Do I actually have to give props to Dell?

It seems I just might. First Dell took a stand last year (June 2007?) when they started selling XP again after Microshaft told them to only sell Vi$ta, now Dell has made a bolder move, saying the WILL sell XP after the June 30th M$ cut-off. Though I have no love for the trash they call hardware it is about time someone stood up to Redmond and said (in pure Network fashion), "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" If there is one thing M$ never understood, it is that the market doesn't just want the stuff you give it. The market will eventually demand what it wants. They copy other ideas poorly (Windoze, Zune, PocketPOS, etc.) and expect that people will want it because it says M$ on it. Vi$ta sucks guys, and the new service pack didn't help. It takes too much hardware to do too little, and costs corporations and institutions just too much money to upgrade incompatible equipment and software, so Dell comes to the rescue by continuing to sell XP so productivity and the bottom line can be saved. This also helps small businesses without the upgrade capital as well.
Really with SP3 and the new mini-laptop market (that just can't run Vi$ta), Redmond may likely have to extend support sales again (contrary to its own statements). But beating a dead horse has also always been another M$ trend. They continue to sell, change and repackage crap no one wants (Windoze CE, that damn paper clip). They should have given up on Vi$ta rather than continuing to throw R&D money at it hoping it would finally get done and work right. Now that they have thrown so much into it they can't give up, and want to force down the throats of a public that just doesn't want it. Give it up guys, Vi$ta is hated by many of the most loyal M$ users.
If you get a chance, check out the "Vista Failure Log": http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/177855
It also looks like NEC will offer XP after the cutoff:
http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/195462

What the hell happened to Boot Camp?

So I am now using a 17" MacBook Pro CoreDuo (yes an older one) running Leopard. I admit so for Boot Camp has not been a selling point for me. So far I'd just rather use Parallels or VMWare Fusion (I would recommend both products), but I figured with MacBook Pro I might want to take advantage of Hardware (like the video to play games), so I figured I'd install XP on Boot Camp. I got a black screen with an error about a missing file. I check the forums, and I tried all the suggestions, reformatting the Boot Camp partition, trying different XP discs, I even reformatted the Mac, tried a fresh install of Leopard. Still the same. Apple refused to support it after "the Windows installer started". A few days earlier I was asked about this problem by someone, but since I had never seen it before I didn't have answer. I still don't. I tried the Boot Camp beta under Tiger and it worked great (on a MacBook Core2Duo), but Boot Camp 2.0 under Leopard is, as fas as I'm concerned, is a complete failure. Or maybe it's just Windows.
Addendum: It seems the best fix is takes a lot of time and going back to the Tiger beta to get XP installed then upgrade to Leopard. It was a great beta.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5860087

Sorry for the delay...

The Random Tech Guy shall return shortly.

Vi$ta? No Thanks!

The Random Tech Guy doesn't not recommend Vista for anyone or for any application. He highly encourages avoiding it at all costs (use 2000, XP, Ubuntu Linux or best yet a Mac), and encourages others not to use or recommend Vista. He also helps people removes Vista from machines that shipped with it and upgrade to other legitimate operating systems.

Micro$oft Phone Home

Since the release of XP the one thing I can't understand it why a person who pays for an OS and runs it legitimately would use something that needs to phone home to prove it is real (and usually without your knowledge). Things like Windoze Product Aggravation and Windoze Genuine Validation (sorry no good pun for that one yet) are just sad. M$ says they are used to reduce piracy. Piracy hasn't decline. M$ claimed that the new "technology" in Vi$ta has helped curb piracy. Blogger and users alike shot shot back that it is because no one wants to pirate Vi$ta. As usual Microshaft needs a reality check. Vi$ta is s@#t in a box with the M$ logo. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy, and now that it like XP it not only wants initial validation, it wants another every 180 days, and more if you want to download certain products. The system is so convoluted and confusing that I even found others trying to get to the bottom on the phenomenon.
These new "technologies" make the products more expensive, since M$ has to waste R&D money on this crap. It also takes up your bandwidth. That's right every time it does a check it is using bandwidth you likely pay for. Why isn't M$ giving all legitimate customers who are victims of their back-orifice like tools a rebate for using their bandwidth? Why doesn't M$ just trust their user to manage their own machines, licenses and software?
Worst of all this is like an illegal wire tap. Though claims are made that the validation is "straight forward", it often does so without asking the customer first (they call this "transparency"). Even if it did, if the customer canceled the check either the software would deactivate or would create a violation of the license agreement.

