Direct From TechProGuild

Let's see. The processor is now Intel. The OS is now (roughly) BSD Unix. I claim that within 5 years Apple will be out of the computer business all together - and the fabled Mac GUI will be licensed to various software vendors as a competing style of window manager, akin to KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, etc.?

And you're absolutely right. If you're a Mac-only ISV, the writing is on the wall. Time to diversify.?

Admittedly, I?ve been on a bit of a tear lately about all the
hype surrounding the new MacIntels. Rather than just being viewed as the nice
machines they are, and a logical upgrade path for Apple development and Apple
customers, anymore they?re being viewed as practically the Second Coming. With
an Intel chip stuffed inside the box FINALLY the Mac will take its rightful
place at the top of the computer world and Windows-based computers will be
relegated to the ash heap of history. Or so we?re lead to believe.

I?ve tried to point out that one common hysteria point is the
ability of a MacIntel to be able to run Windows natively and why
that didn?t matter. I?ve also pointed out that even the ability to run
Windows applications under Mac OS is a bad
idea. There are just a few more things about the Mac left I?d like to talk
about.

I read an article by famed computer pundit John Dvorak where
he said that what Apple needs to do is to open-source
Mac OS X. The theory was basically
that with the Mac being able to run Windows, Mac users may decide to run Windows on their
Macs rather than OS X. Therefore the only way to save OS X was to release it
into Open Source where it would take hold, be rewritten to run on PCs, and
squash both Linux and Windows in the process because it was so much better.

Missing in the article is any reason why doing so would
benefit Apple at all. At its core, (no pun intended) Apple is a hardware
company, not a software company. Mac OS X provides the proprietary operating
system that Apple needs to justify the higher prices for its computers over
anyone else. As I?ve said before, if
Apple is put on a level playing field with Dell (or HP, or Lenovo, or Toshiba
for that matter), it will be squashed. Apple?s profit margins would have a bigger
bite taken out of them that its logo.

This is the main reason why you?ll never see MacIntosh clones
as was suggested by someone who commented on of my blog posts. Don?t forget
that once upon a time there were indeed Mac clones such as Umax, Radius, and DayStar. In the mid-90?s
Apple hoped to grow market share on the backs of clones making the Mac OS more
acceptable. What really happened was that Apple?s profits crashed because they couldn?t
charge enough for royalties to offset the lost hardware sales. One of the first
things that Steve Jobs did when he returned was to pull the plug on Mac
clones. He won?t be revisiting that any
time soon.

Steve Jobs doesn?t want to be Michael Dell. Dell creates large profits, but does so by
selling large quantities of machines with a slim profit margin. Jobs wants
those profits too, but he wants a larger profit margin on each machine to do
so. In order to have a larger margin, he must differentiate the Mac enough to
justify the higher price point.

That?s why you have Macs running different hardware, a
different OS, and constantly being redesigned to be eye-catching. Yes, they?re
probably even engineered better than your run of the mill Dell under the hood
too, but they HAVE to be in order to justify the price.

The Mac is always going to be a niche machine. As such, Apple
can command a higher price for it and a higher profit margin. Doing anything to
make the Mac more mainstream, whether it?s running Windows, Windows apps,
creating clones, or open-sourcing OS X, threatens the bottom line and risks
pulling Apple down to Dell?s level.

Steve Jobs knows better and wouldn?t let that happen to his
baby. He?d much rather have Apple command 5 ? 10% of the marketplace, keep what
he views as Apple?s high standards, and let everyone else fight for the rest.

If I were apple... I'd be positioning OS X to fill the gap where Linux desktops are failing miserably (high-performance desktop interface on top of *nix).

With the move to Intel, the marketing for the hardware & OS should be separated. This would allow greater sales of the MAC hardware & greater sales of the MAC OS on other Intel boxes. The cost of the hardware might actually come down for the average Mac user.

When I?m not producing content for you here on TechProGuild,
one of the things I like to do is go out on the lake with my boat. It?s not a
fancy yacht by any means. It?s just a small 17.5 foot Bayliner motor boat. I?ve
had it for a few years now and even though it?s never the biggest nor the
fastest thing on the lake, it always gets the job done.

One of the things you learn early when boating is to make
sure to follow a procedure when getting ready to go out on the water. You want
to make sure you have all of the equipment on board and that everything is
working fine. If you don?t, you?ll quickly have a bad day.

Recently, I took my father-in-law, who?s also an avid boater,
out for the 2006 Maiden Voyage. We?ve
both been boating long enough that setting up and getting ready has turned into
somewhat of a reflexive routine. We just do what?s necessary to get the boat
ready, pop it in the water, and off we go.
This time was no different ? almost.

We got everything ready and onboard with no problems. We backed the boat into the water, and while
on the trailer, I fired up the engine. Usually after sitting most of the
winter, it sputters and complains and never wants to start on the first try.
This time it fired up on the first crank with no problems. This was a very good
start indeed. I let the engine warm up a little bit and then backed the boat
off of the trailer. That?s when it hit
me.

?Did you put the plug in the back of the boat?? I asked.

