Recently a buddy of mine got his mitts on a used iPod Touch so I had to go through installing iTunes, associating the iPod with his computer, downloading apps, and copying over his music. It would’ve been a lot easier had we not had trouble getting the iPod to recognize his Wifi connection. Everything went smoothly up until that point. Since there’s no way to remote control an iPod I had to get him to take pictures of the iPod’s screen with his camera phone, message them to me, then I’d forward them to my email so I could see them as my phone’s screen is to small to see detail. I tried to follow along on my iPod but since he didn’t have the latest OS on his it wasn’t exactly the same.

All told it took 3 hours an hour of that was wasted shuffling pictures back and fourth. The point of this post isn’t to gripe about helping a friend It’s to point out that as technology gets better and better remote access has to keep up so that the vast majority of tech consumers most of whom aren’t tech savvy can get the help they need.

1. I file them away and rarely revisit them. In the past six months if I’ve pulled 5 bookmarks out of my bookmark’s menu that would be a lot..There has to be a better way
2. Folders for bookmarks are dumb. Many bookmarks fit into several categories. Sure there’s tags which I’ve tried using but they’re so inconsistent if you don’t remember exactly how you’ve tagged related items you wind up with 1 item tagged autos and 6 titled cars.

Pictured above is my bookmarks toolbar, I use this as a hybrid part of it’s my most frequently visited sites and the other part is my to-do list, since most of my work is done online I can bang things out pretty fast this way.

• d = Daily – Sites that I visit several times a day (mostly my sites).
• T = To Do – Things that I should get done within the week.
• s = Social Networking – Facebook, Myspace, etc is in here.
• b = Blogs – Takes me direct to the login page on all my blogs .
• r = Review – These are sites that I want to revisit later because I don’t have time to read them now.  When I have time to burn and sit to review them they either get categorized or dumped.

The rest of my  bookmarks toolbar acts as a quick action list. These are a bunch of things I *need* to get done or read today. Normally there’s a couple of threads from my DJ board, a couple of other tasks such as WordPress plugins / development notices from various CMS’s that I use, and finally a news article or two. What always happens is throw a bunch of stuff on the bookmarks toolbar that shouldn’t be there then I wind up having to deal with all the clutter.

There has to be a better way to manage a simple thing such as bookmarks. Your thoughts?

How to properly buy a Macintosh computer:

1. Discover that you really like how Apple computers look…Oooh they’re so sleek and shiny.
2. Realize that you have never used anything but Windows and know nothing about Mac or OS X.
3. Sign up at 3 or 4  separate Mac forums and ask Mac enthusiasts if they think a Mac would be right for you.
4. Complain about the price.
5. Get over the price and trek to your closest Apple store or order online.
6. If bought at the Apple store complain about how far away it is. If shipped complain about how long it took to arrive.
7. The MOST  important part is as you’re unboxing your new Mac run a video camera. Some people call this geek porn..Be sure to post the video all over YouTube and all the previously joined Mac forums as if no one has ever seen a Mac unboxed before.
8. The SECOND most important part, once you get your Mac setup on your desk. Make sure to take melodramatic pictures of your setup.. Oh yeah nobody ever seen a Mac keyboard at eye level from the side. You really are the most artistic person we’ve ever met. It it’s a Mac Book Pro make sure you get a nice shot of the keyboard back lights on.
9. Realize it doesn’t play your FAVORITE GAME despite everyone on the forums telling you that you cannot run Windows software on a Mac. Complain and cry about it in the Mac forums.. When someone suggests VMWare Fusion or Parallels exclaim I just paid $3,000 @^%!&*( dollars for this computer now I have to spend another $80 just to play my games.
10. Realize you’re also going to need a Windows license if you want to actually use Fusion. Kick, scream, and cry about spending $250 on a boxed version of Windows… Then realize that games don’t play well in virtual machines, figure out Boot Camp and setup a dual boot.
11. Become a Mac fanatic telling everyone everywhere how great Mac is as you’re running Windows on it just to play your stupid games. :p

Having two keyboards on my desk drives me nuts, I cannot tell you how many times I start typing on the wrong keyboard especially when both machines are running. Aside from that it just looks cluttered. The Mac wireless keyboard is a tiny little thing that I never thought I’d get used to but I find myself liking the tactile feel of it over my more expensive Microsoft keyboard. I never thought I’d be able to do without my navigation keys (Page Up, Page, Down, home, end, etc) or a number pad but I seem to have adopted just fine. I still haven’t gotten used to the Mighty Mouse and have since gave up on it, swapping it out for a $10 USB mouse.

