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For some time now I've been taking part in WIMAX trials here in Hamilton Ontario. This too was trumpeted as a glorious thing that would change the face of our city, bring us into the high tech 21st century etc.

In practice although WIMAX seems to work OK (aside from a real lag much of the time, which may just be bad server configuration by Primus Communications), My sense is that the company isn't really committed to it. I doubt that there will be a serious public roll out.

The idea seems great - a wireless Internet connection that works wherever you are. The reality seems a bit less rosy, and my guess is that a city wide wireless network will need a good level of customer support - not Primus' strong point by a long shot.

For some time now I've been taking part in WIMAX trials here in Hamilton Ontario. This too was trumpeted as a glorious thing that would change the face of our city, bring us into the high tech 21st century etc.

In practice although WIMAX seems to work OK (aside from a real lag much of the time, which may just be bad server configuration by Primus Communications), My sense is that the company isn't really committed to it. I doubt that there will be a serious public roll out.

The idea seems great - a wireless Internet connection that works wherever you are. The reality seems a bit less rosy, and my guess is that a city wide wireless network will need a good level of customer support - not Primus' strong point by a long shot.

Anyone else amused that one of the biggest selling points of new Intel Macs is the ability to run Windows and access all of the programs that aren't available on the Mac?

Two and half years into owning a G4 Powerbook I've concluded that Macs are no more or less irritating*, crash prone**, or prone to dumb design ideas*** than are PCs. They just incorporate different irritations, ways of crashing, and dumb design choices.

I've given the Mac a good run, and arguably am more knowledgeable than most users. I have taken the time to understand the ways that things work on the Mac. I doubt that I would buy another.

* No Delete key, but a key marked "delete" which actually backspaces. Yes, I know there is some multiple key combination that will delete stuff, but I still believe that pressing a key marked "delete" should cause things to be deleted.

** "Kernel Panic" is exactly the same as the "Blue Screen of Death". In my experience the Mac crashes more often than my XP machine. And then there have been programs that just stop working for no apparent reason.

*** The Dock irritates me no end on this small 12" screen. I'll take the Windows task bar any day. Simpler is better. It also drives me crazy that the Mac defaults to leaving all apps running forever instead of shutting them down when you click the "close" button.

Having spent too many hours dealing with increasingly bizarre authentication schemes at various web sites, and more hours reading about each new form of high tech security wizardry, I've come to conclude that an awful lot of companies are ignoring the obvious - that the only really secure way to protect data is to prevent physical access to it.

As long as someone can get access to the container, they can find a way in.

Obviously we're balancing convenience with security, but when some employee takes your whole customer database off-site on his laptop your problem is not encryption, it's keeping that data in a controlled environment.

Gosh, I just upgraded my old MP3 player for new 2 gig model. It doesn't have a video screen, it doesn't make phone calls. It doesn't walk the dog. It doesn't shuffle. Hell, It doesn't even have a brand name on it, or on the box, or on the "instructions."

Then again it's literally one inch square, looks cool in pink aluminum, and allows me to a) copy songs (or anything) to it from any computer and b) play music.

For $30 it's EXACTLY what I need.

Guess I'm not in Apple's target market?

Am I really unusual in understanding that there are some things that one does not broadcast to the World? Am I alone is understanding that you don't post pictures of yourself drunk with transvestites on Facebook? Am I alone in understanding that you don't film youself in illegal acts and then stick it on YouTube?

Honestly, I don't care what someone does in their private life, but if they don't understand the line between private and public I probably don't want them working for me. Really people, is it that hard to use a pseudonym and a hotmail address?

The vast majority of of people walk in to Staples or Best Buy and buy a computer. That computer includes Vista. They use it.

They don't "upgrade" to Vista, they don't decide to buy a Mac, they sure don't try out Ubuntu, they use Vista because that's what came on their new laptop.

Microsoft doesn't need exponential sales of Vista, they don't need the whole world to change overnight. All that they need is to wait as millions of people eventually upgrade their systems. As long as Dell or Best Buy will sell them a laptop for $599 (compared to Apple, whose offerings start at about $1000) that's what people will buy, and Microsoft can watch the adoption continue apace. Widespread use of Vista is pretty much inevitable.

My PC is still running Windows 2000. Its fine, mostly, except for some apps that actually insist on XP. Still, I have conceded that at some point I will upgrade and have "acquired" a copy of XP from one of the usual sources. I don't need it today, but acknowledge that one day soon I'll take a day or two off and upgrade.

In fact my first experience with Vista was in the last month, helping a girlfriend set up her new HP laptop. Based on the problems that we ran into I'd be wary of encouraging people to buy Vista yet, but I also accepted that if she was buying a system that's what she would get so I was prepared for a steep learning curve. If anything Vista reminds me a lot of OS X - very pretty but very frustrating if you don't want to do exactly what Redmond or Cupertino want you to do.

Without even reading TFA, it's obvious that the author doesn't have clue.

