My Take on Pc v. Mac v. Linux

I love reading the boards where people argue endlessly about which OS is the best and then bash the other OS’s. I never respond to these threads because I’m some what of an oddity…I am proficient in all three and have used them all for about the same amount of time over my life time. Whats even odder is that I equally liked and disliked all three. Here is my experience:

1. As a tiny school kid, it was Mac all the way. My days of Oregon Trail bring back fond memories. What makes Mac’s great for kids is that they are simple, totally based on the mouse/graphic interface, and are very strait forward. Oh ya! and that one button mouse is great for little hands. Really if your having a problem using a mac take a breath and think about the simplest dumbest solutions and it will probably work.

2. As an early teen, it was Windows. Its a good family computer because it shoves everyone into the same interface, with lots of people using it going generic is the way to go; great driver support is a must as well. Most parents rightfully think computers are the way forward and want to get their kids in front of one, but because money is tight and parents like to be safe they go with Windows. Its not a dig, its just the way it is.

3. Late Teen, Early Twenty something: Its time to rediscover Mac (unless your a hopeless gamer locked in your dorm room). Face it, 85% of what a college computer is used for is entertainment such as movies, tunes, internet, and of course porn. Macs were great at this point in my life because they just worked. There were no annoying update/malware pop-ups, no viruses, no compiling, and no searching through hundreds of files on the hard drive because you clicked the wrong file to save a word document.

4. Mid to Late Twenty Something: A Legacy Mac, and a Basic Linux box. So I still have my G3 Ibook from school. Its great to maintain my music collection which connects to my ipod and to hang on to old files as well as my check ledger. But sadly its getting slow and my college loans keep me from buying a new Mac so I was faced with the choice of Windows v. Linux and chose Linux…and why you might ask? Well it goes like this:

1. I have spent my life using computers and I want something i can customize. I’m not scared of script, or compiling. I don’t just want my machine to work, I want it to work the way I want it to work.

2. I know that just with regular use/updates a Microsoft computer only really functions at an acceptable level for about three years…but I will be poor for 30 so an OS that doesn’t eat resources with great legacy support is paramount.

3. I need good basic software that will accept industry standards that is cheap because so am I, I was sold on the word “free” lol.

4. I’m really busy now that I’m out of school and there fore I don’t have time to log into the half billion social networks I have. Id love to self host a website and after a bit of research clearly Linux is the most strait forward and cost affective way to do that.

Final thoughts:

Mac: simple, elegant, great for kids and people that don’t want to think about maintaining their computer. Clearly the leader in entertainment. The only hold back is that if you don’t have a grand to plunk down a new computer look elsewhere, you just got priced out of the Mac market.

Windows: inexpensive way to indoctrinate families, and gives good blanket coverage for several people with different needs. If your a gamer, this is what you want as well. If you don’t mind replacing your pc every three years or so, are willing to take the time to protect your pc from internet scum, and have the liver to be able to hold all the booze your going to drink to fight the crazed tendencies caused by the million pop-ups asking “are you sure you want to do this” Windows is the way to go.

Linux: You’ve been around the block, actually know how a computer works, and want more control. Your tired of the wall-garden safety nets of Mac and PC. You are interested in programing, hosting, or web editing. If your poor and you have an older pc you want to squeeze a few more years out of. If you don’t mind popping Tylenol for a month trying to figure out what distro is right for you, if you don’t mind taking the extra time to get it to play even the most common media file types or hunting for drivers, and if you dont mind dealing with fanboys that spend so much time messing with their OS just because they can instead of actually using the computer Linux is the way to go.

What the Heck WP! My Belated Complaint

I love it when companies (like WordPress) come out with a new upgrade…NOT. Upgrades are supposed to be great. They add features, fix holes, and make things more intuitive. There is a down side though: Companies want to keep things “shiny” so they change the lay-out and interface too.

With this down side in mind I ask, what good is an upgrade if i have to relearn how to use everything from the ground up? This is why WordPress and alike could learn a thing or a two from Apple.

