Applepeels

Apple's "free iCloud" services? Not really.

I guess that I am guilty of not paying enough attention to the world of Apple.  However, I have been a loyal and long suffering paying member of Apple's .Mac and MobileMe services.  I lived through all the changes such as my web pages coming down and my photo albums disappearing into incomprehensible folders.

My account was also one of those whose renewal coincided with the announcement of the new free iCloud services.  That meant that my account got extended until summer of 2012 which is probably why I have paid so little attention to iCloud.  The other reason is that the cloud that has my attention is Google's.

However, when I got the notice below last week, I thought perhaps I should spend some time investigating iCloud's free services.

Actually it turns out to not be so easy to move to iCloud unless you have already jumped onto Apple's newest bandwagon with both feet.

Apple's "free" services are actually free only if you already own an IOS device or have already upgraded to Lion.  Apple doesn't hide this fact, but I have missed any discussions that you have to be running Apple's Lion operating system to enable iCloud from a Mac.

Since I saw Windows 7 mentioned, I thought that I might be able to sneak by with that, but I had forgotten that this was Apple that was offering a "free" service.

I though surely this must not be the case so I contacted one of my favorite Apple system engineers, and he confirmed that you do indeed need to be running Mac OS X Lion.

Now I am not exactly out of date on my Macs.  I did buy an I5 iMac about fourteen months ago.  However, I have seen no reason to upgrade to Apple Lion's operating system, and a couple of good reasons to not upgrade.

First I don't like the on-line upgrade process, and second, I am afraid it might break the older version of iPhoto which I am using.  I quite like the older iPhoto, and as you can see from my posts, I detest the newer version of iPhoto. 

So I have happily stayed on Snow Leopard. While it is not perfect, I no longer have to enjoy the latest and greatest to get my work done.  I am even a version behind on Microsoft's Office on my Windows laptop though I do have the latest Office on my iMac.

It is interesting that Apple's new "free" services are only available to Apple customers with the latest and greatest operating systems.  I might sound like a technology party-pooper, but I have a very usable dual G5 tower that I bought in December 2004.  It has a couple of one terabyte drives in it, and I still use it almost daily.  I can't upgrade it to Lion.

Until late last month, I was still using my 2006 MacBook. While it isn't completely dead, it doesn't run for more than a few minutes before dying on me.  I even tried a new hard drive, but beyond backing up all my data, I had no luck in fixing the MacBook which happens to be our only other Intel based Mac.  I should mention that we still have a very usable white half moon iMac at our other home.  Our youngest daughter is also using one of those.  I bought three of those one summer.

So I guess I am stuck trying to figure out the best, or more properly, the cheapest way that I can enable Apple's new "free" iCloud services. 

When my MacBook died, I was actually thinking about perhaps buying a new laptop of some sort from Apple.  I have been carrying an Apple laptop since Apple started shipping them.  It feels a little funny to not take one into a hotel room when we are traveling.

However, I got a quick reminder of why I am sometimes hesitant to buy Apple products.

Those of you who are regular readers will know that I am writing a book about about my career at Apple.  In the fall just before my MacBook died, I sent Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, an email congratulating him on re-instating Apple's charitable match.  I saw it as a very positive change at Apple.  I mentioned in the note in passing that I was writing a book about Apple and would send him a copy when it got to market.

The next week, the day my MacBook died, we got an envelope from Apple's legal department reminding me of all the non-disclosures that I had signed with Apple.  They also included copies going back to the first one that I had signed in 1984.  I took the letter as a not very subtle attempt at frightening me into dropping the book.

However, I sent Tim back a note thanking him for the reminder, but also telling him that I have been writing about Apple for over seven years and until I pulled down much of the content in preparation for my book, I had over 1,000 pages of articles about Apple on-line.  Not once in the seven years did I receive a note from Apple complaining about the accuracy of my posts or about my disclosing any proprietary information.

I did tell Tim that the letter from his legal folks had convinced me that there might be more friendly alternatives to an Apple product such as a Kindle Fire.

So here I am stuck between some family members who would like to keep their old email addresses that go back to the .Mac days and Apple which is requiring me to buy something before I can use their "free" services.

It is hard to believe that even Microsoft is better at free than Apple.  Microsoft's Skydrive which is truly free now even works on Firefox.  Of course Google has a host of free services which seem to work from just about any platform.  Actually Google pays me more in my Adsense account each year than I pay them for the extra storage that I need on Picasa.  They also host one of my domains for free, and their email has become a favorite of mine.

The truth is that Apple is one of the most proprietary companies in the computer business. They are also among the best at mining their customers and accumulating a huge pile of cash.  Much of what Apple does is dedicated to getting you to buy their latest gear and only their latest gear.  I don't have a problem with Apple making money, but I find it wasteful to throw away perfectly good hardware that is still doing the job.  Perhaps that is one reason I love what Ubuntu is doing.

So I am wondering how Ubuntu can create a very simple distribution disk that I can download from their servers and use to install the latest and greatest flavor of Linux on my old Dell Pentium III while Apple wants me to go to their store?  The obvious reason is that Apple wants to lock me into their store and only their store.

Well I might have to figure out if I can buy an iPod touch and use that to migrate my Mobile me services.  That might be the cheapest and least painful of the solutions that are out there.

Any suggestions from others facing this dilemma would be appreciated.  I am not giving up my Android phone because I love the integration of the mapping apps with Google Maps. Besides I like the choice that the Android world gives me.  Also my Droid won't be two years old until March, and it is still doing a good job of keeping me connected.

My Apple book is now being edited by my trusted family staff, my wife and my oldest daughter.  At this stage, it is 295 pages and covers the time from September 1982 when I started selling Apple IIs in an Atlantic Canadian dealership to July 2004 when I left my position as director of Apple's federal sales in July 2004 just after sitting in a Senate hearing with Avie Tevanian.

I feel like I have done a commendable job describing life at Apple, but it has taken me seven years to get far enough from the situation to write a book, so I will await the judgment of others. I am glad that it is all down on paper.  Some of it is still hard for me to believe even though I lived it.

I am grateful that I wrote down about twenty-five pages of thoughts the fall after I left Apple.  That and a habit of using a daily planner have helped me nail down many of the important dates.  Not so surprisingly, the more I wrote about the old events, the more that I remembered.   Somehow I still haven't remembered any secrets, but that might be because I didn't know any even when I worked at Apple.

I have talked to a number of ex-Apple employees to get refreshed on a few things, but the story is mine.  Next week I am talking to agent recommended to me by someone well known in the Apple world.

Beyond that fishing has been good here this fall on the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina.  We were still in shorts weather through December 16 when I had a spectacular afternoon over on the beach.

While there have been signs of the seasons changing, somehow, the warm weather has managed to help us forget last winter.

With all the great weather, I am glad that I still have the ability to focus, or I would never have gotten my Apple book written in this fall to remember.  Hopefully my next post will have some details on how the book is going to published.  However, after the letter from Apple legal, Tim Cook will have to buy a copy if he wants one.

