The Way of the Johnny

I listen to Leo Laporte on the TWiT netcast network and lately he's been raving about Windows 7, so I decided to give it a test drive. I use VMWare Fusion my my Mac to run Windows XP, so it was a natural choice to try running the Windows 7 Release Candidate in a virtual machine. Fortunately, VMWare had a tutorial on their website on how to accomplish this, so I downloaded the 64-bit Windows 7 ISO, installed it in a virtual machine, an presto, I've got Windows 7 RC on my Mac. Following are my first impressions of the operating system. 1. Windows 7 feels snappier than XP. The fact that I'm using 64-bit Windows 7 compared to 32-bit Windows XP might be a factor in this. And I assume Windows 7 is better able to take advantage of the Mac's Core2Duo processor compared to XP. Whatever the factors are, it's really nice to see Microsoft improve the speed of Windows dramatically from Vista. 2. Windows 7 retains the same control panel structure as Vista. I don't u...

My wife and I have 2 computers in our household: a Macbook Pro 2nd gen. and an Asus Eee PC 4G. Both of us also have iPod Touches, which I consider mini computers. I wasn't sure how the Eee PC would be used when we moved into our house. The Macbook Pro is a lot more powerful, has a bigger screen, and functions as our desktop computer replacement. And we can check our email, surf the internet, and install all kinds of applications on our iPod Touches. So where did that leave the Eee PC 4G? My wife came up with an answer: use it as our 1st floor computer in the kitchen, living room, and dining room. The Macbook Pro usually resides in our basement where my home studio gear is and the iPod Touches are convenient, but can be cumbersome to type on (the virtual keyboard is awesome and Apple did an outstanding job with the predictive correcton, but nothing beats the speed of a full QWERTY keyboard on a laptop). So here's a list of the ways we use the Eee PC 4G, which can be easil...

I got my Macbook Pro 2nd gen. about 2 years ago and I'm still loving it. I recently upgraded the hard drive to a Corsair solid-state drive and it's pretty awesome to have programs launch in less than 1 second. But this blog article isn't about a new hard drive, it's about why I use a Mac and why I still use a Mac (and will probably be using Macs from this point on). I get a kick out of the newest Microsoft "laptop hunter" commercials and I also get a kick out of the Mac vs. PC commercials. Both are equally biased and both bend the facts in favor of the respective companies agenda. But, as far fetched as they tend to be, I notice both Windows users and Mac users repeating the same "facts" in their discussions of which platform is better. Truth be told, each platform has its advantages and I'm not going to even try addressing the differences. Computers are indeed personal and I wanted to give the reasons why the Mac is the right platform fo...

I just watched both Fr. Jenkins and President Obama's speeches at the Notre Dame University commencement. I'm not surprised by anything Obama said, who basically advocated "dialogue" by forgetting about our differences, which include our religious beliefs. He addressed the abortion issue by basically sidestepping the moral question and appealing to people's emotions, which the audience ate up. It's no suprise that Obama won't lift a finger to stop abortion (and no, reducing abortion is not the same thing as making it illegal). What really disturbed my was Fr. Jenkin's stance. I knew he was a lightweight when it came to standing ground for Catholic teachings, which include the Magisterium and the USCCB, but what he said in his speech basically amounts to "dancing with the devil." Fr. Jenkins really believed that having Obama come over would help open up the president's heart to the Catholic position. This is all well and good, but wh...

I downloaded the new Internet Explorer 8 last 2 weeks ago when it first came out so I could see what all the fuss was about. I had heard mixed review about IE8 and wanted to see for myself how it ran on my work desktop (3.2GHz P4 with 3 GB of RAM, Windows XP SP 3). Basically, here was my experience with IE8: it was slow and kept crashing. Truth be told, IE7 crashed on a daily basis for me and I was hoping IE8 would resolve this, but it didn't. IE8 was not only slower, but it slowed down my computer in general and crashed more often than IE7. I don't know what it does to the underpinning of Windows, but I noticed the graphical speed of Windows slowed down noticeably after installing IE8. What I mean by graphical speed is the minimizing, maximizing, and switching of windows, refreshing of the desktop, and other graphical animations of Windows. Did I mention IE8 crashes more often then IE7? This is not necessarily an IE8 problem, but more of a compatibility problem. The com...