Apple does/doesn’t do  the following when they upgrade:

1. They don’t wait forever, they do small incremental upgrades over the course of the life a their software slightly tweaking things as they head to the next major release. This creates a better learning curve for new features, and less shell-shock when the next full release comes out.

2. They pick a theme/layout and STICK WITH IT. Go back and look at Mac OS 10.1 and compare it to 10.5, its basically the same thing. The theme/layout is just window dressing anyway so just stick with what works. Refinement is fine, but not much more.

My general complaints about the new WP:

1. We are still pigeon holed into one user interface. Why is something that is so easy (choice) for self-hosters so hard for wordpress.com? I’m not asking for the world just maybe two choices or more widget control.

2. The new theme is brighter than your average bug zapper, I literally have to turn down the brightness on my monitor to work with it for more than a half hour. The darker lay-out was one of the reasons I picked wordpress in the first place, photo sensitivity sucks.

3. Everything is crammed into one screen! Tabs are great, stick with the tabs and just give me more features in them. The way it is now if anything new is added it is going to involve a whole new UI “upgrade” to accommodate it.

4. How is it that we still don’t have adsense? i mean really! This idea has been floating around forever.

What the new UI translates in my mind is to that of a little kid with peas on his plate…if you move everything around it gives the illusion that you’ve accomplished more then you really have.

next time WP give me less peas and more functionality…and don’t make me rent a Sherpa to try to find it.

Would The App thats Actually Useful Please Stand Up?!

For the past year Web 2.0 has really taken center stag, and there are sooo many apps out there, but I ask you…is that a good thing?

I’m actually wishing we could go back to the days where the only ways people could communicate online was email and chat. With all the social networking utilities, and apps offered by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others it makes what used to be easy terribly hard.

Now instead of one email account I have 3, instead of one chat client I have 2 (and thats only because I tell friends on other networks to bite me), Instead of having just a basic webpage or blog (think Anglefire, Geocities, and Liverjournal) I have a Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, Wordress, Flickr, and then like 5 others I never check unless I get an email notification. Id also like to note that I have the least number of total accounts than anyone in my social circle of 20-somethings.

With all those accounts youd think my web-life would be a breeze, it’s not. My friends are divided into three camps on any one social networking subdivision. For pictures there is the Flckr group, the Photobucket group, and then everyone else. For networking my friends are spread out like this: 40% on Myspace, 40% on Facebook, and 10% spread out on networking like Livejournal and others. Then with newer stuff like news sharing, bookmark sharing, document/webpage collaboration everyone is all over the map….which makes it hard to share and collaborate… which is kind of the point of the applications in the first place.

For me its all very daunting and hard to manage…never mind keep up with, and regularly contribute to. I put the blame for this squarely in the lap of the ISO and non-web 2.0 software makers.

Plain and simple we need standards and applications to go with those standards, or as I lovingly call it the “Pidgin Effect”. Like with office documents there needs to be one or two stardards that most major applications can use simultaneously. The future is in aggregation.

Instead of logging into both Yahoo and Aim I use Pidgin and do both in one screen, it can do more but thats the last thing I need. Why can’t that be done for Social Networking? Why can’t I log into one screen and manage the same content over multiple pages? I can do it to read information with my news aggregator, why not the other way around?

There are a couple promising pieces of software out there but I’ve found that due to lack of standards I find myself saying “they do everything but…”. I look at computer based apps like Flock, and web based apps like Plaxo and have hope for the future…but no cure for the headache I have right now.

Can You Here Me Now?…No?…Crap!

So have you been seeing these commercials about “TV’s Switch to digital”…ya me too, but this is much, much bigger. Just ask the thousands of Onstar Clients, and Cell Phone Users in rural areas come February.

For years there has been a huge push to go all digital, and vicariously to get rid of the analog band. Heck even Am/Fm are getting into it as they try to regain some of the ground lost to satellite radio. But with cell phones the conversion date is much sooner, much more abrupt, much less deliberately planned out, and in the end will hurt service for hundreds of thousands.

