Confession Time: Technological Ineptitude Edition.

(And there, I just posted blog #1958 - the year I was born!)

Since we, his loyal friends, have promised Jim that we will not do what we did when he turned forty, how about giving Jim the gift he really wants this year?

No, not just advice about technology. You can go to his website and read the birthday wish for yourself.

Let's let ol', er, middle-aged Jim's genie out of the bottle........

{Going to run and hide now. Hehehehehe!!!!!!}

I think it's funny that you'd avoid Macs because of advertising and stereotypes. Volvos tend to be associated with sandal wearing, Brie eating liberals, but they are nontheless sturdy cars with good resale value.

That's an apt comparison which introduces the concept of total cost of ownership. Apple doesn't compete in the low-end, low margin part of the PC business. But if you compare apples with apples (pun intended!), i.e. machines with similar specs, there is not much, if any, cost premium buying a Mac these days.

But after a few years, PC's don't have much of any resale value. Check out the prices for used and refurbished Macs. Three and four year old Macs often go for thirty or forty percent of their original cost. Taking that into account, Macs are actually cheaper than Wintel machines. It's like comparing Chevys and Volvos - you have to include the resale value in any calculation of total cost.

Then figure the opportunity cost. Windows tends to require a level of tending and maintenance that other OS's don't. And you pretty much have to install anti-virus and anti-malware programs on Windows. Macs and Linux installations avoid that hassle and the slowing of the system it entails. And most Windows installations require regular rebooting to keep them stable. Unix based OS's (OS X, Linux and the BSD's) avoid all that. I often go weeks or months without rebooting my Mac laptop; I just close it and let it go to sleep; when I open it up I'm back at work within seconds. When you then include the hassle and maintenance cost of Windows, Macs are not only cheaper than PC's, they are much cheaper (if you value your time)!

One of the reasons PC's lose value is that each iteration of Windows requires more and more hardware omph. Apple actually supports their old hardware (up to about five or six years) and each iteration of OS X runs faster on your existing equipment.

About three years ago, I abandoned using Windows on my personal machines. I finally bought a Mac, but buying a good used laptop, such as a Thinkpad, and putting Ubuntu on it, came in a very close second.

Linux has come a long way, especially now that that big players like IBM are backing it. Personally, I find the Linux interfaces mimic Windows too much, and Linux still exposes too much computer gibberish to the end user. There are many features of the Mac interface that I would miss if I switched to Linux for full time personal use. Expose, which makes a snap out of dealing with the plethora of windows that multi-taskers end up with, is one. And why should each window have its own set of menus, as they do in both Windows and Linux? The OS X interface makes better use of your screen real estate.

I install and use Linux regularly, but mostly for servers and infrastructure support. Using Linux, I can clone and image dozens of Windows machines for a fraction of the cost of using proprietary Windows software.

On the other hand, for most users, OS X is the least user-hostile of the current choices (IMO there are no user-friendly computers, despite the hype). It mostly "just works" and gets out of your way.

I would try one of the Linux live CD's (Ubuntu or PCLinux as recommended above), that let you try without installing; if it allows you to do your work in a way you're comfortable with, go for it. OTOH, don't just turn your nose up at a Mac. I'm sure glad I didn't.

but run it on a decent machine - dual-core processor, a gig or two of ram. Prepare for learning curve, this works best if you have a linux-savvy friend who can help you. I am enjoying using it at home. At work we have stayed with XP - Vista breaks some of our statistical and simulation software packages.

I'll be the first person to suggest Windows Vista :) I've loved my system ever since I started using it. Don't listen to what anyone says unless you get your hands on it... I've gotten several people that had negative opinions of Vista to actually try it and they liked it after they gave it a real chance. It's not perfect but it's nowhere near as bad as many people would have you believe. I've found no substance to any of the most popular arguments against Vista ever since I've been using it.

