Making your iPod Touch a useful productivity tool

Over the festive season I treated myself to an iPod Touch. There were basically two reasons for this:

1) I don't want to have to spend the additional amount per month for a phone contract for the iPhone when I already have a perfecttly good phone.
2) I had enough American Express points accumulated to receive one as a reward.


The reputation of these gadgets are that they are little more than game's machines that you can play your music on, but having now spent a couple of weeks working with it, I find it an extremely useful tool from a productivity point of view and I wanted to let you know my working methods for how I use it.

The Touch, remember, is effectively a stand-alone system with no connection to the internet unless you are within a wi-fi zone. Therefore it cannot be defined as 'always-on' in the same way that the iPhone can. However there are enough apps and tools to make that almost an irrelevancy.

Here's a typical day for me on the Touch:

My house is wi-fi enabled so I use my time in a morning to make sure I have everything I need on the Touch before heading out.

1) I use Appigo's To-Do ($9.99/£5.99) to manage my task list. This links in with the  Toodledo web app.(free or $14.95/year)  I can load my to do items on either of these apps but before I leave the house I hit the synch button to ensure the Touch is up-to-date.

2) Simplenote (free or £2.99/year). This is the favourite tool for the Touch. It is a simple note taking application which will instantly synchronise with a web site to ensure that both Touch and 'cloud' version are kept up to date. If I need to remember something or jot some important information down (Ideas for blog posts etc) I can either drop them onto the web app or into Simplenote on the Touch and they are synched with each other as soon as a connection is made. This is useful if I have information I need to take with me everywhere because it doesn't rely on having a connection to work. I can drop, for example, Paid wi-fi passwords onto it and use them when I need to connect in a cafe or something.

3) In the morning I check the web. I use Morning Coffee on Firefox (free) to pick up a list of web sites I read regularly. There are usually one or two pages on there that I wish to read later so I hit the 'Read Later' bookmark which automatically downloads them into my Instapaper account. The Touch has the Instapaper app (free or £2.99/$5.99) loaded and these two synch together to ensure I have those pages available for reading off line. Further more Instapaper (pro version) has a twitter and email function which means I can take a web page from Instapaper, read it, select text I like, and create an email based on that text. I can send the email to my Posterous account and it will be automatically posted whenever I reach a wi-fi connection. The Twitter function works in a similar way by storing the tweets up until you go on-line. This effectively means I have mobile blogging.

4) DropBox. I have the DropBox app (free or $9.99/month) installed. If there is any attachment or anything that I have received from my email that I want to save and read later I can save it into my Dropbox account. I then use the Touch Dropbox app to favourite that entry and it is downloaded onto my Touch for off-line reading. (Note: if you are wanting to read a PDF it is also useful to install the Aji Reader app ($0.99) which will allow you to select a PDF from the web, download it to your Touch and have that available for full zoom-in-and-out rotatable reading later on).

5) Evernote (free or $45/year). All my notes and various things are loaded into Evernote. Again with the 'favourite' option I can physically download the ones I am interested in onto the Touch and use them offline. Of course I can also add new ones while off-line and they will be automatically synched when I get a connection again.

6) Email. I use the inbuilt Touch Email app which is great because it is synched to my Gmail account. In the morning when the wi-fi is attached I can download all my mail from the Google server to the Touch and I'm ready to go. The mail app works equally as well without having a network connection and all mails are kept on the Touch until the connection is remade and it can synch them all back up.

7) NewsFeeds. I have 111 feeds that I read on a daily basis. They are stored in the Google reader account that I have. Using MobileRSS I can synchronise them all in the morning and have them on my Touch when I am off-line. This does rely - of course - on having full feeds from your sources and not just summarised one- or two-liners.

8) If I decide I am ready to post a blog entry I can write it in BlogPress (free or £2.79/$2.99). The lite version supports Blogger only and the paid version supports other platforms too. This is a streamlined blogging application which can create posts, schedule them and publish them. If you are off-line you cans save them in a draft form on the Touch and then publish them when you get back on-line.


I also run an iTunes synch to update any apps and ensure that both my calendar and contacts list from the Mac have been updated to the Touch and I'm ready to go. I use Plaxo to manage my calendar and this is set to automatically synchronise to iCal which then synch's to the Touch. Contacts are managed in Google which also synchronises via Plaxo to the Mac Address Book.

So, using about 5 to 10 minutes of time in the morning I can identify the main pages I want to read on the web, the Dropbox files, email, Evernote entries and feeds that I wish to have, synch them all while at home and then head off to work with enough material to read on the train that I don't have to worry about not buying a newspaper.

On the train (or plane, or anywhere I have a few moments) I can read my email. If there is something in there that requires an action I can either create an entry on ToDo directly or - using a fabulous e-mail in function - I can email the details to my Toodledo account and an entry will be created automatically. As soon as I hit a wif-fi zone the email will be sent and I can then synch up my ToDo account on the Touch.

Using Instapaper I can read those web pages I identified earlier. If I find something I want to keep a permanent record of - such as useful website -  I can open Evernote, create a new entry and tag it. If there is a piece of information I wish to use directly - something which sparks the idea for a new blog posting, for example - I can make a new Simplenote entry there and then or mail it directly into my posterous account or create a draft post in BlogPress.

When I next hit a wifi zone I can synch up Evernote, Simplenote, Instapaper and ToDo and make sure I am completely up to date.

The result of this is that I can emulate an 'always connected' paradigm whilst only being connected for a short amount of time. As long as I can get 5 minutes of wi-fi connection to enable synching up there is no reason for me to be connected 24/.

How do you use your Touch? Have I left out any important applications?

(Costs are for either the free option (where available) or the cheapest paid option if more than one exists. All prices are accurate as per the iTunes store at the date of the posting)

Read More

Random Musings on life 'n stuff

Occasionally things occur to me that I have to write down:

• Why is it if I throw a kitten into boiling water I am an animal abuser but if I throw a lobster into boiling water I am a chef?
• Maggots are said to be good to put into a wound because they only eat dead tissue. How do they know it's dead? Maybe if they bite and nibble at live tissue for a while it 'becomes' dead. You could lose an arm that way.
• If we descended from the apes, how come there are still apes on the planet? Crocodiles descended from the dinosaurs, apparently, yet the dinosaurs disappeared.
• What is all this commotion about X-Factor? So what if someone got voted off? So what if it's talentless twins remaining? IT'S JUST A TV SHOW. Get over it, folks.
• Who can we believe about Global Warming? Is it really getting warmer? Feels pretty cold outside at the moment. Is it right that global warming can resulting the planet getting cooler?
• If we do need movement on the global warming front, surely the best way to do this is to make it financially attractive for businesses to adhere to set standards. Reward adherance to standards, penalise non-compliance. It works every time. 
• PC vs Mac. Who really cares? iPhone vs Android. Who really cares? Friendfeed vs Twitter. Who really cares? If that's all you've got to worry about then you're in a pretty good position in life.
• If we run out of fossil fuels, will this make us more dependent on non-fossil fuels, or will we go back to a world where we had less dependence on energy altogether? Will we completely stop flying, for example?
• Ugg boots. Are they the ugliest things ever for a woman to wear? 
• If the oil producing counties of the world run out of oil and some small island in the pacific discovers oil, will that island become a world superpower?
  