"Ummmm. No? didn?t you??

For non-boaters, there?s a drain plug in the bottom of all
boats that allows you to drain water OUT of the boat at the end of your trip.
Normally, you leave the plug out when the boat is on the trailer and then ideally put the plug IN before
launching so the boat doesn?t sink.

In the midst of all of the routine, both of us had forgotten this
key step. We're both pretty experienced boaters and should have known better. But we just overlooked it.

Fortunately, we were able to get the boat back on the trailer and out
of the water before the water got TOO deep in the back. After a few minutes of
draining and then putting the plug in properly, we were off for a good
afternoon.

It?s easy to fall into a routine and miss key steps when
doing things. This is especially true when it comes to IT. Even when you?ve done something a thousand times, it?s important to
follow a
careful procedure and go through things step-by-step. This is just as
important whether you're an experienced IT Professional or if
you're looking at a system for the first time. If you don?t you,
could wind up with computer
viruses, spyware, malfunctioning software, or worse. You could even wind up at the bottom of a lake.
You can
never tell.

Actually, Firestone and Bridgestone are now one in the same, and Bridgestone is the official tire supplier to Ferrari's F1 team.  Still, a cute example, but unfortunate choice of words.

I was using Novell when it was 2.2 . I went to class to get my CNA. Novell forced my small shop to keep upgrading which was expensive at the time for a small service company in rural areas. Our main jobs were law offices with maybe 3 to 5 stations. We couldn't sale enough to stay a member of the big red club. Novel forced many small operators in to changing to Microsoft just becasue the volumes weren't enough. I'm now the Technology coordinator and we have 1500  computers and 40 servers. I'd rather deal with that than Novell.

graynor

The question has been and is anyway going to be is "What does Novell be when it grows up?". This constant struggle with Microsoft has prevented Novell from finding itself and a market. GroupWise was and is a good product, NDS/EDirectory was and is good product, ZEN Works was and is a good product, only going to prove that the company can deliver. But it appears to me that Novell is making the same strategic error; betting the business on the wrong product at the wrong time.

Novell can be relevant but it has to stop wasting time trying to create new and shallow markets. There is a very limited market for Linux desktop in the enterprise just as there is limited market for MacOS and Solaris on the desktop. Focus and expand on core strengths and stop trying to go head to head with Microsoft on every little product. For example create Identity Management products that are tightly integrated with Active Directory, port GroupWise to Windows/AD. Rebuild the disbanded consulting practice, sponsor more tech/learning events and improve product support. ? That how do it, that how you win!

Blah blah, natter natter. Jeez. The very complaints everyone has about Novell is what Microsoft is doing in the present.

The only "strength" MIcrosoft has is the perception that one doesn't get fired for buying Microsoft. That's how it was with IBM not very long ago, and where is IBM today, as a player ...? Of course, Microsoft does play to its strength. :-)

Microsoft is involved in hardware, games, application software, litigation (to make sure nobody can compete ... just look at Lindows and MikeRoweSoft) and Lord knows what else. And people claim that MS is specializing in NOS development?! Give me a break.

Is Microsoft "better" than Novell? Is the Pope Baptist? <g>

Duh!

"News.com points out that most of Novell's own employees haven?t
made the switch from Microsoft products to open source ones."
No, News.com does not make that statement. It reports Ron Hovsepian,
Novell's president, as saying that "about 2,000 employees right now out
of 5,000 are single-boot
only, which is Linux only, the rest are dual-boot.".
I don't know what that means to you, but to me it looks like 3,000 old
Windows PCs have been dual booted, which is the only realistic way of
moving to Linux in a continuous working environment, and 2000 new PCs
are single boot.
Novell have got so much wrong in the past that I am amzed they are
still around, witness all the postings above, but I can only wish them
well in their bold attempt to make it back to the big league. We need
diversity, and we need active competition to stimulate real innovation.
And I don't mean Windows Live.

Can we get an article on how to install Mac os X on my intel machine that is currently running Windows.  is it possible?  I would like to try.

I've been kicking around Linux in the form of SuSe
Professional 10.0 for some time now. I'm running it at home about 80% of the
time now on an old HP Omnibook 900 laptop. It has been a pretty good experience
overall, but as I've related here, it hasn't been completely without
problems.

I've used Red Hat 7.0 ? 9.0 before and have always walked
away from Linux shaking my head. I chose SuSe Professional 10.0 as my Linux
distribution of choice primarily because of its relationship to Novell, whom
I've always had a good opinion of, as well as those bad Red Hat experiences.
However, Scott Lowe recently finished a series for TechProGuild about the Red
Hat?derived Fedora
Core 5, so I thought I might give Fedora Core a look.

Having a spare hard drive for the Omnibook laying around that
wasn't being used, I decided to download and install Fedora Core 5 on it. That
would give a fair comparison ? running SuSe Professional 10.0 and Fedora Core 5
side-by-side.

I was initially very impressed with FC5. It runs like a charm
on the HP. The installation was even better than SuSe's YAST installer. I also
noticed that FC5 was faster than SuSe 10.0.

