OK not really the world, but the market share is up a good 40% from last year. Mac users, don’t get to excited, Windows still owns 91% of the marketplace. Yahoo news reported today,

Mac’s worldwide market share among Web users increased to 6.6 percent in September, compared to 4.7 percent a year ago

It’s been almost a month now since I bought my way into the cool club and ordered a Macbook, my Windows desktop has been fired up I think twice over the last month. There is still some photos and data, along with music and movies I need on it, but I don’t need them on the laptop. One of the primary reasons the laptop is getting more use then the desktop is because I can park my ass on the couch and watch TV and surf the net. Outside of that, it is merely a tool for me to use.

The learning curve for me has been pretty mild, simple stuff, keyboard shortcuts, working in terminal, stuff like that. Outside of that, most programs I use operate the same for me. I don’t love my Mac the way others told me I would, I enjoy the speed it has and the ability to do what I need when I need it, it is stress-free, that is what is important.

This recent spike in Mac users, like myself, is only likely to grow though. I’ve had my sticky fingers on Vista enough to know I don’t like it. I have to support it for work, but I still much prefer XP or even win2k. Most computer users now-a-days are not buying their first computer. They have time vested, programs they are used to using, things that work and don’t work and ways of working around the hardware not living up to what they thought it would be. In my case, buying a Mac was a matter of getting the most from a computer with the least amount of money. To equip a Windows powered laptop with the hardware to match that of my Macbook, the price was only dollars apart, for me it was a choice of operating systems and expandability, most of which I covered several articles ago. I still couldn’t imagine spending $2,500 or more on a Macbook Pro or even $1,500 on an iMac.

Apple could continue to grow its user base if, and only if, they continue to offer products that are financially viable for most users. The fact that Dell and HP offer desktop units that do what most home users need, email, internet, photos, etc for half the price of an entry level Mac desktop will mean that they will continue to dominate the home market. Not until someone has specific needs do they start to look elsewhere. It is also my belief that, with Vista being as shitty as it is, more average users will start to look into other operating systems like Ubuntu. Ubuntu offers what the vast majority of home users want and need, even though mine is currently dusty, as soon as someone figures out an affordable way to offer support and get some marketing behind it, it will grow.

For now I am a content Mac user who also utilizes Windows and likes to play with Ubuntu now and again.

For the last few months I have been shopping for a laptop. Knowing that I have rather specific requirements for what I wanted from the hardware and within a certain budget, I’ve been pretty picky. All this, and I told myself I would either wait until service pack 1 of Vista was released or try to pickup a refurb Dell unit still running XP. Since I wasn’t in too much of a hurry, I could take my time and really get a feel for what I wanted. This usually meant playing with whatever laptops the big box stores had while I was there for some other purpose and looking for deals online. From a tactile feel, I’ve always liked Sony Vaio laptops, however they are way over priced for what you get. HP seemed to have everything I wanted, however their 15.4” models only run a screen resolution of 1280×800, I wanted better than that from a 15.4” and they didn’t offer much in the 14” and smaller line that was anything near affordable. Back to Dell. Dell offers some sick screen resolutions on their 15.4” lines, but the price goes through the roof when you add the video card to drive them, and they don’t come with bluetooth or a web cam by default, they are about a $100 add on. I can live without the web cam, who would want to see me anyway, but I want bluetooth for easy synching with my phone and for a wireless mouse. The added video card and bluetooth put me over the budget I had of around a grand.

My hardware requirements are:

• Intel Core 2 duo
• At least 1GB of RAM installed
• At least a 120GB hard drive
• DVD burner – double layer doesn’t much matter to me
• Extended battery
• Bluetooth
• Under 5lbs

Looking at a refurb site, I thought I found a 13.3” Vaio that fit my needs and an older 1.83 core 2-duo processor. It had everything I wanted and a few things that were nice add-ons, but only came with a 90-day warranty. The company selling the laptop offered a 3-year on-site warranty for an additional $99, but it was done through a third party, something I’m not fond of. I was still very interested in it though and asked some co-workers their opinion on the hardware setup. All agreed that it was a lot of computer for the money, but asked if I looked into the Macbook refurbs, there was one that was about $50 more but had a 1-year warranty.

Reluctantly I went to the Apple site and clicked on the refurbished section. Sure enough, they had a 13.3” Macbook with a better, 2.15 Core 2 duo processor and everything else on my want list. Black would have been my first choice, but they only had white in stock. The next 2 hours really had me pondering what to do. A co-worker has been running Tiger on his new (refurb) 15” Macbook Pro with VMware Fusion, allowing him to also run Windows and Ubuntu all at the same time without rebooting. This sounded great, although I can only think of one application that I have that is Windows specific that they don’t have a Mac version for. At least the option to have Windows is there.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a fan of Macs, most don’t understand why though. I think OSX is a great operating system but I don’t like the overpriced hardware one needs to buy to run the operating system. Up until this point, one can almost always buy more hardware for the money and run Windows than OSX, I still feel this is true with most of the desktop units that Apple offers. In my case, laptop to laptop, the refurb Macbook is in the same price range with the same features as Windows based ones and the ability to run Windows and Ubuntu on it is very attractive.

