Archive for April, 2007
There’s been “some discussion”:http://www.hawaiithreads.com/showthread.php?t=12550 on a “community forum”:http://www.hawaiithreads.com/ I lurk about in concerning Macs and PCs and the differences betwixt the two. Folks have chimed in why they have one or the other (and some even use both, like me for example). There’s even some remnant of the Ye ‘Olde Mac vs. PC. While it’s pretty, for lack of a better word, superfluous, there’s really nothing wrong with people strongly biased for either or. Heck, I was a hardcore PC person back in the day and wouldn’t be caught dead with a Mac. Oh, if that Past Arlan knew what waits in store for him! hehe
Anyway, it’s not surprising that the discussion would fall into similar patterns from other talks when comparing a Mac and a PC. For Macs, it’s always easy to use, fast to set up and just get going but it’s pricey. For PCs, it’s easiest to customize, repair and you can get “more bang for your buck,” yet it’s harder to use.
Now with Vista and purchasing an out of the box system (not building or upgrading your own). Is it still the same pattern? Possibly.
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So, firsthand experience concerning the “Get a Mac Security Ad”:http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov is fun to go through. Sorta.
As I had to install all my games and such, I got the security pop-ups on a near constant basis. Grr, argh!
But as it is now, with things settling down, I haven’t been queried.
The “You must supply Administrator credentials” (or whatever the wording is) that I get when modifying files, deleting/removing items from the Programs list is a bit more irritating, mainly for the fact that the account I’m logged into at the time HAS administrator rights.
C’mon Vista, you should be smart enough to know that. Or! Instead of just giving me a dialog box to click Continue when you want me to supply Administrator credentials, ask for my password and only do such on “mission critical” items. Not the stupid empty game folder that didn’t get removed when I ran through the uninstall.
I need to admit though, the games that do work are running more beautifully now thanks to the upgraded system.
I’ve had this constant crackling sound coming from my speakers. At first I thought they were getting old, but after doing a couple of experiments, it turned out to originate from my sound card (Audigy 2 ZS). Googling up results, it’s interesting to note many others have had similar problems.
None of the solutions worked for me so I activated the onboard sound. Everything seemed to go ok until I fired up “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.”:http://www.stalker-game.com/ Sound was good up until a certain point, then it seemed to cut off. Reloading didn’t work. I had to exit out of the game and restart it. Well, it happened a second time, then a third.
“Alright. I’ll go back to the crackling sound. At least then the sound didn’t cut off,” I said with an exasperated sigh. Go back to my BIOS and deactivated the onboard sound. Problem. Oh wait, I just gotta re-install the drivers. What do I get? A blue screen and memory dump.
What did I do? Did I forget to mention I didn’t remove the Audigy card when I switched to onboard? It’s been so long, I don’t know if that mattered or not. Might have or might have been I didn’t take enough precautions against static discharge.
Anyway, moral of the story? Don’t mess around with crap until you read up and know exactly what you’re doing.
I thought to wait for the “iPhone”:http://www.apple.com/iphone/ before syncing up my phone and laptop. But decided not to wait. Instead, I bought a copy of the “Missing Sync”:http://www.markspace.com/ and paired up my “Cingular 8525″:http://business.cingular.com/businesscenter/8525/index.jsp with my MacBook. They communicated so nicely, it’s kyoot.
What’s pretty awesome is, I initially used “gmail calendar”:http://www.google.com/calendar/ before iCal. But all I needed to do to get iCal synced up was plug in the URL of my calendar and it pulled in all the necessary information. Finally, I fired up Missing Sync and _zap!_ my cell phone’s synced up.
Just another hat tip to ease-of-use technology. And it’s oh so much fun.
I read an article today at Wired concerning the Cult of Mac and it’s got me thinking.
Does the author have a point that the Cult is seeing the time of its passing? iPhone is getting the attention of Apple developers who were working on the new OS X upgrade. Is the change in focus for the worst? Personally, I don’t think so.
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