That's your lot for today.

Read More

Free Video Editing Software - What's out there and is it any good?

The art of video editing is one that has come down through the ages from the days when editors used to stand and handle roles of unstable nitrate-based film in California right down to current days when anyone with a moderately powerful PC can edit his or her own blockbuster in the comfort of their own home.

But the problem with tools such as that is that they are both complex and expensive. A copy of the Adobe Creative Suite (With Premier, After Effects and a few other image manipulation tools) will cost you upwards of $1800 retail (with Premier alone costing almost $800). Apple's equivalent Final Cut Studio is no less expensive requiring an outlay of $1300 but the purchase of a fairly hefty Apple computer to run it on.

So what if you're just a sensible amateur videographer who wants to be able to take his camcorder footage and slap it together cheaply? Maybe you want to upload it to Youtube or one of the other video editing software packages? Do you really want to spend obscene amounts of money on this hobby?

Maybe you do. If that's the case (and it is for me) then go ahead. Use the top of the range tools and produce video's that are awe inspiring and jaw dropping.

But for the rest of the mere mortals who don't want to go down that road, what's out there that can help?

The good news is there's loads of free video editing software out there.

The Basics

Both PC's and Mac's come furnished with a reasonable competent free video editing software tool. The Mac version is called iMovie and the PC version is called Windows Movie Maker.

They are both the 'drag and drop' type of tool, which basically means that you capture your video from your camcorder and then drag each clip that you want into a sequence for editing. They both allow the creation of titles and the use of fades and dissolves.

For a lot of users this will be enough for what they need. After all, unless you're George Lucas you don't need a whole load of fancy transitions to stick between the shots of Aunt Mable and Uncle Don dancing the hokey-cokey at Maria's wedding, do you?

But if you do want a little bit extra there are some other very good tools out there, which are free.

The Others

Hyperengine-AV is a Mac based free video editing tool which has pioneered the concept of trackless editing. With Hyperengine things like audio and video, transitions and effects can be placed randomly across the timeline without being stuck on a particular track. It makes for an interesting looking timeline! It also comes linked in with all the effects that are bundled with Apple's QuickTime toolset (which do things like allow adjustment of video colour, brightness and other such alterations)

If that doesn't appeal to you - or you want something a little more complex, how about Blender? This is one of the best pieces of open source software available. Not only is it free video editing software, it is also a compositing and 3d computer graphics tool. The functionality is amazing, but so is the learning curve. This is a complex piece of video editing software to learn but it will give most of the top-of-the-range tools a run for their money.

Currently the market leader in professional video editing tools is Avid (most Hollywood movies nowadays are edited on Avid tools). Guess what? Avid has a free video editing tool for home editing as well. It's called Videospin and it is actually a less functional version of their Pinnacle editing software (which is a commercial package). It supports many different formats of video and can output to many different formats as well. The main selling point of Videospin, though, is the fact that it can output directly to Youtube!

A favourite of mine is Avidemux, This is a very simple free video editing tool that works on both Windows, Mac and Linux. It's quite basic, but it will support many different file formats and is very stable.

There are many others on the market, we haven't even touched items such as Wax, T@BZS4 or Jahshaka, and the whole area of tools for video conversion between formats is worthy of an article of it's own, but I hope this has opened your eyes to some of the tools that are available other than the basic ones supplied on your PC or Mac.

Gary Comerford runs the Free video editing website at http://www.free-video-editing.com/ez The site has links to and reviews of Linux, Mac and PC software devoted to video editing, special effects, video conversion and DVD creation, as well as tutorials and other editing related items. It's also the place to find out all about the tools mentioned in this article. Why not subscribe to the Ezine (http://www.free-video-editing.com/eza) to be kept up to date in this fast moving area of software?

Technorati Tags: free video editing, software, movie editing

Read More

A day in the life......

A number of people have asked what, exactly, I do all day.

I have a job I love. I work at home, I write a lot and I'm my own boss. A lot of people are jealous or envious of that and I can tell you now there's is no reason to be. There is a perception that work-at-home folks have an easy life. We get up when we want, work when we want, go and play golf when we want (actually that bit is generally true...), and we generally don't work as hard as office based folks.

Well, rather than take you through a typical day let me try and paint a picture of my life as it relates to you, the reader.

I subscribe to a number of newfeeds and blog feeds which talk about productivity and so-called 'Life Hacks'. A lot of what follows is a direct result of my implementation of the ideas found there.

Early start
The first thing to remember is that I like to get an early start (6am when possible). Sometime's it's not easy. Sometimes I really want to stay where I am an keep the duvet on. But I try my best to get up when the alarm goes.

Standard routine
The day starts with a standard routine regarding the computer:

I run a Mac (as those of you who read my 'Mac musings' series will know), and this gets turned on just after I get up. First thing that happens then is Morning Coffee. Note that I have put that in capital letters. This isn't a cup of well made java, rather a Firefox add-on that preloads a set of pages I want to read (you are using Firefox as your browser, right?). One click and I can load up all the key pages I want to go through in a morning. These pages change on a daily basis (thanks to Morning Coffee's functionality), but include BBC News, Aint-It-Cool-News, Google Adsense, Google analytics, a couple of forums, Dilbert, and Wall Shadows (a site run by Algo, a friend of mine, that talks about films and philosophy - it sounds wierd, but go!)

I also do a quick check of e-mail at this point (but only to see if there is anything of great interest that needs an immediate response). The productivity guru's swear by not checking your e-mail first thing and I agree with this. However, I justify this by saying that it's only 5 minutes and it's just a skim read.

Yahoo! Answers
First job of the day is Yahoo! Answers. I run several web sites, one of which is about free video editing. As a means of promoting this I spend time most mornings at Yahoo! answering questions related to video. 90% of the questions are along the lines of "What free video software can I get?". In fact this is such a popular question that I have dedicated a complete page at my site to people coming in from Yahoo! It seems to be working - I have answered nearly 200 questions and 2 out of 3 are rated best answers (approximately 1 out of 4 are either still open or not rated yet). I'm quite pleased at that.

