I am well aware that often times I am a power user and I understand operating systems and networking very well. The goal is to find a solution that is easy to use that I don’t have to manage.

The questions and challenges I was having do not seem to be that far off the beaten path from a typical use case in my opinion. First a little background on the hardware, operating systems, and services involved with the issue. Using my frequent traveller reward points I recently purchased two iPod Touches, my wife has an iMac, I have a MacBook Pro, and we are using an Airport Extreme to connect all this together at home. While I am traveling I often use iChat to talk with the wife. She had a MobileMe/mac.com paid single user account and I had a complimentary mac.com account for use with iChat. She also uses the iDisk and backup tools included with MobileMe. We tried sharing documents using the iDisk but configuring it for a secure connection was not as easy as hoped. So we changed to the free version of Dropbox (I get a referral reward of more storage if you use it; even the free version) to allow for easier sharing.

I did not think anything of this decision to use Dropbox, then came our iPod purchases. The iPod Touch feature set had some things that we thought would make our lives easier. It appeared that MobileMe was going to be the service that was going to make all these things work. The goal was to be able to do the following:

1. Share calendars
   As alluded I travel quite a bit for work, so being able to keep my comings and goings straight can get to be tricky
2. Share files
   Already handled via Dropbox but if we could integrate it with MobileMe and make it easier, even better
3. Share contacts
4. Continue to use iChat
5. I also had additional uses:
   1. Ability to read and write personal email from the iPod
   2. Keep the contacts and calendars on the iPod synchronized
   3. Have some basic files on there as well
      Once again previously done with Dropbox but looking for easier integration
   4. The fun feature was to be able to have palindromic email addresses
      I am not going to publish the e-mail addresses here for fear of spambots, but my more astute readers can probably figure them out. My domain is bradfordbenn.com, the domain for MobileMe is me.com. Get it?

So far after a week of “use” the following the results have not been as hoped for. Perhaps my expectations were too high but for being the “easier” solution in terms of marketing positioning, it does not meet my expectations. However before I go into the entire diatribe, I do want to give Apple credit and kudos for their technical support, when I have hit a problem contacting support has been quick and easy.

The first sign of trouble came when trying to register under the wife’s account after expanding it, and paying more, for a family account. This process took over 40 minutes with Technical Support. I know this time is correct as the transcript contains time date stamps. I wanted to transfer my complimentary account name to the paid account, the online help indicated that it would be possible. So I went ahead and tried to register it, rejected, “invalid username or password”. Maybe I “misremembered” my information, but being that my username is my name, and was active as a complimentary account, I did not think that was possible. I checked the Keychain application on my MacBook Pro and verified that I had the proper password. The combination of username and password still did not function. I thought, okay maybe I was confused as to how to register. My complimentary account was under mac.com and MobileMe uses me.com, so maybe it wasn’t adding an existing account, perhaps it was create a new one. The directions said “use the button” so I was using the button, but things can be wrong or unclear. So I tried again with the creation of a new account; sorry that account name is active.

Time to contact Technical Support via their online chat. I follow the directions and connect and write the question, the queue system says it will be eight minutes waiting. A reasonable amount of time given the wait times on other Tech Support contacts. The agent came on after about a minute. I explained the problem I was having. The chat starts off reasonably enough with the standard exposition, I did not feel as if I was being talked at except for when the webpage address of help was sent back to me. I was following the directions on the help file and by the user agent. I was able to recover the password for the complimentary account through the self serve web application. I then took that and went to the page Set Up Family Member Account > Convert existing> and type into the Member Name “BradfordBenn” and the password into password and it responds “Unable to convert account This is an invalid membername or password”. The agent indicates that the username “is not a valid mobileme account. You should be able to add it as a sub account. You will choose to create anew account.”

