Thoughts on Going PC: A Decade-Long Mac User Makes Peace with Microsoft

My post from a few weeks ago, detailing why I’d decided to switch to a PC from a Mac, really got some of your blood boiling. While there were a few folks utterly aghast at my decision to nix the shiny world of Apple for the starker, more sterile world of Microsoft, on the whole, I think most of you were pretty supportive of my choice. (As an aside: Mac Mini was still too expensive!)

The rundown: All in all, the whole computer cost us about $300 or so (including Windows 7), and a third of that was from an Amazon gift card we had. We used spare parts from a Dell we had on hand, as well as a new motherboard, processor, and power supply. An awesome friend of ours gave us the video card (both the first and second, more on that later) at no cost other than the promise we’d play WoW and D&D.The biggest expense ended up being Windows 7.  Now it all sits comfortably (and quietly) in an obsidian black box near my feet.

One of the things commenters on my first post asked for was an update as to what life was like after the switch. And indeed I wondered the same thing: what would working on a PC be like, ten years after starting with Macs? Truth be told, I had a short stint with Vista in about 2005 — but that experience was akin to some sort of torture. So I’ve got to say, initially my expectations really weren’t that high.

So, here are my first overall observations now that everything is fully functional and Tyrol the Cylon PC is now my day-in, day-out companion.

The Joy of the Buy

Buying parts for your own computer is both really exciting and really frustrating. I’ve never just been able to traipse into a computer parts store and buy stuff to put in my computer. So the experience has been kind of novel for me. I picked out my own power supply, ordered my processor and motherboard. Then I put them into my computer — with the help of my far more technically-inclined husband — and everything, after a fair bit of troubleshooting, actually works. It’s kind of magical!

However. Buying parts for your computer can also be frustrating. Finding cables and power supplies and then bringing them home to find out they don’t quite work, for example. Or having a video card simply fail. These things happen. But it’s part of the experience, this troubleshooting. And it’s super empowering to find the solution yourself! Which, most of the time, is the case. And if you’re having weird errors? Oh, Google Search is totally your friend.

The Operating System

Windows 7… is pretty awesome. I learned to type on an Apple IIe. Not until I was in high school, and my parents got an Aptiva (through which I became horrifically addicted to the game Torin’s Passage), did I have any schooling in the ways of Microsoft and IBM. And even then it was kind of crappy. Then I had that whole Vista debacle I mentioned before. I won’t even get into how much trouble Vista gave me, as these discussions are like beating a dead horse. Thankfully, Microsoft listened, and finally have an OS that is a breeze to use.

Windows 7 is easy to organize and, dare I say it, very Mac OS-like. It’s streamlined and easy to get used to. I no longer have the problem of files downloading into the netherspace (which was always my gripe with previous versions). Not to mention the search function is great. I think I’m doing more than I’ve ever done on a PC before, simply because it’s easier.

Plug and Play… No Really!

Devices. Oh, sweet little devices. I have a really cool phone that takes pictures and videos. But it wasn’t compatible with my Mac. I just plugged it in to the PC and, voila! Pictures. Videos. Right there. Extremely cool, magical, beautiful, awesome, fantastic. Peripherals and networking have also been a snap. Of course, this is somewhat expected as the vast majority of gadgets and whatnots are designed for use with PCs; however, having never had the money (or the available contract) to get an iPhone, this is still really exciting for me (and probably slightly annoying for the people I keep sending pictures to). Sorry, Facebook friends. The thrill will wear off soon enough.

Other Considerations

Shortcomings? I’d be lying to say it’s been easy. We had a video card meltdown, as I mentioned. We had some pretty weird errors as we went along, too. But all in all, it’s been over a week of me exclusively using the PC and, with so much of my job now in the cloud (at last count I had something like seven separate WordPress accounts), I can honestly say the experience isn’t really that different than it was on my Mac. Gaming is better, sure. Media sharing and networking is easier. But so much of the computer experience these days has less to do with hardware than it does to the internet at large that it’s really not as big of a transition as I expected.

My only significant complaint? The beta version of Scrivener has too many bugs, which means I’m back to using Word for writing. Hopefully when it’s out of beta, Scrivener won’t eat all my formatting and send me stomping into the next room. For now, it’s Notepad for posts and Word for novels.

If I had the money, would I splurge on a MacBook or an iMac? It’s possible. I don’t know if Apple will ever stop being appealing to me, even if I know better on some level. They are great computers that work for a very long time and do some very remarkable things. However, the price of that dependability and greatness is high–far too high for me. For now I’m pleased as punch — and admittedly proud — of putting this really nifty little computer together.

Geek Achievement… unlocked. 40G.

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Sperm Docs on Laptops: Legs Akimbo!

Laptop cooling pads may do little to help prevent raised testicular temperature — a potential cause of fertility problems — according to a new study. Instead the best policy may be for men to keep their legs apart.

The study, published in the Fertility and Sterility magazine, looked into ways of mitigating the effects of a laptop on scrotal temperature. Although there are no clear studies conclusively proving that laptops can damage fertility, it is known that a raised temperature can damage sperm.

Indeed, the need to keep sperm at the correct temperature is the reason why the testicles are outside the body and thus slightly cooler than the body’s usual internal temperature.

The study was carried out at the State University of New York. It involved 29 test subjects, meaning the precise details may not accurately represent the general public, but any clear general conclusions should be correct.