I don't like the Mac culture or Apple's advertising (though it started out clever), but Mac OS X is a good option. I hear from friends that tried to go Mac that the system is over-priced as compared to a PC, but you get the benefit of locked down hardware. People would be even more upset with Microsoft if they locked down the hardware (not that they can, now) but Apple gets away with it and I have to admit it has beneficial aspects. A lot of Windows issues in the past are due to third party drivers and software developers generally abusing Windows, check out Sample Content -> Bonus Chapters at http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321440307 for technical but amazing stories of the effort Microsoft went to for the purpose of ensuring applications still run on their updated operating system (when I say Microsoft deserves more credit, this offers prime examples of why).

Brent - the slow start up of Vista is due directly to what programs start with the operating system. There's nothing inherent in Windows Vista that causes a slow start - in fact Microsoft was quite vicious in shaving off every extra cycle they could when optimizing the start time of Vista. Try exploring the "Performance Information and Tools" in control panel and also check out this link http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=241 for a good set of articles on Windows Vista start times. Another program to look at is autoruns (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx). It's quite likely a few simple changes will improve your experience with Vista.

Hope this helps - PLEASE no flames 'cause I like Microsoft/Vista :)

Hey, if you want a taste of the Mac experience with all the frustration of installing Linux circa 1998, you could try what I did... I decided to see if I could put together a Hackintosh on my Dell Inspiron that I picked up last year preloaded with Vista. Total exercise in patience and frustration, but I now have a triple boot box with Vista (blech...), Kubuntu (which is just Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome), and a hacked version of Leopard. It's interesting to see the performance difference between the 3 OS's on the exact same hardware. Vista absolutely sucks, Kubuntu is peppy and pretty much just worked out of the box, and after much struggling Leopard screams.

I definitely appreciate open source, but what's great about my Mac is that I really feel that I can get the best of both worlds. The thing is built up from unix roots, and there's a very active community of Darwin coders making sure that most of the major open source libraries get ported to Darwin (the unix core of OS X). However, system management on the Mac is a dream compared with what you have to go through with ill supported hardware on Linux. Also, I'm not sure I completely buy into the open source mantra of "if I can't see the code I don't trust it." I just don't think that it's realistic to expect most users (even software developers) to really want to spend time pouring through and trying to understand the code behind all of the software they use. I think there's a time and a place for open source, but I've also seen the incredible personal value in having stuff just work, with well thought out design, and if that has to involve a little bit of letting go of control, so be it.

So, as suggested, look past the silly Mac cult hype... that's just clever marketing and annoying hipster affectation. I'd say, before you make a decision, see if you can give OS X a testdrive... for me personally, it was a great transition from Windows XP, filled with lots of little moments where I found myself saying, "damn they really thought that one through!"

Good luck!

Peter

I'll put in another plug for ubuntu. A couple years ago I wanted to try out linux and a couple other distros showed promise, but ubuntu was the one that got me to stop booting into XP. By the way the *buntu varients have the same liveCD capability that Brent mentioned about PCLinuxOS. Those are handy for letting you try things out to see what you think. Despite the hype about ubuntu it has it's own quirks like any other distro of linux so it's worth checking out a couple to see if any others fit you better.

I'll also put in an plus for using a custom built computer. I don't need anything really fancy and custom built is a good way to only get exactly what I want. It also is nice since it lets you have a modular system that can be upgraded in parts when you need some new capability rather than going for a whole new system.

As some might guess from what I've written even though I'm capable of using technology I'm not a fan of needing to get more than I need, so I've kind of been left in the dark ages with my cell phone. It makes calls that's all I care about. I don't mind text message capability since it can be kind of useful at types. Beyond that I don't need it. I actually specifically picked my current phone since the salesman said it was the only model in stock without a camera. Turns out it had one anyway. Ah well, still was cheaper by $10 than the next model.

