* Posts by Michael C

866 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Mar 2007

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Fanboi site squeaks on crocked iMacs

Michael C

Opposite numbers here

I've done numerous Dell rollouts of 100+ units per phase, with 11% DOA/arrived damaged rates. I did a compaq rollout of 360 machines of which 52 were DOA. I have done a bladeserver rollout of 160 blades with 2 of the chassis and 19 blades nonfunctional. Across my IT career, I've seen a 6-8% that have required service/replacement on arrival. Several of these shipments were factory direct from the vendor's warehouses (not floring or retail companies). Orders shipped traditionally via UPS/FedEx had MUCH higher failure rates.

I also spent serveral years running a big-box retail service center, opening up new machines and prepping them for cunsumers before they were taken home. Failure rates there were 3-4%. None of these had mishandled packaging (we pre-screened those out and did not sell them to consumers as new, only as open box after extensive burn-in testing). Typically, a HDD would be bad, casing misalligned, fans didn't work, cables not fully connected, or deal pizels on screens.

I've also done several Mac rollouts. I've never encounter a mac notebook that had any issues out of the box aside a few from clearly destroyed packaging. I've seen a couple bad pixels, but out of 400+ machines, I'd say 2 or 3. I've seen 1 mini out of a few hundred not working out-of-box. iMacs tend to follow a little closer to 4-5% failure rates, but usually related to a slot-loading DVD drive issue, or had drives that fail sector testing with the exception of the old G4 "lamp" iMacs which had issues with the displays, but even still a relatively low incident number, and in every case handled by next day cross shipping.

Lately I've seen an increase in failure rates, but they've all been attributible to mishandling, not manufacturing defects (which the bulk of DOA PCs fall into). this is likely due to Greenpeac's insistence on reduced packaging, which certainly has left the machines susceptible to more abusive shippers.

Michael C
Stop

@AC

"I can definitely get a PC that has the same spec as a Mac for less money. The really great thing is, the PC also does more. It runs more software, and is generally more useful. It is really nice being able to access my corporate VPN from home which is only possible on a PC; or run the same CAD software at home and at work (AutoDesk, Rhino 3D, virtually every high end system); etc. etc."

OK, I call BS on numerous points here...

1) The Mac also runs Windows, both natively and in a coherence VM. Your PC does not. Technically, as a Mac user, I'd have access to MORE software than you, as you can not run any of the Mac-only software, like Filmmaker Pro, or any of the music or, video, or graphics editing software that more than 90% of that industry is standardized on and all of which is Mac-only.

2) I VPN to my Cisco systems at work regulary from a mac, in fact, our 2 most senior CCNAs are Mac users. Here's the free Cisco driver: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/secursw/ps2308/index.html Generic PPTP VPN is a native function of OS X and requires no 3rd party software at all. That said, usually the VPN is established by the firewall/router, not the PC itself, unless you VPN in from mobile, insecure sites, which is not reccomended, and for which the SSL client can be hacked (see recent articles about unpatched Cisco Anywhere vulns).

3) Here's AutoDesk's Mac Supported product portfolio: http://usa.autodesk.com/products/mac-compatible-products. Note AutoCad is natively supported for Windows on Mac (via Parallels). Other core apps like Maya run natively on OS X. Also note less than 1 in 1,000 professionals would use such software in 2 places, given the rediculous licensing costs and lack of license portability... If you;re running AutoCAD, likely it;s on a workstation, not a generic PC, and you;re taking a machine MORE expensive than a Mac pro assuming it's running Xeons and a CAD adapter... If you;re not running it on a workstation class machine, then you're likely not a pro architect or editor, and didn't spend 1000's on this software anyway, and if you did, would be happy running it on any quad core.

4) You said "same specs" and I'm taking that to mean "equal or faster machine with the same performance or better" since simply matching GHZ, and GB means nothing unless you match or beat the SPECS of the core components, so: Build cost of an i7 on New Egg: Closest matching screen (or better) only 1 on all of NewEgg, $1199, and it's not even an IPS screen. Intel 920 i7 CPU (actually, the iMac has the 930, but they;'re not available in retail yet, Apple has the exclusive deal for now...) $304. RAM 4GB 1066 DDR 3 $94. Board $169 cheapest board offered that supports 920CPU that also includes both enough slots to support other components and includes either firewire OR eSATA, $169. Power Supply $59, Case $49, both pretty generic and not 80+%. DVD $32. HDD 1TB 7200 $84. 4850 512GPU $119. WiFi-n $55 (must be PCIx for mainbourd to support it). No OS, No software, no webcam, no speakers, no bluetooth, no infrared, no mic, no wireless mouse, no wireless keyboard, no SD card reader, and NO WARRANTY. total $2164 plus shipping and taxes. iMac euqlally equipped, plus all the omitted extras above, and thrown in Parallels 5.0 and a printer for free, $2079 + tax (shipping free). Nearly $100 less, and hundreds more in value with all the included features.

I can do the exact same for the 13" white Macbook, 15" MacBook Pro, and the Mac Pro. You CAN NOT BUY a machine with the SAME OR BETTER specs as a Mac for less money. In the case of the 27" Mac, you can't even BUILD one! The Mini, you can buy a cheaper comperable machine, but not in that form factor with a real GPU, and throw in the value adds and software and it is cheaper than any retailer's PC of the same class.

Google expands plan to run own internet

Michael C

OMFG the paranoia is ripe!

Look, your local ISP is still going to operate a DNS. You don't have to use Chrone OS, or Google Search, in fact is doesn't take much effort to avoid google almost completely (though it is impossible to know who has ads on their site served by goole).

Google may have a hand in almost every aspect of the net, and now branching into voice, and soon i expect media. However, so long as they have competitors, and I have choice, and they follow federal and state laws on persopnal data collection, data use, disclosure, and allow me to opt out, then I really could care less.

That said, I use Google heavily. I actualy APPRECIATE the data they've collected on my behalf, and it makes life easier. I'm not paranoid by the fact that someone has lots of data on me, and uses that data to target ads for me. That means simply the ads I see are RELEVENT! It gets me places I want to be faster, and if they're adding security behind it to pretect me all the better.

Spyware threat haunts squeaky-clean iPhones

Michael C
Stop

OMFG

So, the "hack" is to

1) trick apple into approving a malicios app, which of coulrse would have to make ilklegal calls to functions not approved, something they do scan for in all submitted code now (and if there was an exploitable system revealed, scanning for that would be even easier).

2) trick a consumer into dowloading said app

3) customer has to run said app

all before the news comes out and says: don't download this it;s a virus, shortly after apple pulls it, and sends a message to everyone who downloaded it telling them to delete it without running it (if there's not some system to auto-remove apps that's never been activated).

Nissan super-battery to 'double' e-car range

Michael C
Stop

Yup

That's exactly the point, not to mention that the current "wells to wheels" power use in terms of CO2 and other emissions of electric cars is actually not much better than a reasonably efficient non-plug-in hybrid.

leccy cars are a fad, and can simply not become mainstream anytime in the next 15-20 years. We don't have the grid or power system to support them, and what power we have is nearly 80% from coal, natural gas, and other polluting sources. Until the bulk of leccy jar juice comes from wind and other 100% renewable resources, all we're really doing is A) shifting consumer confidence in the technology, B) field testing better and better battery tech in large scale real world tests, C) and shifting one dirty energy source to another.

Lets look at a REAL and VIABLE 50-100 year alternative that we would be ramped up an using much faster: Gasoline made from RFTS instead of pulling it out of the ground. It's a 60 year old technology, refined by modern sciences to now be affordable in competition with gasoline (roughly $60/barrel to make, or about $3 per gallon at the pumps after markups and transport).

Check out www.dotyengineering.com (of which I am affiliated in no way). Using this gives us time to research batteries, build out wind power, and adjust our car technology, then we can start migrating away from gas to electric with cars that have 300 mile ranges, fill up in 10 minutes, and cost about the same or less as a poetrol car over a 150,000 mile life (including running costs).

EA exec punts 96,000rpm e-car engine

Michael C

price is the only obstacle

microturbines are the future of electric drive enxtended range vehicles. UNFORTUNATELY, engines like the c30 are about $25K today. Even with mass production, and some laxes in build tolerances (since it would only need to last 10 years used a few hours a day, not 24x7 like the c30 generators it;s designed to power), the exotic materials in said engine will forever keep the prices about $10K. Even streatching current electric/gas hybrids from 60MPG to 100MPG is not enough over 250,000 miles to justify the cost. The difference in price between this engine and a basic cheap hybrid car needs to be within $3,000 (and that hybrid itself not more than $2K higher than a regular car).

If they could take the 30kw engine and par it down to a 15 or 20, it would not save more than 3 or 4K in build costs. That's not enough.

Now, where this DOES have potential in in large vehicles. a $25K engine putting out 150-200Kw, if they could be made that cheap, could potentially bring the possibility of heavy trucks being powered by elecric drive. Some large capacitors allow for a smaller generator yet still could put out 400+Kw for acceleration. 2 motors at 220Kw each, or perhaps 4 at 150 each would provide enough torque to pull a double length trailer, and the encine cavity can easily support a large scale generator and battry system costing $15-20K more than a traditional deisel setup. That 5-10K could easily be recouped quickly in the trucking industry where $3/gallon diesel at even just a 25% efficincy improvement could be $5-10K anually in savings.