Site Build it!
My free video site is hosted by a company called Site Build it! who are the best all-in-one web hosting and site development service. Read more here. One of the things I like about them is that they provide a good number of management tools to help run your site. I check these next. This includes things such as visitor stats, search engine rankings, inbound links etc. I can also check who has signed up to my ezine or left a contact for me through the site.

Writing!
Then I get down to writing. Apart from the free video editing web site I also run three more blogs and a business process consultancy company. On any given day the focus is usually on one of these things. At the moment I am finishing up and starting to promote my ebook "The Perfect Process Project" which will be released next week. The Process Cafe is used as my process blog so I'm adding entries to that in support of the launch.

I also recently got my private pilots licence and started a blog that talks about that. I'm looking to extend my flying skills by doing what's called 'difference training' to allow me to fly more powerful planes. There are entries related to that at the Flying Cafe.

Of course there are these entries on the Musings Cafe that need to be done as well. This is a 'catch-all' blog that has entries which don't fit on the these blogs and which I want to write about. See my posts on environmental tips for an example of this.

I also work on building the business process consultancy business. I spend time on Linked-in answering questions relevant to my area of expertise, connect with folks in that area, answer forum questions from related groups and ensure I keep in contact with business associates from past and present. At the moment I am prepping for a pre-sales meeting with a company in the healthcare industry so I need to spend time researching the company and putting together the presentation.

Productivity
Basically I write every day. It could be a blog post or two, it could be a complete new entry on the latest free video tool to come out. It could be a new chapter in the ebook or a particular white paper on BPA or process facilitation sessions.

So how does this work in reality? Well, getting back to the productivity guru's, they recommend finding the best time to write and write as much as you can in that time. I find that first thing in the morning works for me, before the neighbours are up and before I start to feel tired as a result of waking early! For example, this particular document was started at 6.20 in the morning.

I do realise that I could actually be more productive and I'm working towards it. One of the reasons (as espoused by Leo of Zen Habits) is to declutter your workspace. My workspace sucks. I have papers, cables, documents, 7 hard drives, 3 computer carcasses, boxes and two CRT computer screens around where I work. I really should find time to move that clutter out and get back to something nice and simple. Although, to be honest, when I'm writing I don't find that stuff like that distracts me. I find that if I'm looking for something though, (like a note I made on a sheet of paper about a new piece of video software) I can spend longer looking for it than I would in a decluttered environment, but that's about the only downside.

Wonder what that says about my mind....?


Work breaks/ distractions
The only problem with writing is that occasionally I can get outside the zone. Sometimes it's a matter of not being totally committed to an article or a post I'm writing (that happens if I have a half-baked idea for a post and not enough research into it). So occasionally I need a distraction. I've talked in the past about my cats (one of whom loved to sit and watch me write before he was killed by a passing car), so I do like all things feline. So when I came across icanhascheezburger I was overjoyed.

"Cheezburger" is a site dedicated to funny pictures of cats and kittens but captioned using 'lolspeak' which is the internet chat speak language. I don't spend a huge amount of time on this site, but I can occasionally drop in to see what's just been added.



Generally my writing environment consists of no interruptions. By this I mean no IM (I turn Adium off when writing), no e-mail (I close the email notification noise/alert and just let the mails accumulate in the background), and no phone (generally I send all calls to voice mail). One thing I have found incredibly useful (and infuriating at the same time) is the use of a Mac product called Anti RSI. As the name suggests it's a small application which will work with you to combat RSI. Basically you define work chunks which could be, say, 10 minutes at a time. After 10 minutes a message is displayed with a 15 second countdown. You cannot remove the message and countdown unless you leave the keyboard alone completely. Then, every 50 minutes you can set a ten minute break. It works really effectively to let you work has hard as you can for a while but still remind you to stop typing and give your fingers (and mind) a rest. The infuriating thing is when you are right in the middle of something interesting or inspire) and the message pops up. it can make you lose your focus and concentration for a while! There is a similar product for windows called Workrave

Now that I'm down to one kitten, he can be a little clingy. There was a time when they would go out first thing in the morning and return for food and an afternoon nap and that was it. I would see nothing of either of them other than that. Moe would occasionally come back and sit on the window sill to watch. But now that he's gone Zeke likes to spend time with me. He'll come in during the morning and walk around on the desk, on the keyboard, on my lap and in front of my face. Generally he'll then insinuate himself into my space and settle down across one of my arms, or something. It's very difficult to write with a cat asleep on your arm!

Conclusion
I said I wouldn't take you through a typical day for me and It seems to have ended up doing just that. But there's a reason for this. There are lots of people out there who work in their own routines every day. Some of them work at home like I do, some of them are in an office, some even go out and spend time at the local Starbucks tapping on their laptop.

But however you do it, I think it's worth remembering the following: What I do is not so different to a standard 9-5 job. You work in an office (So do I, but in a different type of office). You are producing in the hope of earning money (so am I). You are trying to get as much done with as little effort as possible (so am I). You are distracted occasionally (so am I).

Where it differs is that I have a lot more freedom about where and when I work. I can work hard all morning, go play golf in the afternoon, and come back and work in the evening if I want. You can't. Although you do get a regular paycheck at the end of the month. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't....

Read More

Wharton's view of Vista

Image Courtesy of Andréia

I'm lucky. Because I recently bought a Macbook I didn't have to go down the route of getting a new PC pre-installed with Windows Vista on it. Had I done so, I would have had to remove it and drop a (legal) copy of XP on there so that I could be comfortable in using it. The general consensus everywhere in the world (apart from Redmond) is that Vista has, shall we say, 'issues' (although having said that, C-Net are reporting that Bill Gates is pushing Windows 7 as a better alternative to Vista so maybe Redmond have recognised the issues).

The Wharton group have produced a report on Vista, (Microsoft's Vista: New Horizon or the End of the Road for PC Operating Systems?) which they have quite cleverly linked in with the Yahoo/MSFT failed merger, by indicating that the merger has been something of a distraction to Microsoft and with that out of the way they will be able to focus on 'repairing' Vista and making it useful.

The article itself is quite long and a little detailed, but picking the bones out of it I would highlight the following:

1) Nearly 16 months after Microsoft launched Vista, the company is still trying to convince some consumers of the operating system's merit. Vista "is a disappointment," says Shawndra Hill, operations and information management professor at Wharton and a Vista customer. "It's too complicated. We had Windows XP and were using it fine. Then Microsoft decided to provide us with something new. But there wasn't anything really new" about it.

