Gambling is one use for such a table, plenty of money in that business I'd say. Any high end sales might also benefit - think of houses, yachts etc. Sitting cosily at a table with a salesman who pulls up videos, images and... contracts....
I just finished reinstalling the one windows pc in our office, and added Safari.
It could easily import my bookmarks from my mac though a shared drive, and has been working well all day. Surfing Slasdot and half a dozen other sites. By no means that's a full test, but to me it seems absolutely fine - and FAST.
It will be my browser by choice on windows untill we get another MacBook. We were holding out for Leopard but it's not worth it till October. After having gotten used to Mac I just cannot stand windows anymore. Even installed Vista (clean install) to see if things would improve but it managed to slow an AMD Athlon 64 3200 with 1GB Ram and a 7200HD to a crawl. How on earth do they (MS) manage that. Absolutetly unusable. I am ready to chuck our MS Windows and Office licences in the bin! And buy Office 2008 if it's any good. Neoffice is doing fine, but can be a bit toooooo sloooowww. Whoever gets there first - making a usable intel OSX office suite - will get my money. Main contenters are Microsoft, Neoffice and OpenOffice. Here's hoping for OpenOffice......
The trouble Windows has been giving me on a (Compaq) branded PC is just incredible. 4 or 5 reinstalls in a year. And that's just running Microsoft office and Photoshop elements with Active Virus Shield from AOL/Kaspersky after Avast let me down. I HAVE HAD IT!!!!!!!!
Right now, in order of preference, my OS of choice for easy of use, compatability and low maintenance are: - Apple Mac OsX (using it on two office MacBooks) - Ubunto (have it running on a 1999 Dell Latitude in the living room) - ? - Windows XP (although Win2k was fine too. Using XP on the 3rd office PC for Office, Photoshop and AUtoroute -? -? -? - Windows Vista ( Just forget it, OK?)
I think you miss the big point: a government might want to have access to its documentation in, say, 20 years without being tied to a single vendor. At the same time, requiring the citizens and contractors to submit government documents in a closed format controlled by a US corporation is also slightly weird. Not to mention most people think you have to pay 300+ euro for it...
Thanks for your advice!
I have bought a free-to-air decoder (to be sure) in the UK, and have a standard dish (80cm) I think. The SAT installers here are not really familiar with installing stuff for foreigners - they do (and are interested only) in the Sky package (only choice in Italy). I have now a dish with 2 LNB, one for Sky on Hotbird, the other for Astra. According to the installer there is one Astra, 2A, 2B or 2D is all the same thing.... Fact is I only seem to receive german, arabic or other stuff I can't understand. Do you know about this. I mean - am I fine pointed at Astra - should I get a bigger dish, or get the LNB positioned differently?
A hassle free well setup computer?
I have Ubuntu running on a spare 1999 Dell Latitude. It is a little old computer that never fails me and the wifi pcmcia card hold the network connection a lot better than under XP, which was installed before. It is also a lot faster for internet browsing, pretty much the only purpose of this machine.
In our home office we use an Intel MacBook and a 1 year old Compaq - that just keeps giving trouble and is the next one up for an "Ubuntu treatment". A pity though for our 2 Ms Office and XP licences, but the cost in time is just too high.
Recently I have installed Ubuntu for an 80 year old friend of mine, after his 3 year windows xp installation was seriously wonky. He loves it. It does his mail, internet and foto management and wifi work out of the box. Ah, and he really likes the wobbly windows, it is something to show off to his pensioner friends! For me, it is one less worry.
I subscribe to that as well!
I am living in the south of Italy and all I can get is BBC Prime (the re-run channel) and BBC World through Sky satellite service.
If anybody has managed a way to receive standard BBC channel through sat, please let me know!
This is a halfarsed attempt to get some hype going in the way Apple does. Hint, hint, hint, but no clear release schedule.
Zune Scene editors are very hard to spot in the wild - you are more likely to meet them at Ms campus.
What a joke.
You might want to have a look at fastmail.fm. Excellent imap provider and they also do webdav. Just point the mail bit of your domain (cname, dns something like that, check the faq) and you're done.
Gmail/domain apps does the job for one user, if you share a company mailbox with others IMAP is the way to go.