Most cars see less than 150K miles in 10 years, so hybrid costs are so high as they will never make financial sence, only environmental sense. However, big rigs that see that king of mileage anually could EASILY benefit. Even smaller heavy trucks like utility vehicles, garbage trucks, tow trucks, fire trucks, and more could use similar but smaller scale systems (actually, not much larger than the sports car setup, just with bigger motors for more acceleration torque and capacitors to push the juice instead of a motor and battery alone.

Windows 7 - Microsoft minus the martyrdom

Michael C
Thumb Up

7 is a big improvement...

...over XP.

If you have vista, and qualify for one of the cheap upgrade options to 7, it might be worth it, but only if you're certain all of your apps are 7 compliant.

If you have XP, and a very recent machine (likely because you downgraded from Vista), with 2GB of RAM or more and a dual core, then going to 7 is worth it, though you'll likely have a lot of software to buy. If you have an older machine, wait until you get a new one.

There's still issues:

- control panels are an inconsitant nightmare, worse even than vista, but simply ignore that and launch the panels direct from the start menu and you'll never notice.

- Backup is still broken, but now worse as the image backups are also automatic. File recovery works, but not system recovery, unless the images are burned to DVD, but that's not an option unless you do them manually on your own. Images to disk or network locations are STILL broken (restore media can't find them even if you browse it to the right folder manually).

- lots of default settings are not the prefered settings

- Search still sux.

- changes to start menu basically force you to use search instead of browsing for an app as you're used to

- home folders are still screwed (why can't I move the WHOLE home directory, instead I have to move 15 seperate folders which takes 6 clicks each and i have to browse each time for the new location! OMFG!)

That said it is more stable, its definetly faster, it certainly looks better, the taskbar is an improvement (if marginal), networking is much improved, reinstalls are quick and painless (reinstalling XP now takes hours with so many patches and packs to install followed by dozens of apps and features included already in 7), media center is improved, and honestly, once you use it for a month or so it really is a nicer experience (it's no OS X, but it's clearly taking lessons from it).

Stop listening to the media, swap out your hard drive, install 7, and USE it, then you can bash it if you don't like it. Odds are you won't dislike it, other than typical "why did they move/change that" which you soon get over, and in some cases, realize that although it's not what you;re used to, it is better in many ways.

Pitchfork-wielding mobs encircle smart meters

Michael C

OMFG!

Security? From what?

This thing has no more internal intelligence than a modem does itself. There's no "operating system" to hack, just a base firmware, factory burned into a non reqriteable ROM. ALL of the intelligence is upstream in the collectors, meaning that if THAT connection was hacked, the data in your meter would be a valid backup.

Also, these things run on cycles. Even my local city water conpany throws flags when my readings are more than normal out of whack vs the previous year's reading, and once they called me to tell me there was an issue, and they KNEW i had not used 6X the water of the previous month and came and replaced the meter and waived the balance of the bill that was different from last year's read.

Also, in typical communities, power use from home to home is regularly predictable. The power company knows the SQ feet of your house, and can compare it to other homes on your block with similar size and age when there's an issue.

Hacking the meter? for what purpose??? It;s not connected to your network. The "smartmeter" devices like your dryer or air conditioner communicate to it through your power lines, not over your home IP network, so it;s a segregated (essentially firewalled) communication system. Its also compatible with traditional homeplug adapters on the same line without interfering (uses a different frequency range and protocol as not to interfere wit home IP services, even over power lines).

Even if the meter was vulnerable, there are no protocols for your home devices to communicate outside of your meter, nor are there any systems outside your meter that communicate with your devices. Your home devices communicate with the meter itself, and it and only it communicates with the power company. No personal information (other than a device ID) is ever communicated to the power company. The power company's networok is also NOT the internet, so it's also immune from direct attack.

This is SECURE.

Michael C

Actually, this is false.

The meter does not tell your appliances ANYTHING. They POLL the meter for current grid status before performing a power intensive operation (spinning up). Once running, they are NEVER told to power down. Even if tols to not spin up, the delay for spinup of a device is capped at 15 minutes.

It's possible that durring a machine wash cycle, you can say finish the wash cycle and the machine drains, but the machine might "pause" waiting for available power to perform a spin up for the spin cycle.

Typical "pauses" are 1-3 minutes, and 70-80% of the time there won't be one at all.

This technology is not about how much power the power plant can produce, it's about LOCAL brownout control. You can't have 400 homes all spin up air conditioners out of 600 in the same 1 minute block of time without making upstream adjustments in power generation and delivery (or experiencijng brownouts). However, by delaying some of them 1 minute, some 2, some 3, etc, the PEAK, short duration draw is normalized, and the grid does not need to react to changes in power except gradually throughout hot, cold, day, and night periods of the day. This is slow-spin power generation, and eliminates heavy reliance on quick spin dirty power generation systems that handle brownout mitigation.

In essence, instead of controlling power from the plant to regions of the city, now the local regions control their own power and make upstream requests as needed for constant power draw, and no longer to handle 3-15 second spikes in power delivery needs.

This system is cheaper for the power company to operate, provides cleaner energy from constant on power generators, and eliminates localized brownouts.

Suchg a system is also critical in power outage scenarios, where hundreds of homes all come on line concurrently after a main line outage. now, lights come on quick, maybe stoves too. Small appliances are also available instantly. AC's can typically wait, as a 5 minute delay in AC spin up typically means less than 0.5 degrees in variance max. Your refrigerator is likely one of the least imprtant appliances in the house, as is the water heater (in terms of thermal loss for extended periods). As power is returned to the community gradually, over 5-10 minutes everything comes back oin, as opposed to all at once, which is a huge burden for switching stations and transformers.

iPhone anti-malware stuck in state of denial

Michael C

troll.

"Apple did not bolt down their phone/ipod for the sake of the user. They did it to control the market (as in take a cut of). Imagine the uproar when Ford announces that all their new cars only run on fuel, tyres, etc. from your local "Ford CarStore"

You know NOTHING. Apple's OS and store is locked down on concession to the TELCOS. Providing a closed systems does provide a consistant user experience, simplifies app development and API contol, and limits requirements for extensive backward compatabiltiy support in the future, and it does give them some controll of the app revenue, but note this: Apple currently operates the App store at baseline protiability. 30% is not a large cut of the share, and that system, especially all the people reviewing the apps, as well as continued development for the platform, costs tens of millions.

Apple profits from the PHONE sales, not the app sales. The availabiltiy of the app store is a great selling point for the device, but itself it not intended to be a core revenue stream (remember, it wasn't even in existance most of the first year!)

Also, you CAN, legally, unlock the device (subject to you CARRIERS contract, not Apple's). You CAN get other apps. It's less secure, provides no support, and apple is under no obligation to support your device (including potentially voiding the waranty). Since Apple never designed to OS for use with an open market, AV was not cooked in. instead, explicit API controll, signed files, and OS level functions prevent rogue code from running. They never intended a servlet from running on the phone allowing a hacker access through bot networks to your device, since running servers over a cell network is NOT SUPPORTED. The only viruses that can effect phones can't actually get installed INTO your phone, they merely abuse unlocked access of dumb people who don;t change passwords, and I believe fully in social darwinism, so I support Apple's refusal to change their OS to help the people who refuse to accept the OS as it was provided.

Michael C

Completely reasonable

1: no background apps.

2: no apps not associated with icons.

3: all iPhone binaries are backed by checksums at boot, can't infect those...

4: It;s OS X (stripped). There has never been a confirmed ITW virus for OS X (trojan yes, worm yes, hack yes, but not one virus).

5: it requires SSH to be installed, and the password left to a default...

Apple wants life ban for clone maker

Michael C
Stop

nope.

They legally bough "upgrades" and sold them with machines that did not also include an OEM copy. This is no different than PC makers who sell upgrade copies of windows insatead of full installs on new computers. They're skirting licensing to save dollars.

In this case, apple offers no retail full license, only upgrades (clearly states on ALL packaging and their web site: "System requirements: Mac Computer with OS 10.5 or higher" for the 10.6 media, and "System requirements: Mac Computer with OS 10.4 or higher" for the Mac Boxed Set for 10.6. Previous versions simply indicated "System requirements: Mac Computer with OS X" as a prerequisite.

The l;icense both on the box, in the box, in the EULA before clicking accept, in online copies referenced by links on the box, by printed materials available in the store before purchase, and in their legal copies online, ALL of these indicate the boxed software is an UPGRADE ONLY, and in fact on the 10.5 and 10.6 packaging, it clearly states "upgrade your mac" in the first line of the product description.

This is not an arguement, this is a fact.

Apple's choice to not sell full retail copies is not a monopoly stance (they're 8% of the market, not 100%). They have every right (as does Palm, RIM, TiVo and others who sell devices with pre-installed and not retail available operating systems) to restrict the sale of the OS. They do this NOt to maintan market presence, but to prevent the swarm of support calls and user experience decline that would result from the doubling or trippling of their user base should they release an OS to run on just any hardware for a reasonable price.

Apple has previously suggested they're workong on a public box retail release of OS X, and if and when they do release it, it will be somehere in the $400 price range.

Michael C
Go

I'm on the fence

On one side I completely agree with the ruling, that Psystar broke the law, and Apple is right in this case. I'm also no fan of any company selling cheap shit, half baked systems at any price, especially one using questionable business tactics.

On the other side, some part of this ruling should require Apple to open up at least a little, and offer OEM licensing agreements at reasonable prices (say $250 for the OS, without iLife). Yet at the same time I know Apple could never support any kind of mad sales increase. They're only 9% of the market now, but if they doubled or trippled in less than a couply of years, there's no way support could keep up, and the user experience would go to crap. The only way apple could reasonable arrange OEM deals would be on strict hardware requirements, and to force the vendor to provide their own support (except for the OS, for which support from Apple would be extra as it is from M$). That's not going to provide cheap systems to anyone who;s not willing to saccrifie support... There's no way Apple's going to be able to support an ad-hoc Os-on-a-shelf model either.

