Tag Archives: Mac OS/X

Apples (Mac) vs. Oranges (PC) – 5 Years Later

Leave a reply

It amazes me to think it’s been almost 5 years since I wrote a 3 part series of Apples (Mac) vs. Oranges (PC). It was in July 2006 that I finally ended the debate and bought my current Macbook Pro with a 15″ screen.

Well, it pains me to say towards the end of March I started having trouble with the computer. That’s probably an understatement, it just didn’t work. It all started with an innocent iTunes update and resulted in a trip to the Genius Bar at the local Santa Monica Apple Store. That’s where I was told the hard drive had broken down and it needed to be replaced. At that point I had a few options:

  1. Replace the hard drive at the Apple Store for approximately $150, which would have increases the hard drive to 150 GB.
  2. Replace the hard drive at MacMall for approximately $240, which would have increases the hard drive to 500 GB.
  3. Buy a new MacBook Pro!

You can probably imagine I preferred the third option, but at over $2,000, I couldn’t yet rationalize a new computer. So instead, I chose option #4, replace the hard drive myself at a cost of approximately $120, increasing the size of the hard drive to 500 GB.

This turned out to be easier than I would have expected. I bought a Seagate Momentus 500 GB 7200 RPM hard drive at Best Buy. Then, I bought a mini tool set at Radio Shack. And, with a little help from ifixit.com – a great source for step-by-step technology repair manuals – I was able to install the new hard drive. A fresh install of Mac OS/X Snow Leopard, a Time Machine restore, and things were good to go. There were a few hiccups along the way when restoring from backup, but overall they were minor.  And now my Macbook Pro is running like new. Who would have thought I would not only own a computer for 5 years without replacing it, but not even need to as it’s running as smooth as can be. Something I can’t say for previous Windows based computers I’ve owned. And with the iPad acting as a great secondary computer, I wonder how long it will be before I decide to actually buy a new computer.

If I could have waited just one month…

Leave a reply

During the month of December the connection to my wireless router was dropping multiple times per day, which usually means the router is going bad. That’s not surprising considering they usually only last a year or two. Well, early last week, the router died. As a result, I did some research and decided to buy the Apple Airport Extreme ($180), which has a USB port for connecting an external hard drive or printer. The main reason I wanted to hook up the external hard drive to the router is to be able to back up my data wirelessly, but Time Machine doesn’t work so well with a wireless external hard drive. So, I decided to go with the wireless printer option. On top of that, I bought a new 500 GB external hard drive last month for $140 to go with the new Mac OS, specifically to take advantage of Time Machine.

Why am I telling you this? Well, yesterday, Apple introduced a new product called Time Capsule, which is both a wireless router and hard drive. Lets do the math. During the past month I’ve paid $320 for a wireless router and external hard drive. The 500 GB Time Capsule, which is set to be available in February, will cost $300. It would have cost less to by a single product. How often does that happen? That sucks! On top of everything, Time Capsule would allow for Time Machine to backup wirelessly, which as I noted earlier doesn’t work so well when hooked up the external hard drive wirelessly.

There’s a reason I love technology, but sometimes I wish technology would be available when I need it, not just after I need it. Maybe I should sue Apple. I’m sure they knew this was coming out when I purchased the wireless router last week. I mean, if people actually bring lawsuits against Apple for lowering their prices shortly after the iPhone was brought to market, I’m sure there’s a lawyer out there willing to hear me out. Of course, I’m just kidding about that. It’s just my way of complaining about all the idiots out there that sue when things don’t go their way. Me, I just add a post to the blog :-) .

Post per day?!

1 Reply

There seems to be some flack coming my way regarding the amount of posts on the blog, or lack thereof. Joker popped me an e-mail saying I should have one per day. He goes even further to say Curt Schilling adds a post at least once per week. My only question to that is, why are you reading Curt Schillings blog? He plays for the Boston Red Sox! I’ll try to do a better job with the blog, but can’t make any guarantees. I’m sort of liking this whole no work, no responsibilities concept.

I guess it would be a good idea to add Happy New Year to everyone in the blog. My New Year’s activities fell through this year and resulted in me being sound asleep before the New Year actually arrived. The plan was to head up to Silverthorne to hang out at a friends place. Silverthorne, for those of you not in or from Denver, is up in the mountains. On Sunday I-70 was closed due to high winds, blowing snow, and avalanche conditions. A lot of people were stranded up in the mountains until after 3 PM on Monday, when I-70 finally opened back up. Although the roads were open, driving conditions still weren’t great and traffic wasn’t going to be pretty with a lot of people leaving and going to the mountains to get to their New Year’s Eve festivities. So, I decided to relax at home and enjoy one of my Christmas gifts.