2) "There is just a lack of enthusiasm for Vista among consumers"

3) Microsoft finds itself at a crossroads, according to Werbach. "The platform for most uses of PCs today is the Internet, not Windows. Windows plays an important role in the ecosystem, but it's not the center of the world in the way it used to be. Microsoft has made several attempts to integrate Windows and the web, but the center of gravity for innovation and monetization keeps moving to the network. Microsoft needs to decide whether it cares more about the next 5 to 10 years, or the 20 years after that."

The interesting thing from a Mac point of view is that this is now at a similar stage to where the Mac OS was a number of years ago. From a fairly universally derided upgrade of the Mac OS, Apple were successfully able to turn that around and produce what is now considered to be one of the better operating systems around.

Can Microsoft do the same?

I would argue that the environment is now so totally different that this may not be possible. As the article states, the platform for most PC's is the internet not Windows. Maybe the advent of such systems as Linux (and it's variants) along with Open Source equivalents of many of today's prime software packages means that more and more people will start to look at alternate hardware/software combinations to do their thing.

Also worth checking out on the article is a number of the comments that are attached to it. There are some real doozies: "It is like having a 747 plane flying on a regional route', and "It is incredibly slow, it is capricious and it is user-surly". However my favourite is actually the user who says the following: "Vista is just fine as long as some parameters are observed. Clean off the "crapware" from the computer, ensure that all drivers supplied by the OEM are up-to-date, and be sure that your hardware is Vista compatible and your computer is new enough, has the power, and the RAM to handle Vista. If you do that, problems are almost non-existent", which I translate as "Take the computer you now have, get rid of it and buy a bigger, more robust, more powerful one, make a clean install of the operating system with nothing that might cause it to be unstable, and then it will work. Probably"

I wonder how many other manufacturers work on that basis? More to the point, how long before Microsoft become the 21st century equivalent of Henry Ford? Ford thought he knew what his customers wanted better than his customers did and dictated what cars they could have, while rivals Chevrolet listened to their customers and gave them different options and (famously) different colour's. Before long Chevrolet was the leader in the automobile sales game and the two companies have been battling ever since.

Can you see parallels between Ford/Chevrolet and Microsoft/Apple?

Read More

The Zen of Digg

You'll notice that at the bottom of a lot of my posts I have a link so that you can 'digg' this article. Digg (for those of you who don't know) is a site that links to articles readers may find interesting and then allows other folks to, effectively, agree or disagree with your thoughts through 'digg'ing the article itself. If an article is really popular it gets 'dugg' a lot and even makes it onto the most popular pages of the site. This brings loads of traffic to the site and looks good on statistics pages. For an idea of a popular article check out ZenHabits 'Guide to being an e-mail Ninja' which went to the Digg front page.

One of the other, lesser known functions of Digg is that it allows readers to actually comment on the article itself. More than that it actually allows the readers to comment on the Digg submission. This is a distinct difference. Let me explain.

Digg does not allow direct links to articles. This means that if I click a Digg link it doesn't send me to the article itself, it sends me to a Digg page that describes the articles, displays comments about the article and gives a link to the external article itself. The comments can go on for pages and - here's the bit I really like - each comment can, itself be Dugg or 'unDugg' (buried) using a thumbs-up/thumbs down icon.

So, in summary we have an article that can be Dugg and we have comments themselves that can be Dugg. Each article gets a Digg count, each comment gets a Digg count and each comment reply gets a Digg count (with me so far...?)

This makes for some really interesting reading. For example: I've submitted several articles to Digg which have picked up a couple of Digg's. Nothing spectacular. Overall, though I have had three comments posted about articles I've submitted to Digg. Of these comments, none received a follow up reply from anyone else and none of them received any Digg's or buries. Ho humm.....

Yesterday, however, I saw an article I liked about moving from a PC to a Mac. My experience with any article that talks about PC to Mac (or vice versa) is that it gets lots and lots of comments (some quite rude) and most of which border on zealotry akin to the religious zealotry of old. This amused me immensely. Enough to write an article I called 'The Zealots' which takes a humorous look at this whole phenomenon. Having seen the article on Digg I added a comment which basically said "The zealots will be out in force" and gave a quick link to the aforementioned article. I think I was the second or third person to make a comment on the posting.

So now, a little over 24 hours later, I go back and check the article. It has been Dugg 2007 times and has 621 comments. Not bad for an article about a PC' to Mac conversion, I think its about par for the course. But here's the amusing thing: My comment about the Zealots is the most buried comment out of the 621! I have 55 negative Digg's. I think the next nearest is 36 negative Digg's.

Let me put this into context: There are 621 comments on this article. The most that any individual comment has been Dugg is 284. (That is 284 people agreed with what the commentator wrote), But get this: here is the most popular comment (complete with typo's):

Operating system war in 5....4....3....2....1
"LULZ ubuntu pwns you all"
"Macs are for fags"
"Yes, but i can play games on my PC?!!!! AH HA!!"
"Linux...."
"OSX>>>VISTA, cause i dont get teh screen o death"

- which is a (far less eloquent) way of saying pretty much exactly what I said in my Zealots post....

That's right, 55 people thought my comment was the worst of the whole bunch even though the most popular comment was nearly identical in meaning. Even the comment which just said "*sigh*" got 2 diggs - that 57 more than I did.

I actually got a couple of replies to my comments which I am going to print here in full (names removed)

Hide 2 replies to this comment (most popular has 15 diggs)

• +15 diggs

  by xxxxxxx 21 hours ago
  1. Reply button.
  2. Blogspam.
  3. ???
  4. Bury!!

  Hide 1 reply to this comment (most popular has -5 diggs)

  • -5 diggs

    by yyyyyy 19 hours ago
    Indeed. Heaven forbid the man provide a link to a humorous article that is apropo for the situation to Digg (which is the paragon of serious, reserved contemplation on such matters), absolutely forcing you to click it and slog through the text, wasting your valuable e-time!

    Reply to this comment

  Reply to yyyyyy's comment. (HTML tags aren't allowed. Comments are editable for 2 minutes)
• -8 diggs

  by yyyyyy 19 hours ago
  Nice article. Dugg.

  Reply to this comment

My thanks to yyyyyyy (you know who you are) who valiantly came to my aid
by pointing out the inherent flaw in xxxxxx's comment. xxxxxx didn't have to click the link to the Zealots article. He could have just ignored it. Notice how yyyyyy got -5 Diggs as a result of that too? Then when he Dugg the actual article that set all this off he was given a further -8 Digg's for his trouble.

So what does this all mean?