 

 

One last batch of iPhoto and Picasa tests

I was traveling when I did the recent tests that I published regarding iPhoto 9.1.5 and Picasa.

Returning to North Carolina's Crystal Coast gave me a good chance to run some more tests and include my I5 iMac.

Again I formatted a SDHC device using my Sony camera.  I took 48 pictures.  I tested to see how long it took a computer to recognize the card, automatically launch the photo software and import all the photos.  I configured it so I only had to click once on each system for the import to start. Timing was done with the stopwatch App on my Motorola Droid phone. (Perhaps iPhoto 9.1.5 was protesting the Droid being the timer.)

Here are the results with the fastest system listed first

1. I5 iMac w/Picasa on Snow Leopard, time, < 30 sec.
2. HP I7 laptop w/Picasa on Windows 7, 31 sec.
3. MacBook, w/Picasa on Snow Leopard, 35 sec.
4. I5 iMac w/Photo 8.1.2 on Snow Leopard, 42 sec
5. Dell P3 w/f-Spot 0.8.2 on Ubuntu 11.04 47 sec.
6. I5 iMac w/Aperture 2.1.4 on Snow Leopard  52 sec.
7. MacBook w/iPhoto 9.1.5 on Snow Leopard  84 sec.
8. Dual G5 w/iPhoto 7.1.5 on Mac OSX 10.5.8 118 sec.

It is not unusual for me to import 500 photos in one day so speed in importing photos is important to me.

I have made my decisions on what to use. I will be using Picasa on my MacBook where I cannot go back to the previous version of iPhoto.  I'll continue to use iPhoto on my iMac where I still have iPhoto version 8 libraries.  I hope these tests might be helpful to others.

While it would be interesting to run tests with Lion, I keep getting reports from my more adventurous friends that are keeping me on Snow Leopard.

Here are two sample quotes from friends whose technical opinions I really respect.

"Not having a good Lion experience, it is a dog on my 2006 iMac and my 2009 MBP."

"Lion is not what it is touted to be. As have some others I have found it slower...."

However, this is not a discussion about Lion on which I have zero experience.

Also I realize that there is a newer version of Aperture, but I don't use Aperture nowadays so I'm am not interested in the spending the money for the upgrade.

The interesting question is why Apple would release a product like iPhoto 9.1.5 which is so much slower than the previous version?

I could speculate all day on that, and it would still just be pure speculation.  However, here a few thoughts on the issue.

From 10,000 feet, I still believe this has more to do with Apple trying to get their software more IOS like.

People who read the first post in this series might remember my statement that it took twenty years for Apple to come up with a piece of internally crafted software that I really loved.

Apple has also introduced some other really poorly performing software over the years with iWeb being the best example.  Additionally while I have finally grown to like Pages for certain uses, it has never been fast.

While this might seem out of left field, I believe the explanation can be found in some of my old experiences at Apple.

One of the interesting things about life at Apple is doing executive briefings and trying to get Steve to show up to talk to customers.  I can remember a time when we hauled some enterprise clients out, and Steve showed up and would only talk about iMovie.

Within Apple having Steve's focus is a good news, bad news scenario.  You will get the resources to do something, but it will be done Steve's way or heads will roll. A great breakthrough product like iMovie can result from Steve's focus.

One of the real challenges of a company driven by one person's genius is that even an extraordinary one like Steve has only so much bandwidth.  With very little real decision making power passed down to the troops, products or strategies can languish until Steve happens to turn his laser glance towards them.

I call it the "Keynote Phenomenon."  I believe Keynote has gotten regular upgrades and remained a solid piece of software because Steve uses it regularly.  I would be willing to bet that Steve never used iWeb and I suspect MobileMe services fall into the same category.

I can almost guarantee that if Steve tried to import 500 photos into iPhoto 9.1.5, we would have a fix and perhaps a much more usable piece of software.

If Apple still took the time to have customer advisory boards or to let heavy users test software changes, I suspect iPhoto 9.1.5 would have never gotten out the door.  Maybe Steve doesn't do movies and photos anymore?

Apple has a history of coming up with some really great ideas, but the company sometimes forgets the importance of staying laser focused on what is really important to users because it has so little interaction with users.  I think it is a company weakness, but I doubt it will change because it has been that way for so long.

I am not a huge fan of either Adobe or Microsoft software, but I still reach for Word and Excel at times, and I have been doing that for more than 27 years in the case of Word and almost that long for Excel.  I also still pull Photoshop out once in a while.

Unless Apple can figure out how to give products like iPhoto a life of their own, and Filemaker might be a good example and even role model, iPhoto, introduced in 2002, might not make it much beyond the ten year mark as a tool for those of us who are more than just casual users.

We can always hope that small developers continue creating more great tools like Rapidweaver, Coda, Pixelmator, Nisus Writer, and Shutterbug which I recently used to create a very nice non-flash based slide show that will play on my smartphone.

 

 

The saga of Apple's iPhoto and Google's Picasa with some tests

I got a few interesting comments on my decision to move to Google's Picasa on my MacBook instead of using the newest iPhoto version 9.1.5.

Perhaps the one comment most illustrative of what I like least about the Apple world said that the whole thing was my fault because I had an issue with iPhoto and I couldn't solve the issue.  That is perhaps the best example of Apple thinking that I have seen in a long time.

The same people who think it is my fault because iPhoto 9.1.5 wouldn't run would be the first to rant and rave and blame Microsoft if Microsoft shipped a program which didn't install properly.

Somehow Apple gets a free pass from many of its users no matter what it does.  Unfortunately that just feeds the arrogance that has often been Apple's downfall. However, they have such a big cash cushion now, it is hard to imagine what they would have to do to screw up, but I have been surprised before.

I try to hold Microsoft, Google, and Apple to similar standards.  When they provide software free or otherwise, I expect it to work which includes installing without screwing up my data.

When I have paid money for a piece of software and the company ships me a piece of software to update it, it is reasonable to expect it to work.  I have been around Apple hardware and software for twenty-nine years this month which is the anniversary of my Apple II+ purchase.  September will be the 29th anniversary of the first Apple computer that I sold, so I have seen the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly.

Perhaps what I should have said in my most recent post is that I was a lover of iPhoto until the version that came out last fall, and I was willing to put up with some blemishes, but now I feel like that I have lost a valued tool since it has grown some ugly warts.

In the interest of putting some facts behind my assertion that Picasa is a better piece of software than iPhoto 9.1.5, I decided to once again try to get iPhoto 9.1.5 running.  I tried another repair of the library and actually left that running all night.  In the morning iPhoto was unresponsive so I forced iPhoto to quit and threw the whole iPhoto package in the trash and emptied it.

Next I got out my firewire drive and copied over a small iPhoto library that I was sure had been untouched by the most recent versions of iPhoto. It was around 9 gigs of photos, and I made it the main iPhoto library.