The date is February 18th of this year,….yes next month…. On that date providers can begin shutting down their analog networks at any pace they see fit. It could be gradual to insure enough digital service can fill the gap, or FLICK! Your screwed.

Cell Phone wise this affects rural customers the most. I think of a friend of mine that lives in the Berkshires of Western Mass who intentionally sets his phone to roam on analog because its the only way he can get a signal good enough to make a call. He is screwed, no two ways about it. Now there is the argument that without the heavy analog singles in the air digital service will improve because it is less constrained, again this doesn’t apply if your in an area that has no towers. Lastly those heavy analog singles come in handy during storms too.

Its not just cell phones that this is affecting but also any service that rents usage on the same networks. Services like OnStar, and GPS devices.

But thats not even the worst one, the worst one affects some of the most vulnerable people in our society: The Elderly. All of those push button first response systems unless hard wired run on analog signals.

So please for your convenience, your safety, and the safety of those you love check out the websites of all wireless devices you use and even call the companies if you have to. This change over WILL happen but you shouldn’t be caught by surprise and without a plan.

***A correction was made to the post to exclude the Lojack Car Security system as it has come to my attention and i have since confirmed that it operates on a totally different band.

The Format war Appears Over

So it looks like Blu-Ray is going to be the next generation of entertainment as more and more studios are defecting from  HD-DVD.  This is good for Sony because  they have been getting their ass kicked (can you say “Wii”), they really needed a win.

This is a fire I have been staying away from. I mean going to slap down money for a peice of technology that has only a 50% survival rate for the near future just seemed like bad odds to me. Further Ive never really understood why people dump so much money into their home theater, as if missing a few pixels is really that earth shattering.

What really concerns me is now that this appears to be settled what happens to regular DVD’s? Are they going to go the way of VHS in a matter of a couple years? Does that mean us people that just want to watch a movie and don’t care about extra features or if i can make out Eve Mendes’s cute little mole will have to go buy all new equipment?

Its no wonder digital piracy of movies is so popular, the average Joe can’t afford to keep up.

Yay! Europe has Annexed Verizon!

Verizon is just one of those companies that i view as evil. They charge too much, dont back their products and they squeeze out the little guy to the detriment of customers. However, it would seem that Vodafone has begun to assert it’s self more in its partnership with Verizon over their jointly controlled cellular brand.

First they announce that they are opening their network, which is a huge step. For the first time Verizons customers will be able to buy phones directly from phone makers and avoid signing a contract of doom. Also this will open the door for more software and o/s choices on the various handsets. All of this variety will make for some major competition which will be good for customers as prices go down.

Then there was this weeks announcement that they are going to go with LTE for their 4g system instead of WiMax which would essentially allay Verizon with the current GSM crowd as LTE is the replacement for the GSM 3g technology.

What this basically means is that their will be several major carriers of the same type of network on every continent. With the same base technology carriers will have to offer better deals to customer s in order to set themselves apart.

These were great decisions but like i said i dont think they were Verizons but rather their partner Vodafone. I think they became even more wary of Verizons business model then customers. I wonder now that Verizon and their German partner will have betworks based on the same technology will one buy out the other? And what does this mean for T-mobile, and other U.S. incarnation of Vodafone.

My Head Hurts

Between the Iphone, Google’s “Android”, Tera byte drives, ultra mobile computers, smart phones, web 2.0, open source, ipod,vista,facebook, and whatever else is flying up on my Cnet newsfeed all i want to do is explode.

Isnt technology supposed to make our lives easier? Right now it seems to be doing the opposite. I have to be proficient on Windows,Mac, and Linux. I have to be able to text messages like a mofo, and have like 5 different social networking profiles because all my real world friends are on different networks…and let not even talk about those e-friends.