So then I tried that again, and it still comes as the username as “unavailable” Hmmm the two results seem opposed to each other. The agent agreed, but I could tell he was a little incredulous of the problems I was having. He suggested creating a test account, so I used our dog’s name. That was the first sign that there was something odd going on. When I set it up with Proper Case, the MobileMe system response was username “is unavailable but the suggested member names are …” with one of them being the exact same name however all lower case. I then tried the username I wanted all lower case, that worked. However at no point in the documentation of the user creation process or the first 35 minutes of the chat was this mentioned. I do not think the agent knew the fact either. When I send an e-mail to the new account it is case INsensitive, so the case sensitivity does not seem to be through the entire system. We all know that there are tools that can convert a mixed case phrase to a single case, so that could have been handled behind the scenes more elegantly.

That was an inconvenience but we got it straightened out, and I was signed up. All should be working now, right? Wrong. But you already know that or else I wouldn’t be writing this post.

I wanted to share my calendar with my wife. Now by share I should actually say collaborate with my wife as that is more correct. So I created a calendar using iCal 4.0, I clicked the Publish button and got the resultant link which iCal queued up for me so that all I needed to do was select her e-mail address for Address Book using Mail. I figured that would allow her to make and add things to the calendar as well. After all the page http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/ said “Add an event on your iPhone and it appears in the Calendar application on me.com in seconds, then syncs to your computers. You can even manage multiple calendars. So you’ll never miss a lunch date, soccer game, or important meeting again.” In fairness it does not indicate that multiple people would be able to collaborate with each other, I took that from “manage multiple calendars” coupled with the fact that the free Google calendar allows for the sharing of calendars. I figured that MobileMe as a pay service would offer that feature, it did not.

I figured it was operator error and I was doing something wrong, so off I went to the online documentation again. The MobileMe help page only has documentation up to iCal 3.0; however the documentation that is there (for iCal 2.0) indicates: “With MobileMe Calendars, you can view your iCal or Outlook calendars online and make changes online at any time.”

You do not need to share your account use name and password for others to see your calendar data.  Instead, you can publish and share your MobileMe Calendar as read-only.” In my opinion the verbiage implies one should be able to share it as read only or allow a user to make changes online. So I continue digging going to the article it references for more help that one is about iCal 3.0. So once again I go to online Chat Support.

I ask how to setup the iCal share so that it is not just view but has the ability for authorized users to make edits to it. This feature is supported in the MobileMe Address Book integration. The support agent informs me that I “won’t be able to do that unfortunately unless she just uses your account on her phone and computer.” So I ask a few more questions “When I publish through MobileMe is my calendar public or can I restrict who can see it?”

Support Agent “no you can’t restrict who can see it however the person would have to know the exact address of the  ico feed just to even gain access to it”

I do some more thinking and ask about placing on secure network sites such as DropBox or JungleDisk. I can export to it, if I figure enough I might be able to publish to it. However they would still not be able to make changes.

So I am now thinking about this some more and realizing that MobileMe is not really a good value for the performance given what one gets for it. It really isn’t even secure with sharing your information. The calendars are wide open, one would just have to run a directory search or guess at some of the names. I am sure that there are plenty of people with the default name of “untitled calendar” or “My Calendar” selected.

Now to their defence, there is a feedback page http://www.apple.com/feedback/, But I figure I would overflow the pages.

After thinking about this situation more, I can share a calendar using Google but I have not figured out how to do contacts yet. I can purchase hosted Exchange services that will allow for the sharing of the calendar and contacts, while not free; neither is MobileMe it is $150 a year for a family, $99 for an individual. Is it really the best solution for the money?

MobileMe does integrate fairly well into the Mac environment, but it does not seem to have all the features completed.

My next rant will be about the software functionality of Apple’s offerings… but that is the next one. Part of it was posted here

The comment came in response to the post “Offline Writing“, I have gotten a comment or two from people I do not know, but this one looked a little too generic to be a real response. The response was

“Well, the post is actually the greatest on this worthy topic. I concur with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your upcoming updates. Saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the exceptional clarity in your writing. I will directly grab your rss feed to stay privy of any updates. Gratifying work and much success in your business endeavors!”