What Christmas gift, you ask? Well, my brother bought me the new Mac OS, Leopard. I spent the night on Monday installing the OS. At first, I tried to do an Archive and Install, which archives the old OS and installs the new one in its place. This option was supposed to make my data and applications available once complete. However, it didn’t seem to work. I was able to boot up using Safe mode, but the normal boot process left me with a blank desktop and no way to get to my data and application. So, I decided to do a clean install, which deleted everything and installed the new OS. I used a backup from earlier in the day to bring all of the applications and data over from the external hard drive. So, here I am blogging with my new OS. There aren’t a whole lot of noticeable upgrades from the old OS, but there are some that I really like. First is Time Machine, which is a backup tool which makes daily, weekly, and monthly backups to the external hard drive. I don’t even notice when it’s running, all that’s needed is for the external hard drive to be connected, which it isn’t all the time. I mean, why have a laptop if I’m going to be at my desk all the time. Apple Mail and iCal had some upgrades too. There is a whole slew of stationary options in Mail, which I haven’t used too much yet, but will just to annoy people with bigger emails. Mail also added a task list (which is shared with iCal) and notes tool, which is pretty cool, especially if you know how much I like to have task lists. And, something that I like is the ability for Mail to recognize dates with e-mails. Once it recognizes a date and I hover over it, it give me the option to add an iCal event using it. There are other smaller upgrades with in the OS, but I won’t get into all of them. Check out the Apple website if you want the full list.

Well, that’s about it for now. If another post is added during the next week, it’ll be from Keystone, where I’ll be spending the rest of this week. And again, Happy New Year!

That feels good…

Leave a reply

It’s so nice to sleep in my own bed after being away for 3 weeks. I finally got back to Denver last Thursday after spending a few days in Vegas. Not much to say about Vegas as I wasn’t in the best shape for what it has to offer. I’m not sure why, but I managed to come down with a little cold during the last few days in Marina Del Rey. The cold might have something to do with late nights out, eating late night meals, and sleeping on an air mattress during most of my stay, but that’s just a guess. By the time I reached Vegas I was pretty beat. The first night I was in bed by 10 PM. I managed to make it ’til midnight the second night. Not that it mattered, I probably won’t be gambling at the Hard Rock Casino ever again. It was ridiculous how fast I lost my money. It’s not that I expect to win money in Vegas. Actually, I expect to lose whatever money I bring. But it would’ve been nice to last a little longer at the tables to at least enjoy a free drink or two. Oh well.

So here I am finally getting some things done at home. Mostly, I’ve been cleaning up in certain areas that get ignored, like the garage. And, in the “things that interest only me” area, I finally upgraded WordPress today. I’m now running on v2.3.1. And I was able to upgrade the K2 theme and Gallery plugin so everything work together. I’ve been using the Gallery plugin for pictures for some time now, but I had to stop using the K2 theme earlier this year when I figured out the K2 theme and Gallery plugin didn’t get along. The K2 theme comes with some cool functions that I’ve missed. Specifically, I’m able to create header images using my own pictures to put on the site. I’ve already added one that I was using earlier this year. One I get more header images in there, the images will rotate so that front page doesn’t seem static. Like I said, things that interest only me.

On that same note, I can’t wait for Christmas to come. I’m getting the latest version of Mac OS/X – Leopard. That’ll give me something to play with for a few days. I’ll try to get another post in before Christmas. But, if I don’t, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Computer upgrades anyone?

3 Replies

I’m jealous! A friend went out and bought a new iMac after Apple released the new versions yesterday. They look quite impressive and thin. And, as she stated – “If I can’t be thin, my computer might as well be.” From a personal perspective, that’s a great theory to live by. Along with the new iMacs, Apple upgraded the .Mac, iWeb (part of iLife), and iWork software.

The upgrades to iWeb and .Mac are particularly interesting. For some time now I’ve kept my eye on .Mac because it comes with a very good backup software, but I couldn’t rationalize paying $99 for backup software alone, even if there was 1 GB of storage space and e-mail provided. Well, that has now changed. .Mac and iWeb now support personal domain names. In other words, I can create my website using iWeb and then publish it to my personal domain name, which would be supported by .Mac. On top of that, they now provide 10 GB of available space, which is a 10x upgrade from what they used to offer.

