The other day I was working on a word document and decided to email it to myself, purely so I could quickly access it via the Gmail site on a Windows machine as I didn’t have access to my USB Flash Drive. It wasn’t until today (three days later) I thought I would clear through my iPhone’s email and get rid of any old email, that I discovered something I never knew the iPhone could do! Okay Okay this may not sound like a great “Feature” and everybody may already know, but when I opened up this email containing the attached word document, the document there was in a box and had a Word “W” logo next to it. I tapped on it and the document opened! There it was, my word document viewable on my iPhone! (See images below)

I was even more suprised that it opened a .docx word file, as this even older versions of word cannot open these without the Microsoft Office Convertor pack installed. Whilst it was fresh on my mind, I began trying out other files to see what else I could read, below are my results…..

• Excel - Opened via Email attachment, but in a similar fashion to the Word file that the document was only viewable and no editing was possible.
• Powerpoint - Not readable on the iPhone, not suprising either to be honest. I personally wouldn’t have any need to open up a presentation on my iPhone although Businessmen may?
• Images - As I’m sure people already are aware, yes the iPhone can open images from an Email
• PDF’s - Surprisingly.. Yes they open on the iPhone. I tested this emailing myself a Magazine scan and man it looked great on the iPhones bright clear display! (see the images below)
• Music - When I tested this, I thought it was going to work as it recognizes the file and lets you open it, but you get an error message saying it doesn’t recognize the format, almost as if it thinks its opening a video clip.
• Video - .mov, .m4v tested so far and I get the error saying format not supported
• Archives - Again, I expected that the iPhone would not open archived files, because quite frankly, what use would it have, not like you could save the compressed files anywere is it!
• Text Files - Similar to Word Documents, text files open but you cannot edit them.

Finding out that the iPhone can handle these various files, most importantly, the Word and PDF files, is something that will come of great use to me. Since setting up my Gmail account up using IMAP, following the ever popular guide from Derek Punsalan (5ThirtyOne.com), I now have access to my Gmail Labels directly on my iPhone. Having access to these labels makes it possible to organize my email a hell of a lot better!

I decided to create a Label on my Gmail account, called “Documents”, to act as a storage point for my Emails containing attachments. Now on my MacBook, I have a number of files that I regularly use as reference, for example a PDF containing tutorials on Photoshop CS3, and to have these available whenever I need them via my iPhones Email would be very useful! By making a new label titled “Documents”, I have a place where I can now store these! So now when I need want to have access to a PDF or whatever I just email it to myself and move it into the “Documents” Label on my iPhone, then should I ever need to check something I can just open the Email up and wallaaaa I’m away!

Now fair enough, this may seem pointless to you, but for me, its great. Should I ever need to view these files I can wherever I am and if I need to forward these on to anybody, for example, a CV or important document, I can just forward the Email on as the file is already sitting there in an Attached Email! Beauty! Apologies for the poor quality images!

I have to admit, when I first purchased my MacBook, I was in the frame of mind that I would put both OS X and Windows on it. Much to my suprise I picked up the Mac way very quickly and I decided against Windows. After reading many blogs and reviews about how fast Windows really runs on the new breed of Macs, I felt it was time to take the plunge and experience for myself! Originally I had planned to put XP on as I figured it wouldn’t haul as much disc space as Vista would, that was until I discovered a program called vLite (short for Vista Lite). vLite is a sweet little program that allows you to customize your Vista setup by removing sections you don’t want or don’t need, cutting down the amount of disk space needed for the installation. It also allows you to make a setup that does all the work for you, meaning you don’t have to sit there and wait to click the bloody next button every 10 mins!

The reason I bring this up, is because a user like myself, who owns a MacBook, has limited amounts of space. My MacBook for example, has a 80gb hard drive built in, and I just couldn’t afford to allocate away 20gb to Vista. My solution was to use vLite to remove the majority of components from my Vista setup disc, and create a new Image that requires much less space. I ended up with a Vista Image that only requires 4gb, which if you compare to the recommended 15gb Microsoft state, its a huge difference!

