Mac OSX December 23, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : computers , add a comment I’m going to start going by my new name iVinnyt. I have to eat some crow on this post. If any of you have read my post I’ve done a fair amount a Mac bashing. Frankly, I was wrong. It was ultimately the fan boy user base that lead me astray. Mainly that comes from the fact that I don’t have much respect for non technical people trying to espouse the merrits of a technical system. Sales men do it every day and frankly I don’t like them either. None the less I made a lot of assumptions about the OS based on these fan boys pointless rantings about MS v. Apple. Now that I’ve used this OS and not exclusiely I might add I am now a firm believer.
To give a little backgroud I am a UNIX guy from way back and if you’ve read any of my posts you’ll know that I’ve used just about every major commercial and nearly every free UNIX like OS that has come down the pipe. I just prefer UNIX as a programmer and as a user because of it’s simplicity and elegance. I’ve built a career around it and thus far have made a decent living with out having to go very far into the MS world. That being said however, I’m an objective person and I’ve taught myself how to program in a windows environment and in fact for a brief period of my life I made considerable money working as a programmer for a windows shop.
I digress. I have to give Apple their due they have delivered on what I as a UNIX person had hoped for, a desktop system based on a UNIX system. I am going to teach myself the programming environment over the next few days and hopefully turn out some apps. This is going to be the beginning of something awesome.
I own a mac now December 20, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : computers , add a commentI never thought this day would come to pass, but I’ve purchased a mac. So now I can begin my conquest to be a coder on this platform.
Why Apple Will win. November 2, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : Operating System Debates, computers , 1 comment so far For quite some time now I’ve been very anti mac. This mainly was a result of my experiences with some of the early macs, and the fact that I had spent a large amount of time working with UNIX. I guess in my youth and lack of experience I was too short sighted to give mac a chance when they release OSX. As the saying goes with age comes wisdom, and I believe I’ve had somewhat of an epiphany. I was reading through digg this morning and came across an article talking about the release of Xcode. I then discovered that all you have to do is fill out a simple form and boom you have access to this product. Personally to me this is what will put mac over the top. I firmly believe that more than a clean interface it is software that makes an OS successful. If you look at BSD/Linux/M$ over the years, they success came mainly from the fact they had simple to use and powerful applications. Apple has always enjoyed a niche market, but now that you have an operating system derived from UNIX, and with an easy to use IDE. I don’t see why there won’t be a flood of applications coming out that will increase the popularity and ultimately make OSX the hands down winner. Being a UNIX advocate I hope this will come to fruition. We will have to see what happens with the next versions of Windows but frankly based on what I’ve seen from Apple, and my experience with UNIX I’m pretty convinced this is it.My Switch To Vonage January 20, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : computers , add a commentSo like more people my age I pack a cell phone so that I can discuss important topics with my friends. Any way, I found myself sitting at home the other day, and the cell phone battery was slowly fading and finally died. As my luck goes as the phone dies I realized that I had support duties that night. So after several hours of driving to locate the charger I was able to get back in business. I then realized that my lack of a land line was really hurting me. In the past I had SBC, and frankly they got the bill right about once every 5 months so that was next to worthless. So I decided to look for alternatives, we have a second land line provider here in KC, but frankly their reviews and track record rivaled the worthlessness of SBC so they where out of the question. So I figured I’d go for the VoIP solution. I maintain a high-speed Internet connection here at the house along with a few web sites so my connection is congested from time to time. So I have to say I was at first some what skeptical of try VoIP, but I figured what the hell if it doesn’t work then I could go with out it and be ok. So I began doing some research, my ISP offered phone service, but frankly I wanted to save money. I then looked at Skype, but frankly I didn’t like the feature set, and so after reading some reviews and looking at a price comparison realized that Vonage would be the one to go with and most likely the easiest to deal with so far. I called the customer service line, and in a matter of about 15 minutes was all done, I had my phone number assigned, and was able to view the details of my account, 2 days passed and a box arrived at my door step. I opened up the box to find a blue linksys router, with a brief instruction pamphlet explaining to plug the router into the wall, plug the router into my internet connection, then plug the phone into the router. I think with the coffee break I took during the setup process I was up in running in well under 5 minutes. I’ve used this phone nearly every day since, and even with a call log that typically stretches multiple pages on a daily basis they have not once got the bill wrong. I have to say that thus far the experience has been great. I recently made a discovery that is really going to make this thing smoke. There is a phone out there that is WiFi enabled, and connects directly to your access point via the wifi, and then goes to vonage. This is about the coolest thing, because right now I do take the phone to work with me, but it requires a little maneuvering. With this new phone all I carry is the phone and I could keep it on nearly as much as my cellphone. Right now I give this bad boy the double thumbs up. If you are in the market to get a land line this would be my suggestion its easy as all get out, it’s highly portable just unplug and take your router with you, and finally it just plain works. The only drawback and the only reason I carry my cell phone is if the power goes out I’m dead in the water.
Gear August 1, 2005
Posted by vinnyt in : General, computers , add a comment So I’ve always been into the whole nostalgia aspect of computers, I own 2:
2 of these
To my surprise I came into possession of 3 Sun machines:
1 of
1 of
1 of
So now the trick is what to do with all this fun stuff…