The iWork software now includes a spreadsheet tool called Numbers. It seems to be pretty cool after reading a review on macworld.com. Although, the person that wrote the article notes that it will take an Excel user some time to adjust to the different layout of Numbers. Apple has apparently created the software to change the way users think of spreadsheets. Numbers, along with their word processor (Pages) and presentation (Keynote) software now makes for a reasonable alternative for Microsoft Office. Add the $79 price tag and it looks like a potential steal.

So, since I’m a budget freak, lets see how much that will set me back:
1. Mac OS 10.5 (Panther) – $129 (assumes same cost as 10.4 Tiger)
2. RAM – $150 for 1 GB (1 DIMM) or $300 for 2 GB (2 DIMM)
3. .Mac – $99
4. iLife – $79
5. iWork – $79
Total – $536 to upgrade to 1.5 GB RAM or $636 to upgrade to 2GB of RAM

Ok, so the total cost might be a bit much for one single purchase, but there’s nothing wrong with dreaming. The question now is, in what order do I buy them? Chance are, since I run Windows XP using Bootcamp and have Office 2003, iWork will be the last purchase. Since my contract with godaddy.com lasts until next March, I’ll probably wait until then to upgrade iLife and .Mac. That leaves the OS and RAM upgrades as my first purchase sometime around Christmas. Sounds like a plan. Any bets on whether I’ll stick to it. In providing full disclosure, I have had my eye on a new big screen TV and a new monitor for the desk at home :-) .

But the again, next year my laptop will turn 2 years old. Might it be time to retire this laptop to a family member and upgrade to a new one?! Ok, that’s a lot of money I’ve thrown around in the post, I’m going to have to stop now.

Best of Both Worlds

3 Replies

We all would like to have the best of everything. For me, there is no time where this is more true then when it comes to gadgets. I’ve even said in the past that my love of gagdets is one day going to send me to the poor house. Well, this weekend I was able to cross out another item on that list of gadgets. It’s called Bootcamp and it’s free… sort of. Bootcamp is an application that allows an Apple computer running Mac OS/X to dual boot with Windows XP (and Vista). The application itself is free to download from the Apple website. However, I did have to pay for a full version of Windows XP. I decided to buy Windows XP Pro OEM (systems builders version) for about $140, which is a big discount over the retail version which runs about $300.

The reason I was drawn to using Bootcamp was the limited number of applications that run on Mac OS/X. Apple provides a good assortment of applications to do the basics (ie, iCal, Address Book, Mail, Safari etc.). However, there were two areas where the Mac wasn’t equal to the Windows computer.

First of all, Quicken for Mac is a run down version of the one made for Windows computers. It’s very disappointing how Quicken limits the functionality on the Mac version. But, I will say this isn’t limited to Quicken. The number of applications made for a Mac is limited. To an extent I can understand why. In the end, a software company wants to bring in the most money. And to do this, you want to create software that can be used by the most amount of people. In this case, Windows has a bigger base with computer users. It’s one of the reasons there are more virus’ out there for Windows computers. Why write a virus for a Mac computer when it will not create the most damage with users?

The second reason for running Windows on the Mac is for Windows Media Player. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not getting rid of my iPod now or anytime soon and will continue to use OS/X with iTunes until further notice. The problem is, I like to listen to internet radio. Specifically, baseball games on mlb.com. It’s the easiest and cheapest way for me to keep up with the mighty New York Mets. The mlb.com site, along with many others, work best with Windows Media Player. There are many sites that don’t work or have limited functionality on OS/X.

After about 3 hours setting up Bootcamp with Windows XP on Friday night (yes, this is what I did instead of going out), I’m all set. It’s amazing how simple it was. The majority of the time I was away from the computer while backing up my Apple files or letting Windows XP install. Choosing which OS to boot with is as simple as holding down the Option key while booting, using the arrow keys to select the OS, and pressing Enter.

So here I am, living in the best of both worlds. My calendar, address books, e-mail, music, photos, etc. live on the Mac partition. And Windows Media Player, Quicken 2005, and Windows Live Messenger are on the Windows partition.

By the way, this web browser I’m using on the Windows XP side, Internet Explorer 7, is a definite upgrade from version 6. It even has tabbed browsing. How cool is that?! Where have a seen that before. Oh, that right. Safari and Firefox have had tabbed browsers for a few years now :-)