Then from the DVD, I reinstalled iPhoto 9 which came with iLife 11.  Of course I ended up doing all the updates and eventually got to the screen which asked me if I wanted to update the library which I did.  Finally iPhoto 9.1.5 decided to work.

As a bench mark I checked my old dual G5 system downstairs, it has over 50,000 photos in one of several libraries, but of course it is running iPhoto 8.

Having gotten iPhoto 9.1.5 running on my MacBook, I decided to run some tests.  While I tried to make it as fair as possible, Picasa ended up being a little handicapped.   The iPhoto library that I used for the tests has about 2,600 photos in it and came in at a little over 9 gigs.  Picasa because it was managing all the photos on my MacBook which includes several libraries, all my jpeg downloads, and even screen captures had 46,000 photo and over 30 gigs of data.

One of my assertions about the newest versions of iPhoto is that the program is flat out slow. To test that I wanted to see how long it would to take to upload photos.   I have two cameras with me on this trip, my Nikon 3100 and my Sony DSC-HX7V pocket camera.  I formatted both their SDHC cards and drove down to the Roanoke River and then visited a local farmer's market.  From the two spots I got about 50 pictures with each camera and made a couple of movies with the Sony.

When I got back, I set iPhoto to the default Photo application on the MacBook, I did a trial upload of another SDHC card just to check that everything was working.  Then I took one of the SDHC cards from my trip and timed with the stopwatch app on my Droid how long it took for iPhoto to launch and import all the photos on the SDHC card in the USB reader that I plugged into the MacBook.  It took just over 50 seconds to import the 50 photos from the Sony formatted card.

I quit iPhoto and set the default photo application to Picasa, once again did a trial import, and then timed how long it took to launch Picasa and import all fifty photos.  It was less than 30 seconds until completion.

I repeated the tests with HDSC card from my Nikon. It had only 49 photos, but they were larger files.  This time I did Picasa first.  It got the photos from the Nikon formatted card in 35 seconds.  I switched to iPhoto 9.1.5, and it took 53 seconds.

Just out of curiosity, I did the Sony card on my HP I7 laptop.  It took 32 or 33 seconds for the import, but it did take a couple of seconds to click and quit the Sony app that imports my movies.  With that said the times for Picasa were a dead heat on both platforms.

One thing that I did find out in all the changing of settings is that there is a setting in the new iPhoto that allows you go back to using Apple Mail for the default way to email your pictures.  As the next tests show, that is a very good thing.

I set the default picture size to be small and "shared" a photo by email.  With both Picasa and IPhoto set to use Apple Mail, it was a dead heat with both programs coming in at close to 4 seconds.  However, when you change the setting to iPhoto using its own email program and Picasa using Gmail, the results were very different.  Picasa took 3 seconds using Gmail, while iPhoto took 8 seconds using its email program.

Next I tried to run some tests of taking a picture, cropping it, applying an auto enhance, and uploading it from iPhoto to MobileMe Gallery or from Picasa to Picasa web albums.  I thought the tests looked pretty even, then when I tried to quit iPhoto, it told me that it was still updating the gallery.  I gave up trying to come up with a consistent way to see which was faster.   From what I could tell it looked like Picasa took 41 seconds, iPhoto 46 seconds, but again I am not sure iPhoto was finished.

I upload a lot from the iPhoto on my I5 iMac to Picasa web albums.  Of course you have to add something to iPhoto to make that happens since Steve has a holy war going on against Google.  I have long had the perception that it takes much longer to upload from iPhoto on my iMac to Picasa web albums than it does going from Picasa on my Windows I7 laptop to Picasa web albums.

This morning I took the same photo, cropped, auto enhanced, and uploaded to Picasa web albums using the I7 laptop.  It only took 24 seconds seconds and was clearly faster than either program on the MacBook.  Both computers are on the same wireless G class network.  My guess is that the difference was not in the editing but in the uploading.

I tried one more test.  I added some photos to one of the cards I used for the previous day's test and went through the uploading to the library test again except this time, I also tested the Windows laptop using the same external USB reader as I use on the MacBook.  Picasa on the MacBook took 29 seconds to get the photos.  iPhoto on the MacBook took 61 seconds, and the Windows laptop took 50 seconds.  The one caveat is that the way I have the Windows laptop set up, a Sony program launches for an optional import which is what I use for movies so I have to cancel it before Picasa on Windows can do its job.

From my tests I don't think that there is any doubt that Picasa is a faster program on the Mac.  It will remain my choice of a photo program on my MacBook while I will continue to use an earlier version of iPhoto on my iMac for as long as I can get away with it.  I will also continue using Picasa web albums since I believe it is a far better solution for my needs than MobileMe Gallery or its successors.

Your needs might vary, but here are some thoughts beyond speed that have gone into my decision.

Number one, I spent much of the last five years of my nearly twenty years at Apple preaching to enterprise customers that it was a very bad thing to let an application or a vendor hold your data hostage.  The biggest example in the enterprise world is Microsoft Exchange mail which at the time was certainly not standards based.  We preached IMAP which lets you use any standards compliant mail client that you want.

In a certain sense, iPhoto with its libraries also holds your data hostage.  Once you have used a library with a new version of iPhoto there is no turning back.  It there is a problem with the library, you need to have a back-up. I think the iPhoto library is a bad idea.  I like Picasa's method of just finding the jpegs and keeping track of them.  If I have a folder of jpegs, I can take it to a Linux computer, a Mac, or a Windows computer and find something that will look at them just like various email clients will look at an IMAP mail server.  I think we are really fortunate to have a free program like Picasa that to certain extent frees the data in an iPhoto library.  It certainly saved me lots of time when I needed to print some pictures.

What I love with the older versions of iPhoto is that I don't have to do a lot of switching around to get my tasks done.  When I have a batch of photos that need the same adjustments, it is easy to apply those exact same settings. I could click on a photo and click again and be back to the main library. That has all changed in the latest versions whose interface I find dumbed down for lack of a better phrase. iPhoto was a better program than Picasa for editing, but no longer.  It adopted some of the things I don't like about Picasa and added some of its own truly ugly interface changes.

The only thing that I do to my photos is to try to make what I see on the screen look like what I saw when I was taking the picture.  Since I live at the beach and shoot in lots of difficult light, a good auto contrast is worth a lot to me.  Picasa has a very reliable one that works most of the time in a way that gets me close to what eyes and memory caught when I took the picture.  I also like to put a watermark on a photo and sometimes I like to put a frame around it.  Picasa does the watermark easily when I want and with access to Picnik's online services does a better job of framing than what I get using iPhoto and Pixelmator.  I can get the same results with both, it is just easier and faster with the Picasa/Picnik combination as long as you have a fast Internet connection.  I pay $25 a year or so for the enhanced version of Picnik.  I think it is a good value for the money, and certainly a better value than I have gotten out of MobileMe.

