In my previous post I discussed my purchase of XP Pro. Why not go for Vista, you may ask? Is it your dislike of the Redmond monopoly again getting in the way of rational decisions?
In fact, I came very close to purchasing Vista. I wanted to see what the very best Microsoft can do is like. I also felt that a more recent OS would be more secure (and also require fewer changes - I'm not sure how many security downloads my copy of XP Pro will require immediately after install).
But in the end, Vista would have required me setting aside at least 20GB of my laptop hard disk - something that I don't want to give up. (XP should take as little as 5GB comfortably).
In addition, Vista does not work well today as far as I can tell with Virtualisation applications - especially if you also want to use a bootcamp partition. Part of this comes down to the new activation requirements in Vista which are torturous. While legal under license terms to do Virtualisation + Bootcamp (as far as I can tell) with the higher end versions, it is not practical to do so today. Also, the virtualisation solutions do not support Aero yet, so I wouldn't have been getting the full Vista experience except in Bootcamp (and probably quite hard to change between the two).
Finally, Vista is more expensive than XP Pro, and for the amount of use it will get, is just not worth it for me. I would have probably got the Ultimate version (for business use and virtualisation), but not used most of the features.
Coming up - an observation on Vista take-up.
Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Vista, XP, Mac OS X
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
15 June 2007
I feel dirty...
Not because I haven't blogged for almost a month - though that, I should also be ashamed of - but, because I've just received delivery of my license for Microsoft XP Pro. Yes, you read that right.
But, do not worry, it's all in the best possible taste. I have ordered a 17" MacBook Pro and am expecting delivery next week. I will be running Windows XP on it both via BootCamp and via virtualisation. At this point, it looks like I'll be going down the VMWare Fusion route, rather than Parallels. I think VMWare is being aggressive in pricing, support and adding features as it comes from behind vs Parallels. We'll see.
I don't expect to use XP much, but I have some home automation components that haven't been updated since I stopped using an old Toshiba Libretto. My Virtual PC copies have never really worked on these items due to poor performance when doing serial operations.
I also wanted to have XP around to experiment a bit as well as to demonstrate to the great unwashed the flexibility of the Mac platform these days.
Looking back, I have bought a lot of Microsoft software over the years ranging from Multiplan, Excel/Word, followed of course by many copies of Office and Office X. I've also had Windows 95 and 98 via copies of Softwindows and Virtual PC. But these became poor when Mac OS X came along (I had to reboot into OS9 to get reasonable VPC performance).
Later this year I will undoubtedly purchase Office 2008 for Mac. I fully expect XP Pro and then Office 2008 to be the last Microsoft OS and Applications that I ever buy again.
Next up... Why XP Pro over Vista?
Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Vista, XP, Mac OS X, MacBook Pro
But, do not worry, it's all in the best possible taste. I have ordered a 17" MacBook Pro and am expecting delivery next week. I will be running Windows XP on it both via BootCamp and via virtualisation. At this point, it looks like I'll be going down the VMWare Fusion route, rather than Parallels. I think VMWare is being aggressive in pricing, support and adding features as it comes from behind vs Parallels. We'll see.
I don't expect to use XP much, but I have some home automation components that haven't been updated since I stopped using an old Toshiba Libretto. My Virtual PC copies have never really worked on these items due to poor performance when doing serial operations.
I also wanted to have XP around to experiment a bit as well as to demonstrate to the great unwashed the flexibility of the Mac platform these days.
Looking back, I have bought a lot of Microsoft software over the years ranging from Multiplan, Excel/Word, followed of course by many copies of Office and Office X. I've also had Windows 95 and 98 via copies of Softwindows and Virtual PC. But these became poor when Mac OS X came along (I had to reboot into OS9 to get reasonable VPC performance).
Later this year I will undoubtedly purchase Office 2008 for Mac. I fully expect XP Pro and then Office 2008 to be the last Microsoft OS and Applications that I ever buy again.
Next up... Why XP Pro over Vista?
Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Vista, XP, Mac OS X, MacBook Pro
06 December 2006
What's happened to Adobe?
Adobe is a company I used to admire. I first came across them in the mid-80's when I worked at the investment bank/venture capital company that brought them public (to much fanfare). I was an early user of postscript in the first Apple laser printers which I thought was marvellous (too often I was encouraged to buy technology from one of our "investments", but this one I jumped at myself).
I've never been a user of Acrobat (though I use pdf documents all the time, and think they're great), and I've only touched Photoshop on the odd occasion.