There are probably several reasons for this. First FC5 uses a
different Linux kernel than SuSe 10.0.
FC5 uses the 2.16 kernel as its base while SuSe uses the 2.15 kernel.
I'm sure that the programmers working on Linux are constantly tweaking the
system to improve performance.

Secondly, FC5 defaults to GNOME 2.14 as its window
manager. KDE 3.5.1 is included and can
be used as an alternative. Conversely, SuSe 10.0 uses KDE as its default desktop.
As I've chronicled
before, the included version of KDE with SuSe 10 is a dog, but it has been
quite tolerable after upgrading to KDE 3.5.2. SuSe 10.0 ships with GNOME 2.12
as an alternative.

The choice of a window manager is relevant because of the
overhead they place on the system. When booting FC5 under GNOME 2.14, the
system instantly consumes 88Mb of the 384Mb RAM in my laptop. By comparison, SuSe
10.0 with its default KDE window manager gobbles up 245Mb RAM, leaving only 140Mb
for applications before hammering the swap file.

Interestingly enough, if I swap each distribution to its
alternative window manager, the difference remains. SuSe 10.0 under GNOME consumes 115Mb while FC5 under KDE takes up
225Mb. In both distros, GNOME is more efficient than KDE. Also, under identical
window managers, FC5 seems to be more efficient than SuSe 10.0.

I'm sure I don?t have either distribution tuned properly to
maximize RAM usage and am running some needless services. For example, until I
started going through some startup files and removing some entries, KDE 3.5.2
took up 323Mb of RAM after bootup. Therefore, I'm sure there are somethings I
can do to both distros to make them more efficient.

So after using Fedora Core 5 almost exclusively for 3 weeks,
what do I think of it as a Linux distribution and compared to SuSe Professional
10.0? More on that later.

I got a call the other day from a company that I do
consulting for from time to time. The lady in charge of Human Resources had
lost some data that she needed recovered. It was a very important interview
with someone who was filing a sexual harassment complaint for the company and
she had gone to a remote site to perform the interview.  She used a computer onsite to type up the
interview and was bringing it back to the office.

How did she bring it back that cause her to lose data?  Drop
her laptop?  A corrupt attachment to an email? A scratched
CD-R? Maybe she accidentally poured a soda over her USB memory
stick.  Nope, none of the above.  She had lost data the old
fashioned way ? by
storing it on a bad floppy disk. Fortunately, at least it was a 3.5
inch floppy
and not a 5.25.

I was prepared to have to take the disk home and maybe use
some utilities I have to revive dead sectors on floppy disks, but I didn?t have
to go to that much trouble. She had tried copying the files from Windows
Explorer, which failed when it hit the bad sector. Dropping to a command
prompt, I was able to move the file using the old COPY command. I did have to
Ignore and Retry a few times, but eventually the file moved over.  There were a few formatting issues, but she
didn?t lose any of the important parts of the interview so she was lucky.

It had been a while since I got a call about a bad floppy
disk. You don?t see them around as much as you used to.  Once upon a time, 1.44Mb seemed like acres of
space to store data on, but with today?s ever larger files, floppies just don?t
cut it. Combined with the ubiquity of writable CDs and USB memory drives at
ever falling prices, floppy drives are definitely Last Millenium.

I still have a couple of boxes of floppies at home. They?re
mostly actually old 360K 5.25?s for my Tandy 1000. Surprisingly enough, those
old floppy disks don?t go as bad you?d think even though none of them are less
than 10 years old.

I stick to the memory sticks for most portable storage things
although a CD-RW is pretty universal. It will be interesting to see what comes
out next.  In a few years, we?ll be
chuckling about the people that are still using USB drives.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I?ve started
playing with the Fedora Core 5 Linux distribution. I?ve been running SuSe
Professional 10.0 for several months now and decided maybe I should take a look
at Fedora Core 5 as well. This was mostly prompted by some articles that Scott Lowe has
recently done on the topic, but also has to do with wanting to get a first hand
look at what?s driving the Number 1 Linux vendor Red Hat. 

As I said before, Fedora?s installation went great. And being
based on GNOME 2.14, the interface is fast and reasonably friendly. Compared to
KDE, it?s restrictive, but it gets the job done. Linux founder Linus Torvalds
once described GNOME as being ?developed by interface nazis, where consistently
the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it
would confuse users'.? He may have overstated the point, but it IS a little
restrictive.

Fedora?s PUP updater works really well. It?s even better in many
respects than SuSe?s YOU updating utility. Both of course make Microsoft?s
Windows Update look silly by comparison and do much more than simply update the
operating system. Both of them will check installed application packages as
well and help to make sure you?ve got the latest versions.

My one main gripe about Fedora Core 5 is what?s missing. I?ve had to
jump through a lot of hoops installing additional RPMs left and right to make
FC5 do the most basic of tasks. First, FC5 ships with the Helix Player which
doesn?t do a very good job of playing RealMedia files. To fix that problem I
had to download the actual RealPlayer 10 for Linux.