I think you are making a lot of assumptions that say more about you than the post you are replying to.
As many have pointed out, to relax and get in a different frame of mind you need to disconnect. It also needed to get some fresh views in you work life. Having said that, the way email and voip can change operations for small business owners is simply amazing. In the old days it would have been simply impossible for me to stay in another country, with friends, family or in rented accommodation with internet and just work as usual. The difference is of course that after work you have a totally different environment to explore, and it is great if you can do that without having to close your office.
I travel around with a Macbook and a bluetooth headset to answer skype and sip calls during working hours - if i think it will be calm i just forward those two to my mobile. When staying somewhere longer I take with me a dect phone and a Grandstream voip adapter. I am waiting for the wifi phones to mature. The services used are the following: Skype with UK skype-in number and Skypho.net for SIP in Italy. Skypho.net also have uk numbers now, so I might be ditching Skype-in in the future. I have tested a lot of services and hardware, for example I did not like SIP on the Nokia E61 (wifi phone with sip client), it is too early for that. I settled for Skypho and SIP hardware also for office use as it simply is the most reliable and cheapest. As a sidenote, don't ditch your landline for a sip-account over cable, I have found the latency to be a major problem. ADSL is best.
Bottom line: if you store your company data on a server, have a reliable (imap, fastweb.fm) mailhost and SIP with phone number you _can_ work anywhere and anytime. That does not mean you should.... I have ditched my blackberry and IM to be able to focus on work when working, and on everything that life has to offer when i am not. My mobile goes always off at 1900. Modern technology is an enabler to a more flexible life/work-style - you don't need to be stuck in an office to work, but you will still need to take vacations without dragging a lot of gear around.
I am in no way affiliated to the companies mention, just a happy customer who has done his homework.
as many have pointed out, to relax and get in a different frame of mind you need to disconnect. It also needed to get some fresh views in you work life. Having said that, the way email and voip can change operations for small business owners is simply amazing. In the old days it would have been simply impossible for me to stay in another country, with friends, family or in rented accommodation with internet and just work as usual. The difference is of course that after work you have a totally different environment to explore, and it is great if you can do that without having to close your office.
I travel around with a Macbook and a bluetooth headset to answer skype and sip calls during working hours - if i think it will be calm i just forward those two to my mobile. When staying somewhere longer I take with me a dect phone and a Grandstream voip adapter. I am waiting for the wifi phones to mature. The services used are the following: Skype with UK skype-in number and Skypho.net for SIP in Italy. Skypho.net also have uk numbers now, so I might be ditching Skype-in in the future. I have tested a lot of services and hardware, for example I did not like SIP on the Nokia E61 (wifi phone with sip client), it is too early for that. I settled for Skypho and SIP hardware also for office use as it simply is the most reliable and cheapest. As a sidenote, don't ditch your landline for a sip-account over cable, I have found the latency to be a major problem. ADSL is best.
Bottom line: if you store your company data on a server, have a reliable (imap, fastweb.fm) mailhost and SIP with phone number you _can_ work anywhere and anytime. That does not mean you should.... I have ditched my blackberry and IM to be able to focus on work when working, and on everything that life has to offer when i am not. My mobile goes always off at 1900. Modern technology is an enabler to a more flexible life/work-style - you don't need to be stuck in an office to work, but you will still need to take vacations without dragging a lot of gear around.
I am in no way affiliated to the companies mention, just a happy customer who has done his homework.
I am also a new Mac user, since early January. Whilst I love my new machine (MacBook Core2 Duo) and the OSX those few application with "Brushed Metal" don't really fit in with what you call "whole Apple experience". Ironically Firefox has a more modern and proper theme then Safari.
I wonder if Safari 3 has shed it's metal look.
It is funny that Apple gets so much praise for it's consistant UI, where I am surprised by all the different looks.
Here are some programs I use regularly and often concurrently: Safari: metal Mail: light grey, Adresbook and Calender: metal - these 3 are often open next to each other. I don't see the logic, this is just slack. iPhoto, iTunes: Dark grey Apple Aperture: very dark brushed metal. A wonderfull application nevertheless. Pity I have to keep Photoshop just for artwork. Ms Office: Pinstriped blue and while plus horrible floating taskbars. Unusable. I am currently deciding between NeoOffice (very slow on first launch) and my licenced copy of OfficeXP in Crossover (does not look to good).