Psystar did a bad thing. Apple won, and further strengthened their position. They however seem to be showing some caution, like they know the coults could do things to make life very painful and much less profitable for them.

Fanbois Apple buyers howl over crocked iMacs

Michael C

Are you Fing kidding???

DOA Failure rates of shipped products are like 1%. Yes, 1 in 100 systems is bad IN THE BOX. This is lower for some models than others (particularly desktops are vulnerable, not so much laptops), but seriously, a 27" 30lb machine in a flat box easily squashed by UPS and you're blaming APPLE? Why not point the finger at fucking greenpeace on this one for making apple reduce their packing to such extreme measures things like this happen...

T-Orange won't share the airwaves

Michael C
Go

look, its simple

I'm not in favor of the government taking it, so long as the bandwidth is offered up for bid, and at reasonable prices. due to tower redundancy, a lot of air wave won;t be used anymore. Any towers decomissioned by the merger should return 60-80% of the airwave to the open market where is can be sold. If the government determines the pricing is not fair, they'll simply reclaim it and pay t/orange less than market value, then sell it themselves. Pricing should be fairly easy to determine based on recent air wave trading.

They can't horde it unless they can show on paper the legitimate use and need of it within a 2 year period from now. (network expansion/migration to a new paralel technology after which they'll part with the old air waves; rollout of some massive broadband service, etc) some reason to keep it if they fail to sell, with money rolling out of the coffers continually in an actual and measurable effort.

FCC approves radio mast 'shot clock' rule

Michael C

Finally, some rational thinking from the FCC

I'm liking this regime change more and more...

California votes in HD TV power pruning law

Michael C

Easy to attain law

...and since it;s only 1 state, getting rid of non-compliant inventory in other states is a non issue.

Half the power savings can be attained simply by making minor tweaks to existing sets.

1) capping max brightness at reasonable levels. Unfortunately for the manufacturers (and fortunately for us) this will limit their ability to lie so much about contracst ratios. I could really care less if black is black, but white is so bright I have to avery my eyes, that's not a contrast ratio that means anything....).

2) ensuring TVs use little to no power when in "idle" or off.

3) remove speakers from the TV. (who uses the built in speakers in 40" LCD's anyway?)

4) LED backlighting

Also, to jRallo, I can't find a link either, but I had read yesterday the law included max output when on and max output when off, so simply dialing back the brightness won't have an effect unless they limit MAX brightness permanantly in the firmware. (and if they go too far, the set will look like ass in stores, and noone will buy it anyway).

Macs not all that for reliability

Michael C
Thumb Down

Bad Data

Keep in mind, the BULK of Apple machines failing in their 3rd year are the 1st generation intels, which had 1) a mainboard recall, 2) battery issues, 3) heat disipation issues, and 4) fualty hinge systems that lead to display failure.

I'd like to see the data broken out to show the 2nd and 3rd generation Apple notebook failure rates seperate from Gen 1.

On a side note, we recently (about 2 years ago) sold a fully functional Lisa and a Mac 512ke to a museum. About 6 months ago I sold a 17" iMac (lampshade) for $750 on ebay. We have in our posession a fully functional original blue iMac still in use, a G4 cube, a G3 tower, an original edition iBook clam (orange), a 1st generation intel iMac (still used daily), and a 1st generation Intel MacBook Pro 15" (used daily). A few have gone through hard disk drives, and the original iMac needed a motherboard after a surge (and discovering dad had it connected to a surge protector that appeared to be as old as he was), but other than that, none have required repairs.

It should ALSO be noted, the large majority of Mac users buy waranties. The large majority of other buyers accept the default policy offered and by no extended coverage. This means most macs failing in their 3rd year are repaired free (inclusive of those covered by extended waranties due to voluntary recall notices, which includes at this point nearly all the original intel mac notebooks).

I'd also like to see numbers for 4th and 5th year, and beyong reliability. I've never had a PC last more than 4 years before tossing it as some repair simply "wasn't worth it vs a new purchase", but several of my 4+ year old macs I'd bother to repair if the part was under $200-300.

Office 2010 beta lands in laps of MSDN, TechNet coders

Michael C
Thumb Down

and nothing for the vendors...

I'm a partner subscribed to MAPS, but do I get it thoguh that subscription, or through connect? no... Gotta wait like everyone else....

Apple wins attack of the clones

Michael C
Stop

Parallels...

OK, 1: apple has between 7% and 10% of the PC market, depending on who you ask, so they are CLEARLY, not a monopoly, and not subject to any restrictions as such would be anticompetitive.

Compare this to IBM, which has the clear lions share of the Mainframe market, yet for which you also can not acquire licenses to run OS390 seperate from the purchase of hardware.

Or Sun, no licenses for their clustered systems or high end HPC systems without a hardware purchase.

Or HP for HP/UX...

They are not alone.

You can buy UPGRADES, but you can not buy a retail copy and install it on your own system as there IS no retail copy... IF and when Apple chooses to support selling retail copies depends entirely on their abiltiy to SUPPORT those copies, which they are FAR from prepared to do. Think about it, if you could buy OS X for $320, and put on on almost any machine (excluding netbooks and given some limitations like a descrete GPU and an intel processor), then a LOT more than 7% of the market would do so. Apple would have to double, tripple, or even quadrupple their staff, set up vendor relations with a hundred other providers for driver certification, and spend hundreds of millions on product testing and support. Their profits would shrink and quality of support would decline, as well as user experieince would decline.

Apple does NOT go after hobyists who legally acquire a license for OS X and "attempt" to install it on their own machines, knowing full well apple's refusal to support it. However, that is NOT the case for retail buyers. PsyStar violated this by making poeople believe Apple had some level of support for their wares, and by not paying apple for the partnership and distribution rights. A few thousand people trying this on their own, most being capable computer people and all being people who are either highly unlikely to ever buy a mac (or who already own one and are loyal customers), is a non-issue. A million machines sold by a 3rd party cuts into their profits and strains support, and provides an inconsitant customer experience. Letting clones exist is a lose-lose for apple.

When they have 20% of the market, I'll begin to expect retail copies of OS 11/12 to start coming available. until then, it's buy a mac (which is a VERY good machine for the price, often CHEAPER than the COMPERABLE hardware).

Microsoft admits Mac was Windows 7 muse

Michael C
Go

Win 7 stable?

I've been ruining Win 7 about 6 weeks. It's a clean install on good hardware (I did several hours of burn ins to prove it was fault free). Core duo, 4GB ram, 8800GT, and a couple of drives on an intel RAID controller. It's all relatively generic hardware running 100% Win 7 drivers (no legacy crap running). I have office 2007, and a few common apps (thanks nineite!) installed. It;s running pretty vanilla, with very few tweaks other than interface adjustments. It's pretty much a stock install.

I've had 8-10 BSODs in 6 weeks. 1 while burnign a DVD, several while playing a game, 1 while downloading ISOs from the microsoft Partner site using IE... and 2 while trying to install software. I have rechecked the hardware, re-installed the OS again (from a re-downloaded and reburned image), and performed every kind of scan I can. It's simply not stable... Funny thing is, Vista actually was relatively stable on the same hardware... Only went down when i rebooted for a patch for over a year.

My wife's Macbook Pro... Had it a few weeks now. Running 10.6 on a Core 2 w/ 4GB of RAM and the 9600GT graphics. Have Vista installed in a VM running in coherence mode. It's FAST. It's not crashed a single time. It even plays PC games in the VM with better frame rates than my PC does in some games! Running native from bootcamp Windows is faster at most tasks than my desktop rig. Granted the CPU in the laptop is a bit faster (2.5 vs 2.2), and the 9600GPU is really an 8800 mobile processor, but it;s a laptop, and should have heaty issues holding it back... It doesn't.

The other day she was playing DnD Online from the VM instance of Vista and I was streaming music off her notebook through an Airport Express at the same time, using my iPhone as the remote to controll it. She had left iChat logged in any my parents logged in and requested a video chat. A notification poped up while she was playing and she clicked on it, launging iChat over the game still running full screen behind it. She chatted with my mom in video chat for 3 or 4 minutes, then switched back to the game. She never noticed an issue in video performance of either the game while I was streaming music, or in iChat while it was trying to also render the game in the background (the game graphics did stutter while she was in iChat, but the music I was pumping into the other room never stuttered). Granted, load times in the game are somewhat impacted by all the activity, and no, she can't run the game with quite so many "high" settings runnign in a VM as she can running direct, but it's so much better than her previous PC she doesn't even care... The fact that the Mac OS can handle multipple apps while streaming, and balance a VM running a 3D game at the same time, i've never seen a PC able to handle that...

HP, Dell punters furious over Windows 7 upgrade delays

Michael C

Why a single vendor solution just works

I bought a cheap notebook from Acer back in late Sept and am still waiting on my 7 upgrade media. Currently it's been downgraded to XP and is running nice, but not what I'm after. My gaming rig has been running 7 since it showed up in my MAPS account for download, and i can't wait to get the little notebook upgraded (yes, i could waste a license key on it, but why when i have an 11th one coming free...)