Although I can?t fault FC5 for it specifically because SuSe had the
same problem, I had to download a ton of RPMs in order to get any of the
players to recognize WMV media files. In both distro?s cases, I also had to
upgrade the installed media players to newer versions which meant scrounging around
the Internet. Fortunately, I discovered PackMan which was a big help for
SuSe and RPMFind
which helped find the latest versions for FC5.  

What was probably most annoying in FC5 was its complete
inability to play simple MP3 files. The first time I tried to play one, a podcast from
TechRepublic, I was greeted with a reasonably irritating message saying
that due to licensing and patent restrictions in some countries, MP3 support
wasn?t included. This, of course, had to make me run around and find additional
RPMs to get around that problem.

Now, as a computer guy, stuff like this can be annoying, but
you know how it is. You?re not going to let the machine stop you from doing
something, so often you?ll go the extra mile to make it work. For typical end
users however, things like this present a barrier to entry and cause people to
go fleeing back to Windows. It?s also a reason, which I?ll discuss later, why I?ve
given up on eCommStation.

There are several other minor annoyances which have caused me
to pull the FC5 hard drive out of my laptop. (Such as its infuriating tendency
to wake up IMMEDIATELY after you try to put the laptop in to Suspend.)  For now, I?m back to using SuSe Professional
10.0. SuSe
10.1 has recently been released by OpenSuSe and I hope to see what?s new
with that soon.     

Last week, Jason Hiner?s blog mentioned that his first
computer was a
Mac Classic. He also created a
discussion that asked other TechRepublic members what their first computers
were.

My first computer was actually a TI 99/4a. This was a
computer that my parents bought when I was still in high school. It was a nice
little unit. Texas Instruments actually sold a lot of them in the early 80?s
but got scared when IBM entered the market with the PC and bailed out.

As you can see from the image below, the TI 99/4a was all
integrated in once piece, kind of like the Commodore 64. Mine had a whopping
16Kb of RAM. I forget the speed of the processor, but I don?t think it was over
1Mhz.

There was a cartridge slot on the front that you could use to
play games with. You could attach a joystick to it. For external storage your
basic choice was a cassette recorder.
(Yes, like the kind you record voice on.) To get any real work done however, you needed
to drop several hundred dollars on an expansion kit that would take you to a
phenomenal 64K and could host full height floppy drives. We never got that.

The first computer I purchased with my own money was a Tandy
1000. The Tandy 1000 was Radio Shack?s first successful IBM compatible. Its predecessor, the Tandy 2000, was actually
more advanced than the IBM PC at the time but wasn?t compatible enough and
died a slow lingering death.

The Tandy 1000, shown below, was actually a clone of the
ill-fated PCjr. As such, it ran all of
the regular programs for the IBM PC, but had an enhanced sound chip and better
graphics than the basic IBM PC. You could run 16 colors at 320x200 where the
basic IBM CGA graphics limited you to 4 colors. It wouldn?t be until the mid
1980?s when EGA became more popular that you could run that many colors on an
IBM compatible.

I went ahead and bought some of the extras for it. An
internal 300 baud modem ($175 ? 1200 baud was just TOO fast and TOO
expensive). A 2d half-height 360K Floppy
drive ($150 ? no FULL height floppy drives like those PCs). I didn?t
immediately get the color monitor - I stuck with a green screen.

I also didn?t get the extra memory at first. The Tandy came with 128K of memory which displayed in
giant numbers when you booted the machine. My roommate who was a Computer
Science major took a look at it the first time it started up and said ?128K?!
What are you going to do with THAT much memory??.

Actually ? nothing. You could do hardly anything in 128K with
a PC-compatible. The first thing I did to buy an expansion board to
take
it to 640K. Then I got an external 10Mb hard drive. And a color
monitor. When I outgrew the 10Mb hard drive, I put an internal 40Mb in
it which is still there.

My last major purchase for the computer was a 286 accelerator board for it that sped it up
about 6 times. The card had an 8Mhz 80286 with a ribbon cable on it. You?d disconnect
the 8088 CPU that came with the computer and plug the cable in. Then you?d put
the card in an available slot, load the DOS device driver in CONFIG.SYS and
zoom? off you went.

I still have my old Tandy 1000. It?s sitting on my desk in my
home office. It?s a great little machine and it still works. I also use it as a
baseline to remember how things used to be and as a measure against modern day
computers.

For example ? I have a copy of Windows 2.03 installed on it. I
can turn on the Tandy, have it go through its startup routines and boot
DOS and Windows 2.03 before my 3.0Ghz Dell here at the office boots Windows
XP. How?s that for 20 years of progress?

Don?t you just love provocative headlines like that? The
first thing that pops to mind might have been ?Ah, he?s talking about the new
dual core CPUs that Intel is shipping.? or ?Oh, that?s probably a something
having to do with lower power CPUs for laptops".

Nope. In this case, I?m talking about Intel following AMD?s
lead in abandoning 386 and 486 CPUs. AMD abandoned their 486 and 586 line back in 2002.
Intel recently announced that they would no longer be producing 386, 486, and
some other RISC processors after
September 2007.