Apple should really focus on UI look consistency in the next release - and please don't make stuff black like Vista, it'll look bad on my shiny white Mac!
It took me while typing this in Safari, my next post will be from Firefox!
I loved BeOS at the time (1998-99?) and I haven't seen anything that snappy since....
Wonder if one wanted cutting edge today, what system would you want:
SuSE or Ubuntu Linux? Very pleasant, hardly innovative - where can you try out that new suse start menu in VMWare?
Vista? Never seen it, if it is anything like WMP11 or IE7 I don't like it.
OSX? From the few times that I have used friends Mac's and edited video's etc I must say it's very simple and intuitive, but hardly innovative. What about Leopard - is it worth putting forward a MacBook purchase?
Thanks,
Don.
The war comparison is stupid indeed. As for markets, it is funny that I run Suse Linux without problems for years at home whilst being in employment.
Soon after starting my own business I found myself buying PC's and office licenses for compatibility reasons and because I had no time fiddling with operating systems anyway. That was 3 years ago. Last weekend for fun I downloaded Ubuntu for AMD64 to install on my Compaq desktop - no luck with 64 bits Nvidia and Sitecom wireless. From forums it appears possible to fix, but again, very time consuming. 32 bits was better in term of graphics but no wireless and OOo is still as sluggish as all those years ago. And that on an Athlon 3200 with 1Gb ram. mwah. Graphics on an old Medion laptop were also broken.
I really want to use Linux and I would buy a pre-installed box if I could find it (in Holland). I would continue with Ms office in Crossover though, that worked fine already years ago. Maybe I should buy a Mac and drop Linux for another 3 years?
There isn't really a point to this rant. If there was I would have made it clearer.
Any idea how many laptops are stolen with id badges in the side pockets?
Besides that, I it is stupid to make company data accessible by sticking a usb stick in a client. There _are_ ways of securing data - remote drive/homedir + encrypted local cache on client. Not exactly rocket science either.
You think you can't go back to dial-up? Ha! After 5+ years on broadband I moved to a very rural area in Southern Italy where dial-up was not even an option the first year (2004...) so we had _2_ laptops sharing a 14k grprs line. We did setup a successfull business that way, did lots of mail and website coding!
After that we got 64k isdn - wow. Then, when mid 2005 adsl arrived to our village we were amongst the first to apply, and now 8 months later it is active! 640kbps, wonderfull, comfortable, but we did do well without. Cost wise it is not a big difference - we allways paid around 30 euro per month.
In case you are wondering where this little backwards town is: Briatico
in Calabria. Well worth a visit!
imagine what they will do if it was a offending movie/act: take whole servers and backbones down? Oh the horror.
You are quite right: Theo van Gogh, a dutch producer was killed 2 years ago in a ritual muslim execution after making "Submission", a movie critical about the state of muslim women and sexuality.
It seemed quite nice, but I allready connect wireless to scanners, printers etc through an old and silent(p500) in the corner of my office. It also gives me a windows terminal when needed. Don't really see the added value for a small office.
It looks like you can't get a better deal if you _must_ have a wide angle, for example interior photography. I'll be getting one asap - I was close to spending $300 more for a Canon DSLR with a wideangle zoom lens.
Unless of course I can find a 24mm lens (no zoom) that fits well on DSLR. Any suggestions? I have never worked out how lenses for analogue camera's compare on a DSLR. Would be great if someone could enlighten me.
Slashdot Mirror
Gambling is one use for such a table, plenty of money in that business I'd say. Any high end sales might also benefit - think of houses, yachts etc. Sitting cosily at a table with a salesman who pulls up videos, images and... contracts....
Yes - and why did they put the close button on the wrong side of the window???
There's not even a "window menu" that closes the thing upon a double click!
-----
-Ditching the old windows computer-
Doesn't SafariBlock (which is free, unlich pitihelmet) work on windows?
I beg you pardon, I saw others only advising PithHelmet.
Please go ahead and don't use Safari.
Regards,
Don. (the 49 Billionth Mac user)
I just finished reinstalling the one windows pc in our office, and added Safari.