This weekend we bought a MacBook Pro for the wife. BestBuy apparently had it in stock a while (though it's the 100% current hardware), but it neither came preloaded with OS 10.6 nor was the upgrade disk in the box. I put a request on Apple's website, 8 minutes later THEY CALLED ME so i did not have to wait on hold, and Monday night the OS 10.6 media, niceley packaged not in some generic envelope, showed up on my doorstep. Apple said it should have had the disk, as it was manufactuered after 10.6 was in RTM, but apparently it was missed (happens).

I'm now running OS 10.6 on a new machine (via a similar free upgrade process), and have Windows 7 running in boot camp and mirrored into Parallels for coherence mode. While I'm still waiting on a free upgrade to Windows 7 for the Acer (that I had to pay over $10 to ship, Apple send me the disks free both this time, and for my fathers machine when OS10.5 came out last time around), My wife was playing DDO in a virtual machine with higher graphics settings than my desktop PC upstairs, and a better framerate too, on a laptop... (apparently the 9600GT in the mac is a bit faster than an 8800GT from nVidia, and with a faster dual core and faster RAM, even in a VM the game gets a better frame rate than my 2 year old custom desktop).

Apple has a distinct level of care in providing customer service. The machines may have a higher starting price, but for that price I've allways found the product to have more features and be more powerful than similarly priced competitors. Given they're a single source vendor, responsible to support the customer, the hardware, the OS, and the software equally, they can't place blame on a 3rd party when things don't go right (and there are issues, and i have made many service calls to Apple over the last 2 decades, the hardware is no more reliable, it;s just better pressented and supported). Their service policies are great, including not only break-fix support, but they'll actually walk you through processes over the phone, and Geniuses in the store can be booked for training events and software/OS support free of charge as well.

I learned this lesson first hand when working for a BVC producing disaster recovery systems. They built the servers to sell as appliances, customized the Linux OS, and wrote all the software, so they as well were single sourced. All we ever heard from customers after switching is how wonderful it was for a company to take ownership and support a product end to end. With an HP or Dell backup system for example Dell will first blame the OS or server hardware for conenctivity issues and sick you on that vendor; they'll tell you it;s a software issue yet another 3rd party; end they'll blame Dell for faulty hardware; who then finally blames the drive manufacturer inside their chassis; and after 6-8 hours and 5 phone calls you can get an answer to why your backups are failing. A single source vendor has distinct support advantages, and paying the same price to Apple as i would for a higer end Dell, HP, IBM, toshiba, etc, but getting single sourced support, that's ABSOLUTELY worth it.

Apple IDs the next-generation iPhone

Michael C

@anonymous

"Don't know about others, but NFC and other similar technologies (including the UK's Oyster Card and the Netherland's OV Chipkaart) make me very uncomfortable. Sure, they have many advantages, but personally I see a lot of issues as well:

- Ability to track one's movements quite easily. Now it's just public transport, but RFID readers will become more and more ubiquitous. Yes, I know I can already be tracked by mobile phone, by credit card purchases and other things. All the more reasons not to get an extra tracking system on me - I'm running out of tinfoil."

Well, they can track your movement by bluetooth ID or SIM card ID if your pohone is on anyway. Seleral malls already do that, BUT, that does NOT give them access to IDENTITY information about you. They know a person with SIM ID 123456789 walked into a store, and stood near a cash register for 5 minutes, and maybe they picked up an RFID session initiation, however, wether you made a purchase, processed a return, and especially who you are, are all secret to them. The cash register knows who you are, but that's information you expect a retailer to have anyway, and they'd be required to have on a credit purchase, so who cares. Nobody else can noop other than to track your device noxt time it returns, and how often, but they ALREADY GET THAT from your SIM card, so an additional techn ology, especially one limited to transmit range in INCHES is irrelevent.

"- Open to fraud. I'm not talking about fraudulent recharges of transport cards - it's the transport companies' problem, I couldn't care less. What I'm worried about are concealed devices which can trick my card or my phone into making payments without my knowledge. You know, like someone with a reader hidden in a plain bag, collecting payments from anyone in the vicinity. And before someone jumps to say that it's not possible, remember that the Oyster and OV cards were marketed as being safe too."

Um, dumbass, you have to type in a pin, or on screen comit to the transaction, not to mention, opening the app that allows the incoming request from the cash register in the first place. They can NOT automatically process a transaction without you doing something on the screen. Next, since it;s a device-to-device secure communication, another device (which would have to be within inches) can't piggy back and replicate that transaction without it being obvious to Visa later. The device only communicates with the cash register, which still has to process a validated payment... The issue with the older tech was it could simply be scanned, this requires an interactive response from the user to initiate a transaction...

"- Difficult to reverse wrong charges. What if the reader in the bus or in the shop accidentally charges me twice or charges the wrong amount? With cash I can just get my money back, but how do you do it with an NFC device?"

It;s still Visa on the back end. You're going to see both on the cash register, and on your phone screen, payment ammount confirmation. It's no more at risk of sending a bad transaction as swiping a regular card. An NFC device is simply an electronic connection to another existing credit source. Have you never called Visa or your bank to dispute a transaction? Also, you have a receipt in your hand from the electronic transaction, if it went through wrong, do a return while you;re standing there!

"Because of these and of the dozens of other exploits that are bound to be invented, I prefer to make my money transactions in a more physical or at least visible form - cash, credit card etc. They're not perfect either, but at least I have a little more control over them."

Cash is easy to lose, easy to have stolen, has no inherent security at all, and is easily mis-counted (and extremely difficult to dispute unless caught instantly, and even then requires a full till countdown to confirm the issue). Credit cards are EXACTLY as secure as NFD, since it;s STILL a credit card. Actually, since noone gets to see the account number in full, noone holds the card in their hands to run through a hidden reader under the counter, it;s even MORE secure. Checks are easily stolen and used, and most banks offer little or no protection from bad checks and can take weeks to return the money to your account. I've been a retailer and had a contract to accept credit cards. I've also as a consumer disputed numerous charges, especially from online retailers, and it;s never taken more than a few hours to have things corrected (and about 20-30 minutes of that on a phone, the rest simply wwaiting for a confirmation reply call).

Michael C
Go

Nearly unlimited possibilities

1) This is a primary technology usable in Microsoft Surface apps. This might hint at an Apple equivalent (without it having to be a surface as well; think of setting an iPhone on your desk, and automatically it becomes a computer input device and extension of your screen)

2) touch it to a product in a store to access info about it, and for media buy right through the device and put the product back on the shelf. no more barcode scanning by taking pictures...

3) use the iPhone to buy stuff in machines, or pay at a cashier, as they already do in other countries, but with visual feedback on screen more than "enter your pin".

4) proximity aware information syncing (more secure than bluetooth).

5) much easier pairing of devices and accessories, and less power to communicate with them.

This could go on and on.

MS forensics tool leaks onto the web

Michael C

dumb

OK:

1) anyone seriously worried can simply disable USB in the firmware. This would at least ensure someone has to reset the bios (if it's not one of the better boards that requires a password to do so)

2) still only gives access to encrypted files, does not decrypt them without a key.

3) hard core hackers and terorists who know this might be snooped on, and have the skills to cript COFEE don't run Windows...

4) the data's not there, it;s in the cloud on an encrypted system.

5) you have to actually FIND these guys first....

no, this tool is for basic phorensics of dumbasses who trade in kiddie porn, people who cheat on their taxes, and people having police investigate their own spouses. Most REAL computer criminals do not fear this technology at all, the fact it's been leaked will simply be amiusing for them (and far more importantly, could give them back doors to exploit).

Fact is, the more ways you give the government to get into systems, the more ways you give the hackers, a group of people distinctly immune to the tools you;re using. Just stop putting in back doors and lock the shit down completely and we'll all be a lot safer. The dumbasses hitting the kiddie porn sites don't use countermeasuers, and crumble under contempt of court cases and give up their passwords willingly anyway... (or the evidence that was enough to get a warant toseize the computer is in itself enough to convict anyway).

Microsoft U-turns on Exchange Server 2007 support

Michael C

Great...

...now where's Office 2010 to use with it???

Windows 7 kills two thirds of active Vista initiatives

Michael C

File under "Duh"

Lets face it, half the Vista only products in dev were killed months ago... As soon as devs chould get their hands on RTM versions of 7, anything not being developed that was 7 compatible got killed. A lot of work transitions from Vista to 7 projects, but when they come out, they'll be for 7, and MAYBE will run on Vista. Same goes for all the hardware guys. In 18 months, good luck buying a spanking new product that runs on anything other than 7 except in some "limited" backward compatability mode, unless its just a simple app that by nature is Vista compatible (even then, donp;t expect much support for it).

The Desktop refresh

Michael C

proper questions for large companies

1) Is your corporate AV, AS, sys log, auditing, and other security software all Win 7 native yet?

2) Is your DR solution win 7 native yet?

3) is your system image and software deployment system Win 7 native yet?

4) do all your web apps work in IE8 or another Win 7 native browser and support Java 1.6 or higher and other key plug-ins?

5) Are you prepared to support Office 2007+ or an equivalent Win 7 productivity package?

6) can your messaging systems, including your VoIP desktop client if you have one, support Win 7?

7) are you up to AD on 2008 yet, including having tested all new associated GPO?

8) you have tested at least 1 system image for all relevent software in your environment, including validating deployment processes, app testing under Win 7, performed a security assessment, and in general proved each custom image needed will operate in all department areas under the new OS.

9) Win 7, and all other apps required on it, are all approved per your corporate architecture standards, and pass corporate audit reules as well as any imposed by your business sector or government regulatory bodies (DISA for example).

10) you have not already migrated to Vista (if you have, moving to Win 7 can likely wait a while...)