Another area where I believe that Picasa is substantially better than iPhoto is the touch up tool.  There are photos where I might want to take a stray branch out of the finished picture.  For many years I would resort to Photoshop for that task, but the touch up tool in Picasa, once you learn how to use it properly, does an exceptional job.  I can't even remember when I have had to resort to Photoshop.  I find that the iPhoto retouch tool does more smudging than anything else.

Another really big point for me is that it is very easy to share a single photo using Picasa web albums. I get the link for sharing, embed it into my blog post, and I am off to the races. I also like that I can choose in Picasa whether to use Gmail or AppleMail to send my pictures by email without going to the preferences.  Of course Picasa syncs automatically to my the photo gallery on my Droid.

I always try to use the best tool for the job.  I have Aperture and have tried Adobe's Lightroom several times, but I don't need their features.  That said, there are days that I take 500 to 1,000 pictures, and it would be a rare day when I don't take fifty or sixty pictures.

I use Nikon, Panasonic, and Sony cameras.  I use Apple, HP, and Dell hardware along with OS X, Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux.  I have Epson, Canon, and HP printers.

Sometimes a different camera lets me see a scene in a different way, and there are tweaks that are better done in one program or the other.  The results are highly subjective.  I still prefer the editing on the iPhoto 8 that I have on my iMac. Sometimes now I use Picnik with it for watermarking and framing.

Your needs are going to vary from mine, but I have given this a lot of thought, applied some tests, and come to the conclusion that Picasa is far better software for my needs than iPhoto 9.1.5.  All the tests were done on my July 2006 Intel MacBook running Snow Leopard.

This settles the issue for me, I might run some more tests when I get home to my I5 iMac just to see how fast it is importing, but I won't be upgrading to iPhoto 9.1.5 ( or LIon for that matter) since the newer iPhoto just doesn't meet my very demanding needs.

This isn't the first time I have had comments about iPhoto and interface changes.  Share has once again moved.

That said I am probably going to need some more Marsh time after all this thinking about computers.

 

 

I pull the plug on Apple's iPhoto at v 9.1.5

My love affair with Apple hardware started August of 1982.  It took Apple another twenty years to come up with a piece of internally crafted software that I really loved and which actually managed to get updated. 

In January of 2002, iPhoto was introduced, and it seemed to fit my needs from day one.  I was never crazy about the way it stored photos, but the positives always outweighed the negatives in the irregular updates over the years until last fall.

My mostly Mac workflow had iPhoto as a key element for years.

Now the love affair is over.  I just switched to Picasa on my MacBook on Wednesday, July 27, 2011.

It was not an easy divorce.

I purchased an I5 iMac October 18, 2010.  Two days later Apple announced iPhoto 9 as part of iLife 11.  I went ahead and ordered the very reasonably priced upgrade.

It did not take long to arrive, but some internal guardian told me to install it on my Intel MacBook first to see how I liked it.  I don't have my main iPhoto library on the MacBook, and I have a spare MacBook iPhoto library that I keep on a firewire drive.  Well I didn't like iPhoto 9 at all.  It was slow and just did not seem to perform well.

I did, however, keep using it occassionally when I was in a hotel or just had a couple of photos to get from one of my cameras.  The software did get a little speedier, but its email interface remained irritating, and it did not perform as well as the older software.  It also would hang, and require force quiting.

My I5 iMac happily chugged along on iPhoto 8.  I am currently running version 8.1.2 of iPhoto on my iMac.

The last week of July 2011, I did a routine software update on the MacBook. It included iPhoto 9.1.5.

When I launched iPhoto after the software update, it told me my library needed to be updated.  It started and never finished.  Relaunching iPhoto got me nowhere so I searched the web for some solutions.  I tried a few which did not seem to work. I even tried creating a new library, and iPhoto 9.1.5 still did not work.

Then I dug out my DVD and re-installed iPhoto 9 from scratch.  I then applied the software updates and got the same non-functioning results.

There were probably ten photos on the MacBook that were not on my backup library.  I had those photos on my Windows laptop, but it really irritated me that I could not get my MacBook to work.  My wife was asking for those specific photos of our granddaughter to be printed on our little Canon Pixma Mini 320 which for some reason unknown even to me, I have been using exclusively with my MacBook.

It was getting late, and then it dawned on me that I had Picasa on the MacBook, but that I had not used it for a while.  I launched Picasa, and it immediately began sucking up pictures that had been added to the MacBook since the last time that I had launched Picasa.

I took a gamble and went to bed.  I got up the next morning and found that Picasa had located and added all my photos, and the ones that I needed to print were easily accessible.  I hooked up the printer, and printed the few photos that my wife wanted, and we took off for a lunch with my wife's college roommate.

When we got back, I changed the default app for photos on the MacBook to Picasa.  I am not going to spend any more time trying to make the newest version of iPhoto work.

I really hate to see iPhoto go because it has been an application that I used almost every day.  That said I also use Picasa for Windows every day.  I will keep using iPhoto on my iMac as long as I can get away with it.

What bothers me about the iPhoto problem is that it is just another glitch that is making me wonder if Apple is stretched a little too thin.  I wasn't one of the folks who hated the big change in iMovie.  I got so that I liked it, but recently after several unsuccessful tries at uploading movies to YouTube from iMovie, I gave up on iMovie.

I don't do any complex video these days so as long as I can trim a clip a little, I am pretty happy.  It turns out that Picasa does a fine job of sending HD video from my Nikon 3100 to YouTube, and Sony included an application with my Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-HX7V that uploads their AVCHD format video.

The movies that come from the Sony are very good,  I recently did a handheld movie of a trip down the White Oak River at 30 mph in our skiff.  It was early morning on a deserted river that I travel three or four times a week so I didn't feel too bad about filming with one hand and driving with the over.

The next day I put the camera in my Gorilla pod mount on our skiff and did a movie of some marshes near Swansboro which is about ten minutes by boat from our house.

On July 30, I made this movie on the same river. It is even better.  The difference is that the river was glassy smooth, and I could go even faster.  I am pleased with the movie, no iMovie necessar, and it uploaded while I was cooking breakfast.

The point is that I did these movies without a Mac being involved. Trimming was simple and straightforward. Uploading worked flawlessly.   It was only a few years ago when I know that I told a group of people taking one of my photography classes that I would not even consider doing a movie with Windows.  Recent events have proved that things have changed.

Right down there are only two programs left which I use that are Mac only and for which I don't have a Windows equivalent. Rapid Weaver is one and Coda is the other.  That is a pretty thin software line holding me to the Mac. I am not counting MacDraft PE since my Housevision.us project is on hold until the real estate market turns.

I do use Pixelmator and Fetch by choice when I have that opportunity, but there are Windows or web based programs that work as well.

While I am still irritated about the location of the SD slot on my iMac, it is still a very good product. Apple's recent hardware announcements like the new Mac mini look very good.  One of these days, I will likely get a Mac mini to replace my aging 2004 dual G5 system. So likely the lure of cool hardware will keep me using Macs even if Apple's own software no longer meets my needs.