It could easily import my bookmarks from my mac though a shared drive, and has been working well all day. Surfing Slasdot and half a dozen other sites. By no means that's a full test, but to me it seems absolutely fine - and FAST.
It will be my browser by choice on windows untill we get another MacBook. We were holding out for Leopard but it's not worth it till October. After having gotten used to Mac I just cannot stand windows anymore. Even installed Vista (clean install) to see if things would improve but it managed to slow an AMD Athlon 64 3200 with 1GB Ram and a 7200HD to a crawl. How on earth do they (MS) manage that. Absolutetly unusable. I am ready to chuck our MS Windows and Office licences in the bin! And buy Office 2008 if it's any good. Neoffice is doing fine, but can be a bit toooooo sloooowww. Whoever gets there first - making a usable intel OSX office suite - will get my money. Main contenters are Microsoft, Neoffice and OpenOffice. Here's hoping for OpenOffice......
The trouble Windows has been giving me on a (Compaq) branded PC is just incredible. 4 or 5 reinstalls in a year. And that's just running Microsoft office and Photoshop elements with Active Virus Shield from AOL/Kaspersky after Avast let me down. I HAVE HAD IT!!!!!!!!
Right now, in order of preference, my OS of choice for easy of use, compatability and low maintenance are:
- Apple Mac OsX (using it on two office MacBooks)
- Ubunto (have it running on a 1999 Dell Latitude in the living room)
- ?
- Windows XP (although Win2k was fine too. Using XP on the 3rd office PC for Office, Photoshop and AUtoroute
-?
-?
-?
- Windows Vista ( Just forget it, OK?)
Just my 2*2p.
For adblocking on Safari have a look at the free add-on SafariBlock http://fsbsoftware.com/SafariBlock.html
I think you miss the big point: a government might want to have access to its documentation in, say, 20 years without being tied to a single vendor. At the same time, requiring the citizens and contractors to submit government documents in a closed format controlled by a US corporation is also slightly weird. Not to mention most people think you have to pay 300+ euro for it...
Thanks for your advice! I have bought a free-to-air decoder (to be sure) in the UK, and have a standard dish (80cm) I think. The SAT installers here are not really familiar with installing stuff for foreigners - they do (and are interested only) in the Sky package (only choice in Italy). I have now a dish with 2 LNB, one for Sky on Hotbird, the other for Astra. According to the installer there is one Astra, 2A, 2B or 2D is all the same thing.... Fact is I only seem to receive german, arabic or other stuff I can't understand. Do you know about this. I mean - am I fine pointed at Astra - should I get a bigger dish, or get the LNB positioned differently?
A hassle free well setup computer? I have Ubuntu running on a spare 1999 Dell Latitude. It is a little old computer that never fails me and the wifi pcmcia card hold the network connection a lot better than under XP, which was installed before. It is also a lot faster for internet browsing, pretty much the only purpose of this machine. In our home office we use an Intel MacBook and a 1 year old Compaq - that just keeps giving trouble and is the next one up for an "Ubuntu treatment". A pity though for our 2 Ms Office and XP licences, but the cost in time is just too high. Recently I have installed Ubuntu for an 80 year old friend of mine, after his 3 year windows xp installation was seriously wonky. He loves it. It does his mail, internet and foto management and wifi work out of the box. Ah, and he really likes the wobbly windows, it is something to show off to his pensioner friends! For me, it is one less worry.
I subscribe to that as well! I am living in the south of Italy and all I can get is BBC Prime (the re-run channel) and BBC World through Sky satellite service. If anybody has managed a way to receive standard BBC channel through sat, please let me know!
This is a halfarsed attempt to get some hype going in the way Apple does. Hint, hint, hint, but no clear release schedule. Zune Scene editors are very hard to spot in the wild - you are more likely to meet them at Ms campus. What a joke.
You might want to have a look at fastmail.fm. Excellent imap provider and they also do webdav. Just point the mail bit of your domain (cname, dns something like that, check the faq) and you're done.
Gmail/domain apps does the job for one user, if you share a company mailbox with others IMAP is the way to go.
For some things it is worth paying.