Although not an earth-shattering announcement nor one that
will probably shock the computer industry, but it?s interesting from a couple
of angles. First, there?s the whole history and End-Of-An-Era thing that the
production end means. Secondly, there?s the Wow factor that Intel has still
been able to sell these CPU classes 15 years after their peak popularity.

From the historical perspective, the 386-class CPUs changed
the entire PC industry. Back before the first George Bush was in office, the
386 CPU ushered in the era of 32-bit computing that we?re only now starting to
see the end of. By adopting the 386 before IBM, Compaq put itself on the map
and lead to the overthrow of the entire IBM PC empire. Mated with Windows 3.1
and then Windows 95, the 386/486 entrenched Microsoft at the top of the
software industry.

People long forgot about those CPUs. Before the turn of the
century the Pentium line and its successors had made the 386 and 486 CPUs
essentially obsolete. The CPUs have lived on as embedded processors, still
crunching data bits inside of devices such as network controllers and data
acquisition devices.

So, even though Intel will still be cranking out the creaky
silicon for another year, the end is on the horizon. While we?re pounding away on dual core
processors and looking forward to 64-bit and quad-core processors for every day
use, all we can say is ?The King is Dead! Long live the King!?

I like your analogy to the neglected bomb shelter.  I referenced your post on my blog:  http://lawfirmmanagement.clarislaw.com/law-firm-disaster-recovery/update-your-disaster-recovery-plan.php#more

Microsoft finally
ships its long awaited subscription security tool OneCare Live tomorrow.
OneCare Live is Microsoft?s entry into the security realm dominated by third
parties such as Symantec and McAfee. It combines a firewall, anti-spyware, and
anti-virus tools along with such things as backup and performance tuning. Not to be outdone, both Symantec and McAfee
are offering
their own new tools.

Jason Hiner has previously
mentioned in his blog that he?s excited about OneCare and plans to use it
at home once it ships. I?m still very skeptical about OneCare.

Oh, I?m sure that Microsoft has done a good job with the
product and that it does exactly what it?s designed to do. I?m also reasonably
sure that it will drive Symantec, McAfee, and others out of the market,
especially when the corporate version becomes available. I also don?t buy the
argument that just because Windows has a reputation for being buggy and full of
security holes that you can?t trust a security product from Microsoft.

So why be skeptical?

I guess it doesn?t have anything to do with OneCare itself.
Rather, releasing a security product for sale like this makes me trust
Microsoft as a whole less. The reason for this lessened trust comes from a parallel
argument made by those people who wouldn?t trust Microsoft with security because
they think Windows is so bad. My reason is based on the inherent conflict of interest that a vendor has
selling an operating system and then charging you to keep it secure.

In selling a subscription product that secures its systems,
what incentive does Microsoft have to truly build security into their
products to begin with? Sheer altruism? Ask Netscape, Lotus, IBM, Corel, Novell,
Ashton-Tate, Borland, and Computer Associates how altruistic Microsoft is. The answer is there is no incentive.
Microsoft gets to play lip-service to security with Vista and other products and
then offer to take more of your money via OneCare for you to be truly secure.

It makes much more sense to me to have security products like
antivirus bundled with an operating system. By including it for free, I?d be
more willing to trust the system as a whole because the company wouldn?t be
profiting from their own mistakes or the willful destruction of others.

Why is it more important to bundle something like a media
player which is completely irrelevant to an operating system, but not something
like security? And it?s not like
Microsoft doesn?t have a history of bundling anti-virus with its operating
systems. DOS 6.x came with anti-virus, but it mysteriously disappeared in Windows
95.

Of course the reason they don?t bundle it is because they can
make a lot of money from it. If there was a way to get a revenue stream
directly from a web browser or a media player, then you?d be paying for IE and
Windows Media Player as well.

Here?s another thing that confuses me. If Vista is supposed
to be so secure, to the point that as George Ou advocates in his
blog you don?t even need
anti-virus or other security products, then why is Microsoft now entering the
market? Could there be something about
Vista, Longhorn, and Office 2007 that Microsoft isn?t telling us? What are we
supposed to believe?

See? This is what I mean by the conflict of interest and the
questions that OneCare raises leading me to trust Microsoft a little
less. I want a system that I can trust to be secure or at least backed
by a company that won't profit from its own mistakes.

If you remember back to the end of last year, several editors
here at TechRepublic offered their list of the top headlines you wouldn?t see
in 2006. I pitched in with my Top
5 Pick and I?m happy to announce that I was absolutely wrong on one count:

3) Novell returns to profitability

This
one pains me because I?ve long been a Novell and NetWare fan. The problem is
NetWare market share is dropping like a rock at the same time Novell is trying
to sell a free operating system that has a version dominated by RedHat. Novell
has a solid record of selling operating systems to business and understanding
networking in general, but so far it hasn?t been able to turn this reputation
into profits. Being squeezed by Microsoft, RedHat, and The March Of Progress,
Novell is in a whole world of hurt. I hope this one turns out to be wrong.

Turns out that Novell just announced that they returned
to profitability in the last quarter. It wasn?t by much ? only 1 cent per
share. And the revenue wasn?t huge, only $278 million, but even so, a profit is
a profit.

