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…however, strangely, my Windows is all doom-and-gloom.

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Yesterday, after realizing I was running out of drive space on my trusty MacBook Pro, and knowing that I’d need a Windows machine for certain upcoming school requirements, I decided to wipe my Windows XP Boot Camp partition from my MBP, and went out and bought an Acer Aspire X1200 desktop PC. I was attracted by its quietness, small form factor, decent specs, and great price.

Now, this computer looks fine on paper. Maybe everyone was right, I overpaid for both Macs that I’ve bought in the past 4 years. Looking at the specs, it’s hard to argue that for $450, this looks like a fantastic deal, and sure beats paying $600 for a new Mac Mini, right?

Wrong.

My short amount of time with this PC has done nothing but remind me why I will pay just a little extra (and sometimes a little less, depending on your research) for a Mac, rather than suffer through a PC hell again.

First off, setup of this little bugger took about 30 minutes. That includes unboxing, plugging everything in, and first boot-up, where Windows Vista ran some sort of “speed test” on the machine to check its performance, and install its bloated mess onto the machine. 30 minutes. I could have been actually USING my computer in 1/6 of the time had I bought an Apple computer. I know from experience.

And that doesn’t include the time I took uninstalling all the crap software that Acer decided to include with the machine.

Oh yeah, this computer didn’t even come with a recovery/restore disc. I had to burn my own.

My old Mac Mini (which I no longer have) took 5 minutes for me to set it up and be up and running. And that was in 2005. I paid about $600 for it.

“Cheap” does not equal “Value”.

Fitting that the embedded ethernet adapter died after only one day. From looking at the customer reviews on BestBuy.com, I’m not the only one that’s had that problem. I’m returning this machine tomorrow for a refund, rather than try to deal with Acer Tech support, who would only tell me to do everything I’ve already tried to troubleshoot the problem.

So, the next time someone tries to say things like “Macs are so expensive, why pay that much for a computer when you can pay so much less for a PC?”, I say again, “Cheap” does not equal “Value”.

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I’m just going to link to it. what a joke.
I’m almost speechless at the level of misinformation, ignorance and general stupidity the author shows when trying to explain the new features of Apple’s upcoming OS X “Leopard” operating system, and how they relate to Windows Vista. This is unreal. It has to be a joke.

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As I mentioned the other day, iTunes was under some scrutiny in regards to it’s new “Mini Store” feature. Well, Apple has responded, and responded in the right way. Here’s a screenshot of what you’ll see now (click on the thumbnail, dude). ’nuff said.

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Interesting price comparison of a MacBook Pro and a Dell Inspiron E1705

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As reported this week, after Apple released iTunes 6.0.2 on Tuesday, people have had growing concerns over what many are deeming as “spyware” - the biggest new feature of the software, the iTunes “MiniStore“.

The MiniStore is a little bar at the bottom of the iTunes window that displays things such as information about the artist currently playing/displayed, as well as a “Listeners Also Bought…” section, that changes whenever you click on a song in your library.

The issue that is getting people all riled up is the fact that this MiniStore is on by default in this new version of iTunes, and it does in fact transmit a little data on what you’ve clicked on to Apple (by way of a third party). Apple claims to discard this data, and says they are not using it for any other reason than to disply relevant information in the MiniStore.

I think the main issue is that this feature is on by default (there is an option to turn it off, which stops the data from being transmitted), and they didn’t really mention this feature would be included in the update’s informational changelog. I would not go so far as to classify this as spyware, but it is somewhat concerning that it was implemented in this manner. My hope is they release another update soon that explains the MiniStore in more detail, and turns the feature off by default. It should be interesting to see what comes of this. In the meantime, people are really getting their panties in a wad over this. I think that’s a little bit of an over-reaction, personally…

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Yestrday at Macworld Expo 2006, Apple announced a new Intel-based iMac and MacBook laptop, and may I say, I’m starting my Xmas wishlist extra early this year.

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Google has finally released a beta version of their pretty cool Google Earth app for Mac OS X. Sweet.

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Funny Foxtrot strip re: Steve Jobs’ Keynote (scheduled tomorrow at Macworld) and the rumors that always swirl around before one of these things…

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I’m pretty excited to hear about what kinds of new things to expect from Apple soon from Macworld…

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