While I have no hard feeling towards Apple over my non-functional iPhoto, I do feel some sadness.  I have seen really good Apple software disappear, languish, or just get dropped.  The list doesn't need to get longer.

The thing that I used to love about Apple is that we could have great confidence in saying that everything will just work.  It made selling the product very easy.  I actually would think twice about saying that these days.

I have gotten to the point that my Windows 7 laptop is often what I grab when I want something done quickly.  It boots faster than any of my Macs, and in seventeen months, neither my I7 laptop or my wife's Windows I5 laptop have ever hung.  I have never even had an application misbehave.

That is a 180 degree turn from the days of Vista when I used to spend 45 minutes a week just keeping my Windows system running.  Now the Windows 7 laptop is what just seems to work. Also, and this hasn't really changed over the years, when there are versions on both platforms, there always seems to be some little feature that the Mac version doesn't have. 

Snagit is a program that I have enjoyed on Windows for a long time.  I was happy to see it come over to the Mac.  Yet the other day when I was trying to create a web page with some simple Flash content, I couldn't do it on the Mac version.  I had to switch to the Windows version.

Probably Apple doesn't need hard to please customers like me, they seem to have more than enough, but I have to think there is an underlying problem in a company who can't get an important product like iPhoto out the door in a  bulletproof release.  I hardly even know when Picasa is updated.  It seems to get faster and better.  I still believe that moving iPhoto slightly towards a more iPhone-like interface might be at the root of the problem, but I am not going to lose much sleep thinking about it since Picasa fixed my problem without me even having to resort to my backup library.  The organization is a little weird because of some of the imported iPhoto naming conventions, but I can live with it.

The iPhoto and iMovie problems and a natural reluctance to test the first release of an Apple OS are keeping me from trying Lion even on my MacBook test system.  I'll get there, just not for a while.  I have been burned a few times.

As usual, the absolute best way to get a great Apple experience is to buy a brand new product with the software pre-loaded. Apple's whole existence is built around getting new hardware out the door, so new will always deliver the best way to enjoy a Mac.

With that said, it is time to sign off from the Crystal Coast of North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks.  The heat has been here, but we have been luckier than most places when you look at temperatures.

Still even a couple of days with the windows open help a lot in the heart of summer.  We were fortunate to have some of those.

Of course either an early morning trip on the river or a trip over to the beach also helps to keep us happy here along the coast even when iPhoto has a major blip.

I remain happier and healthier living in world where Apple is not the center of my universe.  Focusing on my tomato crop is far better than living for the next Apple product or jumping on the lastest tech trend.

David Sobotta

Ocracokewaves

 

 

 

 

 

A Mac user reports after one year on Windows 7

It was on Februay 15, 2010 that I ordered both my wife and myself HP laptops running Windows 7.  About a week later I reported my first experiences with Windows 7. 

I actually was pretty surprised with the hostility that showed up in some of the comments to that post. I did not intend to offend the Apple world by once again purchasing some Wintel gear.

I wanted a fast processor in a laptop and had gotten tired of waiting for Apple to deliver one. 

It has been a year since I placed the order, so do I regret not waiting for that MacBook with an I7 processor?  Actually I do not have any regrets about my decision to spend money on non-Apple products.

My wife really needed a new laptop.  Her old Mac laptop had gotten so slow that even she had noticed. Initially I was going to buy just her a new Mac laptop, but in February 2010 I just could not see laying down good money for outdated processors from Apple.

When I found out that with rebates we both could get new laptops with the latest processors for less than the price of one Mac with an outdated processor, it did not take me long to place the order.

I was surprised that I got accused of being a shill for Microsoft especially considering that I had called Vista a Quagmire in a not very old post.  And just because I bought HP laptops for us, did not stop me from using Macs.  In fact this fall I ended up buying an I5 iMac because much of my work is still done on Macs.

I continue to use my old dual G5 tower and an even older Dell Pentium 3 desktop that runs Ubuntu Linux. I am pretty pleased with my technology set-up, but I think some of my observations on Windows 7 might be of interest to Mac people who would never consider dabbling in the world of Windows.

First off Windows 7 is an exceptionally reliable operating system. It is just a few days shy of a year since my wife and I both started using Windows 7. There have been no problems either hardware or software related with the systems.  That is no as in none. That is a pretty heady accomplishment for a brand new operating system running on new processors.

The systems have not crashed, locked up, or misbehaved in way that I have been able to determine.

In the year's time I have migrated my dedicated Mac using wife to the Windows world.  Would she still like to be using a Mac?

The answer is probably yes, but she also realizes a bargain when she sees one, so she is very happy with her HP laptop and saving some money.  She does claim to still miss her Apple address book, but her real problem is that she doesn't use an address book enough to really remember it in the Windows world.  She had years of hardly using her Mac address book for it to become second nature.

Our systems are set up very similarly.  My primary browser is Firefox, but I also use Chrome, and once in a while I have to use IE to print some GIS maps that our county has posted.  We both use Microsoft Security Essentials which is free, less intrusive than Norton, and also less of a resource hog.

Neither my wife or I have been bothered with viruses or any malware in the last year.

We use Thunderbird for email, Picasa for photos, Snagit for image captures, Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007 and Excel 2007.  I also use RealFast for my real estate forms.

Since I have dual Gmail personalities, Firefox is logged in under one ID and Chrome under the other.  The reasoning behind this is separate photo storage that I maintain in Picasa Web Albums.

I share files with Dropbox as does my wife.  Dropbox is actually part of my workflow since I will often first download my photos from SD cards to my HP I7 laptop. 

Any that I want to use in a post that need only minor editing I will fix in Picasa and save in my Dropbox which also puts it on my three Macs, the dual G5, my 2006 MacBook, and my new I5 iMac.

If there is a file that needs more work than I like to do in Picasa, I will save it in another Dropbox folder and work on it with Pixelmator then save it back to Dropbox.

Much of my work is writing or web pages. I do a lot of my writing in the mornings at the kitchen table.  The HP I7 laptop is my favorite machine for that since it has a 15" screen and a full sized keyboard.

I often do my web site work in the afternoon or evening.  Then I usually retire to my upstairs office and also download any photos to my I5 iMac where I might take another look at several of the best ones.  My new iMac has iPhoto 09 on it.  I made a mistake and put iPhoto 10 on my MacBook so I am not fond of doing iPhoto work on it.  I also have Aperture on the iMac but I rarely use it.  I have pretty well quit using Photoshop.

All of the blogs that I work on are done through a browser interface.  With a browser as an interface, it really doesn't matter to me which system does the writing.

However, I am working on a book which I write on the iMac using Nisus Writer Express.  When I finish a section I do take the time to open it in Word 2010 on the Mac and save it also as a Word document.  I have enough effort into the book that I don't want to take any chances of losing it.