The laptop is supposed to arrive tomorrow, we’ll see if FedEx ground comes through or not, but several of my friends that know its coming are more excited to me. In telling a few Mac using friends that I ordered one, their first question back to me has been nearly identical, to the word, do you love it?

I can’t say that there is any proper way to answer that, even after I get it and start using it on a regular basis. I’ve never said, Wow, I love Windows! Nor can I say that about nearly any product I use on a regular basis. What makes Mac addicts so into their hardware? Some of these friends who know it’s coming bought a Mac because it looks pretty, which in most cases, it does, some are programmers and designers who have been using Macs so long that they are just more proficient with them. Where does all this supposed love come from though? Why do Mac fans get all excited in the pants at the announcement of a new keynote speech by Steve Jobs?

My main computer uses are

• Internet
• Email
• Photoshop (most RAW processing digital photos and adjusting for output)
• Minor coding (usually in Dreamweaver or Scite)
• Writing / blogging
• Bittorrent

My hope is that none of these tasks are drastically affected as I make the transition to a Mac. I have no intentions of moving entirely, my XP based desktop is still plenty fast and will serve for grunt work with specific Photoshop work that requires a higher resolution than my laptop will provide me with.

Expect updates on how my introduction into OSX goes as well as other learning curves, widgets, and other Mac anomalies go. Wish me luck!

A new computer was needed at work and yesterday the big brown truck dropped off a shiny new Dell computer for me to configure. Now mind you, this is my first experience with Vista because I never got around to actually loading any of the beta releases that came out. Out of the box and up and running it is nice and pretty and round and all that crap, but there are some ups and downs for it.

First and foremost, I’ll complain, that’s what everyone always does anyway.

• It needed an Internet connection to do anything
• I can’t control the user account Administrator at all
• It locks computer after about 30 minutes of being idle, requiring a password to be entered
• Stupid pop ups asking if I really want to create a new folder on the desktop
• Using 800mb of ram just to sit idle
• Dumb way it handles logging into the box itself or a network domain

I’m sorry, but it is a memory pig. This one has the Business flavor installed, which comes with Office 2003, but it is not active. It’s just there and wants you to call and get a registration code for a fee. The logging in thing is stupid. At work we have a domain, we log into it. Traditionally on Windows you will hit Ctrl + Alt + Del and enter a username and password and from a drop down menu select the network or the local computer. For Vista, if you want to log into the local box you must type it as COMPUTERNAME\user and then your password. Dumb! It also seems to lock the computer after about 30 minutes of being idle, requiring reentry of a password.

There are some good things about vista, I’m not sure what they are yet, I’m still getting used to it, but if I find them I’ll do a follow up post. This may put a damper on my plans for a new notebook; I’m not overly thrilled with the power consumption or the idiosyncrasies that are vista as of yet.

The Vista launch, by all accounts was blah, at best. No real big surprises, most people who wanted it have been using one of the many beta copies available on the Internet for months already.

Vista is supposed to offer several new and grand things to the end user, however I have no reason as of yet to upgrade from my XP machine. All the fluff that is coming with Vista is also confusing the hell out of consumers, including myself. Which version do I need, how many versions are there, do I need to find my XP key, What if I want to do a fresh install of Vista, do I really have to install XP first? These are all valid questions; sadly most did not have a clear answer until a few weeks ago. To make it worse, the Apple ad campaigns are making it seem like Mac is the best solution, more simple if you will. My opinion of Mac has been the same for years now, great operating system with bloated hardware costs.

Personally, I have no plans on upgrading my home computer to Vista, not even long term yet. I do however plan on buying a laptop in the next 6 months, but will be waiting until service pack 1 comes out to fix whatever holes need fixing in Vista that couldn’t be done prior to the rollout. My recommendation to others would be the same. Give it a few months, wait for some updates come and then consider making the move. If your computer is more then 2 years old, I’d highly suggest buying a whole new computer. Vista will cost you between $125-300 depending on what version you get, a quality, fully loaded Dell desktop costs around $600, including Vista and bigger and better everything.

For no nonsens answers on what the different versions of Vista are, what minimum requirements are needed and just about everything else, check out this computerworld.com article.

What seems to be a scene straight out of the movie War Games (for those of you old enough to remember it), the password to a Vista laptop at the launch party yesterday was placed directly on the keyboard.

From the Gizmodo article:

was wondering how to log on when I noticed the handy piece of tape at the bottom of the keyboard with all the users and passwords

Reports started to show up yesterday that Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista, was out in the wild, pirated of coarse. And who else would be doing this so early, before the official release? China, and it costs about $2.50. It is believed that these pirated versions are a hacked Beta release that was publicly available on the Internet, but with a crack so that the 180 day serial number never expires.

I’m still not sure what the demand for this new operating system is yet, I have no plans to upgrade until at least SP1 is out, and at that point I’ll just buy a whole new computer (thinking laptop). In China, the average wages are considerably less then here in America, however Microsoft still insists on charging through the nose for software. This may be a bad business decision, seeing they have more people then any other country in the world and a continuing growth in the tech sector due in large part to the free trade that is now possible between China and the western world.