50Micron.com

Well, my 30 days are up.

I enjoyed using it, and I definitely see the upside in Apple computers over PC’s.  But I’m going back to my Dell Precision690. (Already have actually)

Most of the “failings” of the Mac G5 Pro I was using can probably be attributed to the fact that it’s a G5.  So much software doesn’t work on the PowerPC’s, developers have given up on them.. (as is probably justified, they’re old)  and upgrading to a MacIntel would probably solve a few (but not all) of the problems I was having with compatibility.

A few points:

Negative:

• MS Entourage had significant issues.  I was forced to use the EWS (Exchange Web Services) client instead of the standard, because my exchange environment is Exchange 2010.  Maybe I jumped the gun in upgrading to Exchange2010.  Entourage 2008 doesn’t work with Excahnge2010, because Microsoft did away with WebDAV.
• The MS RDP Client for Mac (v1.0 due to PPC Support) only supports a single session.  I usually have 3-4 RDP sessions open at a time, so this was a significant limitation.
• TimeMachine doesn’t like to back up to a network drive.  I found a few workarounds but was never able to try and get it working.  I prefer to backup to an offsite location.
• NTFS read-write support doesn’t exist in Leopard (10.5.8)  Though read-only support exists, if I can’t write to an NTFS formatted thumbdrive this is useless to me.  I’ve found some third-party drivers but they are both expensive and buggy.  I’m told this exists in SnowLeopard (10.6.x) but again, not willing to shell out that kind of money for a computer to do something I can do with windows.
• Software is expensive…  The Version of Quickbooks that I paid $99 for on windows was $299 on Mac.  WTF is up with that?!

Positive:

• I love having a native BASH shell.  I do a *LOT* of scripting, and it’s nice to be able to do it hands on.
• The GUI is very intuitive, I like the Dock (Akin to Cairo-Dock for Linux)
• I enjoyed iPhoto – the face-recognition, while imperfect, was interesting to play with.
• Application installations were easy, and almost NEVER required a reboot.
• It’s mostly quiet.  I love a computer I don’t hear running.  Though the Precision is pretty quiet too.  And the Mac “Jet-Engines” when you put it under load whereas the Dell doesn’t.

- And finally:

• The start-up chime the mac makes *REALLY* annoys my eldest son, who for some reason (couldn’t be his dad, could it?) HATES apple products.  I must have rebooted it ten times one night while he was in the other room playing BlackOps just to hear him complain.

Bottom line, I work with EMC products.  Much of the software I use in my work runs on Windows by virtue of the fact that EMC writes it that way.  (Why Symmwin hasn’t been ported to CentOS or some such yet is beyond me….would save the company MILLIONS every year in software licensing)

But it all comes down to cost.  The starting price of a new Mac Pro is $2499 (Source: Apple)  That’s for a ‘simple’ box with a quad-core processor.  The higher-end systems (12-core, 2x 6-core CPU’s) run $4,999.

Macs is more expensive.  As a side-note.  I walked into Micro-Center to buy memory for it.  The G5 uses standard DDR, PC3200 memory.  In the *SAME STORE* memory was two different prices, depending on whether you were in the Mac side or the PC side.  For PC’s the 1GB PC3200 memory was $29/ea.

On the Mac side, it was $59/ea.  What amazed me mostly was the fact that the guy behind the counter said that people would GLADLY pay the extra $30 for the exact same memory because it said “Mac Ready” on the label.  (It was even the same manufacturer)

Wow.  That’s all I can say about that.  Wow.  That’s abusive.  That’s taking advantage of people who don’t know any better.  Double?  Really Apple?  (Well this wasn’t apple, but it is the general problem.)

Let’s put this into perspective.  The Dell Precision 690 I have runs 2x Dual-Core 3.0Ghz Xeon CPU’s, 8G of ram, and it cost me less than $1,000 when bought seperately.  It’s a faster box, (Twice as many CPU cores, DDR2, PC5300 memory, etc)

Now I’m not the type to buy the latest and greatest.  I’ve never bought a “new” laptop in my life, (I prefer refurbs, especially since Dell sells them with the exact same warranty as new at half the price.) I drive a 6-year old Prius, my wife drive’s a 10-year old Chevy.  I have a modest house in the suburbs that’s slightly crooked but fits my needs, but isn’t flashy by any stretch.  And every piece of computer equipment I buy for the datacenter is second-hand.  (we just acquired a pair of Cisco 9140 Switches, how many generations back is that?)

To go out and buy a “NEW” Mac for those prices is completely INSANE.  Now I could probably buy one used on ebay.  (Apple people tend to upgrade often, so there are lots of them out there.)

So in my humble view – Macs are great personal computers, and wonderful graphics arts systems.  They *CAN* be used in business if you’re willing to make some sacrifices, but again, if you want stuff to just work, Windows is still the way to go for business.

I *MAY* consider a used MacBook Pro though.  I can see where the portable version would come in VERY handy, and you can get Intel-based MacBooks on Ebay (lease-returns) pretty cheap.  (I’m amazed Apple doesn’t have an outlet store like Dell does)

This concludes my latest experiment.