I've got a very technical background having done programming work at one time or another for Apple II, HP, PDP-11, VAX C, Windows/ASP, PHP/MySQL, Javascript, Actionscript, etc.

A few years back I owned and operated a commercial recording studio packed wall to wall with gear that I knew inside out. The one thing in that studio that I could never figure out was the answering machine. I couldn't set the time and date to save my life.

And to weigh in on the OS discussion, I'm not what I'd consider a die-hard Mac guy because that kind of implies that you have a religious dedication to it. For me it's a case of finding an operating system that simply works for me without having to spend time screwing around with getting it to work. If I want to get all uber-geeky I can jump into the unix command line and do arcane stuff. For the most part I really don't have to go there.

Don't be put off by the latte-swilling Mac adherent stereotype, I don't even drink lattes.

I'm an original Mac person; I've got my 1984 Mac128 and it still works, mostly as a museum piece. My Mac G4 tower is 9 years old and runs great in a hotrodded condition (faster processor, maxed RAM, three big drives inside). I am enjoying Ubuntu Hardy Heron on a Toshiba laptop. My wife uses Mac and PC(XP) in her business. We have lots of computers but the Mac is still the best experience. Apple builds the hardware and the software and there are fewer bad surprises if you are not a techie. Macs just work. That's why they have cult status with creative types; concentrate on your project and almost forget the computer. Use one side by side with anything else and you will never go back. Elegance and power.

Okay, I'm good with computers, can navigate around most menu-driven consumer electronics, and can even remember how to reset the clock in my car twice a year. But I have no idea how to transmit the photos that my cell phone can take, or how to send a text message, or download a ringtone. I've never had any particular need. I've poked around out of curiosity, and found the menus totally counter-intuitive. When I need photos I use a camera. Nobody in my social circle uses text-messaging (why yes, I am old -- how did I give it away?). My phone comes with dozens of ring tones; I just want the one that sounds like a phone!

(When I changed wireless service providers last year, my choice of phone was one of the cheap freebies. I got features, whether I want 'em or not.)

So why do I care? Because as the resident dinosaur among the grad students at my school, I watch others using these other tools with enthusiasm. What am I missing?

One thing I have been considering is making the jump to an Open Source OS, since those have now become more user-fondling. Anyone want to offer opinions on this?

Download PCLinuxOS. It's an .ISO file, so after you download it you'll have to burn it to a CD-ROM. After that you just place the CD-ROM into the drive, reboot, and try out the "Live CD" version that runs from the CD. No changes are made to your hard drive. Play with it and see if you like it.

I love PCLinuxOS. It has flat-out *everything* a normal user would ever need in a desktop system, built-in right from the start. It's easy to use, and easy to figure out. I run all my home network machines with PCLinuxOS. The only MS machine is my work machine - and only becuase they insist on me running Vista on it. I am about *this frickin' close* to wiping this thing out, installing PCLinuxOS, then installing VirtualBox and running Vista inside of a VirtualBox.

10-minute start-ups are unacceptable, and that's what I get sometimes with Vista. Drives me nuts. The cpu working at 80% capacity, using 1 and a half gigs of ram - just sitting there idle, doing *nothing*. Amazing. When I right-click the freakin' desktop and it takes 30 seconds or more for the context right-click menu to appear, there is something seriously wrong with the operating system.

Bleh.

I bought a desktop back in 2000 - more than 7 years ago - that ran a dual 450mHz AMD chips motherboard, with a 266mHz front side bus, and 512mb of RAM. I ran Windows 2000 server on it, tweaked to run the dual-chip setup.

I could click on the Word icon, the Excel icon, the Powerpoint icon, and the Acrobat Reader icon as quick as I could, one right after another, and the applications would open up as fast as I could click on them. It was incredible. It was what sold me on the machine, which was pretty pricey back then at 2100.00 bucks.

What. The. FUCK. Happened. To. Microsoft? Why did they bloat and kill their users like this with an unusable OS like Vista?