On the Mac side applications seem to always follow the same flow, that is they all pretty much look and act the same. Where as on the Windows side apps don’t always have the same look or shortcuts from application to application nor do they always follow the windows GUI guidelines On OSX, I’ve only run into one application that looks crappy and that’s the GIMP which depends on the X11 Windowing system, this is the windowing system that Linux uses and I imagine a throwback to the ‘classic’ days (OS 8 and 9). I’ve never thought of myself as much of an eye candy person and I don’t really think it’s the eye candy aspect of it, it’s the continuity between apps on OS X that I enjoy. I know that pressing Cmd , in any app will bring up it’s preferences stuff like that matters to me, someone who does not have the time to go hunting through help files to find some obscure keyboard shortcut or setting.

Most apps seem to run better and be less intrusive under OS X then their windows counterparts, even if they don’t have all the features of the Window’s app. Yahoo Messenger is one, it’s done very well and elegantly for OS X and does not set itself to run on start up.

That’s always been a sticking point with me, no application should set itself to run on start up without my explicit permission. On Windows nearly every instant messenger and many other programs set themselves to run at start up without even asking, disabling auto start is confusing running through the programs options or worse yet some don’t even have the option and you have to force it via msconfig. Then there’s the programs that explicitly set themselves to run at start up on every update after you told it not to. Just plain bad behavior that boarders on malware, IMHO.You just don’t find many auto self starting programs on Mac, I only found one Skype which was very easy to disable under Users in system preferences.

My only problem with Mac’s lie in the cost, not just the initial hardware costs either, which is ridiculous in itself  but we’ll touch on that a bit later. It seems that any hardware made specifically for Mac or that advertises Mac compatibility is inherently more expensive than their windows counter parts. Simple things like a web cam, I can buy $10 web cams for Windows all day, try doing it for a Mac. I haven’t been able to find anything sub-$80. For as much as I use the web cam it’s just not worth it to me. I cannot buy a regular microphone off the shelf for my mini, I need to buy some USB adapter for $40 then I can use a regular mic, or buy a ridiculously priced headset made specifiably for me Mac and use one of my precious USB ports.

Mac Zealots always go around pounding the initially more expensive but cheaper in the long run drum. I don’t buy it, unless you have an all inclusive system like a laptop or iMac that includes the microphone and web cam, things like Mac compatible web cams and microphones add into the cost. Then you run into issues with those all inclusive systems, they aren’t easy to service, in fact they’re made outside of RAM and sometimes hard drive upgrades to be only serviced by “Apple Geniuses”, which factors into the cost of ownership too. I can pop open my windows desktop and replace every component while this is possible on Mac systems they seem to be purposely made to be hard to crack open and get to the guts of the machine.

Other Mac zealots will argue that the design of the computer is factored into the price, okay you’ve got me here they are beautifully designed but again I’m not much of an eye candy guy give me a while box computer and I’ll shove it in a CPU cabinet somewhere. I don’t need the all-in-one look of the iMac or the bushed aluminum look of the new iMacs/Mac Books.

Yet others will argue that last longer, I haven’t been playing with Macs long enough to know that. I do know that Snow Leopard the next version of OS X is coming in September dropped support for PPC processors this means in a mere three years machines that supposedly last longer can no longer upgrade to the latest version of OS X. I’m sure they’re still perfectly functional but so much for the last longer argument. My last PC last me through 6 years of heavy use before I put it out to pasture and gave it to my mother for games, it’s still running today 7 years later. I doubt that an Apple machine will be usable for much longer than that.

I’ll always compare price vs features and for me the so called Apple tax does not add up. I could go for a pimped out new Mini and do all my computer work on that but at over $1000 it just isn’t cost effective. I can build a machine with same hardware and a windows license for $500-$600 and have an upgradeable machine that runs pretty much everything under the sun. I do think Apple is being stingy by keeping OS X on Apple hardware only, it just shows greed especially now that OS X runs on X86 and x64 processors there is no good reason why it cannot run on a ‘white box’ PC.