Not sure really. As I always suspected there are fervent, partisan proponents of both PC's and Mac's (and even different Linux variants now!) and the anonymity of the Internet makes it quite easy for folks to say things they probably wouldn't say if faced with their 'victim'. I get dissed for daring to point readers to an article that highlights some of the zealotry. yyyyyy get's dissed for daring to support me. Some guy gets Dugg for summarising what everyone was thinking in a short, badly worded post, and the ironic thing is that if you read the rest of the comments (all 621 of them) it does turn out to contain exactly the kind of Zealotry I mention in my post.

There was a time when something like this would have got to me. But not now. Life's too short. Now I take a Zen like approach to things and say "Hey, this is the beauty of the internet. Anyone with access to a PC (or Mac) can say whatever they want through the medium of freedom of speech and occasionally there are diamonds in the middle of all the crap" To those of you who posted comments: You know which of you posted diamonds, and you know everyone else is a cretin. Right?



Photo courtesy of Darkpatator

Read More

My killer top tips for swapping a PC to a Mac

My regular readers will know I bought a Macbook last year and my initial experiences weren't good.

If you followed along, though, you would realise that I ended up coming to terms with it and quite quickly - although there were a number of things I wish I knew before making the swap.

Well, having used it in earnest now for quite a while I wanted to report back with the list of the top 5 tips I've picked up.

1) Don't work with it on your knee. The Macbook battery gets very, VERY hot - especially when recharging. I use it on my desk and end up with a very hot area underneath the left hand section. This is, apparently quite normal. I usually prop that end up slightly (or raise the whole thing off the desk a few cm's to allow air to circulate.

2) Read the list of top applications you must have for your Mac. There are loads of these out on the web and I've followed as many as I can. My top applications (the ones I use everyday) are Firefox, Quicksilver, NeoOffice and Cyberduck. Quicksilver is the lifesaving application everyone says it is and I can't believe it's free! AntiRSI is a great tool for timing tasks and stopping you overworking. It physically locks the keyboard at preset (user defined intervals) forcing you to get up and walk away from the computer for a while. It is an aid against developing repetitive stress syndrome and it allows you to chunk work into blocks that make it more palatable to do. Great for those things you don't want to do but have to...

3) Get a back up in place. This is not, specifically, related to Mac's, but is good practice anyway. I have an external hard drive housing and I bought a 300GB drive to fit in, I link in with Firewire to the in-built port on the Mac. Using Carbon Copy Cleaner I have imaged my hard disk onto the external drive and have it scheduled to update changes every Sunday at 8am. This will guarantee me a complete replacement set-up should I need it (God forbid!).

4) Learn the shortcuts. As an ex Windows user I was a little lazy. I would use the mouse for lots and lots of things. This was easy and convenient. It was also very slow. Now that I have the Mac I have taken the opportunity of learning some of the Mac shortcuts to help me speed up my work and become more productive. Want to put your Macbook to sleep for a while? alt-Apple-eject held down for 2 seconds will drop it instantly into hibernate mode. Want to close a window (or tab) that's open without having to locate that little red dot in the top left hand corner with your mouse? Hit Apple-w and it will close instantly. One of the favourite things with the trackpad mouse on my Macbook is the instant scroll (both left and right). Holding 2 fingers down on the trackpad and dragging up or down will put the screen into scroll mode. Doing the same thing but dragging left and right will scroll horizontally. Very cool and well thought out.

5) Your battery will last 3 hours tops. I have my Mac running in power saving mode with the Air Port turned off. I take 10 minute breaks every fifty minutes where the machine goes into power mode and still the battery lasts 3 hours. Now this isn't a problem as I have the AC adapter and can plug it in immediately, but beware of this if you're out at an Internet cafe with no power source.

I'll keep updating you on what's happening with the Macbook over the coming months. So far I've found no major faults or flaws. It seems stable (although I have had one or two freezes which needed a reboot. nothing major but I'll keep an eye on this), and works like a charm.

One thing I am looking at though, is trying to address the definitive list of 'Mac vs PC' issues that keep getting thrown up by the Zealots every time someone writes a 'Why my Mac is better than a PC' post or vice versa.

Keep an eye out for that one!
(Photo courtesy of Galaygobi)

Please subscribe to my blog through RSS

Original posting at Musings Cafe

Read More

The Zealots

(With apologies to anyone who may take offence to this on religious grounds. No offence is intended)

And so it was written that the Mac zealot and the PC zealot should come together and each would proclaim their mastery of the other until there was a winner.

And it came to pass that in an internet chat room (or a forum where these things are discussed), the zealots came together. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

HAIL TO ME I AM A MAC ZEALOT. MAC'S ARE THE DIVINE MACHINES, MADE BY THE GOOD LORD JOBS

Hail to me for I am a PC zealot. I am the most plentiful operating system and the Good Lord Gates is omnipresent and in all your homes

HAIL TO ME FOR I HAVE THE MOST SECURE OPERATING SYSTEM. IT IS WRITTEN THAT YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM IS RIDDLED WITH SECURITY FLAWS AND EVEN THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL GET VIRUSES. BUT NOT WITH THE MAC. THAT'S HOW GOOD I AM

Hail to me for I have the operating system that has the most applications for it. And the users said "I cannot use this Mac for it does not allow me to run gaming. But my PC will allow me to cavort with evil in World of Warcraft". And so it came to be that PC's were gaming machines.

HAIL TO ME FOR I WORK OUT OF THE BOX. THE USERS SAID "I DO NOT WANT TO SPEND HOURS LOADING THE OS, CONFIGURING IT AND UPLOADING DRIVERS AND UPDATES" SO THE GOOD LORD JOBS SHIPPED HIS MACHINES PRE-LOADED WITH AN OS. AND IT WAS GOOD

Hail to me for I do not lie in my advertising by claiming to be better than other operating systems. "We PC buyers are too intelligent to be taken by the falsehoods and the shamans of Madison Avenue". And so it was written

HAIL TO ME FOR BEING INTEGRATED WITH iTUNES iCHAT, iPHOTO, iCAL. FOR I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO DOWNLOAD APPLICATIONS THAT ARE NOT INTEGRATED. AND SO IT CAME TO BE.

Hail to me for not needing a subscription to .Mac to be useful. For the users arose and said "We are proud and just. We do not want to be slaves to the mighty .Mac" And so it came to be.

HAIL TO ME FOR HAVING THE COOLEST LOOKING HARDWARE ON THE PLANET. FOR VERILY THE MACBOOK AND THE iMAC ARE DIVINE GIFTS.

Hail to me for being able to manually upgrade my components, for verily I will want to add more memory, a bigger hard drive and different graphics card. And the component makers of the world came together and made it so.

