Oh, Vanity!

You know sometimes, that a new idea is going to be awesome, sometimes you know it's just going to be ... wrong.

Don't get me wrong. I post here (not regularly) and I'm on Twitter and Pownce...

But I've just spent (wasted?) 10 minutes of my life - when I should be sleeping - watching someone drive their car around CA live. Just because I could.

Jason Calacanis talked about doing this just the other day on TWiT and I fell prey to his vanity.

Oh, vanity!

Okay, maybe it's time...

I know last post (what, a month ago?!) I said that there's no reason to hate Vista. Now I've been using Vista on my desktop since I replaced it in February last, and after a while, it started feeling a little sluggish. But then I added two more gigabytes of RAM and it was a speed demon again.

Then my wife bought me a laptop for our anniversary. I love it. It's got 1 gig of RAM, and a dual core processor. And it takes about 6 minutes to boot from cold to usable, excluding the time it takes me to type in my name and password.

Then one day, my desktop started blue-screening. Regularly. Twice in an afternoon. Worried for the health of my computer, I downloaded Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Live CD and ran the memtest86+ utility. The screen went from blue (okay) to bright red (not okay) in less time than it took me to press Enter. So I started testing each stick separately, and it was my new sticks of RAM. Crap. So I sent them back to the place I bought them. They're replacing them, very nicely and very quickly.

But now I am back to 1gb of RAM in my desktop. And I've got to be honest, I'm a little spoiled after that time spent as sir speedy. It's freaking molasses. So, I installed Feisty Fawn, then updated to Gutsy Gibbon.

You know what? I liked it so much, I installed it on my laptop.

You know what else? It's set as the default for both machines now. When you've got a 160GB laptop hard drive and you keep most of your important stuff on the desktop computer, you can dual boot a laptop easily.

I still like MS products. I'm hoping to get a copy of XP to replace Vista on my laptop. But when I can boot in to Ubuntu in a matter of less than 2 minutes, still access all the same files and formats on my Windows partitions - hell, I save all my data into the Windows partition and if I have to I can still boot into Vista and have that data available.

But it's clean, it's secure, and damn, it's pretty. And that sells a lot of people over.

I am just sick (and tired!)

One fine day, I sat and read about 120 talkback posts on ZDNet, most of them from people who will NEVER use Vista, whether because they use Linux (which is fine) or because they use Macs (which is *gasp* also fine). I've come to believe that the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of run of the mill computer users will buy a Vista box, turn it on, and have no, if any, issues.

My XP box terminally fried (Motherboard issue) on Vista release day. I had to buy a new box that day because of deadlines for a graphic design commission (Yes, Adobe CS2 on a Vista box) and, truthfully, I was dreadfully afraid of what kind of experience I was going to have. Now it's August, and I just bought a new Vista laptop, and in the whole time that I've had my two machines, I've had NO blue screens of death, Adobe suites run great, the two boxes network over a hybrid wired/wireless network just fine...

I am a geek. There. I've said it. I've got MCSA, A+, Net+ certifications. Both of my boxes are dual boot with Ubuntu because I want to keep my skills alive on Linux/Unix, and it's fun. I've built many boxes in my time, but marriage and a new baby make for less money to spend on the fun builds, so my last two desktops were HP's.

Did I mention, I've had few, to no, issues?

HP, Dell, Acer, Gateway - all those guys did just what the author of the post in question did, they just did it from a different stand point - make it work right, for a reasonable price, rather than necessarily the best functionality and "Windows Experience Scores".

Linux is clean, fast and free. As in free speech, people, not free beer. Okay, kinda. That comes with a feeling of freedom that's indescribable, but on the other hand, if you have an issue, you better hope there's someone out there who can fix it, 'cause there's not a 'manufacturer' who will do it for you. To some people, myself included, that's a small price to pay.

Apple, in my opinion, is a small monopoly. One company manufactures, codes, produces... At least Microsoft doesn't make the hardware (okay, there's the Xbox and 360, but c'mon...) I don't build anymore, but that's not because I can't. Oh, did I mention I can afford to have a machine that still runs CS2 happily - and well enough for a freelance designer to do WORK on?

Bottom line, every box has its strengths and its weaknesses. Linux, Mac, Windows, who cares. 75% (I would hazard a guess) of the people with computers out there are using them for 3, maybe 4 purposes - Email, Web, Music, and word processing et al. - that are truly platform non specific.

Can't we all just get along?

The Dumbing Down of America, Part 37

Blows me away on a daily basis, the things that are done for the people who ... society? ... considers to be not worth caring about.

I went to the store on the way home from work tonight and as I was waiting in line to pay for my gallon of milk, I looked over at the lane next to me. I was directly behind the check out girl, and I saw as she punched in that the customer paid for a $8.16 purchase with a $10.00 bill, the screen on her register showed a picture of the cash tray, with a picture of each denomination and coin she needed to pull, with a quantity above it. (1) $1, (3) $.25, (1) $.05, (4) $.01.

What truly made me sad was to see her looking up again and again to make sure she got it right.