But in the last week, I've witnessed a number of things which make me think that Adobe is no longer a company I admire and has adopted some of the dubious tactics of one or two other software companies I loathe (I'm sure I don't need to mention that one is based in Redmond, but I will).
First off, I had to install Photoshop on 2 machines. My partner had bought the upgrade package for her Photoshop a year ago, and encountered problems installing it due to licensing issues (though she was the original and only owner of the old version she had). It sat on our to-do list for a while, and then the theft of the machine put an end to that!
So, we had to get a new Photoshop license. That was as much as £199 or so for an academic license - and you had to provide serious proof for qualification as an academic - certainly far more than for Microsoft Office for example (available to education users for under £100). This package is not a universal application, and will be obsoleted in just a few months by CS3. Installing it was quite painful with many different applications getting installed, (in applications you get Adobe Bridge, Adobe Help Center, and a CS2 folder which has at least 2 applications; Adobe Reader has its own folder; in Utilities Adobe Reader Manager, Adobe Updater and an Adobe Utilities folder. I have no idea what some of these do (eg Adobe Bridge?). The installer also created two processes to be run at login - one which checks for new updates on login for all Adobe products installed. Removing the application from a Mac would be quite difficult methinks.
Now, the upgrade package was wasted, until I decided that I might at least update my own sad Photoshop v4. I had perhaps used this about twice - mainly for conversion of images, but I decided perhaps I'd try to improve some of my photos. The box made no mention of which Photoshops could be upgraded, so I tried it. The installer wanted the old license to be found, so I pointed it at the old Photoshop application. It did not want to do the upgrade. However, I found that entering the license manually gave me a fully authorised copy. My version DID install Adobe Reader version 7.0 something. After installing, the package needed to install updates as well, and this took an age. Less, than a week later, it was telling me my Adobe Reader was out of date and I needed 7.0.7.
OK, perhaps this is all a bit pedantic - after all it's a complex application. But it was my Adobe Reader experience that convinced me they have some serious problems.
My partner was experiencing difficulties with some PDF's, so to find out if it was Preview or Safari, I thought we should download Adobe Reader on her machine. It so happened this was the day that Adobe Reader 8.0 became available. Now, I tend to think of Adobe Reader as a somewhat simple application. But it has become a monster. To install it, you have to download the Adobe Reader Installer. When you install this, it in turn starts an Adobe Reader download which gives you a second installer that you must run. The application itself was over 20MB. Having installed that we noticed that it had taken over the role of displaying PDF's from Preview without asking. I opened up the application to see what was new. I always like to look at an applications Preferences as a guide to what it can do. Adobe Reader has 24 categories of preferences! Adobe has lost the plot I'm afraid. Reader should be a simple pdf viewer that the average user can understand. Anyone without a computing qualification is going to immediately turn off when they see this (incidentally, the preferences categories are just a list of text items - no icons).
Since installing all these things, I've also had to turn off and reject numerous annoying questions/reminders etc from Adobe about everything from making the application(s) default, to checking for updates, etc.
Am I being too harsh on them, or have they forgotten how to put the user first?
Tags: Adobe, Photoshop, Reader, Apple
I've never been a user of Acrobat (though I use pdf documents all the time, and think they're great), and I've only touched Photoshop on the odd occasion.
But in the last week, I've witnessed a number of things which make me think that Adobe is no longer a company I admire and has adopted some of the dubious tactics of one or two other software companies I loathe (I'm sure I don't need to mention that one is based in Redmond, but I will).
First off, I had to install Photoshop on 2 machines. My partner had bought the upgrade package for her Photoshop a year ago, and encountered problems installing it due to licensing issues (though she was the original and only owner of the old version she had). It sat on our to-do list for a while, and then the theft of the machine put an end to that!
So, we had to get a new Photoshop license. That was as much as £199 or so for an academic license - and you had to provide serious proof for qualification as an academic - certainly far more than for Microsoft Office for example (available to education users for under £100). This package is not a universal application, and will be obsoleted in just a few months by CS3. Installing it was quite painful with many different applications getting installed, (in applications you get Adobe Bridge, Adobe Help Center, and a CS2 folder which has at least 2 applications; Adobe Reader has its own folder; in Utilities Adobe Reader Manager, Adobe Updater and an Adobe Utilities folder. I have no idea what some of these do (eg Adobe Bridge?). The installer also created two processes to be run at login - one which checks for new updates on login for all Adobe products installed. Removing the application from a Mac would be quite difficult methinks.