11) and likely most importantly, all corporate policies, deployment procedures, DR plans, and desktop procedures have been updated to support Win 7, and you have a training program in place and ready for all end users.

12) you're prepared to operate in a mixed OS environment during an extended rollout (possibly multiple years).

13) you've budgeted for roughtly 5-8 times the physical cost of the workstation itself as part of the rollout (to include additional software, rollout labor, training, increased support times, etc).

14) every application you use supports win 7, or has been upgraded to it or replaced by a different app to do the same thing under 7, including all servers win 7 might connect to in the operation of that application.

15) due to version upgrades likely required for apps, all back end systems have either been upgraded already, or a migration plan is prepared and a tril run has been completed for any data or systems effected by the transition.

16) for each application, you have identified the key effected systems, and have identified each other system effected by the upgrade of one, and come up with a complete rollout plan ensuring upgrades to one department or system do not cascade unnecessarily into upgrade requirements (or break applications) for other areas.

17) if you're a large firm, you've run this plan past Microsoft reps in detail.

If you answer no to any of the above, get cracking on turning it into a yes. Outside of a lab environment, you should not have a single Win 7 machine on your floor until these, and likely many more business specific, questions come back as a YES.

We're just now starting to look at moving from XP to Vista (might go to 7 in the ned and skip vista). We have 15,000 workstations. More than 50 of our internal apps have to be reqritten to support non-IE6 browsers (been in process for more than 2 years), over 300 back end support servers need upgrades or replacements to support deploying, monitoring, managing, and supporting non-XP workstations and the applications that will come with them, and we have not even started the grand complete plan yet. We likely won't have non-XP workstations in here except in sporadic departments until end 2010, and not complete a rollout until end 2011.

The decentralisation effect

Michael C

Missed that survey

I'm pretty good about keeping the reg up to date on what we do around here.

We have 4 active datacenters in this building housing servers. Including physical and virtual on small-iron boxes we've got about 3600 servers. We have a few other small datacenters around the country, but mostly those are for nothing more than user authentication and personal file storage, and some servers handling telephony systems; all our operational servers and business data are in a single location. We have 10 mainframes (z7 - z10) and a few 595s to go with them.

Now, as for those datacenters, they're all large, fully built out, raised floor environments, with dedicated air handling and power systems, what people typically think of as a "datacenter."

However, having systems in 4 rooms is logically no different from having them in a single room... They're all on the same backbone network, all have out-of-band connectivity to operational systems, and regardless of the room everything is supproted by 2 completely independent power systems, 2 seperate ISPs, and fully redundant network and SAN connectivity across seperate cables and switches, and essentially is one big pool of systems. A system failure on the rack, row, datacenter, or even building level will not cause an outage.

Data growth is an issue for us, but not because of data storage, its limitations in backup infrastructure... Oance you get to a point of using large scal Tier 1 storage systems, dedupe is inherent. Also mainframe virtualization uses single binary images for multiple systems so datagrowth there is limited. Database backup/replication is also not a challenge. The challenge is system level and file data backup, and managing legal hold, HIPAA, and SOX required data backups and archives. We have dozens of rack rows of nothing but IBM tape chassis for TSM. Actually, getting the data to tape is not the issue, its recovering a system... The sheer number of tapes required to restore a single system using TSM's backup methodology is rediculous (master once, incremental forwever is a BAD idea, really bad, but mastering all these systems on even a monthly rotation would nearly tripple our tape load.) We have plans to move tapeless (for internal recovery, resorting to tape only for archive) but its a more than $10M deployment, and with a big Win2K killoff in process, it was not in the 2009-2010 budget...

Backdoor in top iPhone games stole user data, suit claims

Michael C

apple pulls these apps in 5, 4, 3,...

Its happened before. Some app gets approved because someone at Apple looking at the code for specific things, and looking at the operation of the game for specific things, did not find this code segment (out of probably tens of thousands of lines). As soon as it comes to light, Apple immediately pulls the app back in for a more thorough review, and then upon finding the bad code, pulls the app immediately.

Here's something else I've always wondered... Now that there's in-store purchase, and with apple getting 30% off the top opn apps, why are free apps allowed to have external purchase mechanisms for content like these at all anymore? Why has Apple not changed its policy to move the app from the free store to the pay store section indicating the app can cost money to play and forced the devs to use the in-app pay system (or at least start enforing all NEW apps to do this). Storm8's apps seem to bypass apple's ability to profit from their distribution. Maybe this will get that policy changed for the future too.

Is this the world's dirtiest PC?

Michael C

I've seen MUCH worse....

A PC left in a barn area that became infested by a small bee hive (and was STILL WORKING!). The farmer brought it in to our shop for service to have us clean out the "mess" inside the case as part of his free "annual cleaning" as covered under his waranty. He neglected to tell my staff it was bee infested before one of them got stung when he went to pick it up and move it to our back counter after doing an initial systems test. Poor kid picked the tower up as one normally would, one hand on front, one hand across power supply vent in back, but the fan vent was the bees way in and out of the case... He dropped it instantly, causing the side cover to come off and causing some significant damage to the case, a few more bees came out. Fortunately, most of them seemed to have evacuated the case on the way to our shop in the back of the pickup the guy drove.

We had to wrap in in serveral layers of garbage bags, and we used a pack of printable stickers to make some bio-hazard signs. Naturally we refused the cleaning service, and marked his waranty as void citing "unsatisfactory environmental conditions for PC placement and use" He was none too thrilled and threatened to sue the store. This was quickly abated when we threatned to countersue for failure to warn our employees of an eminent danger. 2 of my other staff were so allergic to bees and fire ants that they carry eppy pens 24x7, and if one of them picked up that case instead of the poor kid who did, it would have been a rush to the emergency room not a sore thumb.

We suggested the farmer buy a toughbook to use in his barn instead of a desktop PC, but of course, someone who buys a $400 e-machine desktop package is not the kind of guy to buy a $1800 professional notebook. He left. The PC, after being dropped, never worked again. We never saw or heard from him again.

Even beyond this fantastic story, the PC in the image above, I'd call that about on par normal for some of the crap we had to clean. Sure, most computers just had the sheen of grey/brown dust and caked up fans, but a lot of them, especially those in smokers homes and people with dogs, and for some reason trailer homes just make PCs incredibly dirty. We've actually had to stae in writing to some folks that the attempt to clean the PC might render it useless, and had them sign waivers to protect the store from liability.

I stopped being a manager at that shop in 2002 and moved back to more professional IT work as a network integrator and DR specialist, but the 18 months I spent running a tech bench for a retail shop was eye opening. I can't tell you how many "cup holders" we repaired, how many floppy drives were stuffed full of things by 3 year olds, and how many god awful nasty 4+ year old PCs people wanted to pay os to clean and upgrade (in many cases where an upgrade cost 70% or more of a new PCs cost and still left the old machine FAR below a new machine's specs...)

Mozilla plots Firefox interface overhaul

Michael C

Great, new UI, what i allways wanted....

Now how about a browser that launches in less than 1 second, runs Java as smooth as your competitors, includes tab and plug-in memory snadboxing, allows tabs to become windows and windows to become tabs with simple drag motions, and in general doesn't feel slower than browsing on a cell phone...

Some native integration with other parts of the OS would not hurt either... nor would a revamped plug0in management system.

This SO feels like a "we can't make it better, so we'll make it prettier" version upgrade.

Toshiba attacks 2.5-inch drives from below

Michael C

Did I miss something on the performance note?

Higher areal density, 5400RPM, 2 platter, and smaller diameter spindle. How does this not equal more bits per second passing under the heads given its the same spin speed and number of platers as competing 2.5" drives??? How is seek time from track to track not faster (given shorter distances and presumably less head mass)??? I don't understand how a drive with the same spin characteristics and more data density != faster performance.

Is there some huge cache limitation? Did they leave out NCQ? If the controller sub-par?

Belkin Powerline HD Gigabit mains Ethernet adaptor

Michael C

Here's why 1GB

BECAUSE THE POWERLINE NETWORK IS 200MB! and putting 100MB ports on it would cut the bandwidth in half!

It's still a 200MB connection behind the scenes, but now a SINGLE device can use it instead of it being a 200MB aggregate backbone for numerous 100MB connections (which each realistically only hit 50-70MB.

Microsoft chops cloud costs

Michael C
FAIL

For small customers maybe

Especially those with regaulatory compliance issues.

A basic Exchange server for 50 -100 people is quite a chink of change. Still, $500-900 per month, (archive compliance is another $4 per user) over the 3 year term of an exchange server? i don;t know if it really works out...

A shop with 50 people should have an IT guy on staff full time, or near it, or at least an outsourced contractor, so his/her salary doesn't factor in here. Server + licenses + Security + backup, for 100 people, without redundancy, is an easy $15K over 3 years. (initial price plus maintenance and upgrades), and that's likely conservative. Still, the comparrison is vs a 36,000 cost if you include archive support.

For our shop it would be worse, 15K users of which 12,000 require archive compliance going back not less than 7 years. The monthly costs is $100K, and we didn't spend 1.5 mil on the entire solution, across 2 sites (actually 16, but only 2 have servers), will full CCR redundancy across 4 clusters, Tier 1 SAN behind it which we argued was overkill, and point to point replication system to a hot-site with cloud based MX records for hot failover (a geocluster), and even including backups...

OK, maybe this is really for 10-30 users, not 50-100... certainly not enterprise class unless microsoft has some STEEP under the table negotiating...

Palm Pre evicted from iTunes (yet again)

Michael C
Stop

features of 9.0.2

Did apple do this JUST to break Palm OS?

