Have you ever noticed that as you use your computer it seems to slowly build-up unique characteristics, and almost a personality? This happens with computers and other devices too. After a couple months of using a new computer, it will have characteristics that you put into it. For example you will have all your Windows or OS X settings, installed programs, files, and lots of other things. That alone is pretty unique, but there are odd unexplained things that happen too. You can write them off as bugs and glitches if you want, but they are unique to each computer. My PC, for example, randomly freezes and reboots with nothing to provoke it to do so. For awhile if I opened the “My Videos” folder, Windows Explorer would crash and reload itself. I couldn’t access any of the files in there for months, until the problem corrected itself one day. The computers at the local library are really bad about this. There’s this big table with 6 workstations on it. Those computers particularly would act totally differently even though they were the same make and model, running Microsoft Active Desktop. Some would run at different speeds, some wouldn’t run shockwave applets, one would have odd problems with Java applets, and another would mysteriously close your active window at random moments. They all had a totally different collection of spyware and toolbars too. This has been corrected by the network admin recently, but it’s starting to happen again. It’s not just PCs either. The pinsetters and scoring systems at the local bowling alley are ancient and do odd things too. On one lane the system would always start in French mode and would always not score any shots until one of the bowling center’s staff went back and messed with a circuit board in it. Just today the pinsetter would reset the pins and ready for my second ball, even though I hadn’t bowled by first yet. It only did it when the bowler before me fouled on his second ball, though.

I’m not attributing these odd happenings to anything other than bugs and general use, but isn’t it interesting that these weird things happen after the machine has been in use for a while?

NOTE: This is intended to be a humorous post targeted at people who are tired of Windows (and Mac owners). Do not take it seriously.

-Names
Windows: Boring. Microsoft sounds like a mattress company.

Mac: Cool, but ‘Apple Macintosh’ doesn’t really describe what the product is.

Winner: Mac.

-Coin Flip
Windows: Tails.
Mac: Heads.
Results: Tails, Heads. Heads.
Winner: Mac.

-Logo
Windows: A cool flag made of multicolored squares. Unfortunately they recently added a dorky blue circle behind it.

Mac: A really cool metallic blue picture of an Apple.

Winner: Mac.

-Google Fights
My PC crashed:11,600,000 results
My Mac crashed: 6,280,000 results
Winner: Mac.

-Reputation
Windows: Windows is known for crashing a lot, having a monopoly on the computer world, and being best used in the corporate environment.

Mac: The Mac OS is older than Windows, is used by most graphic artists and other “creative professionals”, and is generally considered to be more stable.

Winner: Mac.

-Commercials
Windows: That really stupid “Wow” commercial.
Mac: Those funny I’m a Mac commercials.
Winner: Mac.

-Company’s other products
Windows: The XBox
Mac: The iPod.
Winner: Mac, but Windows is close (XBox sales are pretty high)

-Overall Winner
The Winner is the Apple Macintosh by a landslide.

Ever heard of Smashing Magazine? Their tagline is “We smash you with the information, which will make your life easier. Really.” And they carry out their promise. Every couple days they post a new entry that literally does smash you with information. The posts vary in web-related topics (css, photoshop, html, php, useful sites, etc.). A lot of their posts consist of a list of links that they think you may find useful. The number of links varies — anywhere from a rare 5 to the largest I’ve seen so far: 83. You’d think that it would be unpleasant reading through 83 links, but it’s quite enjoyable. Smashing Magazine knows what their doing. Try their site out. If your a webmaster, you’ll enjoy it. You may even want to subscribe to their RSS feed. Here’s my current top favorite posts of theirs:

• Free Web Templates
  
• 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
• Web-Sites of the Month: The Best of January 2007
• 53 CSS Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without
• Online Generators

Microsoft has just released, for FREE, Virtual PC 2007. It’s a fully-functional program that has been updated to work with Vista. Now why would Microsoft give something away for free? How about this reason: You must buy Vista Ultimate Edition ($499 about) to legally use Vista virtually. So, that may be another option for Mac users wanting to virtualize Windows. Although…. Looking at the download page it seems as if it only runs on Windows! It looks like Microshaft may be using this just for more compatibility for people switching from XP to Vista.

PC World’s got a new page up on their website. It’s called “The Most Annoying Things About Vista“. Hehe. I agree with it totally. I especially like the part about Vista Home Edition. They, correctly, say that it has no reason to exist other than to let Microsoft say “Vista costs as low as $100″. They unfortunately didn’t mention the Vista EULA (End User License Agreement) which states that you must use the really exensive (think $499) version of Vista (Ultimate Edition) if you want to use it on a Mac in combination with Parallels Desktop or VMWare’s emulator. Basically they’re making you pay more because you’re not using it as often as they want. Going back to the subject of Vista Home Edition, it’s a much better deal to just use Windows XP if your computer can’t run one of the “greater” versions of Vista. I’m not going to get Vista. Period. I’d rather get a Mac next time.

I first saw this video clip on YouTube in early fall (around September 2006). It’s a demo held in Redmond, Washington of the speech recognition features of Windows Vista. It’s hilarious. The “Microsoft Guy” is dictating to the computer and it makes a mistake. He says “delete that” and it writes totally unrelated text after the first part. So the guy says “select all” and it writes a bunch of nonsense after it. It’s funny.

And the Coolest Game Console Ever Award goes to… The Nintendo Wii!

I’ve never actually used one (arg!!!), but from all the reviews, demos, etc. about it….

This thing is amazing. The controller (dubbed the Wiimote by fans) is motion-sensitive. For example, in the Wii Bowling game, you bowl by holding down the “B” button and you well…bowl. Just like real bowling (which I do by the way). In some games, you just point the Wiimote at the TV. LIke in 3d-shooter games, you’d just point the Wiimote where you want to aim and push one of the buttons.

The Wii is totally spectacular. It’s going to revolutionize the game console industry (it plays your old GameCube games too). Nintendo’s suggested retail price is $250. That’s almost cheep enough for me to want to get one. But, unfortunately, there’s a catch. As I write this, most stores (online and off) are either out of stock or charging $550 or more for the Wii.

Oh, and the 5th Harry Potter game (which will be out next summer) will use the Wiimote as a wand. You’ll cast spells by waving the controller in the air.

Hopefully it’ll come down to around $180 in a year or so. $250 isn’t too bad (still rather high though), but $550-$600 is outrageous.

I’ve talked about the ultra-cool Firefox add-on known as ScreenGrab in the past. Guess what. It now has Firefox 2.0 support! Head over to the ScreenGrab Homepage and grab a copy. In case you forgot, it allows you to (if you use Firefox) screen-capture whole pages instead of just the visible area.

What could be better than using Google to search your computer? Windows’s search feature is pathetic in case you haven’t noticed. Google Desktop is the answer. After it spends a couple of days looking over all your files and storing info about them in a database on your PC, it allows you to search through everything on your hard drive. Text, HTML, Video, Music, whatever! Just open up the Google Desktop page in your browser and search. You’ll get results instantly. No more waiting for 10 minutes like the Windows built-in search tool. Head over to desktop.google.com and download a copy. Try it out. If you don’t like it, uninstall it. Broadband is not required and you don’t need to be online to search. It’s free, try it.