to release Mac Office 2008 to manufacturing in December, which would allow it to release the product at the January 2008 Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.

The Microsoft  the official weblog for the Office for Mac team at Microsoft (a.k.a the Macintosh Business Unit, or simply MacBU) had the following to say.

We announced today that Office 2008 for Mac will be released to manufacturing (“RTM”) this December, which will allow for retail availability in the US in mid-January (planning for Macworld), and allow us to deliver Office 2008 to our volume license customers and global customers in the first quarter of 2008.

We had hoped to deliver the product in the second half of 2007 and as you know might imagine, this was a tough slip for us. Moving RTM to December means you, our customers, won’t have our product this year, and I am very clear a lot of folks are eagerly awaiting Office 2008. Slipping delays when our team can move on to our next release of Office for Mac – we’re working to get releases out on a more frequent basis, delivering more good stuff to Microsoft Mac customers more often.

As tough as it is, I firmly believe that this slip is the right call for MacBU. Delivering Office at the right quality level is super important to the entire team and to Microsoft’s long standing commitment to the Mac platform, and it was clear from our June and July quality checkpoints that no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t release our product in time for the Christmas season with the kind of quality we wanted.

We’re in an “all hands on deck” mode right now to ensure Office 2008 gets finished on time, and so you will not see final versions of our RDC client or file format converters until sometime after we ship Office.

Starting in September, we are planning a series of “sneak peeks” to show you more of the features and functionality of this release. I’m very pleased that we can soon start sharing more of what the team has been up to – stay tuned.