My problem with the Mini now is I can see myself getting so used to and comfortable with it, tying myself to the platform, so that down the road when it comes time to upgrade I’m going to be forced to pay the apple tax because I want OS X. I’m really thinking of going cold turkey using my Windows computer as my main desktop and putting the Mac back on my entertainment center as a media computer for streaming, this way I don’t get too used to it and ‘need’ a mac when I upgrade.

I last posted about my new TV, it’s great I really like it, I think it’s better than my old one albeit a 9 inches smaller, it’s still better. On the HD TV front I’m really dissatisfied the cable companies are marketing HD TV like it’s the holy grail meanwhile out of the 20 or so HDTV channels I get, I’m lucky if half of them show HD shows all the time, it’s like a bait and switch, IMHO…Anyway, I’ve got my RCA switch hooked up along with my ‘old school’ (PS 2, Game Cube, Xbox [original] ) game consoles they all look 110% better on this TV especially with the games that support 16:9 format. Ya know it’s funny I consider myself somewhat of a geek although I’m not much of a gamer, I think if I’ve played all my consoles combined for more than 6 hours in the last year that would be a lot. Well last year was a turbulent year for me BUT I only switch on my PS2 or xBox to watch a DVD, I only actually play when I’m bored out of my mind, Grand Theft Auto 3 (PS2) and the Sonic Mega Collection (GC) are my favorite games to kill an evening with hence my hesitance to upgrade. If I were to upgrade, I’d buy the PS 3 first as Playstation has always been *the* game console for me but if GTA 3 and Sonic Mega Collection, which is all the old sonic games from Sega rolled into one game cube game CD do it for me, why should I drop $400 on the PS 3?

Other than that I had my Mini Mac hooked to the new TV via it’s VGA (dated computer monitor) input it was nice for while but I decided I wasn’t using mini enough due to it being on the TV stand rather than my desk, so I moved it back over to my desk and switching between the Mini and my workhorse desktop via one monitor. I really like OS X’s presentation style and eye candy BUT OS X, contrary to what the I’m a Mac ads would have you believe isn’t without it’s drawbacks and need of maintenance just like any other OS, don’t be tricked into buying a computer with the Apple upcharge thinking it just works, it doesn’t. However I could use and adapt to OS X very easy if I had a more powerful Mac computer, I’m just not prepared to pay the apple tax for an iMac. For now my Mini is used primarily as my morning/before bed email/feeds/instant messenger checker and whenever I have any ‘heavy’ work to do I switch to my Windows desktop.

What else? Ubuntu 9.04 aka Jaunty Jackalope was released last month I upgraded both my desktop and laptop to it then was shocked!! to see that Intel graphics cards weren’t supported under the new kernel without the driver desktop effects don’t work.  I was shocked only because the community makes such big thing about proprietary, closed source drivers and Intel gave them them the whole source and they still couldn’t make it work. So, I boycotted Ubuntu for about a month but realized how silly it was to discount a whole operating system just because one thing doesn’t work and this weekend I reinstalled Ubuntu on both my desktop and laptop. So far, so good. I’m actually typing this in Ubuntu right now. Although Firefox is abysmally slow under Ubuntu compared to Windows or the Mac. I don’t get it and cannot understand why. It seems other people have this issue and no one has figured it out yet. Firefox still ‘ships’ with the Great Britain English dictionary instead of giving the American users their own for some reason too, this makes build in spell checking a minefield of sorts.

Also on the OS front, Windows 7 RC 1 (release candidate) was release at the begining on of May. It’s awesome it’s really what Vista should have been. It’s so good that I’ve wiped Vista off both my Window’s machines and am using W7 RC 1 and Ubuntu (just this weekend) exclusively. Me running a non-stable version as a production machine because I like it so much over it’s predecessor is a major win for MS

