But there, for the grace of Steve Jobs, go I

As someone who works, at least part time, as a design professional, I come into Mac fans on an almost daily basis. Sadly, whilst Apple products are generally rather good, they are intrinsically spoiled by their legion of unquestioning followers. You’ve probably met them. A conversation with a member of the Apple harem will go roughly like this:

Me, working on my laptop. Mac fan: Why are you using a PC? You need to use a mac. SOOO much faster. Me: Really? Isn’t that a Macbook Air – aren’t they pretty underpowered… Mac fan: Nope, fast as lightning. Mac OSX literally makes the electrons in processors and RAM function at a higher velocity. Me: Ok. Mac fan: Seriously, why are you still using that steaming pile of failure? I’ve had Macs ten years, and I’ve never had one crash on me. I bet your Windoze heap is crashing right now! Me: Actually, I’ve found Win7 pretty good. And OSX has crashed on me frequently. Mac fan: No. It hasn’t. Me: Sorry? Are you overuling my ability to discern truth? Mac fan: WHY HAVEN’T YOU BOUGHT A MAC YET?! Me: Well, I feel they are somewhat overpriced; I don’t really like how they look, nor do I find them ergonomic; I don’t like the operating system, I feel it doesn’t provide as good a workflow as Windows; the warranties are overpriced and underfeatured, and in my experience, overutilitised; I’m happy with my current machine… Mac fan, screams

Error reporting not reporting error

Yes, the title of this post is a palindrome, as a metaphor for the backwards and forwards nature of the problem I’m experiencing. You see, my computer has BSODed about once a fortnight for the last few months. That’s a Blue Screen of Death, for those of you not geek enough – its where your computer displays an error message, then turns itself off.

Now, I’m used to this – since almost every single computer I have ever owned has crashed on occasion: Windows, Linux, Mac (Yes, Macs crash too!), Android, Palm OS, EPOC, SIBO…

Farewell to XP with Comic Style

Short post today – I have just bought a new HP EliteBook 6930p laptop, and am thus in the process of upgrading, transferring and sorting my old HP Compaq nc6400.

Since I have a final day or so to spend with my old and faithful machine, and since my new laptop is running Windows 7, it is time for me to say goodbye to Windows XP. With my desktop also running 7, I now have no computers left on the 9 year old operating system.