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Why Does Windows Still Suck? - Why do PC users put up with so many viruses and worms? - Why isn't everyone on a Mac?
Napster Unveils Portable Service, Anti-iPod Campaign
Laptop Replacement Vs. Repair
Apple's Mac Mini: Half the Server at a Quarter of the Price
Connoisseur's Guide - Coolest Laptops
eWeek: High-Risk Flaws Patched in Eudora
eWeek: ISPs Need To Keep Moving Against Spam
National PC Recycling Plan Proposed, Again
eWeek: Municipal WiFi -- Keep It Local
Mac Night Owl: Here is the Real Megahertz Gap!
Mac Night Owl: This Week's Mac Night Owl LIVE Update[/url]


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Why Does Windows Still Suck? - Why do PC users put up with so many viruses and worms? - Why isn't everyone on a Mac?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford says:

"So about a year ago, the SO finally upgraded her Net connection to DSL, carefully installed the Yahoo! DSL software into her creaky Sony Vaio PC laptop and ran through all the checks and install verifications and appropriate nasty disclaimers.

"And all seemed to go smoothly and reasonably enough considering it was a Windows PC and therefore nothing was really all that smooth or reasonable or elegant, but whatever. She just wanted to get online.......

"She got online all right. The DSL worked great. For about four minutes.

"Then,.... something swarmed her computer the instant she tried to move around online and the computer slowed and bogged and cluttered and crashed, and multiple restarts and debuggings and what-the-hells only brought up only a flood of nightmarish pop-up windows and terrifying error messages and massive system slowdowns and all manner of inexplicable claims of infestation of this worm and that Trojan horse and did we want to buy McAfee AntiVirus protection for $39.95?

"Four minutes. And she was already DOA.....

".....This exact same scenario, with only slight variation, is happening throughout the nation, right now...... The McAfee site claims a whopping 91 percent of PCs are infected... [by] a stunningly vicious array of malware and worms and viruses, all aimed at exploiting one of about ten thousand security flaws and holes in Microsoft Windows.

"Here, then, is my big obvious question: Why the hell do people put up with this? Why is there not some massive revolt, some huge insurrection against Microsoft?...

"There is nothing else like this phenomenon in the entire consumer culture. If anything else performed as horribly as Windows, and on such a global scale, consumers would scream bloody murder and demand their money back and there would be some sort of investigation, class-action litigation, a demand for Bill Gates' cute little geeky head on a platter.....

"And with very few exceptions, every Mac owner everywhere on the planet simply looks at all this viral chaos and spyware noise and Microsoft apologia and shrugs. And smiles. And pretty much ignores it all outright, and gets back to work......

"I'm a power user. And I have yet to suffer a single debilitating virus or worm or spyware or malware whatsoever. Not one problem in 15 years, save the time I spilled water in the keyboard of my PowerBook and I took off the back and let it dry out for two days and it worked perfectly.....

"....Surely thousands (millions?) of work-hours have been lost nationwide as tech departments spend untold months debugging and installing PC virus protections and keeping abreast of the latest and greatest worm to come down the pike, all due to Microsoft's lousy software.....

"And what about my SO's PC woes?..... [she] bought herself a beautiful new iBook.

"And of course, in a year of solid use, she has yet to have a single problem.

"Oh wait. I take that back. She has had one nagging issue with her Mac. One program keeps crashing in the middle of her work, for no apparent reason. It is baffling and frustrating and makes you shake your head and want to scream.

"The program in question? Microsoft Word."

This is the best essay on Mac apologetics I've read in many a moon. Don't miss reading the whole thing at:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/02/04/notes020405.DTL







Napster Unveils Portable Service, Anti-iPod Campaign

Reuters' Sue Zeidler says

"Napster Inc. on Wednesday unveiled a portable version of its music subscription service, backed by a $30 million ad campaign that takes aim at rival Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iPod player.

"Napster's promotion includes a Super Bowl television spot urging fans to compare the costs of spending $10,000 to buy and transfer 10,000 songs from Apple's iTunes store to an iPod, with the $15-per-month fee to carry songs from a catalog of over a million tracks on Napster-compatible players."

For the full report, visit here:
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7521346






Laptop Replacement Vs. Repair

Forbes' Arik Hesseldahl says:

"When those strange and unfamiliar electronic tones emitted from my PowerBook, I knew it was going to be an expensive day.

"I've lugged this PowerBook G4 from Apple Computer for the better part of four years. I've replaced its hard drive once and its battery once. Only once has it given me any significant trouble, and that was when, during a trip to San Francisco, the hard drive decided go on an intermittent strike, working only some of the time.....

"A long visit with a friendly technician at the Apple Store.... was frustrating--through no fault of his--but mostly because after I carefully described the problem, the machine exhibited none of the symptoms.....

"Since time was short and I had no confidence in this machine, I opted instead to plunk down the cash for a new PowerBook. I opted for the 15-inch model with the 1.67-gigahertz processor, an 80-gigabyte hard drive and a SuperDrive that can burn both CDs and DVDs......

"I fell in love with this new machine right away.... but the episode has me thinking about the entire economic experience of laptop ownership, repair and so on. I don't know what the typical lifespan is for a laptop computer, but I'm betting it's not long.....

"Today's laptop designers are being lauded for their design expertise and for their ability to cram all sorts of features into ever-thinner and lighter bodies. But why aren't hard drives as easy to replace in a laptop as the battery in a mobile phone? Why should I have to pay a professional to do the work to replace it, and in some cases lose the use of the machine for a few days in order to get it done?"