HAIL TO ME FOR BEING DESIGNED IN SUCH A WAY AS TO NOT NEED A NEW GRAPHICS CARD OR EXTRA MEMORY. FOR I AM NOT LITTERED WITH BADLY WRITTEN LEGACY CODE THAT WILL CLOG YOUR HARD DRIVE WITH INVISIBLE FILES THAT EAT UP SPACE AND SLOW YOU DOWN. THUS SPAKE THE GOOD LORD JOBS WHO FURTHER SAID 'THOU SHALT BE ABLE TO ATTACH ANY DEVICE TO THINE MAC AND THE SYSTEM WILL WORK". AND IT WAS MADE SO.

Hail to me for being cheap. For it is written that a new PC is both better and cheaper than a new Macbook. and 'lo ' the users decide they could build their own PC for 1/3 the price of a comparable Mac. And it was good.

HAIL TO ME FOR I AM STABLE AND DO NOT GIVE THE BLUE-SCREEN OF DEATH. IT WAS THUS SO FOR ALL APPLICATIONS THAT ARE IMPORTANT TO THE HIGH END GRAPHICS USER.

Hail to me for I am Vista and I manage the blue screen of death. For I am open to other hardware producers and I can deal with their foibles. And in the world of the true and just, he who cannot integrate with his neighbour shall perish. Even if that neighbour shall covet his wife's DLL's and manifest itself as a blue screen

HAIL TO ME FOR MY USER INTERFACE IS INTUITIVE AND GOOD. THE USERS THREW THEIR ARMS IN THE AIR AND SAID "WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO MUTE OUR MAC'S WITHOUT OPENING A PIECE OF SOFTWARE TO DO THAT. AND THUS IT BECAME.

Hail to me for I am designed to be used with a mouse. The users cried out in their anguish 'What manner of torture is this that I should use the keyboard for working the functions of this Mac. I want a mouse - and a mouse with two buttons at that - to make my life easier" So the Good Lord Gates made it so. And it was good.

HAIL TO ME FOR I CAN RUN WINDOWS ON MY HARDWARE. THE USERS CRIED "IF WE CAN HAVE INTEL PC'S IN OUR HARDWARE SURELY WE CAN HAVE WINDOWS OS AS OUR SOFTWARE?" AND THE GOOD LORD JOBS LISTENED TO THE CRIES OF THE USERS. AND HE SAW THE WRITING ON THE WALL. AND ON THE FIFTH DAY HE CREATED BOOTCAMP.

Hail to me for I am magnanimous in my praise of the Mac that can run Windows, for I myself shall only run Windows and not Mac OS X

HAIL TO ME FOR I AM A MAC ZEALOT AND I SHALL SMITE YOU DOWN UNLESS YOU KNEEL AT THE FOOT OF STEVE JOBS AND THE COOL WHITE MACHINES HE MAKES. I SHALL SPAM YOUR WEB SITES AND I SHALL DECRY YOU IN WRITING AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY BY DISPLAYING MY PASSION AGAINST YOUR IGNORANCE. I SHALL ATTEMPT TO COUNTER YOUR EVERY ARGUMENT WITH A MATCHING OR BETTER ONE OF MY OWN AND TO QUESTION YOUR CREDIBILITY BY IDENTIFYING MIS-SPELLINGS OR TYPO'S IN YOUR TEXT

Hail to me for I am a PC zealot. I too, shall decry you at every opportunity for being closed minded and misinformed. For not understanding that there is a world outside the Apple universe and that folks who like PC's are still real people and not Neanderthals. I shall discredit you too, by quoting facts and anecdotal evidence in counter argument to your posts.

HAIL TO ME FOR I SHALL HAVE PITY ON YOU WHO HAS CHOSEN THE PATH OF DARKNESS AND PROCLAIMED YOUR ALLEGIANCE TO THE EVIL OF REDMOND. I SHALL HEAP SCORN ON YOU, THOUGH, FOR NOT CHOOSING THE BETTER PATH AND WORSHIPPING THE IDOL OF APPLE

Hail to me for I shall cast you into the fiery pits of Silicon Valley for daring to worship the false God of Apple. You shall burn in damnation for not understanding that there is only one true master and his name is The Good Lord Gates.

HAIL TO ME FOR CURSING YOU AND YOUR PROGENY IN PERPETUITY FOR DARING TO INVOKE THE NAME OF THE SATAN FIGURE GATES. MAY THE PLAGUES OF A THOUSAND YEARS BE VISITED ON YOUR FAMILY, AND MAY THE BOWELS OF HELL OPEN AND SWALLOW US ALL IF WE FIND ANY COMMON GROUND BETWEEN THE DEVIL GATES AND THE GOOD LORD JOBS.

Hail to me for I am UBUNTU!

SHUT UP!
Shut up!

For those Mac folks reading this who want to see what happened when I purchased my own Macbook, click here, here, and here

Please subscribe to my blog through RSS

Original posting at Musings Cafe

Read More

7 Tips I wish I knew before swapping my PC for a Mac.

I recently switched over to a Mac, after many years on a PC.

Actually that's not strictly true, I still have the PC and use it regularly, but my main tool of choice at the moment is my lovely Macbook.

Having used this for a while now (and blogged about it in previous posts ), I did some research and, using this research and my own experience, I wanted to put together the top 7 things that I wish I had been told before moving to the Mac

If you're wavering on whether to buy one or not, look at these tips and see if it sways you one way or another. If you've already bought one then cast an eye over these tips to see if they ring true

These are in no particular order and I am indebted to the folks over at Theappleblog for crystallizing some of the comments that were passing through my mind