The next part of my quest, was to get the damn OS on my MacBook without disturbing my current and perfected Leopard setup… I was very happy to find out just how easy it was not to mention how quick it installed! If your not aware there is this huge debate - do you use Boot Camp? or Parallels? Hhhmmm well for starters you need to ask yourself the question, Do I want Windows to run inside of Mac OS X (if yes then you want Parallels) or do I want it to run 100% on its own (if yes then Boot Camp is your answer)?

After researching into the two, I decided to go with Boot Camp, purely on the basis running Windows from startup would allow it to use all my machines resources, mainly the 1.5GB of RAM! Another plus point for me was the fact that Boot Camp is now included as standard on Leopard and if Apple are running the show, surely it should be a easy task to setup! Anyways, the following part of this post will just step you through installing Vista Lite via Boot Camp, so if Parallels was then answer for you then you will need Google to help you further, else read on.

So Boot Camp, if your running Leopard like me then head to your Applications->Utilities folder and you should see Boot Camp Assistant, get this cracked up and we shall begin! You are prompted by a setup screen, you will need to click Continue, then you will be asked what size you want to make your partition. This partition will be the one that Windows will be installed on, I am purely going to be using Vista for developer purposes and therefore don’t need huge amounts of space, just enough to cover the Vista setup files and to make sure it can run okay. In my case, with my Vista Lite setup that I created, I only decided to set aside 10GB of space, click continue, then sit back and wait for Leopard to create the new partition. Once this was complete you will be asked to enter the Windows setup CD and click on Start the Windows Installer.

Your Mac will reboot and strange as it seems the first time you see it, a Windows setup screen will appear and the machine will begin copying your setup files across! Now follow the steps below…

- Choose Custom Install, Upgrade will be disabled as it is not possible to upgrade

- Select and format the <BOOT CAMP> labelled partition

- Now select this formatted partition and click next (ensure that you do not select your Mac OS X partition)

Windows will now begin copying over the files and installing Windows, for my Vista Lite, this only took around 15minutes, I was really shocked just how quick it installed, the restart took its time and then I had to wait for it to load up Vista the first time but there it was running smoothly as expected (or should I say hoped).

So now you’ve hopefully got Vista on the screen of your Mac (Yes I know it doesn’t look as good as OS X does but try get past this) we need to install the drivers so that your hardware will all work, hardware such as your iSight, Audio, Wireless, Network Adapter, Trackpad. This may sound like a tricky job but Apple being Apple, they have yet again made it easy for us. First you will need to eject your Windows Setup CD, you will find yourself pressing the eject button on the keyboard and nothing happening, that is because the drivers haven’t been installed yet, you see my point? to get around this, open up Computer, and select the drive with the Windows CD in and on the top menu you will see ‘Eject’, press it.

Now, Enter your Mac OS X Leopard Setup CD, you should be prompted the usual Windows way asking what you want to do with this CD, make sure you select setup.exe. A setup will appear, follow the prompts you won’t need to change anything, just click continue then it will begin installing the drivers, at this point, let it do what its got to do, don’t start clicking away. When finished it will ask you to restart, do this as upon restart everything will be good to go! You will find that the screen resolution will correct itself also, this is because the graphics drivers have been installed too.

So the setup part is complete, a fully functioning Vista on your MacBook, kinda cool I think, and if you used to Vista Lite version like me, you will find that it runs really quickly, I have AERO running to with no problems, which I wasn’t sure would work! So you may be wondering how you go between Leopard and Vista when your machine boots, well by default Leopard will boot, but if you need to load Vista, all you have to do is hold down the Option key when the machine first powers on, if you do this, you will get two Icons on your screen one for Mac OS X and one for Vista allowing you to choose which one to load.

If for some strange reason you want Vista to load as default, then this can be done by first loading Leopard, and going to System Preferences. In here go to Startup Disk (see above) and highlight the Windows Folder, close System Preferences and now when you restart this setting will take effect.

Well I think I have covered the most of things, any questions or general advice leave a comment, I hope it was useful! So far with Vista, I have found the experience pretty good, it seems to run well, I haven’t installed much on it, I mainly use it for Developer purposes, you know checking my sites appear good in IE too, but I would recommend that you install some anti virus software because unlike Mac’s, Windows are prone to Spyware and Trojans, so be aware! I installed AVG’s free anti virus and that is enough in my eyes.