No:

"iTunes 9.0.2 adds support for Apple TV software version 3.0, adds an option for a dark background for Grid View, and improves support for accessibility."

Yes, they broke Palm OS again. They're OBLIGATED to do so by combinations of the USB-IF rules, trademark infringement issues, ond ongoing litigation. Thay must considder Palm's "attack" on iTunes to be a bug, and it has to be treated as one with an identification of how it was done, identification of a code fix, and deployment of a confirmed resolution.

imagine Apple's surprise if they had not, and Palm creates their own bug that allowed Apple's iTunes to overwrite a critical file on the Pre bricking it. If Apple was not actively trying to prevent Palm from using sync, it could legally be argued the continued "allowance" of that was a permissive and supported allowance (since apple DOES openly support 3rd party integration on many other levels, especially access to the database, but many apps like TuneUp go way beyond that, legally, today). Then, if something a user could do could brick the Pre, Apple might be held responsible legally as well.

The iTunes sync system is NOT a sync system. It;s a per-device customized management interface, handling firmware, device configuration, carrier files, interface to Microsoft Outlook (which Apple pays a royalty for btw), storage management on USB enabled devices, contact management, application management, and much much more. By APalm interfacing into that system as an Apple device, the error information being handled behind the scenes to keep iTunes from crashing as a result is REDICULOUS. Lvl 4 bug reporting generated MEGS of log data when a Pre is connected. Apple is being forced by Palm to manage that code at their own cost. Palm approached apple about syncing, but refused apple's offered price for native integration, so in leiu of writing a simple app (like many indie developers have done using 1 or 2 staffers in a few weeeks time), they chose to violate the USB convention and hack apple. Smart move...

Michael C

@RegisterFail

"Because if they do Apple can decide to just continue to abuse their monopoly by disabling access here too. "

Seriously, Apple can block access to a publiched config of an open XML file and a simple file structure?

"Apple is tying iTunes to the iPod/iPhone and only allowing other players/phones to be used in a half assed manner" Yes, so does Zune, so does Blackberry, and SO DOES PALM!

"This automatically gives them an unfair advantage by leveraging their monopoly to push into other areas, this is without question abuse of monopoly. The problem is the US DoJ is scared to deal with Apple because they want a competitor to Microsoft so they're fucked whatever they do- if they deal with Apple's monopoly abuse they risk weakening Apple and strengthening Microsoft's monopoly and if they don't deal with Apple they're guilty of double standards by only upholding competition law in the case of Microsoft but not Apple- this is why nothing has happened yet but if Apple continues too much further down this path it might well face antitrust charges." You lack any understanding of the words"monopoly" and "anticompetitive" Apple is NOT a monopoly in the media market, the media player market, or even just the online distributed media market. Further, they have not taken direct action to prevent a competitor from entering the market (aside from enforcing legaly held patents), nor have they engaged in illegal activities such as price fixing, etc. They offer an open source system of access to their data, provide DRM free music at the lowest price. Even if they WERE a monopoly, their use of their own software, marketed to support their own and only their devices, is not anticompetitive as the music acquired through it can BOTH be played in other available players, including free ones, and can also be acquired easily elsewhere for the same or lower price, and that it is also compatible with thweir own player (unless their competitor uses proprietary DRM). There's no case against apple, they have done no wrong, and the environment could not be much more competitive and thriving.

"You know, that phone which is built of the backs of decades of research by Nokia and for which Apple is the only handset developer not willing to pay the legally required patent licensing payments for?" No, the Broadcom CHIPSET in the iPhone is built on that research, and broadcom pays for it. Nokia is suing apple for patents that have not held up in court yet, based on a 3rd party inclusion of the chips, and based on failed logical leaps, and extreme fees which apple has countercharged do not meet the legal definition of "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) even if Apple was subjec to them. You can not use Nokia against apple until there is an actual case of evidence presented and this proceeds into court. They're still in DISCOVERY for christs sake and have not even had time to counter sue or post their own comments on the case! Apple does not make the technology, they make the packaing, and the OS running on it. That's it.

"stealing patents" Really? So, um, if these people are known, where are the $100M lawsuits and injunctions against further sale of the iDevice? Apple stole no patents here. A few challengers came forward and the PTO after review discarded their patents, showed them to not be related, or showed them Apple's patent predated their own for that use. Apple's patent law team is of the best in the world. They do not make mistakes often, and when they DO (because some obscure patent that did not come out in dicovery surfaced) they have settled and paid without much dispute and acquired the appropriate licensing. Apple files as many as 100 patents per new device, and confirms there are no patent issues that can be identified (and often they come across them and redesign around them) before they produce a product.

Apple is not preventing the palm deivce from working with their OS, or their hardware. They are preventing Palm for integrating into software that Apple, at its own costs, has to debug. The sync system in iTunes does not copy music from one directory to a mapped folder on a USB mount as window smedia player does, it connects to a proprietary file system of Apple's design and patent using a secure connection, monitors device settings, collects logs, patches firmware, and syncs a hell of a lot more than music files. This would be like saying Palm had to license their Palm Desktop software to all comers, which they themselves not only refused to do but PALM SUED PEOPLE for trying to circumvent. This is the buiggest case of the pot calling the kettle black I have ever seen, and they have lost in both court of opinion and court of law at every turn.

iTunes is not a monopuly, its an application. It is NOT required to sync. It is NOT required to play the music bought through it. It can play music and files bought through other services. No, you can not sync a iPod without it, but you can't sync a Zune without microsoft's software either, nor a Palm PDA of old, nor a motorolla cell phone, thay ALL use proprietary packages. iTunes simply offers more at YOUR OPTION.

All palm needs to do is supprot apple's FULLY AUTHORIZED AND FREELY LICENSED sync option, which more than a dozen other companies already do. Palm is simply lazy.

Google finds voice to respond to FCC

Michael C

You have no understanding

Google Voice is NOT a Telecommunication Service, it's a Voice Routing, Recording, and Automation system. Essentially, it's a VRU, a device I can connect to any ordinary line at home or in a business which can receive, manipulate, and redirect calls, but it by itself does not constitute an endpoint telephone.

yes, it supports SIP endpoints like a gizmo client, but you have to have an existing account on gizmo's service, just like having to have a existing phone with a 3rd party provider for a cell phone or landline.

I used to do the exact same thing at home using an Asterisk telephony board and 2 home phone lines and my cell phone. I had a cell plan that let me place and receive calls to home free, and MCI unlimited calling from home to all of america. I put a "child locked" account on my cell phone, with a 100 minute plan only able to send and receive calls from 1 number (the home one), so in essence had a $15 a month fully unlimited cell phone calling plan. I could also record 100% of all calls,or do 3 way calling without surcharges. I also used it as a call screening service. Several years ago a lighting storm took out the board, which was a handmedown from a client who didn't need it any more, and I could never afford to replace it, so I no longer had my home service. Google voice is the same thing, simply hosted by someone else...

You can not connect a SIP or VoIP device directly to google, without a3rd party, and make and receive calls. They are a 3rd party intermediary service. They are NOT a telco.

You should not be writing articles about technology you do not understand.

Wii HD coming in 2010, claims mole

Michael C

heard this all before

Wii HD, just a slightly enhanced version of the exact same comsole, equipped with a more powerful full 1080p HD chipset and HDMI, mostly just for playing movies and streaming media though since the game engine will only include moderate qaulity imrpovements to existing games, it's not a whole new console, and doesn't have a new language for game generation. It will still be quite cartoonish, just with smoother curves, better shading and ligting effects, and naturally 1080p instead of SD resolutions. Odds are, a Blu-ray player will also make the cut and it will be sold side by side with the existing Wii for some time. Existing games will look a lot better, as will new ones, but the new games will also have to run on the existing Wii as well...

DEFRA loses tapes - and plot

Michael C
Stop

Just any tape?

Speaking from experience, it's not just any old tape device that can read enterprise backups from IBM tape storage systems, and not just anyone can pop out and pick up licenses for the right versions of TSM or FDR, let alone have the right operating systems, software, and agents to put that data on...

When we're talking about having "staff" that move tapes, these are not generic LTO 3 autoloaders and a copy of Backup Exec...

US plan would reclaim TV airwaves for iPhone

Michael C
Go

It;s a wash

If the FCC can eliminate all broadcast TV in dense areas (we're not talking about way rural areas here, there's PLEANTY of spectrum for those folks in the boonies to have their 2 or 3 channels and cell phones too), and if the auction of those frequencies generate enough money to give everyone a permanant discount on cable TV to the point where the cable company OR sattelite company is required by law to provide you your local stations completely free of charge (even if you DON'T subscribe), then I'm all for it...

Basically, I have 2 family members who do NOT currently get TV in any way that over the air. The simply refuse to pay for it otherwise. They get 7 channels locally, 5 in HD, all now digital. The have 4 TVs, and used the government's money to buy 2 set top boxes for the two that did not natively support digital signals. They spent $200 on a fany new HD anteanna on the roof. They're happy. Now if in a couple of years, the FCC takes away broadcast, all they'd ask is that the cable company swing by, hook up a line to their home's anteanna in port, and all 4 of their TVs would get the broadcast tier of cable TV with no further interaction. Since they're in a reasonable area, cable is already available. For some others a few miles away, the gov't would have to pay for a few sattelite boxes and a disk, and someone to set it up and maintain it;s direction to a valid sattelite, and the sattelite company would get a few dollars a month to have their account open and authorize the receivers to pick up only the local tier.