If i want good music quality i have to buy the player that has no support or accessories, but if i buy the one everyone else uses it has all this great stuff…but it sound like crap when i plug it in my stereo. It makes me miss my records.

None of my time saving applications work on all the computers i use, so whats the point? I cant keep a cell phone because the companies keep buy each other out and telling me i need a new one to stay compatible. I have all this networking and communicating software, yet i feel lonely because the interaction doesnt seem real.

I have decided to move in a few months and i think when that happens i will “unplug” other than this blog which is my only source of online enjoyment.

I will leave you with a quote from the great George Carlin that is really ringing true to me right now: “We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.”

So, Comcast is the Police Now?

In a recent cnet article the prospect that Comcast is actively seeking to kill Bit Torrent connections is explored. Apparently they think they are the cops and to that end are allowed to limit an advertised “unlimited” connection without stipulating in their terms of service that they do so.

I’m not even going to try to defend torrents as its a common belief that their primary use is to share pirated media. It should be noted though that there are several legitimate uses for them as well. That said it does seem that Comcast’s approach is ethically and possibly legally wrong.

By advertising an unlimited connection and then killing p2p connections defeats the purpose of having a high speed connection. Comcast charges more for the higher connections and really those speeds are not necessary for everyday use, which says the people in that higher pricing plan are power users. Power users need that band width to design and collaborate, which often requires large file transfers.

The main argument in favor of Comcast’s move is that they are trying to ward off law suits from the film and music industry by aiding people pirate media. This claim is totally ridiculous. First due to the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act Comcast is shielded from any such suits, but that aside it is totally illogical to think the media companies would go after Comcast.

If it were possible to sue Comcast or other isp’s for what happens over their raw connection its not much of a jump to say the phone company could be sued for damages for crimes planned over the phone. See how quick we make the jump to full blown China style censorship? To protect the first amendment Comcast must put its band width limitation in its terms of service so its part of a at will contract. You don’t like it go to another provider, and many would…which is why Comcast is keeping this under their hat.

Lastly the media company’s are not going to go after an isp in the manner argued. At most they would seek a warrant for their customer list with associated ip addresses. This is simply because the media companies work with isp’s like Comcast everyday to provide streaming content,website hits and advertisement, and of course media sales. They are vested in each other, if one sued the other they both would be hurt.

The bottom line is that consumers need accurate information about the services they pay for so they can seek the service that best fits their needs.

The Sprint Shuffle

So for those of you that watch the cell phone industry you may have seen the New York Times article reporting that CEO Gary Forsee maybe on his way out, for essentially not doing his job. For some time now Sprint has just not been booming like the rest of the industry. They lose customers to competitors, and have much more difficulty getting new customers. Some blame this on their lack of kick ass phones, but as a former Sprint customer I can tell you that it has more to do with bad business decisions and poor customer service.

First and fore most the Nextel merger was a bad choice, the 2005 merger really does mark the start of the downward spiral. This is simply because Nextel and Sprint have different networks, so basically they are two different providers operating under one name…. with twice the overhead. It also doesn’t help that push-to-talk never caught on outside of municipal and the small business arena.

Aside from that after the merger customer service took a nosedive. I was with Sprint from 1998 until this past spring, literally 9 years. That’s a long time with one carrier. I liked Sprint because it had good coverage, simple item by item billing, and everything could be done via the Internet or phone…before 2005 I was never asked once to go to the store. Any issues I had were handled quickly and they went out of their way to make me happy, and I was.

After the merger happened my bill was replaced with this vague piece of paper with charges that were regularly wrong. The coverage was still good, but that’s about it. One of the big things they did that totally pissed me off is they outsourced their customer services to India where if the problem wasn’t on the three cards the operator was allowed to read they just directed me to the store. Needless to say my experience with customer service was long, drawn out, and totally unhelpful. After fighting with them a year I just paid the 200 bucks to get out of my contract and left.

