Crackberry

Now I get it. The BlackBerry prayer. Most of us have laughed at the ubergeeks with their BlackBerry's checking their email at all times and in all places. I mean, who cares about their email when they're out on a hike or watching a hockey game? It's all about trying to be important, those of us have-nots like to say. Look at that guy, he thinks he's so cool.

Come to find out, he is cool. The blackberry is surprisingly functional. I've just received my first one, a Verizon 7130e. It's complete with tethering option to become a full-fledged broadband modem for my laptop. Yep, broadband. Well, in certain select cities… Still, it has Internet access and email. Oh yeah, it's also a phone. But really who cares if it's a phone? Well I do for one. When the first PDA phones came out, you'd see people holding what appeared to be books to their head and talking. At least the bluetooth headset came along. Now the 7130e actually is close to a phone in looks as well as function. Maybe it's missing voice activated dialing, but let's not get too picky.

So why would your average user need to check their email before they go to bed, on the way to work, and pretty much everywhere else? Well, they don't. But they still will with one of these babies. There's some kind of strange euphoria when you can delete spam from the parking lot of your work before you go in. You KNOW your inbox will be clean so you can go get that cup of coffee first.

It's an addiction, no doubt about it. It's also one of the first ones to get it right.

Windows Vista

I recently went to a Windows Vista seminar, and have installed the current Beta. I think I like it, but it's pretty amazing that a Sempron 3000 with 1GB RAM and a 128MB video card ranked a 1 for performance. As a business OS, I'm not buying it…yet. Basically the functions of Aero, the graphical component of Vista, dynamically recognizes your hardware and adjusts it's performance accordingly. Very cool indeed. Of course our test machine ranked so poorly we couldn't even test any of the cool graphical components. We did install a 6600GT video card and jumped all the way to a 2. A few things did in fact change, but not much.

The seminar was more interesting. We were able to see some of the new features including using a USB flash drive for a swap drive. Nice. Everything was very pretty. How sweet. I just can't imagine the immense cost in migrating any medium sized business over to Vista. We have about 115 machines on site. The average user runs Outlook, Word and Internet Explorer. Throwing a $2000 gaming rig on their desks just isn't practical. Particularly for the advantages of cool graphics. Let's face it, they could be running Notepad and be just as productive.

Oh yeah, the MS rep recommended that everyone buy Vista Ultimate. Of course it's the most expensive of the 7 versions, but why wouldn't you want the best? At least it'll look really pretty while loading up Notepad.

I'm glad Vista has been delayed, it allows me to put off recommending not using it a little while longer.

How geek are you?

I'm pretty geek. Don't get me wrong, I still like girls and everything. It's just that I like technology. I mean, who doesn't? If you don't work on a computer all day you probably wish you did because digging ditches pretty much sucks. So I try to stay on the cool cutting edge right? Well it seems the only way to do that is to use Linux.

Now you don't just walk into a store and say "Hello, I'd like one Linux please." First you have to decide on a "flavor". Flavor? WTF is that? I like strawberry, but can't seem to find one. How about the Breezy Badger? Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Anyway, now that we've settled on a flavor, let's get to the point. The point is, what's the point? You'll need to spend a LONG time figuring out how to install, well, pretty much ANYTHING. Not that I'm against wasting time, it's what I do best. But come on people. It's not like a want a Mac so I don't have to ever think again but patching a kernel doesn't get me going you know? I've been told that Windows is like having a car with the hood welded shut. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Monkeys can't change the oil can they? OK, so that's a bad example, but still you get the idea. Why mess with it? Why spend countless hours trying to figure out the simplest things to do what? Make it look like Windows XP.

I'm not the biggest fan of Father Bill that's ever been born. As a matter of fact this whole world domination thing kind of pisses me off. But the biggest thing I've learned in using Linux is that Windows XP is pretty darn good. Not only can you perform wonderful tasks like writing a blog or surfing the web for pr0n but you can even play some pretty cool games. Try that with your Badger. Heck it's hard enough just getting the furry fellow to sit still.