1. Just because the interface looks like Windows it isn't Windows: Just take the thing out of the box. Switch it on (The software will already be loaded) answer the couple of set-up questions and then play with the thing. Attach it to the Internet. Try iChat. Play with Garageband and iMovie and iDVD etc. Stick a DVD player in the slot and watch it. Surf the web in Safari. Spend time playing with the built in iSight camera (if you have one). But most of all just use it. Get used to how it operates. Get to used to what you need to do to start a program, stop a program, swap between programs. Most of all understand that this is a completely different operating system. Sure, it shares some commonality with the Windows operating system, but it isn't the Windows operating system. It's a different beast. Which leads directly into the following tip
2. Try to look at this from the point of view of 'This is how the Mac works' rather than 'The PC does it this way and I want the Mac to do it the same way' (CTL-F4, for example): One of the problems you will have as a PC user is getting used to the GUI. You've spent years working on a system that uses CTL-F4 to close things, or where you can click the little 'x' in the top corner of a window to exit an application. Now you're in a system which is, superficially, the same (it has window panes that appear, it is controlled with a mouse and icons) but it works differently. You can't close an application by clicking the red icon. All that does is close the window that application is running. The itself application is still running!. CTL (or Apple) Q will quit the application. Sounds a little counter-intuitive but in actual fact it's only a different way of doing the same thing. Don't worry about the mouse only having one button, you can still make it work in a 'right-click' mode if needed. Don't worry about the fact that there is no apparent forward delete key (There is, actually. It's a combination of the function key and the delete key). Just accept that this is a different way of doing the same thing. It's not better, it's not worse. It's just different.
3. Get Quicksilver and Firefox ASAP: These two applications are the most useful for a Mac. Mac's come preloaded with Safari and Spotlight which are two Mac created applications : A web browser and a tool for locating and executing applications on your machine. These work fine. In fact for many people these will be the two applications you want most for your Mac. But for various reasons (see below) I couldn't use Safari, so I installed Firefox. Installation is dead easy (but see the next point) and Firefox is a far superior web browser. Apart from the fact that it is more functional than, say IE, it is also extendable through the use of scripts, add-ins and widgets. This makes it almost a fully fledged application in itself. And what's more it's open source so its free! But even better than that is Quicksilver. It's best described as a launch tool, but it is so much more than that. It allows you to get to any part of your Mac and do stuff without actually having to load up or open the appropriate program. For instance, suppose I wanted to open the color meter tool which comes as standard. I could open finder, find the application folder, go to utilities, select the appropriate Icon and go. Or I could hit CTL-Space (The shortcut to invoke Quicksilver) type in 'col' so it selects the color applications and then hit enter. This will start the application. Spotlight does pretty much the same thing. But the beauty comes when I want to do something like add an even to my Google Calendar. Normally I would open Firefox, find my google calender, hit the 'Quick Add' option, type in the details and hit enter. With Quicksilver I hit CTL-Space to invoke, hit the '.' to start typing, type my 'quick add' entry and press enter. I have it set up to then automagically push that entry to Google calendar. This tool is configurable and extendable to the nth degree. Need to add a reminder to your GTD application? Quicksilver can do it. Need to go to a particular URL from within another application? Quicksilver can do it. Need to operate the controls of your iTunes without going into iTunes? Quicksilver can do it. It's a very useful facilitating tool for your Mac. And it's free!
4. Installing stuff is different - I love the way you install stuff on the Mac. You download whatever you want to install, click the application icon and - when it opens the associated install window you drag the icon into your application folder. Easy! But then you're left with a DMG file and - possibly - an install drive that needs to be dealt with. What the hell is a DMG file anyway, and why do I need to eject an install program? Not easy questions to answer, but, once again that's how Mac does it.
5. You can't tab between different windows like you can on the PC. Superficially as a Windows user I was used to being able to hit Alt and TAB to page through the different windows that were open on my desktop. With the Mac it's different. With the Mac, Apple and Tab will page you through the open applications on your desktop, not the windows. if you're in an application, such as Mail that has three messages open, you can't tab through these messages and stop at the one you want to use. You can tab into the mail application, but you then need to physically use the 'Window' menu within the application to open the windows. It's a different ethos. Not better, not worse. Just different.
6. The keyboard is your friend. Use it rather than the mouse: You can, of course, do everything you want with the mouse. Get used to working with a single button mouse and pressing an additional key to get the 'right-click' functionality, and you'll be fine. But one of the powers of the Mac is the fact that the keyboard is much more useful.
7. It doesn't work "out of the box" despite what they tell you. It just runs. Mac's are sold as "working out of the box with all the software you need and none that you don't". This is rubbish. Sure, they are already pre-loaded with the operating system and you can be up and running within 2 minutes. But that doesn't mean you can do everything you need. I had to download a load of other bit's and pieces (such as Quicksilver and Firefox) to get myself working efficiently on the Mac. Plus I'm still finding things that are useful to have and installing them. For example I wanted to use iChat to speak to my sister. She, of course, is still on Windows but that shouldn't be a problem, should it? Well, yes it is. iChat won't allow you to log on unless you have an AOL account or have shelled out $100 for a .Mac account. So unless either of us have AOL accounts or either of us is willing to get a .Mac account (Which she can't use because she's on windows) then we're out of luck. So I downloaded Adium, a separate messaging application. I then tried to use Google Documents, but Safari did not support web word processing and I was advised to upload Firefox (See above). Also I couldn't attach to a VGA display without an additional adaptor that I had to buy separately. My trials and tribulations with the new Mac are detailed in this post here.

As an additional point (and not to detract from anything I've already written), there are lots and lots of sites out there which will give you advice and information:

• The Apple Blog is a great resource
• Macworld is another

Once you've bought your new Mac here are is list of some of the key applications you may want to get for it

The key takeaway from this post should be "Don't expect your Mac to work exactly like your PC. It won't. It's better in many respects and worse in some" If you were used to skiing down a mountain with two bits of glass fibre strapped to your feet and then you changed to having both feet locked into a single snowboard you would find it different. Not better, not worse. Just different. And what's more you'll get used to it. It's exactly the same with the PC and the Mac.

I'm not going to get into some of the Holy Wars espousing the views of the Mac Zealots vs the Microsoft Zealots (But if you want an idea about what that entails just look at some of the comments posted on these entries ). This is not a post about which is better. It's not a post about whether you should go to a Mac or stay with your PC. It's just a list of those things I wish someone had told me before I moved across. It would have made my life so much simpler!

Please subscribe to my blog through RSS

Original posting at Musings Cafe

Read More

Is my PC still 45% better than my Mac?

Is my PC still 45% better than my Mac?

Well it looks like I'm going to need some help here.

I wrote a post recently about my lovely, brand new Macbook. I loved the look of it. I said how I thought the user interface was great. I said :

it's really really cool. It has instant wi-fi detection to identify and attach to unsecured wireless networks (However this isn't much good as I'm not wireless enabled yet and still have my old PC attached on my broadband connection). It also has this cool browser called Safari (But as I'm not connected to the Internet - see previous point- it's not much good) and a great little chat app called iChat which is fabulous for contacting friends if you're attached to the Internet (which I am not). It came preloaded with Microsoft Office for Mac, which I have removed because it's Microsoft, and Pages (which is the Mac version). It also came with Photo Booth which takes pictures using the in-built camera and allows you to manipulate them with effects such as 'squeeze' and 'stretch (My sisters three kids got a great kick out of that when I took it up home at Christmas).

I love it to death, I really do. I love the look and feel of it, the colour of it. I especially love the MagSafe power adaptor, But I also said I couldn't use it.