Our Windows laptops seem to perform just as well on our networks as my Macs.  I certainly haven't seen the problems that I had with Vista.  The HP laptop also gives me the ability to print double-sided brochures on our color laser printer at the real estate office.  Unfortunately when they installed accounting software, it locked out Macs and since I was the only Mac user, no one was interested in fixing the problem.  I finally removed the old Mac desktop that I had in the office last fall.

One measure of the success of moving my wife to Windows is that it has been months since she started her old lamp shade iMac. It was the system she used in our second home. I have started it a couple of times just to make sure it works but that is it.  She now prefers to carry her HP laptop.  Her old Mac laptop had not been travel worthy for a long time due to its battery.

I still prefer using a Mac over a Windows machine for most things.  And there is some software on the Mac that I think is better than what is available for Windows computers.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that Windows 7 is a very good operating system and that you can find a very decent computer for much less than what you can in the world of Apple.

If you just want email, browsing, and sharing basic pictures, I would have a hard time recommending a Mac purchase unless you just want a Mac or have been using one for a long time.

We have no trouble printing to our wireless network of HP and Brother printers. In fact I think I have more trouble with my MacBook printing than I do the Windows laptops. Sharing files with DropBox is a piece of cake.

While I haven't timed it, I believe that my I7 HP laptop will boot more quickly than my I5 iMac but the difference is hardly worth arguing.

Those who said that my I7 HP Windows 7 laptop would slow like a typical Windows machine were wrong.  It has turned out be a very good experience.  I have actually helped a couple of people buy HP laptops identical to my wife's I5 machine.

I would never suggest that anyone who is happy with their Mac go out and get rid of it and buy a Windows 7 machine, but if you are faced with aging Macs and a limited budget, you might be surprised at how far your dollar will go in the Windows world.

Switching one machine to Windows does not mean that you have to start hating Macs or stop using them, it just means that you have a few options that you didn't have when you were only using a Mac.

I do find wireless networking still something more of a pain on Windows computers, but it has improved greatly even with the not so new networking gear that I run.  Even my aging MacBook has a habit of deciding that it does not have an Airport card once in a while when changing network locations.  I have to pull the battery and generally reconfigure the Airport card.

I long ago got to the point that computers are tools to get my job done and not part of a religious experience.  Apple makes very good but sometimes very expensive computers.  If you can afford to live in an all Apple world, I am happy for you.

For the rest of us, you can find happiness in a mixed platform world. Sometimes success is measured by keeping old gear going long after the manufacturers would have us retire it.

We are finally into some great weather on the east coast. After some cold damp weather along the ocean shores, the sun feels great.  It is really nice to have afternoon temperatures into the sixties and see some signs of spring even if we might face a little more winter.

Unfortunately there areas in North Carolina and Virginia where the lack of winter snows and rain have made for very dry conditions.

As the weather gets warmer and the boat rides longer, I might just have to forget about computers for a few days.  I hope everyone get their needed rains, but I sure hope there is some sunshine for a few winter busting days on the water.

 

Balanced technology with Apple at the core

Over the years I have worked myself into a technology solution that might be described as revolving around Apple but by no means dependent on the whims of Cupertino.  It works well for me, and lets me have the best of both worlds without being tied to any particular technology vendor.  How I got to this point, and how my solution works is something of a twisted story.

When I started using Apple computers back in 1982, it was not very hard to use an all Apple solution.  The only non Apple hardware I had was an Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer. Times changed, the Mac was introduced, and I went to work for Apple in 1984, but lots of business software came out for IBM compatible computers.  While I was working for Apple, the experience I had using and selling MS/DOS computers gradually faded into the past. Macs and Apple peripherals from printers to scanners and even cameras dominated my life.

Even during the years at  Apple when there was a concerted effort by the company to provide DOS compatibility, Apple was vehemently anti-Windows internally.  If you wanted to demonstrate Windows compatibility on a network, you had to be pretty creative with your local budget dollars.  We managed to get a few PCs in our Reston office.  They were invaluable in helping us learn what our customers' faced in getting Macs to work in their enterprise.

I sometimes felt like our work with Windows computers was a skunk works project. We actually ended up driving a lot of Apple's ActiveDirectory solution with a system engineer on my staff doing much of the development, but the reality even then was that Apple was a consumer company at its heart. Our enterprise efforts were just a holding action until Apple could find hits that would free it from the need to pay any serious attention to the enterprise.

Most people would agree that I bled rainbow colors in those days, so it would be no surprise that my family's personal technology and my own remained 100% Apple. I was even pretty happy with a Nokia cell phone that I synced with my Mac. When I was happiest, the Nokia was on Cingular which eventually got bought by AT&T. Then there was my departure from Apple just shy of my 20th anniversary and just after I reached the magic age of 55 at Apple.

Within a month after leaving Apple I bought a 15" Aluminum Powerbook.  It got a lot of use, but that same fall I also bought a Dell Dimension Pentium desktop.  Probably some of the reason I bought the Dell was Apple deciding they no longer needed my services, but I also really wanted to see how the majority of the people using technology got along in their daily tasks.  For about six months I didn't have a job, so learning about Windows XP and Linux was a way to make myself more marketable. It was an interesting experience and was my start in blogging.  I did purchase my trusty dual G5 PowerMac in December of 2004.  I am still using it and the Dell. I sampled a lot Linux over the years before deciding to stay with Ubuntu.

Both my next two jobs were in the government space.  I eventually got tired of being the only person in the room with a Mac so I bought a Dell laptop in the fall of 2005.  Eventually I gave up the world of a consultant for a job with benefits.  I became the VP of sales and marketing at an email services company.  The Dell laptop turned out to be a necessity with that job.  There were a couple of apps that we used which just would not work on the Mac so through some of 2006, I came to work carrying both a Mac laptop and a Dell laptop.  By that time I was pretty proficient with Windows XP. Eventually I managed to get most things working well in my new workplace, but I had sort gotten to like having two machines on my desktop.

In the summer of 2006, I bought a new MacBook.  My aluminum PB had sucumbed to a number of problems, including a bad lower memory slot and flaky ribbon cable, neither of which were covered by extended warranties.  In the fall of 2006 we moved to coast, and I started looking for a new job.  I wanted something where I did not have to live and breathe technology.

Somehow I thought that was real estate, and just as the the market was tanking, I ended up becoming a REALTOR®.  I did not understand at the time that I sticking my foot into a field which had the potential to require an even greater use of technology than selling computers, networking or cloud services.

By then I had loaned my Dell laptop to my youngest daughter for final years of college, but I was able to get by the first nine months as a REALTOR® using my MacBook and my old Dell desktop at home.  Our office provided us with an ancient Window XP desktop to use while on duty so that helped.

Eventually when I got to the point of writing contracts, I decided that I needed a new Windows laptop so I bought a new Vista laptop just when Apple was introducing Leopard.  It was a lesson in Windows humility. There were some challenges with XP, Vista was a nightmare. and I eventually concluded that it as quagmire.