It?s worrisome that Novell turned a profit on lower revenue
than a year before. Their revenue has been dropping slowly now for years which
is a scary prospect. But at least a return to profitability is a step in the
right direction.

So, like I said at the end of last year, I was hoping that
prediction was wrong. As a longtime Novell fan, I?m more than happy to shout a
Mea Culpa on that one.

 I?m still right
about Vista missing its ship date however...

One of the new features in Windows Vista that you hear a lot
about is the Aero Glass UI and how it?s supposed to add 3D elements to the
desktop experience. Because the Vista machine in the TechRepublic test lab doesn?t
have a video card with Vista drivers yet, I haven?t had the chance to fully
check it out yet.

3D graphics have been making inroads into everyday aspects of
people?s computing for some time now. In the world of Computer Aided Design and
gaming, 3D is very 20th Century.  For regular desktop applications however, 3D
is still relatively new.

In the browser world, some Web sites employ VRML and X3D to embed 3D images, but it never
has caught on very well. Recently however, I stumbled across a complete 3D
browser called uBrowser which will render
any Web page in a 3D window. For example you can render TechRepublic as either
a cube, sphere, or a rotated flat page. Appropriately enough, you can also
render it as a flag.  Below are some
samples:

What?s uBrowser good for? Well, that?s about it really.
Unfortunately, there are no real added benefits in the current version to
viewing a page in 3D versus viewing in a regular browser. It would be cool if
you could spread tabs across different faces of a cube for example and rotate between
them, but this version doesn?t do that.

The author admits that the browser is only for experimental
purposes. It?s still kind of cool though and may yet point the direction to
where we?ll be browsing in a few years.     

With the Vista Beta 2 now
open to the general public, lots of people are getting the change to kick
the tires around. A lot of people are going to be pleasantly surprised, while
others are in for a rude shock I?m sure. One of the areas that are going to
surprise people is the amount of hardware necessary to get Windows Vista
running without being annoying.

To help judge how Windows Vista performs on a given machine, Vista
includes a Performance Rating Tool that gives a general number you can use to
assess a machine?s Vista capabilities. Steven Warren discussed
his results recently when trying out a test laptop with Vista.

When I installed the February CTP of Vista on the test
workstation in the TechRepublic Test Lab, I was extremely disappointed
in the results. With the release of Beta 2, there were some new video
drivers available that supported the nVidia Quadro card in the workstation, so
I thought I?d check to see how the machine checked out now. Here are the results:

The test machine went from scoring a 2 to scoring a whopping
3. What?s really interesting is to compare how Vista USED to judge the machine
versus how it does now. Remember: The only change in the machine is that there
is now a supported video driver.

Clearly Microsoft has fiddled with the algorithms or else
everything would score the same from one build to the next. It?s still
surprising that many elements of the workstation would score high, but overall
the machine only scores a 3. Talk about grading on a curve.

Seeing as how the Performance Rating Tool can give an overall
high score of 5, it?s still scary to think what kind of machine you?ve got to
be running to actually score a 5. We?ll have to see what future betas hold to
see if the ratings change again.

One of the most heralded changes in Windows Vista is the
inclusion of the Aero Glass interface. The interface change in Vista is almost
as big of a change as XP?s Luna interface was over the old Windows 2000
Professional interface. Of course, to
get Aero Glass working properly, you?re supposed to have a ?Gaming Graphics?
card with at least 128MB of RAM. And naturally you have to be running, or
waiting, for Vista to get it.

Or do you?

Recently I stumbled across the Vista Transformation
Pack. This is an integrated set of utilities that will modify Windows XP to
look and feel very much like Windows Vista. It will also do so without a huge
investment in computer horsepower. You can transform Windows XP into a Vista
lookalike with a graphics card with as little as 8MB of RAM. Best of all, the program is free.

How does it work? The author of the Vista Transformation Pack
integrates the Glass2K utility to allow translucency on Windows 2000/XP along
with some other programming magic to completely change the interface.

I?ve created a Photo Gallery that shows you what the Vista Transformation Pack does to your
Windows XP system. It?s not a complete transformation. You can still see the difference
in a few places, but overall it does a very nice job of emulating Vista. If you
want to get a taste of Vista without completely installing Beta 2, this might
be the way to go.

Using system virtualization, it's only a matter of time until you can run Mac OS on a PC.  The real question then is why would you want to pay extra money for a Mac.  One other thing...  I've heard from kool-aid drinking Mac addicts for years that the Mac platform is so superior.  If that is the case, can someone explain to me why Apple has ditched their original bus architecture, graphics system, OS and processor?  Now they are giddy about running Windows.  Give me a break!

Your point about applications has some merit, but remember that MacOS penetration is still in the single digits compared

to PCs so the high-order bit is to get more Macs out there in the first place.. By adding dual-OS capability you remove
a key barrier for many customers to switch to Apple. And, for any mainstream application, a marketing message saying "It's supported on
Mac; just run it under Microsoft Windows" isn't a viable long-term message if they're seriously targeting that platform?
[it adds a tax, and provides an opportunity for the competition].?