Having read a lot about Mac's from other blogs etc. I know there is very much a 'love/hate' relationship between PC users and Mac users. PC users tend to think PC's are better than Mac's, Mac users tend to think Mac's are better than PC's, and there have been many flame wars on talkbacks and forums about the relative merits of each system. So I was expecting
some quite vociferous views from both sides about my post.


I didn't get any.

(Actually that's not true. Two individuals chose to tell me how stupid I was for disliking my Mac because I didn't find it useful unless it was attached to the Internet. I think this kind of missed the point a little. I don't dislike it, I just don't find it as useful as my PC).

Mac's are sold as working "Right out of the box with the software you need and none that you don't" (Voice activated Chess, anyone?), and I couldn't use it right out of the box (unless it was to take weird pictures of my nephews with Photo Booth).

So let me tell you what I did: I took it to work.

I plugged it into the network and lo & behold... it allowed me to surf the net. Which is great (!). I went into Google Docs to update some things, but it said that the supplied version of Safari didn't support Google Docs. So I had to download Firefox (which is a good thing, I like Firefox). But I didn't have to download Firefox on my PC to make Google Docs work (even though the Mac "Works out of the box"). I wanted to send e-mail with the mail client but found I couldn't until I had configured everything for POP3 or SMTP (even though the Mac "Works out of the box"). I ended up using my existing Gmail account and ignoring the mail client. I thought I would use iChat but found it only worked with AOL or I needed to create a new .mac account (at $100 a year). So I downloaded Adium, a separate application (even though the Mac "Works out of the Box"). Never mind, I thought, I'll attach it to a big screen at work so I can see the screen a little better. But it wouldn't attach to a VGA display without an additional adaptor that I had to buy separately ($19 - even though the Mac "Works out of the box"?) I'm not even going to talk about the different little things I need to get used to that are Mac specific (UI differences, keyboard differences) because they all don't matter and I expected that to be the case when I bought it.

Anyway I'm up and running now. This post was completely written on the Mac using some of the tools I have mentioned above. So at least I now know it's useful and I can use it appropriately.


But I still need some help to make this beautiful machine work better for me. I need to know what I'm missing that everybody raves about the Mac for.

Now I want to reiterate that I am not a Mac-hater. I'm not even a PC-hater. I love and hate them both equally. I hate Microsoft for creating bloated operating systems and the software that has all those useless things you never really use or need but I love the wide range of software that you can get for it. I love the ethos of the Mac. I love the ease of use, the design, the cool factor. The fact that I don't have to worry about virus's. The fact that Steve Jobs and the guys at Apple are thumbing their noses at Bill Gates and the Redmond guys with every new piece of hardware they produce (although I'll reserve judgement about the Apple Macbook Air for the time being..), but I hate that fact that all I had was a cool expensive web browser when I thought I was buying into something more.

But what I need are some cool Mac users to let me know where I am going wrong. I've obviously bought the right operating system. Maybe what I need to do is read a few books on the subject (How about 'Switching to Mac for Dummies', or "Switching to Mac - The Missing Manual')?

Of course I've cruised the appropriate web sites and read the hype and the marketing pitches.

Should I invest in a .mac account? What will it really give me? Is Quicksilver the application I should have (even though it's only trialware and runs out after a set period of time)? What's the benefit of using the Mac mail application rather than something like Gmail or Yahoo mail?

Send helpful suggestions (rather than rhetoric or abuse) and point me on the right road to Mac salvation. I really want to make this work for me. So help me,

Please!

Photo1 courtesy Bradley James
Photo2 courtesy Aphrodite

Please subscribe to my blog through RSS

Original posting at Musings Cafe

Read More

My PC is 45% better than my Mac....

So I bought a Macbook recently.

"Big deal" you say.

Well, actually, it is a big deal. For me anyway. You see I'm a dyed-in-the-wool PC guy. I've had them for years, built them out of bits and pieces and generally screwed around with them to my hearts content.

But I'm also Microsoft agnostic - which is why I run Open Office instead of Microsoft Office, etc. etc. etc. So I actually don't like the bloated, overly complicated, resource heavy operating systems that our good friends from Redmond regularly throw out. However, I'm also a bit of a skinflint, which means I'm willing to take the pain of struggling through the 'Morass of Microsoft' rather than paying those extra bucks for the shiny new Steve Jobs offspring, the Mac. I coveted the Mac from afar though

Until now.

I recently had the opportunity to purchase a new laptop. Normally I would have gone with a cheaper model that gave me what I wanted. But this was one I was buying for my business so it had two things going for it 1) It had to be respectable enough to be seen in front of clients 2) I could offset the cost against tax.

So, with some trepidation I heading down to the nearest Apple store (almost 30 miles away) and wandered in.

It was packed. Dozens and dozens of people wondering around, playing with iPods, iPhones, Macbooks, G-whatevers. Very cool. But could I find anyone who was helping? No I could not. I checked the 'sales desk' at the front only to find there wasn't one! Very wierd. Then I realised that some of the folks actually playing on the machines were sales assistants. They wore geek clothes like lots of the other people in the store and hardly stood out at all. Very wierd.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I bought a Macbook. White, 2Ghz. Very pretty. Very cool. I also bought Parallels because I had a need to run some key Windows only business software (Provision).

Then I got it home and started playing with it.

And it's really really cool. It has instant wi-fi detection to identify and attach to unsecured wireless networks (However this isn't much good as I'm not wireless enabled yet and still have my old PC attached on my broadband connection). It also has this cool browser called Safari (But as I'm not conected to the internet - see previous point- it's not much good) and a great little chat app called iChat which is fabulous for contacting friends if you're attached to the internet (which I am not). It came preloaded with Microsft Office for Mac, which I have removed because it's Microsoft, and Pages (which is the Mac version). It also came with Photo Booth which takes pictures using the in-built camera and allows you to manipulate them with effects such as 'squeeze' and 'stretch (My sisters three kids got a great kick out of that when I took it up home at Christmas).

However, whilst it looks good and the interface is awesome, I just can't use it.

It would be better, of course, if I connected it to the internet, but until I get wireless (or a router that supports more than one connection cable) I'm stuck. I can't use any of the software supplied because - frankly - whilst it looks good and works briliantly, when am I ever going to need an application that makes my head look like a Tefal man? (That's an esoteric reference for those Brits who watched television in the early 80's..).

The fact of the matter is that in order to make my Mac useful I need to either make it connected or add a Windows environment to it. And though it pains me to have to take that step, I installed Parallels, added my XP environment over it and installed my work software. It went flawlessly.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the Mac. It looks cool, clean, stylish and sleek, It's UI is awesome, but it's just an 'expensive' toy at the moment. Maybe when I get my place wireless enabled it will become more useful. But at the moment it looks like my PC is 45% more useful than my Mac.

Read More