Mac vs. PC - Part II - Will Dark Become the New Light?

Previously I had mentioned that my IT career has given me PC-only experience and given me the child's-play view of Macs, but something new was on the horizon, something that could shake my viewpoint.

Life has a funny way of progressing. Early in my career, I exhibited great jubilation towards all things computer and had a blast researching any new technology or code that would do something cool, and maybe save time on the side. As my career progressed and the more I was shaped into corporate life, the less gung-ho I was becoming about messing around with PCs and the more I was just trying to seek out the quickest solution to a problem and move on. To add to this, I got married and shortly after, had a child. Life now had a different meaning, purpose and focus. I could no longer spend most of my free time hacking, but I didn't lose that need for technology.

Questions started to form in me, why am I spending all this time trying to fix this when I could be spending it doing something more meaningful? Things that weren't work before now became work.

I began to see some of my coworkers and friends using Apple products. I respected them and even took a close look and their offerings, but still had no intentions to buy one, after all, they were like 3 times the cost of a PC.

Statements like "Macs just work" and "I've never had a problem with mine" began to stand out where previously were filtered out just past my ears. I began to think, "hey, maybe there is some basis for this 'easy to use' OS"

Stage 1 - A simple solution producing a need

A few months back, we decided that it might be time for us to buy a Tivo-type appliance or to build one. Utilizing the inner-geek, I immediately threw out the notion of buying a pre-boxed appliance. That's just too easy, and expensive! I should be able to build one for cheaper, have more features and be more fun! After months of research and figuring, I decided that we should probably start out slow by utilizing my current desktop PC as our media center PC. This could be done with no investment now but allow at least some media center features. We wouldn't be able to watch TV or record it yet until we add a TV tuner and some software, but we could watch online movies and share our pictures and home movies from there. The problem with this simple solution was that my PC would no longer function as my surf-n-email box because it would be too cumbersome to fire up the projector or reconfigure it constantly to work with my LCD too, all while being tucked behind our couch. So the need arose for another system, but what kind of system? A small form-factor laptop would meet this need well. Portable enough to use in the kitchen or even while in bed, but big enough so I could type well and even watch the occasional video without firing up the projector.

Stage 2 - A simple need turns a sharp corner

This new need immediately pushed me looking into the Netbook market. These class of machines were just what I was looking for, something small for surfing and checking email, weather, etc. I looked at the ASUS Eee PC and the Dell minis. I was excited, a new system, small yet powerful. I could tote it with me and even use it for troubleshooting when I was at the datacenter or even mom's house -- perfect!

Then, a storm hit and my eyes fall upon something else. I can't explain it exactly, but at the time, it seemed natural. In looking through ads, my eyes came across a 13" Macbook Pro. Why would I even consider this? First, it was so much more money! Second, I know nothing about using a Mac. Third, I don't own one now, would it even work with anything else I had? Fourth, what would my family think? But despite this, I couldn't help be be drawn in my that part of me that is Woz - the Mac had called my name.

Stage 3 - Just past that corner is a slope you can't climb back up

Hmm I thought, I know people say these things are built like tanks. This new unibody sure upholds that. They sure are beautifully crafted. Simple yet powerful. I read 5-star review after 5-star review. I couldn't find anything bad about these. I then compared it to the Dell mini. Even among the highest reviews, the Dell had issues. Myself knowing Dell and Windows, knew some of those issues. I even thought about the Dell with Linux on it - a better solution than Windows I thought. But I kept coming back to the Mac. It beats Linux, I thought. It has a bigger following, more development history and isn't as pieced together.

Then I thought about the accessibility of owning a Mac. I have pretty low vision and require a larger screen and sometimes inverted colors to see properly. The company I work for purchased some screen-enhancing software for me called Zoomtext. It enlarges the screen and allows me to invert the color. I thought, Zoomtext doesn't have a Mac version, this might be the end of quest for a small laptop right here. I went to an Apple store and talked to one of the sales guys to see what, if any, accessibility features Macs might have. I found out that it has pretty much every feature Zoomtext has plus it's native to the OS, so all the zooming and scrolling performs much better and it won't mess with the browser and how it works (ZoomText causes some web pages to break).

That piece of information was given to me this last weekend, it served as the last nail in the Windows coffin - there's no turning back from here folks. Once you've reached this place, as I have, you won't settle for less. Apple just outdoes PC in so many ways. If you're looking to simplify your life, yet not limit the power your computer has, it's the clear choice.

I now only await funding - the biggest problem here. I hope to have enough over the next few months to go out and snag me one, then it will be trying to get the rest of my family on them (to free up my time in supporting them).

Go ahead, make that dark side the new light side.

Mac vs. PC - Part I - The Dark Side of Computing

Ah, the age-old (or at least computer age) battle between Mac & PC. I'm sure there are millions of articles out there about this same subject, but let me enlighten you from my perspective a bit.

The 80's:

The 80's introduced me to the concept of a computer. This concept was stamped with an apple-shaped logo found all across my elementary school computer lab. The apple was all there was, it was the computer, what else was there? I remember the day the school got it's first Mac, us kids were paraded past it in the lab. I remember so vividly the bezier curve screen saver that invoked the ideas of mass-computing power that lay behind those mystical morphing lines on the screen. I felt myself wanting to know more, yet totally overwhelmed by the mind-blowing capabilities this computer must have.

