P: forgot to tell you i found an MS update the other day that adds DVD and ISO burning to WinXP. Installed it to old PC but not tried it yet..

M: cool

P: also Nero 9OEM for £3

M: i have win7 now. it’s the future
M: cos it’s a bigger number

P: sorry nero isn’t the update…
P: i’ve got 7 too but other PC is XP

M: though really win98 should be the best

P: i liked windows word 5

M: how come, right, my windows is windows xp but word tells me it’s 2003?

P: what version of word?

M: it’s windows xp
M: so it shoudl be word xp but it says word 2003
M: so does that mean i’m actually on windows 2003?

P: probably.
P: word XP was 2002

M: damn – my printer’s nt compatible with windows 2003

P: can’t you incrrease the gigabytes?

M: it needs windows USB – apparently won’t work without that version
M: i have 1gigibytes of memory – is that enough? will i run out of space?

P: how many photos do you have in words?

M: think most of them go in there – words is the one where it shows a small version of the pictures, isn’t it?
M: can i delete the small pictures from there as it’s only the full size versions i’m bothered about

P: why does my broadband not make my PC faster?

M: ah, i know this one
M: it depends how many other people are using facebook at the same time. you see it’s only “up to” 8megagigabytes
M: which means you won’t get that full amount – AND even if you DID get the full 8 your hard drive is 250gigabytes so the 8 won’t actually increase your current computer

P: ah so if i’m downloading a game how many emails can i recieve

M: i don’t think you can get emails while a game is downloading?

P: my friend said you can because of the width of the bands and stuff

M: it would probably give you a virus as the email would mix in with the game anyway.
M: i woldn’t risk it.
M: unless it was a really fast game
M: then you could download the game before you even had chance to log in to aol webmail

The sad thing is, a lot of the statements here are things we hear real people actually saying…

Basically, in my proper computing years I’ve generally been a Windows user and had no major issues with it. I wasn’t OS-ist (I even have friends who are black, erm…, I mean who are Mac users) I just used Windows.

At the end of 2008 one of my bosses gave me his MacBook Pro (see here for proof: “…5 years later I’m on my third MacBook, one has been passed on to a colleague…”) as my Windows laptop was ageing rather badly. OK, I pestered quite a bit too to see what all the fuss was about Macs!!

Well, seeing as I sit at my laptop around 6-10 hours every day depending on workload it gave me plenty of time to ‘learn’ how to use the Mac. It was pretty straight forward and only a handful of Google searches, emails and MSN messages were required to get me knowledgeable about the basic, every day functions. 16 months on and I’m still probably classed as a newbie though but can do most things I need to do.

OK, so why the big divide between Mac and Windows users? To be honest, I don’t know but I think for most people it is largely how they were brought up. If you’ve been brought up using a Mac then you will prefer a Mac, ditto for Windows. The same is true, in my opinion, of TomTom and Garmin SatNav’s – in general users prefer the company they were ‘brought up’ with. Now, that’s not to say that allegiences can’t be switched – I was a Garmin man but have recently started using TomTom more and more. Likewise Griff tells us he moved from being a Windows user to a Mac user and hasn’t looked back since. With regards to operating systems I am still somewhere in between.

Both have their pro’s and cons. It’s pointless, in my opinion, just to say one is better than the other. You could make the same poor argument about which is better between a Ferrari and a Fiesta. Well, it’s a Ferrari, isn’t it? Well, no, actually, as I was referring to which is better for parking in a tightly packed car park in a busy shopping centre – in which case it would be the Fiesta. Which is better: Mac or Windows – well, what do you want it to do? For design work the Mac seems to do better – perhaps due to it’s better memory management when multiple programs are running. But for ease of networking I found Windows wins hands-down. Sharing files from a Windows machine took a matter of seconds and I could access them with read and write permissions from the Mac. Sharing files on the Mac took about 45 minutes with a lot of Googleing and faffing about in order to be able to access them with both read and write permissions through Windows.

I find the Mac is less customisable in terms of digging deep into the settings but then this does have it’s plus points. Less variation in settings means better overall compatibility. Also, Windows NEEDS more settings as the hardware it is running on can differ greatly. OSX runs on Apple Macs and Apple Macs alone. Apple know what hardware is in one of their machines from the outset and so the OS can be tailored directly for that. Windows needs to run on pretty much any hardware and that hardware is not designed nor built by Microsoft. Apple have the advantage there but this also shows that Windows is actually very versatile.

Regarding software I’ve found that you can find a Mac version of most Windows software and vice versa. The only real software issues I have with Mac are the lack of music library/players. iTunes is bad. I’ve fallen out with it after it failed to tag my mp3’s correctly and then wiped 10,000+ of my tags and artwork from all my files. So I now use MediaMonkey again in Windows but no similar software is available on the Mac. CD/DVD burning software is lacking for Mac too – OK I could use iTunes to burn a music CD but what if I need to burn 10? You need to keep going back and setting up the whole process 10 times. In Windows, even the most basic CD burning software will ask how many copies you want and then simmply tell you when to insert the next disc…!

So, in conclusion, which is better? Windows or Mac OSX? Microsoft or Apple? Meh… I like ‘em both and I’m happy to stay in No-Man’s Land for a good while longer!

PS – I want to point out that this isn’t simply a counter post to GriffBlog; I’d actually started writing this 3 days before his was posted! I’ve just been too busy to get it finished and published…

I like my music and I’ve been using Collectorz.com Music Collector for about 7 years now. MuC (as it is often referred to) is a fantastic piece of Windows and Mac database/collection software specifically for cataloguing CDs, LPs etc. It has a tonne of features that can be viewed via their website (I’m blogging this on my iPhone so am too lazy to fully review it!) but earlier today their ‘clz music’ app was finally added to the AppStore. So I bought it!

Now, instead of having to export my collection to HTML, format it, split it into groups by letter, upload and update the search database I can simply export it to my iPhone and view/search from there! It’s great! No more will I be rummaging around Discovery (local 2nd hand music shop) and end up buying a CD I already own (yes, I’ve done it a few times) or cursing the shopping center for no GPRS signal to check my collection online…

Oh, they also have software for movies, comics, books, photos most of which have iPhone apps to go with them.

I’ve also been playing with ‘Remote’ for the iPhone which works really well. Just to have the iPhone sat next to me to switch tracks without having to keep switching to iTunes itself – it’s really lazy but could be handy if I ever connected the laptop to the stereo for parties. Which I might now it works properly!

—————-
Now playing: Nerf Herder – Easy Mark
via FoxyTunes

Now, on the desktop I can use FoxyTunes to control my music and add ‘currently listening to’ links to blog posts etc but on the Mac I can only do that with iTunes as there is no Spotify support in FoxyTunes. A bit of googling tells me that the Windows version of FoxyTunes can control Spotify with a bit of fiddling but this does not work on Mac OSX.

So, what I’m after is anyone who can tell me a way to get FoxyTunes to work with Spotify on the Mac! Either that or for FoxyTunes developers to add Spotify support officially!

*EDIT: just to clarify, the networking ability of iTunes is poor – not the networking ability of the Mac Book Pro!!!