These Old Macs

I'm sure you won't be surprised, but yup I have a basement full of old Mac's. I really am trying to collect them all (or at least one of each), and they all work. I haven't had the chance, but the plan is to build an old Mac museum with an Appletalk network for the real oldies, and Ethernet for the newer ones (with internet for for those that can handle it). Then again I have an SE/30 with a NIC card and have run a browser on it's little 9" black and white screen before.
I have a couple Mac Pluses, and original 20 MB external HD for one, and an SE or 2. Tough I have quite a few machines, I'm missing the two "Holy Grail's" (128k and 512k), and as the years go by, the chance that someone I know might have one in their basement they would rather give to me than keep.
There is the 6100 I found on the curb (no jokes). The system worked and became quite the useful machine for a good 4 years. Some are special. I don't have my original Classic II, but I have one like it. I have an SE/30 I built from parts, and there's the IIsi.
The IIsi holds some sentimental value as it belonged to the father of some friends' who died long before his time. It was kinda cool when they gave it to me for my collection, he loved that machine, and he is one of the guys that made me such a big Mac head. A radio engineer by day, GW, was a damn funny and damn smart guy. I will also miss the strangely addressed pieces of junk mail that usually came with the middle initial "Q". This was one of GW's trademarks. He would get you on some mailing list or with a "Q" right there between your names. Someday it will sit at the center of the collection, among the LC's and Quadras. I'm proud to have his machine.

Low End Mac

I would like to thank lownedmac.com for featuring one of my articles in their "Around The Web" section. If you are not already reading the site (and I'm sure you are because you only found me because of them), do so. There is Mac model info, great articles, and it is a top notch site. As a Mac Guru I would consider this to be required reading. Kudos to Dan Knight for his great work. And most especially, thanks for the link and thanks for reading Dan! (And thanks everyone for reading!)

The Market Share Myth

I have never believed the myth that Apple has less than 10% of the market share. In 10.06 they had over 9% of the laptop market share and that almost doubled (to over 17%) in 10.07. Since laptops are now outselling desktops, and Apple is selling a record number of Macs (both laptops and desktops) the math just doesn't add up. (And do they take in to account households, businesses, etc, that have more than one machine?) Some editing machines for audio and video are often kept off the network except for occasional updates meaning they don't show up on web reports. But recent reports show that Apple gained about .5% market, virtually over night. That's right on 12.25 web site hits by Macs rose .5% from the rest of the month. It seems my earlier holiday wishes might have come true for quite a few people. Enough people got Mac's for x-mas to cause a significant change in market share over night. What a magical time of the year.

To Dell And Back

There is no bigger travesty, no bigger piece of crap (POS) than that awful four letter word. Dell. I have a few horror stories to share, but nothing strikes me funnier than the words, "I will never buy a Dell again." It was the number one sentence I heard at CompUSA, (number two was, "Next time I'm getting a Mac."), and I have heard it over and over since. No institution I have worked at will ever buy a Dell again either.
I have a client who made the mistake of buying Dell's a few years ago, and they feel the pain every time they pay for a new service contract and ever time they need an on-site repair call (who have never been on time, usually a day or more late). Lately that has been more often than they would like. One machine is on it's second motherboard and RAM (and maybe video card) in six months, another is about to go onto its third set in about the same amount of time. Pathetic. Their customer is terrible. I give a company a "three strikes" policy. If a machine breaks down because of the same problem three times, I don't accept further repairs, I make them replace the machine, regardless of how far up the food chain I need to go to get it done.
A colleague had a Dell laptop. It needed a new battery (which they were willing to buy as it was no longer covered) and a new AC adapter. Dell insisted on sending a tech (usually a contract guy who also does other brands) to replace the motherboard (My colleague didn't want this). The machine has been nothing but unstable since. I over heats, they came back and replaces the heatsink and fan. It didn't help. Now she just wants a machine replacement, and will never buy a Dell again.
I must also say in my personal experience, their customer service is not what it is cracked up to be, but I'll give them that they have gotten my issues resolved and usually in a timely manner. The people are usually nice (however institutions get the cream of the crop), are attentive and literate, and are willing to come off script. The parts aren't sent as quickly as some other companies, but the seem to work the first time (unlike another recent problem I had with MPC the new and "improved" Gateway, but that is for another entry).
These are typical stories I hear and witness about the four letter word. And these are just a couple of examples. So please if you have to buy a PC for goodness sake don't go to Dell.
Addendum: I wanted to link another great Dell related blog entry from another blogger: Dell Hell

A Momentary Lapse

I haven't posted in a while. It could be because I haven't had that much to rant about (although the fact that ANYONE would want a fundamentalist screw job like Huckabee to be a presidential candidate, much less president needs to read the Constitution and some other important treaties and documents, we are NOT a christian nation, and god does not belong in this government, go home home and preach to thee other nut jobs Mike, and get the hell out of the race, his support scares me deeply and I hope he loses tomorrow in NH), but I digress.
Addendum: Thankfully Huckabee also finished with a meager 3rd place showing in NH...
2nd Addendum: I divided this post to give the tech analysis its own entry (See The Market Share Myth)...