The 90's:

My history with the computer in the 90's started out slow. I had been given an Apple IIC by a local charity group wanting to get rid of some old Apples. I used it to mess around with a few games, compose some documents, print banners and eventually figured out how to hack my way out to a BASIC prompt and start really messing around. During the early 90's, it didn't really click with me yet, this computer still couldn't show me the real potential of computers. Any other computers at school were so locked down you could only search for books or type stuff - how boring! What use do computers have if this is all they can do?

Then, in the latter-half of my high school career, I was thrown into a virtual cauldron of computer geekdom - my friend's basement. His dad worked for a company selling PC's and had a whole basement full of PCs and parts galore. On top of that, they actually used their computers to do cool things, like surf this new "world wide web" thing, play games, and write code! I was dazzled by all this and eventually was pushed to sell my ATV and buy a PC! What a change! I soon found out that I had a real knack for this stuff. I remember when I unboxed my first PC, I read every manual (including the one with all the DOS commands in it) from cover to cover, memorizing almost everything. Within about a year, I was 1 of 2 king computer geeks at school, writing code, hacking up a storm. I left high school and went on to college. I wanted to do a computer science degree, but knew I wasn't too academic, so tech college it was! I didn't even graduate that, but I did find a great job pretty quickly with a small software company who saw my potential.

OK, put on the brakes here, this is getting to be too autobiographical. By this time, the PC was becoming very ingrained in me, every syntax, click, and concept was PC-centric. I thought of the Mac as kind of a kids computer, not really for real business, and certainly not for the uber geek who wanted to get his hands dirty by messing around with hardware, code and even Linux.

As the years progressed as a IT guy using only PCs, my vision of Macs didn't change much. My vision of Macs was kind of weird. I thought of them as the "dark side" but yet in my mind, they were very white, clean cut and didn't really fit the description the words "dark side" depict. Maybe someday I would investigate this other side some, but only secretly so nobody knew about it...

What you didn't know about the economy

I've been reading up on the economy lately because a lot of what I'm hearing concerns me about our future. A coworker of mine gave me the following link:

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

What Chris has to say has changed my view of not only the economy, but also our country and the world. I strongly urge you to watch "The Crash Course" and keep an open mind. On the flip side, don't freak out either. I think once you watch it, you will want to do something with your life and do something different.

Cold Sunrise

Taken on the way to work yesterday, lots of moisture in the air causing ice crystals to make rainbow type effects.

How many computers does your computer have?

Much in the same way cats and dogs have multiple offspring, computers now have little computers living inside them - a computer litter if you will. I like to call them virtual machines (ok, so not just I, but the rest of the world calls them that as well).


The days of the operating system having the entire house to itself are over, now it has to share it with its brothers and sisters. Its almost like the PC world has gotten more poor and had to move in with ma and pa back home, only pa got a bigger house with more bedrooms, each with multiple beds (cores). Whatever allegory you choose, pc virtualization is here to stay!


If you're not familiar with virtualization or virtual machines (VM's), basically what it means is that you can run one or more operating systems (i.e. Windows XP) on top of another operating system using a piece of software. This software allows you to setup one or more virtual computers that you can then install an operating system onto. The operating system doesn't even realize that it's not a real machine because the software makes it think that it has its own hard drive, memory, cpu, motherboard, etc.


Ever since the tree-hugging eco-freaks starting blabbing their agenda across the globe (see my future article on my thoughts about that), everyone wants to be "green" and using VM's has made a pretty big dent in a lot of company's power bills (in a positive way). It allows companies to run multiple servers or even workstations on one piece of hardware. Most servers do not consume all of a server's resources all the time, so you can pack VM's on it until its resources are more fully utilized, allowing you to do more with less hardware and power consumption.

I mainly started this post to share a little about what I learned today at a lunch-n-learn session I went to today - using virtualization for disaster recovery. The LNL session was put on by a local vendor (Data Link) and IMHO the leading virtualization software company, VMWare. VMWare's product for doing DR is called Site Recovery Manager. It allows companies to more effectively execute and maintain a disaster recovery plan, which if you are in IT, can be a near-impossible task.

I'm all for using a product like SRM to do this, it sounds wonderful but you have to be prepared to pay the price. Is the price worth it? I think so. If at the end of a nuclear holocaust day, you can walk away with your remote data center up and running after just a few clicks, it's worth MILLIONS. Even if you never have to click that big red button, you still have pretty good bragging rights that you even own a big red button.

Hey, I think someone should wire one of those button thingys into SRM, it would be a great action shot for ThinkGeek.

Toasters

You know, there's not much to toasters, though I must admit I'm curiously intrigued with the modern toaster. Why all the electronics? Give me a burntness dial and a plunger lever, why do I need to have all those fancy type-def' settings for things I never eat that require a manual to figure out? Have you ever found yourself doing UAT on your toaster to find that "groove" where your toast or bagel doesn't come out black or lukewarm? It's hard enough with one knob, but now you have buttons and knobs that all need testing. What a waste! If the button labeled "Bagel" actually worked, it would be great, but since it doesn't work, why put it on the toaster?

I would much rather buy a toaster from a manufaturer that spent time and design money on the asthetics of the toaster. Hey, let's make this thing look and feel like a 1920's juke box or gas pump, or some kind of Jetson's appliance. Or even just plain square but make it so solid you need a winch to move it, but it'll be the last toaster you buy!

Food for thought, happy toasting!