Now, the upgrade package was wasted, until I decided that I might at least update my own sad Photoshop v4. I had perhaps used this about twice - mainly for conversion of images, but I decided perhaps I'd try to improve some of my photos. The box made no mention of which Photoshops could be upgraded, so I tried it. The installer wanted the old license to be found, so I pointed it at the old Photoshop application. It did not want to do the upgrade. However, I found that entering the license manually gave me a fully authorised copy. My version DID install Adobe Reader version 7.0 something. After installing, the package needed to install updates as well, and this took an age. Less, than a week later, it was telling me my Adobe Reader was out of date and I needed 7.0.7.
OK, perhaps this is all a bit pedantic - after all it's a complex application. But it was my Adobe Reader experience that convinced me they have some serious problems.
My partner was experiencing difficulties with some PDF's, so to find out if it was Preview or Safari, I thought we should download Adobe Reader on her machine. It so happened this was the day that Adobe Reader 8.0 became available. Now, I tend to think of Adobe Reader as a somewhat simple application. But it has become a monster. To install it, you have to download the Adobe Reader Installer. When you install this, it in turn starts an Adobe Reader download which gives you a second installer that you must run. The application itself was over 20MB. Having installed that we noticed that it had taken over the role of displaying PDF's from Preview without asking. I opened up the application to see what was new. I always like to look at an applications Preferences as a guide to what it can do. Adobe Reader has 24 categories of preferences! Adobe has lost the plot I'm afraid. Reader should be a simple pdf viewer that the average user can understand. Anyone without a computing qualification is going to immediately turn off when they see this (incidentally, the preferences categories are just a list of text items - no icons).
Since installing all these things, I've also had to turn off and reject numerous annoying questions/reminders etc from Adobe about everything from making the application(s) default, to checking for updates, etc.
Am I being too harsh on them, or have they forgotten how to put the user first?
Tags: Adobe, Photoshop, Reader, Apple
26 November 2006
Mac anti-theft Software
My friend Tom mentioned in a comment to the post on the theft of one of our Macs about LoJack software that he'd installed on his machines.
I've been meaning to write about something similar I found called Undercover from Orbicule. Should I be paranoid and not write to the world at large that my Macs have anti-theft software installed? Well, dammit. I'm sure the 3 of you that read this blog are honest people! And, is it not a good test of such software that it can't easily be disabled?
Undercover looked interesting to me as it is specifically Mac software. Among other features, Orbicule make the claim that, once activated, their software will make use of installed iSight cameras to take photos of the machine user! Cool (if our police force can be bothered to do anything with the information of course!). Such features are on top of the ones we would expect such as IP address reporting, etc.
I was also intrigued how Undercover would work if the thief just erased the disk. Using firmware passwords in most recent PowerPC and Intel Macs makes this quite difficult to do (though the user must set these up).
An attraction of Undercover was the family pack license for up to 5 Macs for just $10 more ($49 instead of $39).
However, the proof with both LoJack and Undercover is when they're needed. I hope neither Tom nor I have to experience that! I'd welcome comments from users of either of these pieces of software - especially about experiences good or bad when they really needed it. Both products are welcome entrants to the MacOS software marketplace.
Tags: Apple, MacBook, Orbicule, Undercover, LoJack, anti-theft
I've been meaning to write about something similar I found called Undercover from Orbicule. Should I be paranoid and not write to the world at large that my Macs have anti-theft software installed? Well, dammit. I'm sure the 3 of you that read this blog are honest people! And, is it not a good test of such software that it can't easily be disabled?
Undercover looked interesting to me as it is specifically Mac software. Among other features, Orbicule make the claim that, once activated, their software will make use of installed iSight cameras to take photos of the machine user! Cool (if our police force can be bothered to do anything with the information of course!). Such features are on top of the ones we would expect such as IP address reporting, etc.
I was also intrigued how Undercover would work if the thief just erased the disk. Using firmware passwords in most recent PowerPC and Intel Macs makes this quite difficult to do (though the user must set these up).
An attraction of Undercover was the family pack license for up to 5 Macs for just $10 more ($49 instead of $39).
However, the proof with both LoJack and Undercover is when they're needed. I hope neither Tom nor I have to experience that! I'd welcome comments from users of either of these pieces of software - especially about experiences good or bad when they really needed it. Both products are welcome entrants to the MacOS software marketplace.
Tags: Apple, MacBook, Orbicule, Undercover, LoJack, anti-theft
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