*sigh* *geek despair* ;)

Xubuntu is a version of Ubuntu that uses the xfce windowing system, which is much less resource intensive than KDE or GNOME. I've got an old machine (pushing 10 years) that runs pretty well with Xubuntu. Nothing flashy, but if all you need is a good web surfing box and a light weight word processor, you'll find everything you need with Xubuntu.

Both Windows and Mac are closed source. For someone who doesn't sling code for a living, that probably doesn't mean much, but as programmer I don't trust anything that doesn't include source code. Today's Linux distros are much more forgiving than days of yore, but I don't buy into the ready for prime time hype. Ubuntu comes damn close, though.

When it comes to computers, I'm damned good. I don't have the latest tech myself, but I keep up with it, and I can fix it when people with more money than sense get it and don't know how to take care of it. I can even make Vista run better (though there's only so much anyone can do with that.)

However, my big technical bane is telephone systems. If the system itself is on a computer, I can figure things out with it, but the phone sets give me night sweats. I can't figure out how to program the buttons, or what to do with them when someone else does. I hang up on people more often than I successfully transfer them to the person they want to talk too. I can't even consistently use the intercom feature to call someone else internally. I can dial "9" to make an outgoing call, but if I have to hit a button to get to an open line I'm lost.

I don't know why I have a block with phones. I can use the features of my "smart" phone without problem (it's more like a computer than a phone anyway), but simple handsets leave me scratching my head.

Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

Jim, I concur with Peter: consider the Mac as your next computer. I'm the PC end of my business (The Other Rob(TM) is the Mac end), but the laptop we just ordered for me is a rebuilt Macbook Pro. I'll run Windows XP predominately (because that's my job), but I'll be using the Mac side as well.

I also concur with Peter on Ubuntu being an excellent Open Source solution. I've heard a lot of good about Kubuntu, but I don't have personal experience with it. Either are much more user friendly than past versions, and the latest version of Ubuntu was the first Linux distro that I installed that everything worked properly out of the box. It's great for geeks to be mucking around in the conf files, but you want something that doesn't require too much of that, and Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) will give you that.

If you decide to stay with (or also us) the Microsoft OS, do everything you can to get Windows XP. Avoid Windows Vista like the plague that it is. I'd hoped that SP1 would clear up the major problems with it, but it didn't. They may get it right in SP2, or they may not. Vista could be the next Windows ME (and I personally think it could be worse.)

Anyway, that's the advice I have for you. I post a bunch of BS and jokes, but I'm totally cereal this time.

Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

Just my 2 cents...

I've been a software developer for over 15 years, working predominantly on Microsoft Platforms, with some experience with unix systems from college and personal test drives of Linux.

I just changed jobs this past winter, and since the new company is a Java shop, working with mostly open source, cross platform tools, I was free to choose which platform to use. On a whim, I decided to make "the switch" to Mac...

Honestly, despite a few minor growing pains early on, I think Leopard is a phenomenal OS. And, if you really need to run Windows apps, you can either dual boot with Boot Camp, or just buy Parallels, which allows you to run Windows apps in native OS X windows... a bit like Wine under Linux. You can also install Linux either as a dual/triple boot, or use virtualization to "play." In the past 6 months, I've continued to fall in love with OS X, and would seriously recommend it. Yeah, the hardware costs quite a bit more, but IMHO, OS X is totally worth it.

If you do go the generic box route, with an open source OS, I'd recommend Ubuntu or Kubuntu. Very easy to install and administer... a nice clean Linux distro with pretty much everything you'd need ready to go out of the gate, but without the usual overwhelming amount of options the old distros presented. The install CD, which you can download or order (for free I believe) doubles as a self booting demo, allowing you to try it out before installing.

In an unrelated note, I received a personal reply from Ysrayl Hawkins regarding my question as to why Armageddan didn't begin on June 12th. Priceless insanity! If you're interested, I'll send it your way...