P.S. For Sale – Mac Pro G5 Tower.  Dual 2.5Ghz PPC, 8GB Ram, 2x 250G HardDisks, dual-port Video, Keyboard/Mouse (new).  MacOS 10.5.6 Leopard (Installed, no media)

Make me an offer.

Not storage, but business related none-the-less:

Yes, I’m sure most of you have seen it, and yes, it’s me.  I will say that the reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated.  (Spell check says that’s right, but it doesn’t look right to me)

Where you shop may hit your credit – MSNBC.COM

For those of you who don’t care about the inner-workings of my life and business, please feel free to ignore the rest of this post.

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Through some mistake, I was recently given a Toshiba Portage M200 to test.

 Its the first tablet PC I’ve actually gotten my hands on, so I thought I world put it through its paces on this trip.

So far it’s been interesting. The handwriting analysis is amazing. (a technical term that translates as “can actual decypher my chicken-scratch”)

lm using it with VISTA enterprise, (because that is what I had a space license for.) and even with only 512 MDI in it, it performs very well. It will be interesting to see (after a RAM upgrade) if it can he a useful tool for Visio and the like, which I hate because I am always wanting to point at the screen and say “No idiot, I want it right there.”

 What I’m really looking is for the iPhone style multi-touch interface he come to something other them the parlor-trick that is the “Microsoft Surface.”

 Actually II cant say that The demos of the surface Five seen so few have been pretty impressive.

OK One complaint- I tried to underline something, and it totally didn’t notice. oh well. Still impressive.

Ok – a bit off the storage side.

I recently undertook the daunting task of installing Fedora Core 7 on my Dell Latitude D620 laptop.

The hardware summary is as follows:

Intel Core2 Duo – T7200 (2x 2.8GHZ)
2GB Ram
Intel 3945 802.11 Wireless
Broadcom 10/100/1000 Network
Sprint EVDO Express (Novatell internal)
Dell 350 Bluetooth module.
Now in deference – I was afraid because the first thing it did when I installed it was failed to boot. I figured I was dead in the water from the start – this was solved by adding the following to my grub.conf file:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.22.9-91.fc7 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet clocksource=acpi_pm

I don’t understand the dynamics of why, but apparently there is a timing issue that needs to be fixed.

The Bluetooth and Wired network modules worked right out of the gate, I was fairly impressed because I remember installing fedora some years ago and finding that NOTHING worked.

Next came the Intel 3945 Wireless card. This was a pain because there is a driver that ships with FC7 that ALMOST works. It recognizes the card, and the average user will spend about a day messing with it before realizing that the easiest way to fix the problem is to dump the stock ILW driver and go with the IPW3945 driver from FRESHRPMS.NET. Once I got it installed (YUM is a wonderful thing) it took just a little tinkering to figure out how to get it to pass my WEP key to the router and grab an IP address.

Last but not least was the sprint card. I wasn’t hopeful because I hadn’t seen a single document on FC7 and the Dell 5700 EVDO card.

I found one on Sprint’s website for Ubuntu Linux, didn’t really help because Fedora and Ubuntu put their configuration options in different files in different places. I found another document for the Sprint card (again for Ubuntu) at This Link.

Luckily everything translated almost exactly.

And so it works. I can TermServ back to my Vista desktop if I need to do any Windoze stuff.

You’d think I have too much time on my hands – I don’t. However I get pretty single-minded about some things.

-J

Just for those of you who would like a break from storage.  I hacked into my Prius and added a few options:

1. Removed the safeties from the bluetooth and radio so I can dial the goddamned phone using the keypad and no longer have to dial using the phone when the number isn’t in my speed-dial list.

2. Added a “DVD-Video” mode to it with an auxiliary set of inputs so I can plug my video iPod into it and play it back on the console display.

3. Added a “Stealth” mode to it so I can disable the internal combustion engine and run it on pure electric.  (Works for about 5 miles, the stock batteries aren’t worth shit)

4. Added a factory XM satellite kit for about 1/5 what Toyota wanted for it.

Fun stuff.  Amazing the things you can find on the web.

Just a little non-storage side-step.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Some may have noticed the downtime last night – well it was planned…sort of.

Last night I started working on moving the site over to the new internet connection.  (I’m curious as to whether or not anyone outside notices the speed difference)

When I realized (as I should have before) that moving the default gateway from the old router to the new would affect *EVERY* website and that I couldn’t do it gracefully one at a time, I made the decision to go ahead and make the DNS changes to get off the Dynamic DNS service over to the fixed IP’s.

It took almost 12 hours for the changes to full propegate because not only was I changing the DNS entries, I was changing DNS servers from dyndns.org to Network Solutions.

I apologize for the downtime, but the upside is that the most painful part of this is done, now I can start with the rest of the upgrades.

Stupid people can’t help being stupid – they’re born that way.  They go through life living in complete oblivion of the damage they are doing along the way.

There is no cure for stupid.  It’s the #1 leading cause of “Hold my beer and watch this…” deaths in the world. 

My only fear is that due to modern safety standards, more and more often they are dying AFTER they reproduce and send stupid-spawn into the world.

I think I’m going to lobby congress to repeal all laws requiring safety warnings on packaging and indemnify all manufacturers of such productions of any liability.