Other than that I’ve upgraded to a premium dropbox account after playing with the free (2 GB) account for about a year. For $10 a month I get 50 GB of space which is more than enough for me. I’ve really fell head of heals for Dropbox. It’s not really a back up tool than it is a sync tool. Basically if you have two computers, you put files in your dropbox on one computer and when you turn on your other computer the file automatically updates. Or if you have the other computer on at the same time, it updates as fast as you can upload the file then have the other computer download it. It’s just a great tool, I have nothing bad to say about it. It also supports verisoning which for you non-geek types is where when you change a file the old file is still saved for restoration. It’s saved my kiester a couple of times, by having the auto-save feature of a text editor wipe out my TODO.txt file. one trip to dropbox’s website and the old file (version) is swapped out for the new one. A vast majority of my files are now stored in my dropbox. With dropbox being cross platform whenever I load a new OS, I just install dropbox and let all my files download for a couple of hours.. Presto most of my files are all accessible from the new OS.

Outside of the the tech front and geek stuff:

I’ve been dieting and exercising like crazy since the nice weather got here. I started off walking about a half mile a day with my long Johns on, in the begining of April and I could barely do that, now I’m up to 2.6 miles a day with some resting on the walk, a lot less resting than when I started. I push myself a little further every week, I’m hoping by July to be up to 5 miles a day. That’s probably what’s taken me away from blogging the most; I have to leave by 5p or else I’ll be walking in the dark on the way back and with the bears I just cannot do that. By the time I get home I’m wiped and really only have the energy to force myself to do what I have to.

On the eating front, I’ve drastically reduced my intake. There is still some stuff to cut like how much coffee I drink and late night snacks BUT overall I’m doing very well.

My birthday was two weeks ago. I was wished Happy Birthday many times over via email, forums, facebook, myspace, etc that always brings a smile to my face, so if you wished me a happy birthday and didn’t get a personal thank you, I’m sorry consider this your thank you.

Mother’s Day was nice, I was a little low on funds so it wound up just being flowers and a cake but we still had a nice time. My mom-a-lah is a great woman and treats me better than any man could ask for.. Why do we celebrate her gifts to us only 1 day a year?

Other than that the normally working on issues behind the scenes of my DJ forum and chasing after people for bills they owe me has been the norm lately. I realize this has been a long post covering several topics hopefully you stuck with me. As always, thanks for reading.

I last posted about my new TV, it’s great I really like it, I think it’s better than my old one albeit a 9 inches smaller, it’s still better. On the HD TV front I’m really dissatisfied the cable companies are marketing HD TV like it’s the holy grail meanwhile out of the 20 or so HDTV channels I get, I’m lucky if half of them show HD shows all the time, it’s like a bait and switch, IMHO…Anyway, I’ve got my RCA switch hooked up along with my ‘old school’ (PS 2, Game Cube, Xbox [original] ) game consoles they all look 110% better on this TV especially with the games that support 16:9 format. Ya know it’s funny I consider myself somewhat of a geek although I’m not much of a gamer, I think if I’ve played all my consoles combined for more than 6 hours in the last year that would be a lot. Well last year was a turbulent year for me BUT I only switch on my PS2 or xBox to watch a DVD, I only actually play when I’m bored out of my mind, Grand Theft Auto 3 (PS2) and the Sonic Mega Collection (GC) are my favorite games to kill an evening with hence my hesitance to upgrade. If I were to upgrade, I’d buy the PS 3 first as Playstation has always been *the* game console for me but if GTA 3 and Sonic Mega Collection, which is all the old sonic games from Sega rolled into one game cube game CD do it for me, why should I drop $400 on the PS 3?

Other than that I had my Mini Mac hooked to the new TV via it’s VGA (dated computer monitor) input it was nice for while but I decided I wasn’t using mini enough due to it being on the TV stand rather than my desk, so I moved it back over to my desk and switching between the Mini and my workhorse desktop via one monitor. I really like OS X’s presentation style and eye candy BUT OS X, contrary to what the I’m a Mac ads would have you believe isn’t without it’s drawbacks and need of maintenance just like any other OS, don’t be tricked into buying a computer with the Apple upcharge thinking it just works, it doesn’t. However I could use and adapt to OS X very easy if I had a more powerful Mac computer, I’m just not prepared to pay the apple tax for an iMac. For now my Mini is used primarily as my morning/before bed email/feeds/instant messenger checker and whenever I have any ‘heavy’ work to do I switch to my Windows desktop.