The e-mail was from Gmail, the author’s IP address was from France and the URL for their website is from Czech and about money transfers and advances. So I think it is spam, and marked it as such. The reason that is seems to be spam to me is, They commented in December saying they were looking forward to my upcoming updates, from a post in March that I have already made follow up comments on. That plus the fact that the last sentence does not apply to a personal website. The approach is unique and a new way to get the website links up. Just something to be aware of. for those of you out there.

After getting this spam, I decided it was time to update my purging of my Twitter spam followers. I then thought about it, do I want to have it still be public of should I make it private. The main concern is the privacy and security for the physical world by people knowing where and when I am, but then I shoot a big hole in it by having a website with a blog on it. I guess I could simply make my blog password protected, and only have invited people know about it. The thought spoils the aim I had in starting it in the first place, to share ideas, thoughts, events… etc. Then I thought about making it so that one has to register and then once registered the blog is open. I think anyone who has administered anything with a password knows that there will be an additional effort as people constantly lose them. The logic starts to wrap itself up pretty well in a circular form. What to do? I started thinking about perhaps having some blog posts protected, and others not. I wanted to look to see if WordPress can do that, however I am in a place with no internet access as I alluded to previously. (see, a little vague as to where I am; eh?)

I am still trying to figure an easy way to virtualize a LAMP server so I can travel with it and run it as a virtual machine under VMWare Fusion. I do this for the Windows OS I still use for a few applications that don’t work under Mac. I do not want to become an expert at installing and configuring a LAMP server, I want to be able to have a testing server that can travel with me. I do not want to simply turn on the server in the Mac, as there may be some idiosyncrasies between the Mac OS and the LAMP server. It has not been easy to find a simple solution for this one yet, but I have not given up yet. I am going to wander over to the VMWare forums and see if anyone has a solution.

I have both Parallels and Fusion to allow me to virtualize an OS for my Mac, and have found that the VMWare forums have better signal to noise most of the time, however I like the way that Parallels has decided to handle USB Human Interface Drivers a little better. I also do like that when I called Parallels about a work issue I was troubleshooting, Parallels connected me with a real program that worked through the use case process with me and called me back with answers and contact information if I hit the issue again. Then again, I have not had to call VMWare yet. So you may ask, which is better? I can’t tell you, I can tell you to try both and decide for yourself. Mine came down to the fact that VMWare ran a little faster and I knew more people who use it if I get stumped.

These type of questions come up very often and there is often no one answer that applies to everyone. An example I use is a question that came up a few days ago on the Digital Grin Forum, which is better for running Adobe Creative Suite; Mac or Windows? The answer is that of course it varies on your needs and other things to consider, but people often expect there to be a definitive answer. I wonder if people are looking for reassurance or an answer when they post some of these questions.

The Adobe Creative Suite issue is still causing me heartburn, as the speed at which they ran from supporting a product is disappointing. From a technical standpoint, I understand how they decided to not update previous versions of Creative Suite (anything before CS4) to support Mac OS X 10.6; a.k.a Snow Leopard. But the fact that when CS3 was the current version they had some challenges when one updated the Mac OS X to 10.5, a.k.a Leopard. I was patient and waited for them to fix the issue. I was disappointed but understand how it can happen. Under Snow Leopard, I cannot use Adobe Acrobat Distiller, basically the printer emulator, at all. (Acrobat was the package that had trouble under Leopard.) This coupled Couple this with the fact that the “Updater” that Adobe launches each time the application is launched, it is extremely frustrating. Luckily Mac OS X has the ability to create a PDF built in.

I did the searches to try and figure out how to turn off the “Updater” under Mac OS X; as there is not a simple preferences box to check or uncheck; one has to create a custom file and place it in the proper location. The directions are less than helpful. The directions are as follows:

1. Using a text editor or plist editor, create a new file named “com.adobe.AdobeUpdater.Admin.plist” in the folder /Library/Preferences
2. In this new .plist file, create a child at the root named “Disable.Update”
3. Set the Class of this new child to Boolean with a value of “Yes”

I was stumped, so I asked a programmer friend of mine, HanClinto, who is actually doing development of a gaming tool on his Mac. He was stumped as well. even once we got it figured out, it was to functioning, so I once again asked at DGrin and they suggested another location.

