Technology
Blogging Is Dead (Twitter)
Blogging is officially dead, I called it. Unless you’re already a big player in the blogging game, there is no room for you in this saturated market. At least by utilizing a service like Twitter it is WAY easier to give updates which get the point across in a sentence or two.
My blogging project has failed (not the first time) and I’m moving shop to Twitter where I can give multiple updates each day.
Windows Vista price drop?
Microsoft has decided that Windows Vista is not worth the money that customers have been paying for it. No kidding! So the new pricing is as follows:
* Windows Vista Ultimate: $320, down from $400
* Windows Vista Home Premium: $130, down from $160
I have a suggestion for Microsoft, just give customers one version. Just call it Windows Vista and sell it for $130, maybe even $150, and be done with it. You’ll have happier customers (well, as much happiness as can be had with Windows Vista) and you’ll likely not lose so many customers to Apple. You’ve already lost me as I’ve made the complete switch to OSX by giving up my last computer running Windows in January. Best decision I’ve made this year and I highly recommend it!
Microsoft executives admit to Windows Vista problems
When customers start complaining about Windows Vista it is one thing, but when Microsoft’s own executives and board members start complaining about the failure of Vista it is something entirely different. Microsoft board member Jon Shirley upgraded his “Vista Capable” machine to Vista only to find out that two of Microsoft’s own software applications were incompatible with it. I’m honestly not shocked to hear this and in reality I’m a little proud. After trying Vista for a few months and reverting back to XP Pro I am not inclined to recommend Vista to anyone.
New MacBook Pro line-up
As usual for 2008, Apple’s online store went down today. Every single Tuesday this year Apple has rolled out updates to their product line-up and today was no exception. New MacBooks and MacBook Pros have been anticipated by the masses for several weeks now but today those anticipations became reality.
Unfortunately I’m a little underwhelmed by the new offerings. The price stays the same. I would have liked to see a slight price decrease as it is easy to spend over $3000 on the 17″ MacBook Pro model. I think at this point it should be required that all hard drives come in at least 7200r RPM flavors. The 5400 RPM drives are just too slow for a great deal of today’s demanding applications such as video and photo processing IMO. The screen resolution has always been a downer for me on Apple’s notebooks. The 1900×1200 resolution is only available on the 17″ MacBook Pro model with the other models offering 1440×900. The new Spaces feature in Leopard makes it a bit easier to use this lower resolution, but I would still like to see something a little higher as the standard, like 1680×1050.
I have no doubt that my next laptop will be a 15.4″ MacBook Pro model, but hopefully by that point Apple will realize that a higher resolution is a necessity. I miss my 1900×1200 resolution on my old Dell laptop (15″ model) and wonder why we can’t have a similar resolution offering on the 15″ MacBook Pro model.
Flash DRM
I’ve never been a huge fan of Flash. At times it is extremely slow, especially for sites that seem to think designing the complete website using Flash is a good choice. Beyond using it for games, video or photo slideshows I think it is a poor choice for getting content out there. Apparently Adobe wants to add DRM to flash now, oh joy! That’s a great decision…just as everyone is getting sick and tired of DRM being shoved in their face from all directions Adobe decides that it is wise to embed DRM in their Flash player.
Windows Vista SP1
Windows Vista
For some odd reason I was under the assumption that Windows Vista SP1 was supposed to make things better for the Windows Vista crowd but lately the reports that I’ve been reading is debunking that theory altogether. First I saw reports that the notoriously slow file copy processes were indeed not fixed completely in SP1 and now there are reports that even installing the pre-requisites for SP1 may throw your computer into an endless reboot scenario.
Someone please tell Microsoft that we don’t want their bloatware anymore. In the event that Microsoft simply can’t make a decent OS then please notify third party software makers that users are now switching to Mac platforms and that we would love to have their corporate software up and running in OSX.
Apple Genius T-Shirt
I’ve been looking for a 2007 holiday season Apple Genius employee t-shirt for a while and finally found one my size on eBay. Luckily I won the auction and I should have my geek shirt in all its glory next week! I can’t wait to wear it around my Windows die hards at […]
Asta La Vista
Windows Vista
When Windows Vista was made public over a year ago I decided to wait a few months for some of the kinks to be worked out between Microsoft and third party developers (software and drivers). I actually ended up waiting almost a year (after Vista was made available to business customers) and reformatted my work laptop to dual boot XP/Vista. Vista was made my default OS and I started using it full-time in August of 2007. I gave it a shot, the absolute best shot I possibly could, but last month (January 2008) I decided to make XP my default OS again. That’s right, I *UPGRADED* to Windows XP and eagerly await XP SP3 to be released. Why you ask? Here are some of the MANY reasons I have to answer that question:
- File copying took FOREVER in Vista. Things that should have taken a few seconds took minutes. Things that should have been copied in three or four minutes took over an hour at times which is obviously unacceptable.
- I got more system crashes on this particular system using Vista than I ever did with XP meaning it simply wasn’t stable. Granted that Vista did a better job at getting the OS back into a usable state after a crash, the problem was that it simply happened to frequently. For the record, I was using Vista drivers for all of my hardware and yes, my laptop had specific Vista drivers made for it even though it was purchased before Vista was made available.
- At first Vista appeared to be a bit faster than XP, but in reality once I installed all of my needed software it ran much slower than XP (my system has 2GB of RAM so that isn’t the issue).
- Even a year after Vista was released some software that I frequently use didn’t have a Vista compatible version so I was stuck with using alternatives which I didn’t like (in most circumstances).
- Vista comes in five flavors. Why does Microsoft make you choose from FIVE different version of the same OS? With XP I had one choice for business, XP Pro (or XP Home for personal). With Vista it is either Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate. No thanks. I’d rather just choose Vista Home or Vista Business. Vista Ultimate has turned out to be a total crock considering it is $400 and even Vista Business is $300! Again, no thanks.
I don’t mind for a minute to just simply skip Vista altogether which is what I plan to do. I am in charge of IT at a company with a little over 100 desktops and I simply refuse to *upgrade* to Vista. What worries me though is that Microsoft doesn’t make it easy to go that route. It is fairly easy to skip one version of Windows, skipping two is quite a bit more difficult. What happens if the next version of Windows is as crappy or worse than Vista?
For the record I have run a dual Windows/OSX configuration at home for a few years but last month I made the move to all Macs. I wish I could make the same move at work but unfortunately software manufacturers haven’t figured out that Macs could play a great role in Business, especially now considering how bad Microsoft has made themselves look.
NewsGator Inbox 3.0 beta 2
I’ve been an avid user of NewsGator’s RSS viewing products for several years. Most notably I have been using NewsGator Inbox since its first release and the company just released their newest version 3.0 beta 2. The company previously charged for the products (for which I was happy to pay) but last month they changed their tune and now offer most of their software for free to the public. I use their iPhone version as well as their online and Mac versions. All sync back to their servers so anything you mark as read is synced to all other installations.
Nakko.com
I stumbled upon Nakko.com today and thought it to be a great (free) service! As many of you know, Apple now allows you to create ringtones for free using GarageBand for example, this site is just a central point for ringtones that others have made and allows you access to them. Just peruse through their catalog of available ringtones, add one to your ‘locker’ and then choose to add it to your iTunes. It will add it as a podcast but when you sync your iPhone it will get added as a ringtone (but will also remain as a podcast, you can’t get rid of that entry unfortunately, or at least I can’t figure out how to). Their website needs some work and half the time I can’t get the preview to play, but I’m so glad to have found a free, fairly easy to use ringtone site for my iPhone.