What else? Ubuntu 9.04 aka Jaunty Jackalope was released last month I upgraded both my desktop and laptop to it then was shocked!! to see that Intel graphics cards weren’t supported under the new kernel without the driver desktop effects don’t work.  I was shocked only because the community makes such big thing about proprietary, closed source drivers and Intel gave them them the whole source and they still couldn’t make it work. So, I boycotted Ubuntu for about a month but realized how silly it was to discount a whole operating system just because one thing doesn’t work and this weekend I reinstalled Ubuntu on both my desktop and laptop. So far, so good. I’m actually typing this in Ubuntu right now. Although Firefox is abysmally slow under Ubuntu compared to Windows or the Mac. I don’t get it and cannot understand why. It seems other people have this issue and no one has figured it out yet. Firefox still ‘ships’ with the Great Britain English dictionary instead of giving the American users their own for some reason too, this makes build in spell checking a minefield of sorts.

Also on the OS front, Windows 7 RC 1 (release candidate) was release at the begining on of May. It’s awesome it’s really what Vista should have been. It’s so good that I’ve wiped Vista off both my Window’s machines and am using W7 RC 1 and Ubuntu (just this weekend) exclusively. Me running a non-stable version as a production machine because I like it so much over it’s predecessor is a major win for MS

Other than that I’ve upgraded to a premium dropbox account after playing with the free (2 GB) account for about a year. For $10 a month I get 50 GB of space which is more than enough for me. I’ve really fell head of heals for Dropbox. It’s not really a back up tool than it is a sync tool. Basically if you have two computers, you put files in your dropbox on one computer and when you turn on your other computer the file automatically updates. Or if you have the other computer on at the same time, it updates as fast as you can upload the file then have the other computer download it. It’s just a great tool, I have nothing bad to say about it. It also supports verisoning which for you non-geek types is where when you change a file the old file is still saved for restoration. It’s saved my kiester a couple of times, by having the auto-save feature of a text editor wipe out my TODO.txt file. one trip to dropbox’s website and the old file (version) is swapped out for the new one. A vast majority of my files are now stored in my dropbox. With dropbox being cross platform whenever I load a new OS, I just install dropbox and let all my files download for a couple of hours.. Presto most of my files are all accessible from the new OS.

Outside of the the tech front and geek stuff:

I’ve been dieting and exercising like crazy since the nice weather got here. I started off walking about a half mile a day with my long Johns on, in the begining of April and I could barely do that, now I’m up to 2.6 miles a day with some resting on the walk, a lot less resting than when I started. I push myself a little further every week, I’m hoping by July to be up to 5 miles a day. That’s probably what’s taken me away from blogging the most; I have to leave by 5p or else I’ll be walking in the dark on the way back and with the bears I just cannot do that. By the time I get home I’m wiped and really only have the energy to force myself to do what I have to.

On the eating front, I’ve drastically reduced my intake. There is still some stuff to cut like how much coffee I drink and late night snacks BUT overall I’m doing very well.

My birthday was two weeks ago. I was wished Happy Birthday many times over via email, forums, facebook, myspace, etc that always brings a smile to my face, so if you wished me a happy birthday and didn’t get a personal thank you, I’m sorry consider this your thank you.

Mother’s Day was nice, I was a little low on funds so it wound up just being flowers and a cake but we still had a nice time. My mom-a-lah is a great woman and treats me better than any man could ask for.. Why do we celebrate her gifts to us only 1 day a year?

Other than that the normally working on issues behind the scenes of my DJ forum and chasing after people for bills they owe me has been the norm lately. I realize this has been a long post covering several topics hopefully you stuck with me. As always, thanks for reading.

All in all it’s an amazing little machine, not too powerful, but a more than capable Email, IM, web browsing machine. I think the 2 GB of RAM really helps things run smoothly and the processor is a tad bit faster than my laptop’s 1.66 Core 2 Duo processor. The hard drive @ 80 GB is a joke but I knew that going in and I have an external to supplement storage, so no big deal. Aside from that I love the UI, it’s simply the best UI I’ve ever used. If anything having the Mini has made me want an iPod touch more.