I agree emphatically, and I've been droning on about this issue for years. I love my iBook, but nothing has gone wrong with it in 25 months of use, and I know that if, say, the hard drive croaked, it would require major, complex, and delicate surgery to replace it. Ditto for pretty much any other internal component save for RAM. It shouldn't be this way.

G5 power and razor thin form factors, phooey. What would really get me excited is a truly user friendly, simple to service, repair, and upgrade laptop with modular, plug-in components, and things like the hard drive and RAM slots accessible through easy to remove panels or slide-in modules.

For Arik's full commentary, visit here.






Apple's Mac Mini: Half the Server at a Quarter of the Price

Load test are performed by Tenon and Macminicolo.net on a low-end Mac mini to validate their claim that the Mac mini was a suitable web server platform for 80% of the web sites on the market.

The tests measured the performance of a 1.25Ghz Mac mini compared to a 1.8Ghz dual-G5. Both servers were running Mac OS X 10.3.7 and the Apache 2.0.50 web server under iTools. The Mac mini had been outfitted with an extra 256MB of memory, otherwise the system was a stock release from Apple. The dual-G5 also had 512MB of memory and a 140GB disk - also a readily available stock Apple configuration for about $2145.

The Mac mini topped out at 1239 hits per second, yielding 2502 Kbytes/sec of data served, while the dual-G5 held up 2174 hits per second, yielding 4387 Kbytes/sec. It is probably that other testers will be able to produce improved hits per second from both machines, however most day-to-day installations will orbit around these performance levels.

While these figures aren't at the top end of the generally available ISP-class web server performance curve by any means, the economics of the Mac mini are such that for the first time ever there is a competitive Macintosh server able to handle more than 1000 hits per second yielding 20Mbits of data at a price that meets or beats much of the industry - and it all comes in an Apple package with their traditional emphasis on quality, style and Mac OS X's UI. A great little server for the rest of us!

Complete results are at:
http://www.macminicolo.net/results.html

About Macminicolo.net
Macminicolo.net, a subsidiary of Underwriter's Technologies, has been in the business of maintaining collocated Macs since its inception. Underwriter's Technologies is an Austin-based provider of internet services. The company was the Austin Business Journal's third largesweb-hosting firm last year. Contact macminicolo.net at (512) 853-9500 or
http://www.macminicolo.net

About Tenon
Founded in 1989, Tenon Intersystems is a leader in high-performancenetworking. Tenon technology has provided the framework for world-classnetworking on the Macintosh for over a decade. Tenon is continuing thattradition on Mac OS X. Tenon Intersystems can be reached in the U.S. at 805-963-6983, by the internet at e-mail protected from spam bots, or via the web at:
http://www.tenon.com







Connoisseur's Guide - Coolest Laptops

Forbes' Glenn Derene says:

"There was a time, not too long ago, when "laptop" would have been a comical way to describe a portable PC. The first lug-it-with-you personal computer was the 25-pound Osborne 1 in 1981 (the company went bankrupt in 1983).

"Laptops have not only gotten smaller since then, they have gotten far more powerful and diverse. Now you can get a foldable computer with processing power and a screen big enough to rival even the most sophisticated desktop machines, or, conversely, you can get a super small, but fully-functional machine that weighs less than a Sunday newspaper.

"Here is a rundown of some of the best machines from every subgenre of the laptop world. "

You can check it out at:
http://www.forbes.com/home/collecting/2005/02/03/cx_gd_0203feat.html








eWeek: High-Risk Flaws Patched in Eudora

"Qualcomm has pushed out an update for its Eudora e-mail client to fix multiple security flaws that put users at risk of computer hijacking.

The San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., which offers a free version of the client alongside premium versions, said the new Eudora 6.2.1 corrects several vulnerabilities reported by research firm NGSS (Next Generation Security Software Ltd.)"

Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1759928,00.asp







eWeek: ISPs Need To Keep Moving Against Spam

Opinion: ISPs have to do more than just pass traffic on to the Internet or they're going to be sorry. The blacklisting wars are on their way.

Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1759507,00.asp






National PC Recycling Plan Proposed, Again

"Two U.S. Representatives have resuscitated a bill to enact a national recycling program for electronic waste, following the successful launch of two state-run programs.

The bill, co-authored by Reps. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) last week, would create the National Computer Recycling Act. The act, if approved by Congress and signed into law, would tack on a $10 administrative fee to the sale price of computers and monitors to fund recycling efforts."

Read more at:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,,1759679,00.asp







eWeek: Municipal WiFi -- Keep It Local

Opinion: Yes, municipal Wi-Fi demands research, but more than that, it needs input from the local voters who will pay for it-not legislators or lobbyists at the state level.

Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1759677,00.asp







Mac Night Owl: Here is the Real Megahertz Gap!

Didn't you think the megahertz myth was dead and buried? I did, so I was surprised and disappointed when I read the other day that one of the reasons Apple has held problems selling Power Macs to the professional market is the perception that they were slower than their PC counterparts. Imagine that?

Here's the URL for today's commentary:

http://www.macnightowl.com/index.htm#gap






Mac Night Owl: This Week's Mac Night Owl LIVE Update

The excitement keeps on growing. You listeners are telling us that the shows are just getting better and better, and we like that. We've tried hard to locate guests with both expertise and the willingness to answer the tough questions. Unlike other technology-oriented radio shows, the guest is always the star and we strive to give them enough time to speak without constant interruptions and clock watching.

Here's the URL for this week's update on the show:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletters/2005/02/271.htm#update



Charles W. Moore

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