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When in Rome, Do as Fanboys Do

computer icon So the web is full of fanboy talk after the long circle-jerk orchestrated by Jobs today. One of the biggest things Mac fanboys are heralding is Safari on Windows. Well, here’s my thoughts. So what? I downloaded the browser to see what all the hype (which is 90% of what Apple products are) was about. The browser, on Windows, sucks. It’s said to be the best browser in the world. Yeah right. The browser is supposed to render websites faster than Firefox, IE, and Opera, but I noticed no difference. It was clunky, had very few options as far as customization goes and has no plugin support. So why is this the best browser ever? I also think that the claim of being faster is bogus. Going to several websites, it seemed to go slower than other browsers, except IE7. They put Opera as the slowest browser, but Opera has always gone faster out of the box than IE7 on the two machines I run it on. Safari is clunky, ugly, and pretty much just a general POS. (This is where I’d get flamed by fanboys who say it’s because it’s on Windows…. but you know what, that’s what this was made for, Windows, and it still is shitty). Do yourself a favor and stick with Opera or Firefox. IE7 sucks as well, so don’t use that one either, but hey, at least IE7 has more options and plugin support.

Being a blogger, I had to post about a Mac announcement at least once. There it was. Continue on with your regularly scheduled program. And read this if you have a chance.

Update: The “best browser in the world” keeps getting better. Security holes found within hours of it’s release.

Laptop Ram

computer icon So, I ordered some new RAM for my laptop last week. I need it because I only have 512 in my laptop now. I only really use my laptop at work (yes, I have to use my own computer and have been doing so for the past 3 years when I would work on and off for two different companies (same boss). Each summer I’d use it every day all day long, and quite often the rest of the year, so it has some wear and tear on it. I rarely use it for personal use anymore. The programs I use at work, Outlook, Photoshop, our Live Support chat, are memory hogs. This makes it hard to do things quickly. I figured I’d update the RAM and hopefully that would ease things a bit. Well, I got the memory yesterday, installed it and computer wouldn’t boot, not even to BIOS. I’d turn it on and the screen would be black. I replaced the original memory and it booted. I don’t know what the problem was. I tried every combination I could think of to get it to work, it just simply wouldn’t with the new RAM (yes, I had the right kind and my system could support the size and speed). I decided, in the end after tech support calls, just to return it and get a refund. I’ll just keep using the laptop as is and when I think about it now, it’s not exactly fair to upgrade my computer, out of my own pocket, just to use it at work. Truth be told, I should have a new laptop bought for me, not for the company, but for me, since I spent countless hours using my current one for work. I know that won’t happen, but oh well. I’m not going to try and upgrade the laptop anymore. I’ll just wait 6 months or so, whenever I am sure of my financial situation, and buy a new one. It won’t be used for work.

Some thoughts on my new computer

computer icon So, it’s been almost a week since I got my new computer from Dell. I must say, I am not disappointed. It is so nice to have a computer that doesn’t slow down to a standstill when you launch more than one program (especially with Photoshop). My computer can handle multi-tasking very well. I will sit there with 20 tabs open in Firefox (20 inch widescreen means more room for tabs!) and run Photoshop, IMs, music, PSPad, IRC and be uploading via ftp and not notice one hint of a slow-down or hiccup.

At first I was reluctant to use any of the new features that weren’t that necessary in Vista, such as the Vista sidebar and Gadgets. After browsing the gallery I found some nice additions, such as the App Launcher, Remote Desktop, and Run Command gadgets. The RD and Run Command are great because there is no Start, Run in Vista, though Windows key-R will get you there, just as before. Also, App Launcher is nice because I don’t have to overload my quick launch with programs and I don’t want to have a messy desktop. Why mess with the beauty of the 20 inch widescreen with a bunch of icons?

I’m actually pretty impressed with Vista. It is eye-candy, but it also does things better than XP, such as searching and the boot speed. The time in which it takes my copy of Vista Ultimate is cut in half of what it takes XP. Very nice.

My new computer

I’m writing this post from my beautiful new 20 inch widescreen digital flat panel display on my new Dell. Yes, I went with a PC (and Windows Vista) for my new computer. It’s pretty sweet and running so fast compared to my old computer. Some of the other specs are 2.13GHZ Intel Core Duo Processor, 2GB of ram and an ATI Radeon 256MB video card. I’m not into Vista all that much yet, but it’s not bad. Yay for new computers!

Meetro

meetroBack in February I signed up for Meetro. If you don’t know what it is, “Meetro is the world’s first location-aware IM client and real-time social network — which means Meetro allows you to meet real people in your neighborhood.” Meetro also supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Gtalk protocols. It could be a replacement to Trillian (though Astra looks freaking awesome). The reason I quit using Meetro though, was the closest people to me were like 200+ miles away. Not exactly close. To be fair this was a few months ago when the client was in beta stages. They just released 1.0 so I decided to give it a go again. The result is still the same. Closest people are about 250 miles away. Maybe when more people hear about it and sign up it will catch up. I don’t know. For some reason it doesn’t want to connect to my yahoo account and I also wish it would have tabbed IM conversations. Maybe in the next release.