Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The Difference Between Mac OSX and Windows

Ok...I switched from Windows to a Mac last fall. For years, I always felt that Windows was the best platform. Plenty of software, pretty easy to use, and since my first experience with a computer was on an old MS-DOS machine, as technology progressed, I worked my way up from DOS to Win3.0, Win95, and finally WinXP.

Life was good. Yet, in the last few years, I kept hearing about how much better Apple's products were. Then, Apple went to the Intel chipset, and now you could run dual operating systems - both OSX and Windows. Since I moved to a Mac - I've quickly replaced my Windows software with Mac software. I rarely boot into Windows anymore...my Mac boots in less than a minute, while WinXP takes a good 10 minutes. And, never works as well, either.

So - now I've found these videos on YouTube that give a much more graphical description of the differences.

This is how things work on a Mac:



This is how things work on a PC.



Think Apple should use this in their next commercials with Justin Long. :-)
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Tuesday, May 06, 2008

The Coolest Desk!

I attended the 3rd Annual Phoenix Contemporary Design Fair the other week. (And, yes - this blog posting is not of the most timely nature - I'm sure I've been 'scooped'!). Anyway, this year, the furniture design competition included what might be the coolest desk I've seen yet!

Seems that every desk I see seems to be the expression of "bigger is better". Yet, the bigger the desk I have, the more crap gets spread out over it! Plus, what's the point these days of a desk? Where in the past, you needed buttloads of room for your typewriter, your big-ole stack of paper-based projects, and a photo of your significant other - now, it's a place for your keyboard, monitor, and mouse. Oh...and you still need to keep your significant other happy by having room for their photo as well.

Well, of everything I saw at the design fair, the coolest idea was the the example of minimialism. Or, in other words, what would Steve Jobs make if he made a desk? The answer is the OneLessDesk. A local firm by the name of Heckler Design (www.hecklerdesign.com) has build a stainless steel desk - basically a hoop for your monitor to rest on, an out of sight rear-facing shelf that lets you hide our wires, power strip, and external hard drives, as well as USB hubs and small speaker. The shelf is ventilated to keep everything cool. A smaller "hoop" slides out, giving you a place for your keyboard and mouse.

What I like most - is when you slide the keyboard "lower desk" is slid under the "upper desk" - it only sticks out from the wall 12". That's right - one foot! Why the hell didn't this exist when I was in college - this would have been a hell of a lot better than a couple of cinder blocks and a slab of plywood!

And, it's not wimpy, either. It's made of stainless steel - and with it's industrial-clean look, it's not something you need to hide in your home office!

Here's a photo of what it looks like:

So, if you are looking for something that is clean, simple, functional - someplace where you could park your iMac and feel proud to have it sitting there - I'd say this is the best there is!

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