Daily Breakfast 655 – Spider Soup
In this episode: boxers and religion; Apple keynote highlights; Microsoft’s project Natal makes sci-fi a reality; modified marathon diet; spider soup; baseball feedback; biking between masses; Miami Vice movie review.
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You really need one of these BugZookas. I use it to get all kinds of things out of the house, even wasps. Will help you and those poor spiders.
http://www.buybugzooka.com/?gclid=CIG3vse0_ZoCFVpM5QodEHwLdw
The new MacBooks are stil *way* too expensive when compared to PC notebooks with equal featureset.
The cheap 10.6 upgrade is nice, but the hardware cost it what really bugs me.
Danshaku –
I don’t know about any notebooks that are sold with the same hardware MacBooks have which also have the same performance a MacBook has. I was used to PC laptops before I got my MacBook. What you forget is that you have to buy a new laptop after almost every significant Microsoft Windows upgrade, whereas Mac OSx Leopard for instance also runs on older notebooks.
Try running Vista on a 2003 XP Laptop. Is not going to work. PC notebooks seem to be cheaper, but when you take this into consideration they aren’t cheap at all.
Your review of Miami Vice cracked me up! Thanks–I’m glad I didn’t waste my time watching that movie.
As far as laptops–I have to agree with danshaku. Who says you have to upgrade to Vista at this point? Unless you’re a hardcore PC gamer (is there such a thing on the Mac?), you don’t necessarily need the latest version of Windows. Look at the new netbooks–they’re doing just fine with XP SP3.
Jeff,
upgrading because of being a hardcore gamer (EA Games are also available for Mac by the way) wasn’t my issue. It’s the issue of having to upgrade all hardware when Microsoft decides to upgrade the OS and discontinue service on the old (e.g. stop providing security patches).
Especially on a laptop you need to have a safe OS, having an obsolete OS compromises security. My point is that you can keep your old notebook when Apple upgrades the operating system because the OS doesn’t make an extreme hardware demand. When you want your Windows notebook perform at the same level as a Macintosh notebook, you need to invest heavily on hardware just to make Windows perform at an equal level. Windows is a very bloated operating system and you need very sophisticated system specs, just to keep the OS running on your hardware. That’s insane.
It’s better to have a much leaner OS so you have more calculating power left for the applications. And that’s where the difference between Mac and PC really lies. You’ve got far more power on your MacBook and much more possibilities with the software, not to mention the user centered design of the OS. I have used Windows from the beginning, bought a Macbook because I did not want to buy a laptop with Vista. It’s not possible to buy a new computer with Windows XP running on it.
And don’t get me started about the prices they pay for software, they paid over 300 euros for Microsoft Office whereas the Mac version costs 140 euros. A new (non-OEM) version of Windows costs hundreds of euros, whereas Mac OSx Leopard costs 129 and Mac OSx Snow Leopard only 29 for upgraders. Most software applications are around 80 euros, a fraction of the prices for Windows software.
Now I’ve made the change I never want to go back. My productivity is much higher, the system much more stable and faster compared to friends’ laptops same hardware specs but with Vista. And I know I can keep this notebook for YEARS instead of the 3 year cycle of a PC notebook. It was expensive to buy, but it’s cheaper in the long run. Microsoft only makes you think they are cheaper. Do the math. They are not.
I’ve had two Macs, each of which died after slightly more than 3 years of use (i.e. when even the extended warranty has run out).
With prices that high I just can’t justify buying another one, as much as I like Mac OS X.
Fortunately Windows 7 finally looks like a worthy competitor, which for the first time ever manages to significantly improve upon the performance of its predecessor.
Now unless Microsoft seriously screws up pricing (there have been conflicting reports so far on that subject), I’ll almost certainly upgrade.
Of course I still dream that one day maybe Apple will allow Mac OS X to be installed on non-Apple systems, but that’s rather unlikely.
And finally, Linux is doomed as a desktop OS, as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve used it for eight years, despite its shortcomings, always hoping it would catch up but it never got there.
Linux on a notebook is still a major pain, so for me it’s just not worth the effort any longer.
That’s weird, my roommate is still using her sister’s dinosaur iBook and an iMac classic running OS9 without problems. You had a lot of bad luck with Macintosh computers then!
I really, really hate spiders too and have had to endure a lot of them in our country home. thankfully they seemed to have stopped getting into the house. Right now, we only see one every now and then.. it used to be once a week and they are big!!!