I think you are making a lot of assumptions that say more about you than the post you are replying to. As many have pointed out, to relax and get in a different frame of mind you need to disconnect. It also needed to get some fresh views in you work life. Having said that, the way email and voip can change operations for small business owners is simply amazing. In the old days it would have been simply impossible for me to stay in another country, with friends, family or in rented accommodation with internet and just work as usual. The difference is of course that after work you have a totally different environment to explore, and it is great if you can do that without having to close your office. I travel around with a Macbook and a bluetooth headset to answer skype and sip calls during working hours - if i think it will be calm i just forward those two to my mobile. When staying somewhere longer I take with me a dect phone and a Grandstream voip adapter. I am waiting for the wifi phones to mature. The services used are the following: Skype with UK skype-in number and Skypho.net for SIP in Italy. Skypho.net also have uk numbers now, so I might be ditching Skype-in in the future. I have tested a lot of services and hardware, for example I did not like SIP on the Nokia E61 (wifi phone with sip client), it is too early for that. I settled for Skypho and SIP hardware also for office use as it simply is the most reliable and cheapest. As a sidenote, don't ditch your landline for a sip-account over cable, I have found the latency to be a major problem. ADSL is best. Bottom line: if you store your company data on a server, have a reliable (imap, fastweb.fm) mailhost and SIP with phone number you _can_ work anywhere and anytime. That does not mean you should.... I have ditched my blackberry and IM to be able to focus on work when working, and on everything that life has to offer when i am not. My mobile goes always off at 1900. Modern technology is an enabler to a more flexible life/work-style - you don't need to be stuck in an office to work, but you will still need to take vacations without dragging a lot of gear around. I am in no way affiliated to the companies mention, just a happy customer who has done his homework.
as many have pointed out, to relax and get in a different frame of mind you need to disconnect. It also needed to get some fresh views in you work life. Having said that, the way email and voip can change operations for small business owners is simply amazing. In the old days it would have been simply impossible for me to stay in another country, with friends, family or in rented accommodation with internet and just work as usual. The difference is of course that after work you have a totally different environment to explore, and it is great if you can do that without having to close your office.
I travel around with a Macbook and a bluetooth headset to answer skype and sip calls during working hours - if i think it will be calm i just forward those two to my mobile. When staying somewhere longer I take with me a dect phone and a Grandstream voip adapter. I am waiting for the wifi phones to mature. The services used are the following: Skype with UK skype-in number and Skypho.net for SIP in Italy. Skypho.net also have uk numbers now, so I might be ditching Skype-in in the future. I have tested a lot of services and hardware, for example I did not like SIP on the Nokia E61 (wifi phone with sip client), it is too early for that. I settled for Skypho and SIP hardware also for office use as it simply is the most reliable and cheapest. As a sidenote, don't ditch your landline for a sip-account over cable, I have found the latency to be a major problem. ADSL is best.
Bottom line: if you store your company data on a server, have a reliable (imap, fastweb.fm) mailhost and SIP with phone number you _can_ work anywhere and anytime. That does not mean you should.... I have ditched my blackberry and IM to be able to focus on work when working, and on everything that life has to offer when i am not. My mobile goes always off at 1900. Modern technology is an enabler to a more flexible life/work-style - you don't need to be stuck in an office to work, but you will still need to take vacations without dragging a lot of gear around.
I am in no way affiliated to the companies mention, just a happy customer who has done his homework.
I am also a new Mac user, since early January. Whilst I love my new machine (MacBook Core2 Duo) and the OSX those few application with "Brushed Metal" don't really fit in with what you call "whole Apple experience". Ironically Firefox has a more modern and proper theme then Safari.
I wonder if Safari 3 has shed it's metal look.
It is funny that Apple gets so much praise for it's consistant UI, where I am surprised by all the different looks.
Here are some programs I use regularly and often concurrently:
Safari: metal
Mail: light grey, Adresbook and Calender: metal - these 3 are often open next to each other. I don't see the logic, this is just slack.
iPhoto, iTunes: Dark grey
Apple Aperture: very dark brushed metal. A wonderfull application nevertheless. Pity I have to keep Photoshop just for artwork.