Parallels/BootCamp will bring the greasy nerds back to the Mac camp; they'll be able to run Windows, Linux, and Mac
on their machines. That will spark more innovation on the platform as well as the explore what can be done with
this new OS model of virtual desktops. Jobs will make it work for the rest of us, and Gates will come out with a version
a few years later with a lot more menu selections, clippy (tm), and a new strain of viruses. It's all good, sort of. True, you
can do all this on PCs, but just imagine how many more dates you'll get when you hang at Starbucks, surfing
the web on a chic looking Mac.. The women will think you're a trendy graphic artist and, when you show 'em
the virtual Desktops, hang on! The extra $200 you'll spend for the machine will be well spent.?

And most importantly, running Windows as a virtual desktop on a Mac will let me surf porn on my Mac
with reckless abandon! Just fire up that trusty MS Desktop and start clicking away! And, when I'm
done, clean up is a snap, just like with me and my trusty Kleenex box. No lingering guilt, viruses, or
other glop on the machine; just delete the OS image and back to work you go. Sure I can do this on
my PC, but watching that smooth skin looks sooo much better against a chic aluminum flatscreen.?

pung!

And for the gang that argues that PCs rule because of bus architecture, my Dad can beat up your Dad because?
he drives a car with a Bosch onboard computer!

Your point about applications has some merit, but remember that MacOS penetration is still in the single digits compared

to PCs so the high-order bit is to get more Macs out there in the first place.. By adding dual-OS capability you remove
a key barrier for many customers to switch to Apple. And, for any mainstream application, a marketing message saying "It's supported on
Mac; just run it under Microsoft Windows" isn't a viable long-term message if they're seriously targeting that platform?
[it adds a tax, and provides an opportunity for the competition].?

Parallels/BootCamp will bring the greasy nerds back to the Mac camp; they'll be able to run Windows, Linux, and Mac
on their machines. That will spark more innovation on the platform as well as the explore what can be done with
this new OS model of virtual desktops. Jobs will make it work for the rest of us, and Gates will come out with a version
a few years later with a lot more menu selections, clippy (tm), and a new strain of viruses. It's all good, sort of. True, you
can do all this on PCs, but just imagine how many more dates you'll get when you hang at Starbucks, surfing
the web on a chic looking Mac.. The women will think you're a trendy graphic artist and, when you show 'em
the virtual Desktops, hang on! The extra $200 you'll spend for the machine will be well spent.?

And most importantly, running Windows as a virtual desktop on a Mac will let me surf porn on my Mac
with reckless abandon! Just fire up that trusty MS Desktop and start clicking away! And, when I'm
done, clean up is a snap, just like with me and my trusty Kleenex box. No lingering guilt, viruses, or
other glop on the machine; just delete the OS image and back to work you go. Sure I can do this on
my PC, but watching that smooth skin looks sooo much better against a chic aluminum flatscreen.?

pung!

And for the gang that argues that PCs rule because of bus architecture, my Dad can beat up your Dad because?
he drives a car with a Bosch onboard computer!

Your point about applications has some merit, but remember that MacOS penetration is still in the single digits compared
to PCs so the high-order bit is to get more Macs out there in the first place.. By adding dual-OS capability you remove
a key barrier for many customers to switch to Apple. And, for any mainstream application, a marketing message saying "It's supported on Mac; just run it under Microsoft Windows" isn't a viable long-term message if they're seriously targeting that platform? [it adds a tax, and provides an opportunity for the competition].?

Parallels/BootCamp will bring the greasy nerds back to the Mac camp; they'll be able to run Windows, Linux, and Mac
on their machines. That will spark more innovation on the platform as well as the explore what can be done with
this new OS model of virtual desktops. Jobs will make it work for the rest of us, and Gates will come out with a version
a few years later with a lot more menu selections, clippy (tm), and a new strain of viruses. It's all good, sort of. True, you
can do all this on PCs, but just imagine how many more dates you'll get when you hang at Starbucks, surfing
the web on a chic looking Mac.. The women will think you're a trendy graphic artist and, when you show 'em
the virtual Desktops, hang on! The extra $200 you'll spend for the machine will be well spent.

And most importantly, running Windows as a virtual desktop on a Mac will let me surf porn on my Mac
with reckless abandon! Just fire up that trusty MS Desktop and start clicking away! And, when I'm
done, clean up is a snap, just like with me and my trusty Kleenex box. No lingering guilt, viruses, or
other glop on the machine; just delete the OS image and back to work you go. Sure I can do this on
my PC, but watching that smooth skin looks sooo much better against a chic aluminum flatscreen.

And for the gang that argues that PCs rule because of bus architecture, my Dad can beat up your Dad because
he drives a car with a Bosch onboard computer!

pung

Your point about applications has some merit, but remember that MacOS penetration is still in the single digits compared?to PCs so the high-order bit is to get more Macs out there in the first place.. By adding dual-OS capability you remove?a key barrier for many customers to switch to Apple. And, for any mainstream application, a marketing message saying "It's supported on?Mac; just run it under Microsoft Windows" isn't a viable long-term message if they're seriously targeting that platform?[it adds a tax, and provides an opportunity for the competition].?

