Jan 25, 2007 | blog
Ah, finally have the full skinny on the free T-Mobile WiFi Hotspot offer for new Windows Vista Users. The offer is for 3 months of service only starting this Friday. While the rumor of this news was spreading around the web this morning, there was no additional information on the length of the offer.
Even for 3 months this is a great chance to try out the hotspot service at your favorite coffee shop.
Via: Information Week – T-Mobile Offers Three Months Free Hotspot Access To Vista Users
Jan 13, 2007 | blog
I’m just going to give out my recommendation as a blanket statement to everyone. When you start seriously thinking of upgrading to Microsoft’s Windows Vista, simply plan on buying a new computer.
In the long run, you will be much, much happier with the result. Unless you just bought a new computer and have the “coupon” for the Vista upgrade, upgrading aging hardware, migrating your data and dealing with some hard to find drivers will be a painful experience.
So, I strongly recommend just going and buying a new PC when the time is right. Instead of spending additional money on upgrading RAM, disk, video, etc… just put that cash aside for a new computer.
With that said, my second recommendation to go with Vista is to forget desktops. Look at purchasing a laptop instead. Yeah, yeah, yeah this doesn’t accommodate all the gamers out there, but you guys know what you need anyway. I’m talking about the average computer user who is served quite well in the sub $1,000 market for laptops. Trust me, there are literally dozens of options among the 1st and 2nd tier vendors. Laptops are starting to head below $500 now for the low-end, but you’ll find the machine to fill your needs somewhere between $600-$1,000 at this time.
Another option to consider is the latest in mobility, a UMPCs that will provide the utmost in mobile computing convenience.
Just remember that Vista is a new experience, and the slow or troublesome computer you’ve been putting up with will be a great backup web browser, but not a good candidate for a Vista upgrade.
Disagree? Well, let me know in the comments!
Dec 20, 2006 | blog
So how have I been doing in my month-long quest to be Linux-only user for all December 2006?
Not as well as I had hoped.
Mainly its my fault for trying this in the wrong way. Instead of backing up my data, wiping my Windows partition and loading up Fedora Core 6 (FC6) like I had originally planed in early November. I simply installed FC6 in a VMWare instance on my Vista laptop. It works quite well all around, but it is not as “convenient” as it should be.
The fact that I’m already booted to my Vista desktop and then need to launch my FC6 virtual machine to do my work. Compounding this is my workload — at work. I’ve been so inundated by work that I have little time at home to get the things done that I had planned, so when Windows comes up, I plain forget to launch into FC6 to get my work done.
Now all this is all excuses and we all know it. So my revised plan is to do a little more learning in FC6 to get a better feel for the OS and to search out some of the tools I need in a Linux environment that I enjoy in Windows. Also, I’m going to revisit this trial in the New Year – probably February – and I’ll do it the right way by installing Linux on my hard drive, and put Windows in a virtual machine, so there!
Dec 5, 2006 | blog
Really, I’m starting to wonder if the staff over at eWeek’s Microsoft Watch has any fun, or if they simply get off writing things like Study: Just Six Percent of American Business PCs can run Vista Premium, or Yet Another View on Vista Adoption, or CIOs: Vista Will Need Heftier Hardware.
I know that covering Microsoft is their job, but it gets a little old when they keep talking about how barely 10% of corporate PC can run “Vista Premium”, or how Microsoft’s prophecy of Vista adoption is overblown.
Guess I just get tired of trade magazines that state the obvious – kind of the same issue I have with Gartner.
Oct 19, 2006 | blog
Of course this is complete hogwash, just “sour grapes” on Symantec’s part. Microsoft has spent a huge amount of time in the last 5 years working solely on securing the Windows OS.
The real problem for Symantec (and McAfee as well) is that they have stopped innovating, and are about to be caught with their proverbial pants down. Tough shit.
I used to recommend Symantec as a AV product, but its tied for top place with McAfee and Microsoft’s own OneCare product. Its sad that these companies can’t come up with new ideas and products. Instead, they have to run crying to anti-competitive-biased foreign regulatory arm of the EU. Can’t even try to make their case here at home.
Crybabies.
Link to BetaNews | Symantec: MS Making Vista Insecure