I bought the Vista laptop because it was a cheaper solution for generating forms than anything else.  Supporting myself on Vista was a time whirlpool.  If anything Vista made me appreciate Macs more.

During all this time I continued to do my website and creative work on Macs.  My Windows computer let me access one of our MLS systems which required IE and let me create approved real estate forms.  It also let me print on our office printer which I could never make work on my Macs after some security software was installed on the printer.

In the winter of 2009 I was hoping that Apple would ship some new I5 and I7 laptops at a reasonable price.  Considering the tough state of the real estate market, spending money on a premium laptop like a Mac seemed like a gamble especially when it stil had an old processor.  Of course I was also to the point that I could no longer take Vista even though it had improved somewhat.

After listening to a lot of technology people whom I respect, I ended up buying both myself and my wife new Windows 7 laptops.  In about a month, we will have used those two laptops for a year without any problems. Windows 7 has proved to be a great operating system that might even be more reliable than OS X.

I have ended up helping a couple of folks get I5 laptops similar to my wife's HP.  Neither has expressed any regrets. I also convinced my daughter to stay with Macs because I thought it was right for her.  If money had been no object I would have bought both my wife and myself Macs.  But as it ended up, we both got very good systems, mine an I7 and my wife's an I5 for less than the price of one I5 Mac which didn't ship until months later.  Of course all my real estate software worked out of the box with Windows 7.  My son's company is all Windows so he long ago stopped using a Mac.  He also loves gaming so he has a souped up Dell I7 desktop with a solid state drive at home.  My youngest daughter is still using a desk lamp iMac. 

A week or so after I bought the HP laptops, I ended up choosing a Droid as my smartphone.  I was completely frustrated with AT&T's service in our area. Three years of it had been a lesson in dropped and missed calls. I only managed to get 50% or less of the phone calls when I was in my home, and the idea that I would pay AT&T more to fix their problem by installing something in my home just drove me up the wall.

Through all of this Apple peripherals including monitors have mostly disappeared. I have added HP, Epson, and Brother printers to my technology solutions.  I have an HP AIO printing/scanning/fax solution and an Epson scanner.  I live with a mixed wireless/wired network. It has a fair amount of old network equipment in it, but with some help from my son, I manage to keep the network running.

This winter I finally gave in and bought a new I5 iMac.  The old Dual G5 was getting very slow in spite of a number of hard drive upgrades. While I am pleased with the speed I have gotten with the new iMac, I stll believe it could be a better product.  Both my Windows I7 laptop and my old Ubuntu Dell boot faster.

The one thing that I have on every piece of hardware is Dropbox.  It is a great utility.  I spend a lot of time in Firebox, an increasing amount of time in Chrome, and a little time using Safari.  I useTweetDeck on my Windows box and my Macs.  I have the latest version of Office on the Mac, but I am stuck on Office 2007 on Windows.  I use Thunderbird for most of my mail on Windows, but I do access my Gmail with Chrome.  My Linux box runs little more than Firefox with an extra tab for Gmail.

On the Macs I run Apple's Mail client, but I find it getting a little creaky.  I have used Powermail in the past so I might go back to that eventually.  Right now I am using Dreamweaver and Rapidweaver, but I am evaluating other solutions.  I do use Pages for some brochures.  For word processing I use Word on Windows, OpenOffice on Linux, and Nisus Writer Express on the Mac.  I have given up Photoshop on the Mac for Pixelmator.  I manage my photos on Windows with Picasa and on the Mac with iPhoto 09. I find the most recent release of iPhoto an abomination so I am looking for alternatives.

I really like SnagIt on Windows, and while I have it for the Mac, I rarely use it there for some weird reason. It is a great tool on Windows for creating directions on a map.  Building my Housevision.us services site pushed me back firmly in the Mac world because I could not find an inexpensive Windows CAD solution that fit my work style so I now use MacDraft PE.

I have made lots of movies on the Mac, but I have also done some recently on Windows because of some trouble getting iMovie to work with YouTube.

MobileMe is not a service that I find worthwhile even though I am still paying for it because I have a couple of family members who just don't want to change their email addresses.  I am still bent out of shape over Apple taking down some photo sites that I had there for years.  I now store all my photos on Picasa web albums though I still maintain a presence on Flickr.  I will sometimes do photo editing on Pixelmator on the iMac, save the photos to my Dropbox, and them import them to Picasa on my I7 Windows laptop and then upload them from there. The uploads seem to go faster than on the iMac, but I have not sat down with a stopwatch and timed it.

Living in a world of IMAP email, Microsoft Office, and Dropbox makes it relatively easy for me to be platform agnostic. Even the brochures that I do with Pages, I save as Word files and modify them in Word on Windows and eventually print them on our doubled sided color laser printer at the office which I cannot get to work with a Mac.

The fact that I don't use Macs for everything is not a slam against Apple, it is just a response to Apple's expensive pricing, and the fact that not everything that I need can be found on a Mac unless I run Windows on a Mac which I don't want to do.  It is also just the way things happened.

For a variety of reasons I have chosen to have Windows hardware for Windows and use my Macs as dedicated Macs.  While I could easily run Windows on the new I5 iMac, I have no need to do so.  I would rather have the redundancy from the extra hardware.  I also like the feel of competence that I get from being able to use multiple platforms.  When I was still doing duty at the real estate office, I was often pressed into service to solve Windows problems.

Fortunately after my recent home network repair, all my technology tools are working well and doing what I need them to do.  I like having three screens on my desktop. The integration between My Tracks on my Droid and my Google maps is just icing on the cake of my technology world. I am happy that I no longer have to use the somewhat flaky i-gotU software on Windows to do my GPS tracks.

I don't ever expect to give one vendor all of my business. I would far sooner have them compete for my business.  I expect over the short term, Apple, Google, and Microsoft will all continue to find me both someone who users their products and a critic when something needs improving.

Over the long term, I am not placing any bets, but I sure would like to see Apple focus a little more energy and competitiveness on their laptops and desktops.  I think there is still a big place for them in the world.  I hate to see Apple give up that space completely to Windows vendors.

The recent news on developers and smartphone app intentions is a pretty good sign that no one has the market sewn up.  That market will be interesting to watch.

I am happy to report that we finally got a normal storm this winter and that Wednesday morning we woke up to 54 degrees Fahrenheit.  That is a nice change from the snowstorm we saw last weekend.  Even this winter's weather has not shaken my belief that the Southern Outer Banks is a great place to live.  It was nice to make it to 59.7 Fahrenheit on Wednesday.  I even ordered the seeds for my tomato plants.  It's almost time for the great tomato race to start.

 

 

A Mac user & Windows 7 on an Intel i7 laptop

Sometimes when you use a product that nearly drives you crazy, you wonder if the vendor can ever get back your business.  I would have to say that Vista was the product that almost caused me to give up on Microsoft.  I had battles with my Vista laptop from the day I brought it home until the days before I replaced it with a shiny new HP Pavilion laptop powered by Intel's new i7 processor.