Parallels/BootCamp will bring the greasy nerds back to the Mac camp; they'll be able to run Windows, Linux, and Mac?on their machines. That will spark more innovation on the platform as well as the explore what can be done with?this new OS model of virtual desktops. Jobs will make it work for the rest of us, and Gates will come out with a version?a few years later with a lot more menu selections, clippy (tm), and a new strain of viruses. It's all good, sort of. True, you?can do all this on PCs, but just imagine how many more dates you'll get when you hang at Starbucks, surfing?the web on a chic looking Mac.. The women will think you're a trendy graphic artist and, when you show 'em?the virtual Desktops, hang on! The extra $200 you'll spend for the machine will be well spent.?

And most importantly, running Windows as a virtual desktop on a Mac will let me surf porn on my Mac?with reckless abandon! Just fire up that trusty MS Desktop and start clicking away! And, when I'm?done, clean up is a snap, just like with me and my trusty Kleenex box. No lingering guilt, viruses, or?other glop on the machine; just delete the OS image and back to work you go. Sure I can do this on?my PC, but watching that smooth skin looks sooo much better against a chic aluminum flatscreen.?

pung!

And for the gang that argues that PCs rule because of bus architecture, my Dad can beat up your Dad because??he drives a car with a Bosch onboard computer!

Your point about applications has some merit, but remember that MacOS penetration is still in the single digits compared?to PCs so the high-order bit is to get more Macs out there in the first place.. By adding dual-OS capability you remove?a key barrier for many customers to switch to Apple. And, for any mainstream application, a marketing message saying "It's supported on?Mac; just run it under Microsoft Windows" isn't a viable long-term message if they're seriously targeting that platform. [it adds a tax, and provides an opportunity for the competition].?

Parallels/BootCamp will bring the greasy nerds back to the Mac camp; they'll be able to run Windows, Linux, and Mac?on their machines. That will spark more innovation on the platform as well as the explore what can be done with?this new OS model of virtual desktops. Jobs will make it work for the rest of us, and Gates will come out with a version?a few years later with a lot more menu selections, clippy (tm), and a new strain of viruses. It's all good, sort of. True, you?can do all this on PCs, but just imagine how many more dates you'll get when you hang at Starbucks, surfing?the web on a chic looking Mac.. The women will think you're a trendy graphic artist and, when you show 'em?the virtual Desktops, hang on! The extra $200 you'll spend for the machine will be well spent.?

And most importantly, running Windows as a virtual desktop on a Mac will let me surf porn on my Mac?with reckless abandon! Just fire up that trusty MS Desktop and start clicking away! And, when I'm?done, clean up is a snap, just like with me and my trusty Kleenex box. No lingering guilt, viruses, or?other glop on the machine; just delete the OS image and back to work you go. Sure I can do this on?my PC, but watching that smooth skin looks sooo much better against a chic aluminum flatscreen.?

pung!

And for the gang that argues that PCs rule because of bus architecture, my Dad can beat up your Dad because??he drives a car with a Bosch onboard computer!

If you surf around the Web long enough, you find all sorts
of little things that people have done to break Windows. Recently, I was
checking out a blog and saw this title:  How to Break Windows Notepad.

It seems like if you type the string ?this app can break?
(No quotes) into Notepad, save the file, and then double-click the file to
reopen it in Notepad, all you get is a string of boxes. You can see the results
below:

It?s an actual bug, not just cosmetic. If you do a search
for any of the words in the string, you won?t find them. Changing the font won?t
help either.  The boxes won?t disappear.  However, if you try the same trick but type ?this
app can?t break? everything works fine.

Do you know of any other Windows quirks and bugs
like that? Let?s see how many we can list.

There is some basic lack of insight in this article.

"The usual reason given for this desire is the ability to do work at home on a Mac and then be able to transfer it to work where the user usually has a Windows workstation. With the introduction of OpenOffice 2.0 for the Mac, NeoOffice, and Microsoft Office for Mac OS, you would think that those products would take care of that work-at-home requirement"

Are you kidding me? You think "work" is office applications? There are genre-specific applications that are designed for Windows that are used everyday for work. Office is fine for some very high level management functions but day-to-day work requres more than that..none of which runs on Mac OS for obvious reasons.

You give a person the option to run Windows on her Mac to get her work done and then return to what she really prefers for everything else - her stupendously superior Mac, you bet Macs are going to sell more because of this.

It confounds me that you can miss this basic tenet and also makes me wonder if you have ever used a Mac before?

Lets get another thing clear. OS/2 is not Mac OS - not in quality, not in aesthetics, not in adoption. Don't just pull up an example for the sake of it bro. Do your research and think about it.

"If you?re a Macophile, just say No."

Really? I'm sure that works for a guy who works with some kind of word processor all day to shoot out shrill postings based on a general superior disdain and little else - but for the rest of us, especially for Macophiles, say Hell Yes!