The participants used laptops in three different set-ups, each for 60 minutes of continuous use. The first set-up was to sit with legs together, the second with legs together while using a lap pad below the laptop, and the third to sit with legs at a 70 degree angle.

The changes in temperature on both sides of the scrotum were measured after each session. In all three cases there were increases: with legs together the average overall increase was 2.435 degrees Celsius; with legs together and a lap pad; the average increase was 2.1 degrees; and with legs apart and a lap pad, the average increase was 1.44 degrees.

All three figures raise concern as it’s believed a temperature increase of as little as one degree Celsius can affect sperm quality. The researchers timed how long it took to reach this one degree increase and found it was 11 minutes with legs together, 14 minutes with legs together and a lap pad, and 28 minutes with legs apart and a lap pad.

Yelim Sheynkin, who led the study, said people shouldn’t panic as using a laptop wouldn’t automatically make you infertile: rather, frequent use might contribute to problems. He said lap pads made little significant difference and could even lead to a false sense of security and cause users to keep laptops on their laps a longer time.

Instead Sheynkin’s advice is that there’s no way to avoid the fact that laptops cause heating, and men should mitigate the problems by keeping their legs apart and severely limiting the time they keep laptops on their laps.

(Image credit: Flickr user M.V. Jantzen)

Kill Bill Cake [PIC]

Barbarann Garrad from Cake Rhapsody created this awesome Kill Bill-themed cake for her daughter’s 9th birthday. Check it out:

The bottom represents “the bride”… the scene in which Beatrice is gunned down in the opening scene. There is white bridal lace with blood and realistic chocolate bullets. The next tier is a Japanese pagoda. This represents the scene toward the end in which Beatrice fights the “crazy 88’s” and O-Ren Ishii. It has the traditional rooftiles and curves and bamboo of a pagoda, all edible. The top is yellow with a black stripe to represent the suit Beatrice wears when she is fighting O-Ren Ishii. It also features an edible piece of notebook paper made of fondant with Beatirice’s “death List five” , and katana.

[Source: Flickr]

Why You Should Only Buy Linux Pre-Installed on your Systems

By Mackenzie Morgan
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Many Linux users are geeks, and vice versa, and geeks can build their own systems or at least install an OS, so why should we buy systems with Linux pre-installed? Why is it so important if the OS is free? Let’s talk about a little thing called “market share.”

You’ll see a lot of talk about market share on the Internet, but usually it confuses market share and installed base. See, geeks tend to care about installed base. We’ll argue with the people quoting 1% market share that it can’t be right because how can companies know whether we reinstalled the OS or not? And that’s just the point. Generally, they can’t. But what changes when we change our OS isn’t the market share; it’s the installed base. The market share is still based flatly on the number of units sold—the thing business people care about.

Why should we care about the difference? Well, it’s really hard to get a good handle on the installed base of just about anything. Mozilla can tell us how many installers for Firefox were downloaded, and I can tell you that the Firefox_Setup.exe on my flash drive was used to install on at least 5 random people’s computers, but then the people who downloaded and never got around to finishing the install or went back to Internet Exploder get in the way, and it’s a big mess. It’s not hard to count the number of units bought or downloaded (“shipped”), though. Number of units shipped is what business people use to determine whether they’re doing a good job or a lousy job, too. That’s where we come in.

Ever heard of “voting with your wallet”? The more of us buy our systems with Linux pre-installed, the more the market share percentages sway. What happens then? Then hardware manufacturers get more pressure put on them to play nice. Then ISPs get more pressure put on them to actually support Linux users. Then software developers (yes, game houses too) get more pressure put on them to port their programs. It might not be much pressure—yet—but the smart ones will see the writing on the wall. Already we’ve seen Dell pressured into selling machines with Ubuntu, and they, in turn, pressured Broadcom into releasing working drivers. It’s all fine and dandy for us to try to yell at various companies “please support us!!!”, but until there are signs in the market (you know, the one with money) that Windows’ share is shrinking, they can keep on ignoring us.

If you’re convinced that you need to do something about this market share issue with your next computer purchase, where do you actually find a hardware vendor offering Linux as an option? There is actually a handful of them. In the Ubuntu world, System76 is popular on the “support a small business” front. For those wanting a more mainstream brand, Dell, as mentioned above, is the way to go. Watch out though. Sometimes they put sales on some components on the Windows-equivalent systems and not on the Ubuntu ones. When this has been noticed before, they’ve promptly fixed it and applied the sales to the Ubuntu systems too, so just make sure you check so you can email them if they got it wrong again. I’m a repeat-customer of ZaReason, since they will ship Kubuntu, not just Ubuntu, and I like KDE. Really, they’ll ship just about any distro you request as long as the drivers are there. System76 and ZaReason tend to appeal more toward the quality-and-service-over-price buyer, so if budget is really your limiting factor, have a look at Sub300 (oddly with a URL of Sub500, go figure). It’s Linspire, but you were going to reinstall over Windows anyway, right? At least you can count into the market share game and try to influence the industry.

What do you think? If every system running a Linux distro had been purchased that way, and if no Linux users were using User Agent Switcher to masquerade as Windows and avoid silly webpage blocks, what sort of statistics would we see about operating systems? If I missed it, who is your favourite vendor for hardware running a Free Software OS?

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