I have Unicel now and am very happy. The operators speak English, truly care, AND actually fix your problem. Also the billing is fair and I have excellent coverage. Sadly Verizon is buying them out and I’m back to square one. Verizon seems over priced and the only other provider in Vermont is Sprint, looks like I might just get a Voip for home and Prepaid Wireless for when I travel

Everyone Else is Writing on the Iphone, Why Not Me?

I love technology, gadgets, and learning new software but honestly I see it as what is: a tool and nothing more. The most powerful computer or device in the world is nothing more then a hammer to me, a way to make an otherwise hard process easier, to see what I mean try building a house without a hammer.

I have bought plenty of devices and other technological wonders, but the only ones that didn’t end up on eBay going to the highest bidder were the ones that truly made some part of my life easier AND were worth the cost. Many of those items have been Apple products.

I have been a fan of Apple since OS 7.8 was their main operating system (yes folks there was a Mac OS before 10) and I have been often impressed by their usability, reliability, and most importantly their longevity. I had a Newton, a Proforma, a Powerbook 1400c/s, a Powerbook “Pismo”, a G3 Imac (Snow), a G3 Tower (Bondi Blue), and finally the last model of the G3 “clamshell” Ibooks and a 3rd gen Ipod. Those final two entries I still have and use pretty regularly (great for basic internet and DVD playback on long trips, and of course music while biking). Each one of them served me well and went on to other owners when they no longer met my needs after years of service (that’s right not one of them died on me), mean while I’ve had 6 various models of Windows based systems that all died or were parted out because something like the power supply died.

You will notice something about my experience with Mac: I stopped buying them at just about the time OS 10.2 came out (that kids was the first full version of OS 10 with full support), and I never owned one with a processor greater then a G3 (two generations before the Intel conversion) . Like many of Mac classics faithful I didn’t view OS 10 like the second coming, it was more like the beginning of then end. Apples since then have become “sexy”, and “must have”, and “user friendly”…in other words a commercial success.

Their success is so great people will camp out to buy their items when they debut, like Harry Potter, Star Wars, or a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Their market share and influence has increased as well, bottom line investors are making a butt load on a company that was all but dead 10 years ago…an amazing turn around indeed.

Now they are just another electronics/computer company that because of some simply AMAZING marketing are able to command higher prices then the rest of the industry. Heck, they are able to get people to camp out to be the first to own their products! When did that happen for IBM, Hp, Gateway, or anyone else for that matter? Sure Sony and Microsoft in the gaming sector enjoy that on occasion, but not like Apple.

That’s my problem; I don’t buy into hype; which is why I didn’t buy an Iphone. Sure I was impressed by what it could do, but then I saw the price tag and there was just no way I could see why ANYONE in his or her right mind would pay that for a phone. I mean hell, I built my dual core, 64 bit, DDR 400 RAM running Linux machine for less then what that phone cost. For the price of that phone the only way it would have been worth it is if it came with a weekend in the mountains with Kirsten Dunst…ok that’s over the top, it would be worth waaaaay more if it came with that LOL.

So to all those people that are crying because they were dumb enough to pay 600 bucks for a PHONE, just be happy you got your hundred-dollar credit; if it were up to me you would have gotten nothing. You get what you pay for, and if you haven’t found a use for that phone to enrich your life then it doesn’t matter if you spent a dollar or 6 hundred you still wasted your money. An image and hype only last a few days, but true functionality last much longer.

I spent 80 dollars on my smart phone, a Nokia E62. It does mail, music, Internet, office documents, voice recording, maps, and of course it makes calls too. I got what I paid for, and im very happy with it. I don’t care if Nokia lowers the price to free; it was worth the investment when i made it. I have no regrets, why you might ask? Because I do something before I buy technology that most people don’t: research. I think about what I would want a device to do, and how much those functions will be worth to me. Then I do research and buy the device that serves my purpose for the price I want. I won’t pay extra for a name or because something is cool; which sadly is why I don’t buy Apple products. They are either more “sexy” then functional, or out of my price range.

Remember buy what you need, and not what you want. In the end you will be much happier.