Ms Office: Pinstriped blue and while plus horrible floating taskbars. Unusable. I am currently deciding between NeoOffice (very slow on first launch) and my licenced copy of OfficeXP in Crossover (does not look to good).
Apple should really focus on UI look consistency in the next release - and please don't make stuff black like Vista, it'll look bad on my shiny white Mac!
It took me while typing this in Safari, my next post will be from Firefox!
I loved BeOS at the time (1998-99?) and I haven't seen anything that snappy since.... Wonder if one wanted cutting edge today, what system would you want: SuSE or Ubuntu Linux? Very pleasant, hardly innovative - where can you try out that new suse start menu in VMWare? Vista? Never seen it, if it is anything like WMP11 or IE7 I don't like it. OSX? From the few times that I have used friends Mac's and edited video's etc I must say it's very simple and intuitive, but hardly innovative. What about Leopard - is it worth putting forward a MacBook purchase? Thanks, Don.
Forgot the link to the photo's: http://www.flickr.com/photos/incalabria/sets/72157 594365218510/
It's a mix of Olympus C3000Z (2001) and Canon Eos 350d (2004) with crappy kit lens first and very nice Sigma lens (2005) later.
The war comparison is stupid indeed. As for markets, it is funny that I run Suse Linux without problems for years at home whilst being in employment.
Soon after starting my own business I found myself buying PC's and office licenses for compatibility reasons and because I had no time fiddling with operating systems anyway. That was 3 years ago. Last weekend for fun I downloaded Ubuntu for AMD64 to install on my Compaq desktop - no luck with 64 bits Nvidia and Sitecom wireless. From forums it appears possible to fix, but again, very time consuming. 32 bits was better in term of graphics but no wireless and OOo is still as sluggish as all those years ago. And that on an Athlon 3200 with 1Gb ram. mwah. Graphics on an old Medion laptop were also broken.
I really want to use Linux and I would buy a pre-installed box if I could find it (in Holland). I would continue with Ms office in Crossover though, that worked fine already years ago. Maybe I should buy a Mac and drop Linux for another 3 years?
There isn't really a point to this rant. If there was I would have made it clearer.
Dennis.
Thank you, I was thinking of getting a Canon because it looks nice in the bag with the other Canon gear ;-).
By the way, can you easily tell the pics taken with the new Canon Dslr as opposed to my 2001 3mp Olympus?
Any idea how many laptops are stolen with id badges in the side pockets?
Besides that, I it is stupid to make company data accessible by sticking a usb stick in a client. There _are_ ways of securing data - remote drive/homedir + encrypted local cache on client. Not exactly rocket science either.
Thank you. Which Sony?
Now, what is a good _compact_ for an DSRL user?
Small, light, cheapish or sturdy and yet some creative control. How about the new Nokia camera phones?
I would really appreciate any tips and experiences.
You think you can't go back to dial-up? Ha! After 5+ years on broadband I moved to a very rural area in Southern Italy where dial-up was not even an option the first year (2004...) so we had _2_ laptops sharing a 14k grprs line. We did setup a successfull business that way, did lots of mail and website coding!
After that we got 64k isdn - wow. Then, when mid 2005 adsl arrived to our village we were amongst the first to apply, and now 8 months later it is active! 640kbps, wonderfull, comfortable, but we did do well without. Cost wise it is not a big difference - we allways paid around 30 euro per month.
In case you are wondering where this little backwards town is: Briatico in Calabria. Well worth a visit!
imagine what they will do if it was a offending movie/act: take whole servers and backbones down? Oh the horror.
You are quite right: Theo van Gogh, a dutch producer was killed 2 years ago in a ritual muslim execution after making "Submission", a movie critical about the state of muslim women and sexuality.
It seemed quite nice, but I allready connect wireless to scanners, printers etc through an old and silent(p500) in the corner of my office. It also gives me a windows terminal when needed. Don't really see the added value for a small office.
It looks like you can't get a better deal if you _must_ have a wide angle, for example interior photography. I'll be getting one asap - I was close to spending $300 more for a Canon DSLR with a wideangle zoom lens. Unless of course I can find a 24mm lens (no zoom) that fits well on DSLR. Any suggestions? I have never worked out how lenses for analogue camera's compare on a DSLR. Would be great if someone could enlighten me.