Archive for February, 2008

My First Mac Rant

I’ve been using a Mac Book Pro running OS X Leopard as my main PC for about 2 weeks now, and my goal was to adapt without Windows (either via Parallels or Boot Camp) using native software. Browsing, well Firefox and all the plugins I use work in OS X. iTunes? Well…iTunes. Video/Codecs? VLC. FTP? Cyberduck. Office 2007? Well, there’s Office 2008 for Mac.

Everything seamed like a smooth transition until I started using Word, Excel and Entourage. Everything looks different. Tool bars and menus are totally different from their Windows counterparts. It is not easy for Mac-switchers as it is, getting used to not having a taskbar, jumping icons and what not, but why oh why does Word for Mac have to be completely different from regular Windows Word? Why is Entourage the complete opposite of Outlook? I mean, its the same program in essence that does the same stuff, but these having different UIs is confusing and just plain stupid. If Adobe can do it with evey single Creative Suite program Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc) why isn’t Microsoft doing it?

My guess is that Microsoft doesn’t care about Mac-switchers and they aren’t the core target. They care about providing Windows-Word like More >

Build an inexpensive Vista PC for $500 – revisited

About a year ago I wrote a pretty successful article (it got Dugg over 1000 times and I still get traffic via search engines) and I’ve decided to revisit this article and update it a bit with fresh hardware. In a year, memory and processors got cheaper, so I will be including these in this new build. This time, we will be building the computer for about $500 (without tax) with Vista Home Premium included. I don’t get into the specific of building the machine itself (more…)

Free teeth whitening in exchange for 15 minutes of work

Normally, I wouldn’t be blogging about my last visit to the dentist’s office (still no cavities, yay!) but I just had to due to outcome of the visit. I had an appointment for just a general checkup and cleaning. While the doc was taking x-rays he asked me about my work and how I earned a living. I gave him the standard answer, which is something like, “I fix/build computers, servers and I do networking. I also design and develop websites”. It was then that he decided to share with me his computer issues there at his office, which were networking related. (more…)

«12