Dom Barnes’s Blog

I’m an Apple fan. Thats no secret. I like the products, I like the design, the interfaces, the simplicity and yet ability to be powerfully complex. I like the whole shebang (sp?). I also liked the new “Get A Mac” adverts they started a while ago.

My problem with these, however, is only a recent event. Up until about 6 ads back, they were more focussed on features that the Mac could offer over Vista, such as MS Office native, iWork, Time Machine, Boot Camp, the version simplicity. But recently, the ads seem to have dropped into the realm of Vista-bashing.

That being said, I’m not a massive fan of Vista, or Windows at all. But I use it, and I admit that Vista does have some advantages over XP. I recommended it to my mum in fact (largely on the basis that XP support will dwindle so best to jump on board sooner). 

Surely Apple can come up with better ads, and features to push, like Photobooth, Garageband, iChat, Screen Sharing, all of which are great features to plug, rather than spending time and money on ads going on about unhappy Vista customers and Vista bugs.

Perhaps we can band together and make them come up with some engaging adverts instead?

I like linux. Its a fun platform to try out, and you can’t beat the price. It will run happily on low spec machines, and cos its a *nix OS, you can use it for a file server, web server, lots of stuff easily. But this is about one thing specifically.

I’m still running my MythTV box, only now its in a different room, and its mainly just a backend system for me. I record stuff to watch later on my main laptop. But before I could use it, it needed to be on my network. So that means wireless. I bought a Wifi PCI card on eBay and got it today. I was a little unsure about the setup cos I didn’t know whether I needed to install some more software or drivers, so was prepared a little to haul it near the router to wire it in. So I installed the card, and booted up. After logging in, I moved the mouse to the Network icon in the menu bar, expecting to have to at least select the other ethernet connection. But much to my surprise, it gave me a list of available Wifi networks. I plugged in my key and voila! Connected.

Now compare this to the XP installation. Its all the same up to the boot. Then the New Hardware wizard kicks in, and there is a requirement to install software and drivers, choose whos configuration setup to use, and probably a reboot.

Now I thought XP was meant to support a lot of hardware, yet I seem to find that when it comes to Wifi hardware, you almost always have additional drivers and software to install, and yet Linux, which is often stated as being a little behind the curve, as there is no one being paid to work on it, handled my new hardware with no problems at all.

So I’m quite happy now, on my network, enjoying the internet and updating software to my hearts content, while I record TV. Thanks Linux

As I posted before, I took my A+ 220-601 exam recently and as part of the study, I got a few books that came with CD-ROM’s. They all contained test engine software which I was looking forward to using, but of course, cos of the narrow minded people, it was Windows only. Since I don’t have Leopard yet (Jan ‘08 after payday and I get an external drive to backup so I can clean install) I was encouraged by a friend to get VMWare Fusion. So I took the plunge and forked out the £45-odd quid for the software.

I downloaded the dmg file and installed the software, and put in the serial number supplied via email. And there I was, ready to install Windows. I pulled out a disc I had nearby and got to work on the dreaded install. I’ve already done this a few times with Boot Camp beta, so was more than familiar with the many many many many updates needed when you install Windows, and because they don’t do bulk updates like Mac OS gets (only their infrequent Service Packs) It took about 4 reboots, to install around about 90 updates, hotfixes, bug fixes and new software, included the fantastic(!) IE7.

So I finally got that sorted, downloaded Firefox, TweakUI, Acrobat Reader, and got them installed. Finally I was ready to actually get studying, but before that, a good nights sleep.

Well it seemed to do the trick cos I passed the exam, and now I have XP working for the future. I’m going to keep the virtual image on my laptop cos it will no doubt come in handy next time I need to tech support for my parents.

The next step for me is to set up a Ubuntu install. Its all done (off the Live/Desktop CD) and now just updating that. To make it work smoother, I need to install VMWare Tools, to allow shared folders and other business. Luckily, this website provides a great step-by-step for this  as it seems a bit tricky.

So I’ll be a triple boot system soon, which is nice to have. And certainly one to impress the friends and family, and people at MMUG.