The first few weeks I tried using the Mini as my primary computer because most of my work only requires a decent text editor, Internet browser, and maybe the GIMP so I was safe. Although, I was not pleased that I could find a decent free text editor for OS X. Over on the Window’s side I use Notepad +, on Linux I use Gedit which has context highlighting, a god sent for coding. Now OS X does have text editors with context highlighting however they’re commercial projects, ie paid software. Now, I have no problem paying for software if I’m going to use it all the time however for a second computer that I’m just playing with I’m not about to shell out money for apps. If a made the switch to pure mac, I’d gladly buy some software.

That’s the thing with OS X, there are plenty of free programs but it doesn’t seem many are up to standards of free software on the Windows and Linux side. GIMP works horribly on OSX, Filezilla my preferred FTP client crashes after every upgrade, and a few other examples. One might say you cannot judge a computer but it’s free software offerings, I say you should because it adds to the cost of use.

On to the keyboard and mouse:

The keyboard is just way to small, I feel like a midget using it not to mention the lack of end, home, and the no number pad makes it keyboard all but useless to me for coding work. Maybe I’d be happier with the corded keyboard, I don’t know and I’m not paying $50 to find out.

The mouse = just plain stupid. Well then again Apple always screws up mice, remember the iMac puck? From not being ergonomic to not registering right clicks and middle clicks properly I gave up on it and plugged in a Microsoft wireless mouse which works 100%

All in all I really like the OS X’s UI design other than that it’s nothing special, in my humble opinion. I see nothing that justifies the ‘apple tax’ on their hardware. If I had money to throw away maybe I’d buy a pimped out 24″ iMac and get down to business with a faster processor and more RAM but I’d rather buy a system off the shelf and use Ubuntu or Vista.

For now I’m using the Mini as my primary ‘communication’ machine. Adium (IM Client) is the best instant messaging client I’ve ever used. The mini always stays on my desk asleep, I wake it up to check my email and websites in the morning for any coding work I switch over to my HP Desktop running Vista and Ubuntu.

I’ve been a long time fan of Roboform in fact I often recommended it to just about anyone I could tell about it. For those of you who don’t know both Roboform and Keepass are form fillers and password savers; they both save your user name and passwords in addition to your name, address, etc. Just one click with Roboform and it fills in your user name and password to log on to sites and another click fills in your name and address information when placing orders. For anyone who spends any amount of time online a form filler is a major time saver not to mention great for security as you can set random passwords and have the program remember them for you.

Now a little back story, I’d been becoming more and more frustrated with Roboform as I’ve bought more than a few licenses over the years but just last year when I bought a new laptop and desktop within a month of each other I bought two more licenses and started using them. Which is all fine and dandy until you reinstall Windows a few times and Roboform won’t activate which means with over 200 passcards stored I couldn’t use any of them. I’d have to email support and beg them for more activations, which they always obliged but it was still an unnecessary headache in my opinion.

For this reason when Foxmarks (now xMarks) started offering secure password sync along with it’s awesome bookmark sync’ing capabilities I started letting Firefox save all my IDs and passwords little by little.

Fast forward a little bit and I’m reading on Lifehacker about using Keepass and Dropbox as the ultimate password sync tool. As some of you know I use several computers and with those computers I often dual boot, so keeping all my passwords in sync is a great idea not to mention Roboform only works on Windows and with my new Mac plus me dual booting Linux on my other machines Roboform isn’t much help in that area.

Long story short, I decided to dive in the only problem is that there isn’t a direct Roboform to Keepass conversion path. I found one how to on lifehacker but it didn’t convert half my user IDs which was troubling a little Googling found this more involved python script that went off with out a hitch: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7023471 .

Now that I’ve been using Keepass for a month or so now I really don’t miss anything about Roboform. Probably my biggest ‘loss’ in switching is that there’s no toolbar in Firefox or IE to fill and submit as there is with Roboform. However the gains are much more, I now have my passwords stored safely but available from any operating system and in conjunction with Dropbox my passwords are constantly synced and updated whenever I turn on my computer. You just cannot beat that.

The only thing I noticed that wasn’t immediately apparent is when you’re using Keepass on Linux and Mac in addition to Windows you’re going to want to download the ‘classic’ (1.x branch) of Keepass for Windows so the database is saved in the same format across machines.