No cost to the household, profit for the government, no more bitching from the telcos, WAY less power used in signal tranmission, and less complication for the local folks broadcasing (and way lower power bills too, which actually would permit way more local TV station competition).

This is a win, win, win. Why fight it?

Yea, it might cost 20bn, but it will make 60. Given goverment numbers, it will un over budget by 2 fold, but taxpayers will still profit 20bn anyway, we'll roll out some additional cable line in the process too (or IPTV, which would be a MUCH better way to use that money).

Microsoft counters Windows 7 upgrade hack advice

Michael C

@Tzael

The reason people need to "hack" upgrades to do a clean install is that on an OEM PC, you have NO older copy of windows to inser when booting from the upgrade media, since you got only a restore disk, not a full media (unless you explicitly requested and paid extra for it post-sale).

Take a Dell you want to upgrade to 7, but you don;t want all the crapware and bloat you had before, since you have no medai with which to validate your upgrade copy, you either need to hack it, buy the full version, or pay dell for an authentic MS DVD of your OS.

Microsoft's complaint is that people are hacking the upgrade to install on a NEW PC by claiming they're upgrading the copy of their OEM installed on an older PC. OEM copies are NOT transferable. In fact, even your FULL copies are only transferable a limited number of times (for the original Vista release, it was ONCE, but Microsoft later revised that I believe to 3 times. Upgrades to not increase this number either... If your copy of XP had 3 migrations, and you had it on an original machine, moved it to another later, then upgraded to vista while moving to a 3rd, you can move 1 more time to a 4th box while upgrading to 7, but that's it, no more moves (legally speaking).

Keep in mind, "moving" to a new PC involves anytime you have replaced 3 or more core serielaized components as part of an upgrade or major repair (CPU, Moterhboard, GPU, hard disk, and network adapter, so changing a board with onboard video and NIC alone counts as a new PC unless you replaced it with the same model number board.). It does not matter if the component replacements are over an extended period either. Microsoft's technology looks for replaced components between a reboot, and you can fool this by changing parts over several days, however, the LICENS is bound not to the chassis, but to the SUM of the 5 core components, and if over time any 3 change, it is now no longer the same PC, and thus has been moved, wether or not activiation triggered.

Windows 7 - The Reg reader review redux

Michael C
FAIL

inconsitant changes and still no working backup

OK ,some nice changes, I'll admit, and a bit more change under the covers than Microsoft makes evedent in basic advertising (some nice changes to stack processes, GPU, new APIs, etc). howver, the changes, especially to GUI and control panels, are rediculously inconsistant. What's been changed in one way for an app is changes in a different way for another app. Even microsofts own inciumbant (completely remodeled) apps (like Media Center, Messenger, WMP, IE) do not even all use jumplists in the same way (and they're of the few that actually use it at all). Too many poorly documented features that programmers won't use, and too many options left to continue additional inconsistant experience issues. Even a properly planned project with no direction is doomed to fail.

Backup. OK, it was better than NT backup in Vista. File backups seem to work (though restore could use some help). In 7, do they improve it? Nope, they took AWAY choices and conficuration. Also, now image backups run EVERY TIME you run a file backup, and you can only keep 1. WTF? Best practice is current plus 1 previous backup (and previous for images is the most recent backup PRIOR to a patch or install, which could be months ago...). What's worse, image backups are STILL borked. a 2.5 year old bug makes them unrecoverable unless it's the first image backup you've done, or unless you do it to DVD. They're not portable, even TOUCH the folder they're in (including with AV scanning), and they can never be restored. Great, since I can't automate images to DVD and data to disk, and since I can't keep 2 copies minimum, and since restores of images dont't work, i need to buy something else, yet again, since my Vista based backup apps are no longer compatible... So, I'm buying a mac...

Ares I: What's the point?

Michael C
Stop

Mars...

...we are not getting there with people until we have a fairly well establiched base on the Moon. Likely, we're not getting there until we have a better established ISS. If the current one is coming crashing to earth in 2016, it will likly be 2020 until we have a new one funtional enough to use as a staging area to build a moon base, and 2025 before we're assembling a larger craft there to head to Mars.

But honestly, Why?

We need an ISS for some research. It would not be a bad idea if we staffed a few more folks up there in a larger station, and gave them a run-a-bout type craft to service sattelites with. It's a pain to service crap from down here, sending both men and equipment. Have 2 craft for sending me from earth to space, and some various simple craft to put STUFF up there. The guys already in space could colelct the stuff, and move it to final orbits,and return to the space base. This is more efficint, cheaper, and a more long term solution. Abandon all other efforts until this is finalized (other than robot based missions).

FCC launches war of net ideologues

Michael C

NO EXCEPTIONS

Forget this idea of filtering "unlawful" content as CONTENT. Let them block SITES/IPs that are identified by 3rd party or government organizations as distributors of illegal content, after an investigation is done to confirm the content is in fact being distributed knowingly and ilelgally.

By targeting "content" like copyrite works, how is an ISP to have ANY CLUE if that work is being transmitted legally or illegally if they can't formally identify the party on both ends of the transmission? If they throttle my LEGAL downloads and uploads to myself, family members, and friends, for which I am excersizing my freedoms to share legally copy protected works, then I'll have claims with the FCC against my ISP real fast... and so will hundreds of thousands of my collegues in the cloud who might do similar things.

let me make this clear. There is 1 and only 1 type of content filtering/throttling I approve of: VoIP signals should be QOSed into a seperate channel when active, and be guaranteed at all times 128k connectivity and high packet priority. CAP this QOS channel at 128k and it can't be abused by hackers and mass downloaders as a 128k channel is fairly useless for bit torrent traffic, and further allow ISPs to validate that the QOS traffic is in fact voice traffic (not hard since is uses a different protocol that's easy to identify), and allow ISPs to penalize monitarily clients who use the QOS channel for any non-voice traffic.

OTHER THAT THIS ONE EXCEPTION, traffic management must by both IP and content agnostic, and shoulfdonly occur on a switch level, never a connenction level. aka, if I'm being throttled, EVERY SINGLE CONNECTION at that same switch should be equally throttled. This is the most fair, and lest costly traffic management system available, and should be MANDATED!

Next, disclosure and SLAs: Traffic shaping needs to be able to 1) be real time monitored by every connected client. A free agent of some kind should be availabel, as well as a web service, that can identify my route through the network, and show each switch capacity and thorttled percentage in granularity of at least 10 minute or shorter intervals. 2) throttling must never be to below 50% of advertised rates for more than any 90 minute intervals in a rolling 24 hour period or else be in violation of SLA, never be throttled to less than 70% for more than 4 hours in 24 hours, and never under any cirumstances throttle to below 1dn 256up. 3) SLA must be auto comitting, providing 1 free business day of use anytime throttling results in breech of SLA. Further, outright downtime exceeding 12 hours in any day should result in 1 day's credit accepting that modem outages (inside home hardware failure) does not count if the modem is replaced free by the ISP before the end of the next business day. 4) any throttling that occured must be viewable both on a web site in granular form, and in the bill in summary form, indicating any SLA breech. 5) Advertised bandwidth must be attainable as measured by a simple bandwidth tool from a bootable ISO (aka, clean OS image) or from a tool inside the router's firmware or router or other solid state or clean OS device connected directly to a modem for not less than 2 hours a day measured in 10 minute increments on more than half the days in a calendar month.

Bandwidth caps: Not to be less than the following formula: (downspeed + upspeed) * # of days in billing period * 24 hours, *10 represented in GB. For example, if my advertised speed is 8dn 0.5up, then my October bill should be 8.5 * 31 *240 = 61.75GB. a base system (2dn 256 up) would include about 15GB. Additional GB must be billed at a rate not to exceed the following formula: (monthly rate - $10 base connection cost) / #GB in plan month. Further, additional fees must never exceed the cost of raising to a higher tier plan with a higher data cap, the top tier offered by any ISP must be an unlimited tier, and total monthly bill may never be over $99 for ISP services.

IPTV: Bandwidth required to deliver IPTV via a bundled sevice with internet, (and as well VoIP while I'm at it), must NOT be included in the advertised bandwidth rate, not count against monthly utilization. IPTV bundedled service should be QOSed and segregated. So, for example, you get uVerse with 18dn 2up internet. They say you can use 5 concurent streams with any 3 in HD at a time. subtract that out and lets say the TV isgnal would be 10dn 1up. That means the user is left with 8dn 1 up internet, and the caps/limits/throttling should apply only to that porttion. IPTV bandwidth should NEVER be throttled at all (otherwiser they're essentially providing fewer concurrent streams, with is a service availabiltiy issue, not a bandwidth issue, and shouold be penalized).

Nokia sues Apple over iPhone

Michael C
Grenade

I can't speak to the patents in question...

...since nobody listed them for us, but:

Apple's patent lawyers, and the processes they go through for due dilligence on new products, are TOP NOTCH, and few cases have ever gotten past them causing them to pay out.

At best, Nokia might have some obscure minor patents that do not effect the overall functionality of the iPhone that will either be licensed for small amounts of money later (consistent with what others pay only for those minor technolgies, plus some penalties), or Apple will simply code around them with little impact.

The chips that are in the device are solt to apple (as they are to RIM, Sony, Motorolla, etc) and Apple is almost certainly not the manufacturer of the infringing technology. So long as Apple has proper documentation and assumptions in that the distributors of this chipsets and components have appropriate rights to the technology (which I'm usre Broadcom and others do), then it realy boils down to software, and those patents are easy to work around provided Apple can in fact document due dillegence and effort to identify potential conflicts.