The point of Facebook and similar networks is that access is controlled. The concept of a Friends list is what makes it work.

A lot of people want a place that will allow people to find them, to even follow what they're doing in their lives, but where they can also restrict who sees how much data. Facebook provides that.

Critical to understanding this is to realize that our ideas about privacy are changing rapidly, and different people have different expectations and comfort levels with respect to what they want to share, and who they want to share it.

What I place on my web site is different from what I blog, and is different from my Facebook profile and a Facebook group about a current romance. And each of those reaches a different population, some by chance, some by design and control.

No, the author lacks an understanding about all of this.

It's no surprise that half of the comments here boil down to "Users are idiots, especially Windows users."

As some people note though, the bottom line is that Windows works fine for most people, is familiar, and probably most important runs all of the programs that they want to use.

Would I love to break away from Microsoft? Sure. That's why I bought a Mac. Is Apple the alternative that I wanted? Unfortunately not. Ugly details here.

Is Linux the alternative? Not even close. If the out of the box (or off the torrent) install won't play DVDs or MP3s, it's not ready for public consumption. An out of the box Windows install generally*** just works without searching the web and downloading obscure codecs and media players.

*** "Generally" means "most of the time, for most people." Don't waste my time telling me about the time when it didn't work for your specific situation. You are an exception, OK?

I do think it has to be said, though, that if you really want desktop search that includes your e-mail using apple mail seems like less of a sacrifice than sharing all the data with them that google desktop necessitates.

Honestly, I tried the apple "MAIL" app when I got the Powerbook, and found it limited and frustrating in the extreme - using it IS a sacrifice.

After taking a crack at Thunderbird, then Entourage, I have settled on Gyazmail, which really is a nice bit of work.

(The power supply for the Powerbook just fried itself, so I'm back on the PC for a few days until the replacement comes in, using Pegasus 4.4, which still rocks.)

There are a lot of of us. I bought my G4 Powerbook because I was tired of Windows nonsense.

Hurrah! Now I get to deal with OS X nonsense. And with design and feature choices that just defy any reasonable sense of usability.

I too find, even after a year and a half, that I can boot up a Windows machine and accomplish more work in less time. I can't think that I'm alone.

Over the last year I've been moving between Windows, OS X on a Powerbook, and a relatively recent SUSE install on a PC.

The truth is that each of them has shortcomings. The good news I guess is that most of these are irritating, not fatal.

Windows IMHO is not a long term option because of the creeping DRM and the obsessive control of the computing environment that MS seems to want. Frankly I have this horrible feeling that Vista will open a can of worms that will never end.

OS X just has too many irritating or dumb features, or lack thereof, that drive me around the bend. I'm not talking about things that are different from Windows, I'm talking about boneheaded design and UI mistakes that no-one in Mac land seems to be willing to admit are a problem.

Linux, well at this point for me it works 90% out of the box, much better than a few years ago, but that last 10% can be a nightmare. As always with Linux, if it works it's lovely, but if it doesn't you're off into that hell of MAN pages and web forums, filled with half answers, slightly incorrect assumptions, and Linux arrogance.

I'm weary of tinkering with computers. I just want to turn it on and have it do what I want easily and without irritation. And I want to be able to TURN OFF "features" that annoy me.

No OS does that yet.

As some of us have found, appearing on Apple's "compatibility" lists does not necessarily mean that hardware is compatible.

Or that it's sorta kinda compatible but only in some cases...

Beware...

I bought my first Mac a year ago, and honestly it will likely be the last.

Despite what the fanboys say, there are just too many things that are irritating or poorly implemented (can you say "Finder?"), and too many places where you're forced into doing things the "Mac way", even if there are better alternatives.

I've given this machine a go for a year as my primary machine, and find it slow, crash prone, and often inefficient in the hoops through which one has to jump to do otherwise simple tasks.

Added to that is the relative lack of quality freeware and open source apps and utilities (compared to Windows or Linux platforms). There are at least a dozen such programs that I relied on on a daily basis on Windows. In almost every case I was boxed into paying what I considered an overly high price for a commercial app on the Mac.

Overall though it's the cumulation of a hundred little things that has convinced me that the Mac is not the machine for me. I just find the whole affair annoying, and I always seem be stopping work to change something that shouldn't have happened. A good example is the Dock, which invariably covers up a scroll bar or other part of what I'm working on, and which honestly is much less efficient than a good old Windows Task bar.

Maybe on a 30" monitor this doesn't happen, but on a 12" Powerbook it's an endless source of irriation. It's just bad design.

It knows that because its well-implemented new Sleep mode uses very little electricity and also takes only two or three seconds to either shut down or restart, you want to use this mode to 'turn off' your computer, whether you realize it or not. It wants to teach you about what's best.

Despite my struggles with the switch to a Mac I have to say that Sleep is one thing that the Powerbook does very, very well. I never used it on my Windows boxes, but can't imagine not having it since living with an Apple.