The cap of 2.5 million created a gold rush of sorts many people were pounding on the site all day which caused it time out and throw errors here and there. All the while Windows 7 main page said come back Friday afternoon. No updates no nothing. All the while people were getting some download links here and there, MS continually killed most download links posted. Wired posted that we should expect the download to actually open to the public around noon pacific time. There was some confusion and misinformation from Life Hacker with a Technet download of the beta that was released slightly early. Noon pacific time, nothing, nada, not a thing for Microsoft. At about 2 PM pacific time they put a statement up on main Windows 7 page saying they were surprised at the response and are adding more servers to handle it.

If this isn’t a sign that Microsoft just plain doesn’t know what it is doing with marketing, I don’t know what is! MS knows they jumped the shark with Vista (even though I like it very much), and have tried to build anticipation around Windows 7, which is a good thing. Yet they shot themselves in the foot before they even got out of the gate. Things like that just irk me. Ubuntu releases new version and BAM it’s up on a torrent for very fast downloard.  Sure Ubuntu’s home page and mirrors get extremely slow but for the most part they stay up. Firefox releases a new version millions of downloads in one day, no site crashes, no I’m sorry we didn’t expect this kind of traffic. I don’t understand how a company with literately billions of dollars behind them can screw the pooch so bad and on the regular!

As for me, I’m one of the lucky ones I got a download but no license key. I’m typing this from Win 7 beta, I like it but am still unhappy with the way MS handled this. Really makes you wonder if they’re capable of doing anything right.

Open source is a mantra I’ve identified with many times. For quite a while I used Ubuntu Linux, which is open source..100% free for me to copy, use, and modify as I see fit with the exception of logos and branding.

Open Source is not freeware! Freeware often has distribution and source code limitations. Open source programs like Open Office, Pidgin, and Songbird are great, even awesome! On the flip side open source sometimes includes restrictions on logos and branding just like freeware; It’s often hard to decipher the two.

Open Source is good for the most part. However open source of FOSS (Free and Open Source) advocates are the worst part of open source. FOSS fanatics often preach that any commercial software is bad, even evil and when I say evil I mean devil evil . If you follow the FOSS blogs chances are you will see many FOSS blogs and articles post anti-Vista or anti Office or Anti-X developer ad-nasauem. Many just regurgitate the same things others do. Vista is evil, proprietary formats like doc and docx are evil because they seek to profit from technology. The evil of profiting from technology seems to be the mantra of FOSS diehards. What’s so evil about profiting from others mistakes? People have been doing it for centuries!

In part I do agree; My belief has always been that “Education is key to everything for people around the world and the keys to get that education should be free!!” For me a browser and Google are all I need to learn something. FOSS provides that, as long as I have a computer I can install Ubuntu and search Google with Firefox for free.

FOSS is great however the bashers of commercial technologies just because they’re commercial puzzle me. If you’ve got your own thing going with X Linux distribution why bash the competition aka Microsoft? Some of the bashing for example Vista is a resource hog, is warranted however taking a 5 year old computer and expecting it to run Vista is just plain dumb. You don’t expect a DVD player to play Blu-Ray movies do you? You don’t expect a PlayStation 2 to play PlayStation 3 games do you? Why would you expect a 5 year old computer to run a brand new operating system?? It just makes absolutely no sense. The bashers of commercialism in the software realm would realize that had they taken a step back, and shined some prospective light on the subject. NO ONE, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE expects 5 year old technology to utilize brand new technology in any realm except for the slighted (for the their own growth oriented arguments) open source world.

There is a reason why proprietary formats are well in the is because they just work. A MS Word document I write on my computer will display and print exactly the same on my computer as on a the ancient computers my cousin uses at her high school. For the most part my computer will just work. With open source Linux operating systems like Ubuntu chances are this or that piece or hardware won’t work correctly, someone will post a link to some obscure fix some where, and maybe the fix will work. If they fix doesn’t work people in the community will blame the user ie you’re too stupid to figure this out!

Here is a newsflash for you: People want their computers (and other technology) to just work! They could care less if X company won’t open their firmware so FOSS developers can hack a driver for X piece of hardware. They want it to just work and for what ever the reason with Windows it does just work.

On a personal level the very second someone bashes Microsoft or Apple or <insert “evil” profiting company here> in an argument of causation for using FOSS software it discredits the entire argument and quiet frankly turns me off.