Windows 7 - the Reg reader verdict

Michael C
Pint

Well, it is an improvement...

I'll give it that, light years better than vista in terms of performance, stabiltiy, and look/feel.

A few notes: (OK, more than a few)

1) cant resize the fracking start menu!!! since it's now more of a tree than a menu, and browses like explorer, this needs to DYNAMICALLY F***ING EXPAND. You can't even MANUALLY make it bigger.

2) only way to see traditional control panel list is to change settings on steart menu to display control panel as a menu list instead of an icon. Control panel folder is a web page, not an actual directory...

3) still can't move a user from drive to drive with a 1 step proccess, have to use a preferences pane to move each sub folder manually one at a time (and MANUALLY create the target folders, which have to be named exactly right btw).

4) even LESS options for backup, including that now you can only keep 1 system image at a time and have less control over file backups than before (including that in sheer stupidity it deletes your CURRENT GOOD image to make a new potentially bad image, and it does this EVERY DAY if you want file backups every day, so in essence, you no MUST make DVD backups of your system image. They're also equally bugged as Vista and can not be moved/copied once made or the restore utility won;t find them. Since they have further crippled this, don;t even bother, just get a real backup program like acronis, and whatever file backup too came with your external HDD or NAS (or deploy a WHS w/ FP3)

5) Control panel design is completely inconsistant. took me 5 minutes to notice the stupid "add printer" button in a place noone would typicalyl go looking for it....

6) Task manager still sucks. they bought Sysinternals YEARS ago, yet nothing has moved from procxp to taskmanager yet...

7) can resize the icons on the task bar, but they don;t actually change in SPACING, so changing the size give no additional room for icons...

8) no equivalent to quick launch bar anymore. Have to pin lots of icons to taskbar and have Aero graphics enabled to tell which are running and which are not. Also, if I have an excel window open, clicking the pinned icon switches to it or minimizes it, and does not launch a new instance of excel, which is what i want, so you have to open the start menu to open more then 1 version of the same application.... (maybe there's a keyboard shortcut to do this, but since there's no manual, who knows...)

9) not a single new screen saver. Theme templates are nice, but not very customizable (can't control what images rotate on the desktop directly, or how often, very little customization outside of colors)

10) Advanced power options have been further limited.

11) XP mode is a joke. Seriously, if you;re going to make me A) understand how to run virtual machines, and B) have to patch, secure, and maintain is as a complete seperate machine, the LEAST you could have done was cross integrate the user home folders, let me control the VM hardwaree more directly, automatically share connected devices like printers, and make the cross integrated apps show up in a unified apps menu not segregated under a seperate virtual machine menu system. this is WAY behind VMWare or Parallels integration, and not even a comparrison to Rosetta which "just worked" and didn't require intervention.

12) networking at home with other non-7 systems is now more difficult for everyday users. Netowork controlls in general are more obscured as well, buried behind difficult to read control panel panes, and less consolodated than before.

13) still no automated checkdisk/defrag functions. C'mon, it's been 14 years, since NTFS came out, can't we finally get some tools to automatically maintain system health!?!?!

14) Every program I've launched since i installed launches in full screen mode by default the first time. 7 is good about remembering window positions (mostly), but c'mon, nothing in a multithreded OS should ever launch full screen, as if we didn't run other programs concurrently...

15) search options still suck, but it seems faster, and indexing seems to behave and not slow down the machine. in fact, without tweaking the Os AT ALL, its faster than either XP or Vista was tweaked to it's fullest on the same hardware.

16) still no virtual desktops, yet again staying at least 5 years behind all the other competitors.

OK, for the nicities:

A) jump lists and libraries are a nice attempt at making browsing more productive. Its easier to get to more recently used things.

B) mouse-over pinned icons shows all windopws seperately for running programs, making switching easier.

C) it certainly is faster

D) No issues with my hardware. Have to get a new copy of Roxio though to keep ISO and CD burning features working that should have been free with the OS since Win98SE...

E) even viewer window is now resizable. Granted, it should have been from day 1 in Vista, but at least it works now.

F) UAC is friendlier, snappier, and I can control how often it pesters me. It's still useless as anyone without a clue will simply click OK, and anyone with a clue doesn't need the prompts that an AV client would not already disclose...

G) It's prettier.

Verdict: Honestly, to have to sepnd real cash on a real PC to run this "well" you need a decent Core 2, 2-4GB of RAM, a FAST HDD, and descrete graphics. Yea, it'll run on less, but not "well" and certainly not in a state i could use as my only PC. If I'm gonna spend $1000-1500 on a decent PC to run this on, i might as well buy a mac and run it on that with Boot Camp... It;s a worthy replacement for XP, but it's not worthy enough to continue to buy PC hardware. (I'm too old, too busy, and too tired to keep manually rebuilding systems; I want warranties and someone else to be responsible, and at that price, no boxed PC or laptop compares to Mac hardware, i've looked, hard, at leats, not once you considder a few apps like adding backup, AV, productivity suite that's compatible with Office and syncs with Exchange, etc).

Apple preempts Win 7 with fresh iMacs, Macbooks

Michael C
Stop

Bad mouse?

It's the "free" mouse... so who cares. I throw out the mouse that comes with the Dells and IBMs at the office too... If the new thing is actually really nice, and works, you'll see everyone else trying to copy it (and pay heafty royalties to apple for it, since I did see the patent app on this recently approved).

If you don't want the new touch mouse, choose the older mouse option when ordering, save $20, and go buy a regular bluetooth mouse you're comfortable with. Better to have something you like for a few bucks more (and maybe see the other on ebay, or just keep it in the drawer as a backup).

At least the keyboard isn't also a POS, cuz we throw those out with ther Dells too, and spend $60-80 a piece on quality kit that lasts and feels good typing on. Each $700 PC we bring in, we add $260 to between a good mouse, keyboard, AV client license (no, there are NO free centrally managed, logged, auditable AV clients out there, so **** all you people who say you can use free AV...),

Also, no problems here using bluetooth with our macs with anyone's mice (except for the ones that also taike forever to sync to PCs, which is clearly the mouse's problem, no Apple).

Also, who in their right mind pays ANY manufacturer to upgradce the RAM in a new machine at the factory? Dell's RAM and HDD upgrade costs are equally unreasonable, so are HPs, so are IBMs, and Sony's are off the chart! MacMall usually doubles the RAM free on most systems, and if not, you can buy RAM much cheaper and self install. Since Apple (unliek most companies) is nice enough to ship 2 chips in 4 slots (not 4 in 4) you can add another 4GB for $93 from Crucial (less from New Egg). Now, going from 4 to 12 or 16, not as big of a deal... you only save $120 doing it yourself due to the massive cost of the 4GB SoDIMMS. Much better to have those under Apple's warranty.

Now, for Pricing:

everyone's comparing the 27", which granted, the screen alone is rediculously priced so building a PC and getting a 27" to go with it, let alone an LED backlit super high res model like this, is not happening cheap, and that alone makes the iMac an impressive deal. But honestly, 22" is fine for most people, so lets look at those 2 models:

base model, $1199. (1149 for students and teachers).

4GB 1066 RAM (with 2 additional slots open to go to 16GB!), 3.06GHz duo (with VT and 64bit extensions!), 500GB 7200 drive, Descrete graphics, webcam (i'll considder that optional), gigabit ethernet, 802.11n, and bluetooth, and a DVD writer. Oh, and a 22 (21.5) 1080P native display.

Per New Egg, no 21.5 or 22" displays are available under $169 (plus shipping) with 1080 native resolution and all the decent ones are $199 and higher, so we'll say, the screen is worth $200. The Dell XPS 630 is the only model comperable (base components or better) to iMac configuration, so I've configured one. Same CPU (no VT), same RAM (800mhz, vs Apple's 1066, and only upgradeably to 8GB) , same HDD, same DVD drive but adding Roxio to give it equal capabilities, the Vid card is better, but its not extreme added the cheapest kbd and mouse options (none come with it, these were not wireless), no software, no accessories, no wireless networking, and not even Vista Ultimate, and it;s $988. Also no webcam, mic, or speakers were included... So it's more expensive than an iMac, even without being an all-in-one, and it's slower and has fewer options installed. Sure, you can add more than 1 HDD, and can change the vid card...

Michael C
Stop

27" too big?

I've got 2 sidebyside 22" screens and I could use more desktop space.

For a secretary's desk, yea, it would be gargantuan, but for deaily use, honestly, if you already have a 22" screen, it would add about the width of a coffee cup to the dimentions.

Note the screen is not set in the middle of a huge mass of plastic anymore. Its fairly flush to the edges. I dont; feel like looking it up atm, but my bet is the 27" now has within 2" the width of the older 22" imacs, and within the same of the current 24" iMacs. It's not that much bigger.

plus, at this size you can easily set it farther back on your desk, and have a tone more actual space in front of you.

Michael C
Stop

@Robinson

"So let me get this straight. With 5% of the market, Apple is "preempting" Microsoft? Apple are a bit player in the PC market, period. 95% of people don't give a flying **** what Apple do!"

Well, first of all, it's 9% for apple.

Next, from the rampant and insecent screaming in forums like this from PC owners who have both never owned or exentively used the products they're bashing, a whole lot of the 91% left absolutely DO give a flying **** what apple does (and most of them do ther damndest to emulate and copy what apple does for less money if they can).

Oh, here's one for you: Microsofts whiny new PC recomendation tool. microsoft.com/windows/PC-scout. Put in the specs of ANY of the Macbooks and see what you get. Yup, not a single competitive PC at any price... NOT 1!

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