The Old Pismo

For those of you who don't know the final model of the Powerbook G3 was codenamed the "Pismo". It was the first and only G3 Powerbook to have Firewire, and like previous versions it also had USB and an internal Airport card. I have a friend who has one, and I like to use it as a great example of the superiority of the Mac and it's life span.
Up until the release of Leopard on October 26, 2007, this machine built over 7 years before could run the latest version of OS X (Tiger 10.4.11), and still does. My friend commented on how quick the machine felt even with only a 500mhz processor, 384 MB RAM and the older 802.11b WiFi card. Though the machine now has a 40 MB Hard Drive and could actually hold more RAM, my friend loves it.
I often ask people if they can show me a seven year old windoze laptop that could run Vi$ta
(released before Leopard so a fair question). There are none. ME II can't even run on a Pentium III much less the the Pentium II's that were being used at the time, which can barely run XP, IF you can get enough RAM in the machine. His Quantex of about the same vintage (which felt antiquated a year later) couldn't even hold up to the Powerbook.
As an addendum, a few people with G4 upgrades in their Pismos report they are even running Leopard...

A little more about the blog...

This blog is not some kind of parody. This truly is what you read is what you get. I have a good background in the filed of computers and IT, both formally and informally. In the time I have spend with computers (back to the Apple II in the early to mid-80's) I have used plenty of stuff. I had an Atari 800 once, and a Radio Shack Color Computer, and even an Apple IIGS.
I remember when those hacks at Radio Shack were hawking trash 80's that ran DOS or even those sickening early versions of Windows (those were not operating systems folks, they were shell that had to be run over an operating system). They used to trash me for liking Mac and Apple, but they were idiots, I could crash their store machines and it would take them forever to make them run again (they just needed to boot from a floppy and rename a file or two, but they were too dumb to figured this out). I knew then I could out tech these guys in the crap they sold that I didn't even regularly use. They said Mac users knew nothing about their machines. They had it backwards. I could fix any problems I had, and most of the guys who used Macs I new could as well. These guys couldn't even fix DOS.
I remember being shown Windows 3 or 3.1 (like it matters), and someone said, "See you'll like this, it's like a Mac." It wasn't even close, clunky, ugly, unintuitive (things haven't changed much). I quit back in to DOS much to their amazement and worked from there again. What was the point in using a bad GUI shell? Really Windows 95, 98, & ME were just glorified DOS shell's and they showed it. The only thing that struck me strange was how the DOS mode (at least in 95 and 98) were more stable than DOS was. Maybe because it was newer than 6.22.
People make a fortune off Books and CD's on how to use Windows. Why? Why not just buy a computer you can figure out and use on your own (like a Mac)? Why spend money on crap? (PC hardware included). People tell me because the can get such "cheap" PC's. Yet these things break down, fall appart, blow hardware, get Windows rot and are useless in a year or two. If you buy one of those four or five hundred dollar PC's, you get what you pay for. Crap. Plain and simple, someone took a dump put it in a box and put a label on it. When it dies (not if), and likely before the warranty runs out, you get what you deserve. High maintenance and repair bills or you need a new machine. You should have spend good money in the first place. I still run a machine daily that is seven years old, and I have only made some modest upgrades over the years when they were cheap. And yes it is a Mac, and yes you can upgrade them.
Don't even talk to me about building you own PC. I have done it many times. The price of doing so is getting hard to compete with "brand-name" machines even if I will get better quality parts. I have also rescued countless "builders" who never should have tried in the first place. Go back to doing your job, let me do mine.
And also, I cam going to mention the "L" word. Linux. Ubuntu 7.10 is looking pretty snazzy and seems (like most of their previous offerings) pretty stable. So if you do know what you are doing, kill ME II and give it a try. Just don't kill your machine (unless you realize it is a PC and it is due for the office space treatment).