During this whole time my white Intel based MacBook with OS X stood tall.  For the first year of my life with Vista, my MacBook was always in my backpack. When the Vista laptop would have trouble booting, I would reach over and grab my MacBook and often find out what I needed before Vista recovered.

Still I have to give Microsoft credit, they slugged away at Vista and made some huge improvements to it. However, even with the changes, Vista is nowhere close to OS X.  When Snow Leopard shipped, I installed it on MacBook, and really saw little improvement other than some disk space that I recovered.  Eventually Vista got to the point that I did not have to carry my MacBook as a backup.

To be fair, some of the problems that I had with Vista might have been caused by having a laptop that was limited to two gigs of ram.  However, I did not think that was a problem when I bought it since my MacBook only had two gigs of ram.

I am a hardware junkie who pays attention to processor families, and when Intel announced their new i-series processors, I decided that my wife and I would get some new laptops.  Her 12" aluminum PowerBook was ancient and starting to make some strange noises.  In addition to a next generation processor, I wanted some more hard drive space, a quieter laptop, and again I was after a 15" screen that would be friendly to my old eyes.

My wife's system was the priority, and I was willing to buy her one of the new unibody MacBooks but only if Apple would come out with the new processors.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I remember one of Apple's best reasons for switching to Intel was so that Apple customers would not have to wait for the latest and greatest processors. So I wonder what the excuse is now that IBM cannot be blamed for not shipping processors on time?

When I started seeing Windows machines with i-series processors in Staples stores, I questioned my Apple friends who seemed surprised that these systems were actually shipping.   As is always the case, the Apple folks had no idea when there would be new Apple laptop systems.

When Staples announced a sale where I could end up with a 14" i5 laptop for my wife and a 15" i7 laptop for me for a total cost of a couple of hundred dollars under the price of one 15" MacBook Pro with an outdated processor, I decided to go for it.  For those interested the total price for the two laptops before taxes will be $1549 after getting a $100 cash back rebate.  I will also get a rebate back from my credit card and some coupons from Staples.  My cost for the two machines will be under $1,500 before taxes.

We picked the two machines up on Tuesday night, and I have been working when I have time at getting them both up and going.  It took just a few minutes to get both machines out of the box and hooked to our Airport wireless network.  Windows 7 is a huge improvement in this regard.

Applying updates and loading software has taken a little time but it has not been onerous.  Of course, it is not as easy as with a Mac, but to be fair I did not even try the Windows migration assistant. I did not want all of the software on my old machine (particularly Outlook), and I was curious if I would run into any hurdles that might be a problem for others.  My wife's system is a different story since she is going from a Mac to Windows.

Before I did anything, I went to Microsoft's web site and installed their free security suite which lets me ignore Norton.  That is also a new benefit in the Windows world.

Then I used Internet Explorer to download and install Firefox.  Then with Firefox, I downloaded and installed Thunderbird 3.  I used one of my USB memory sticks to bring my addresses over from Thunderbird. Then it just took a few minutes to set up my six email accounts. Five of them are IMAP so getting my mail going was no big problem.  At the same time I brought over the certificate that I use for signing and encrypting mail on one of my accounts.

Bookmarks were not a big deal, I sent myself an email with the dozen that I need. I could have used another method, but I just wanted to bring over a few bookmarks.   I then installed MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.  Then I downloaded Picasa for my pictures and Google Chrome which I use sometimes.  During all of this I installed Flash and approved an automatic Java update. Before I went to bed that evening I started both systems on their MS updates.

By the next morning, all I had to do on my system was to install TweetDeck and get some printers going. My Brother 5250DN required downloading a driver, but the installation went flawlessly and even duplex printing worked without a problem.  The drivers for my HP6100 series printer came with Windows 7. It also worked fine the first time.  I finally installed the finicky NC real estate software that I use.

Then I brought over all of my data and the library of pictures that I wanted with an external USB drive.  The final pieces of software were SnagIt and CutePDF writer which is a free piece of software that lets me print PDFs from any application just like a Mac does out of a box.

All of this probably took me about three hours, and all I have left to do is put Thunderbird on my wife's system and install her printers.  I am not looking forward to getting her Mac address book into Thunderbird but fortunately she just has a relatively small number of email buddies.  Her two email accounts are both IMAP, so I might just go through her emails and use Thunderbird's add address feature.

I actually took my new laptop to work the afternoon after I picked it up.  The only problem that I uncovered was the lack of a Windows 7 driver for the old Konica-Minolta printer in our office.  It might just take a little more looking, but it is not a huge issue for me, since my Macs did not work on it anyway.

To be very honest, I have found Windows 7 to be an immensely pleasing surprise.  It is stable, fast, and enough Mac-like that I doubt that my wife will have any problems using it.

I am truly amazed at the progress which has been made.  My new laptop wakes from sleep very quickly.  In two days of using the two machines, there has been no crash or system hang.  Windows 7 has worked flawlessly.

My new laptop is so quiet that I can once again hear the tapping of my keys.  It is very fast, and so far I am exceptionally pleased with it.  Even creating the two Windows 7 recovery disks was a piece of cake.

I love the Mac-like Windows 7 task bar at the bottom of the screen.  The little rectangle on the right side of the task bar that toggles to the desktop is easier than a keyboard combination.

As much as I love Macs, I would have a very hard time recommending that someone currently shopping for a laptop buy a Mac.  If you use your laptop for a long time like my wife, it would be a crime to spend your money on a last generation processor when you can get the newest processors for much less.

Windows 7 has really closed the gap with OSX.  It is an impressive operating system.  I think Windows 7 will certainly help Microsoft reputation in the world of operating systems.

On another note I recently signed up for Microsoft's free Office Live workspace. I installed a piece of software that lets me easily save a document that I have created using one of Microsoft's desktop applications to the free online storage.  It is a nice bonus, and the price is right.

Microsoft still does some interesting things, and I suspect Windows 7 and aggressively priced hardware are going to go a long way towards protecting Microsoft's base of users.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes Apple to come out with their own i-series laptops.  Even then I seriously doubt that you will see an i7 processor from Apple with a 15" LED screen for under $900.  My bet is that the only i-7 laptop from Apple will be a top of the line PowerBook with a 17" screen. 

I can remember the days when Mac laptops were great values.

In the world of today's laptops, I think that day is long gone, and I am sad to say that.

While lots of folks might be excited about placing an order for their iPad,  I am pretty excited at the great technology that I got in my new HP i7 laptop.  I suspect it will be able to handle my computing needs for a long time, and it came at a very reasonable price.

I will be providing more updates as I get more familiar with the machines. I am sure there will be glitches, but right now I am a very happy customer, and I am enjoying my new computer which is functioning perfectly.

The warm glow is enough to give me some spring beach dreams.