What truly irks me about this situation, is it is not an inexpensive software suite. I have been a customer with them since Aldus Pagemaker, Macromedia Freehand, and Adobe Type Manager – early 1990’s. I have tried to keep up when I can afford to. However I have not seen any real reason for going up to CS4 and a very steep upgrade price. Couple this with the fact that in my opinion Mac OS X going from 10.5 to 10.6 is not a major revision, that would be going from 10.5 to 11. This is akin  to a service pack in my mind. One should not expect this to be such a faster turn over rate nor so expensive. I believe that Adobe, as is many other software developers, to a subscription approach, keep updating the software to keep the revenue coming in. That is understandable; however the pricing structure is not. It is more expensive for me to upgrade my existing package (Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium) to the current version of it, than it is to purchase the Complete Package (Adobe Designer Premium) as a student.  So I am very much stuck. Being that I don’t use these tools professionally (I do use them at work under Windows XP SP 3 and a different license) I have a hard time paying as high a fee for an upgrade. The reason I got the suite is that I want to work in the same software environment at work as I do at home. It is advantageous in both directions, I hone my skills and can apply what I learn in my personal time at work. Our official graphics artists and I have even been trading tips and tricks, so it does work.

I will say that I do like how similar the environments are in both OS’s for Adobe’s products. Microsoft among others could learn a lot from them. I have stopped using Microsoft Office for Mac as it is so different from the Windows version. I am still disappointed with iWork under Mac, there are some features (pivot tables for example) that just aren’t there. I even tried to do the trial of the updated version iWork 09; however I could not see if it addressed just the basic thing of working with Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows better as I am some what of a power user in there. However that even failed. It can open an Office 2007 format document, but it can not save into one – you have to export it. If I do the same thing in Microsoft  Office 2007 opening a 2004 document, it allows me to save it in the older format and tells me what the problems will be, it allows me to work with it just fine.It also does not support many features I use often. So I can’t really interchange my work easily with others from Mac and once again, a different environment. Good thing I got Appzapper, time to get rid of iWork ‘09.

It seems cranky, I know, but these are the things that have been kind of irksome over the last few weeks to me. Aren’t computers supposed to make things easier? I have no problem with people making a profit, I have a problem with people gouging. I have no problem with wanting things to be a little different and unique between application, but if you advertise that one can exchange files with other applications, do not have some many problems; make it transparent to the user.

Let me explain a little. I was thinking of posting a humorous post about the magnet that was distributed during the health screening at work. I understand that they are trying to have some fun and to make sure that we have all the pertinent numbers. I wanted to scan the fun part of it. I placed it on the scanner section of my Canon MP600, and pressed the buttons on the control panel as, nothing happened. I tried a few different things; nothing worked. I figured I had Windows XP SP 3 running under VMWare Fusion already, I will try it in there. Connected the printer/scanner to the Windows OS and it popped up asking if I wanted to install the new driver; it did that three times: printer, scanner, and card reader. After that was complete I simply clicked on the scanner in Explorer and started scanning. It cropped to the proper area, asked me where to save the scan and that was it.

I still wanted to get the drivers installed into Snow Leopard, I figured that perhaps I did not update the drivers when I did the installation. Sure enough when I went to the Canon website I found that the drivers I had installed were out of date. Wait, I had to manually go there and look, Windows prompted and asked me about drivers. Then the Canon website navigation approach was more complex than needed. One could see on the download page that there were four things to download; they were not available as one download. When one clicked on the link, it actually spawned a new window via Java so that one could accept the user agreement, then download it. However it also navigated you aware from the page, so I had to keep going back to it. Not very fast, not an Apple issue, a Canon issue.

After that I figured I would read through the documentation for the things I downloaded to see what I needed and what was superfluous. So I opened up the read me files. The one for Easy-PhotoPrint EX was not very helpful or even worth including. Here it is in its entirety:

*******************************************************************
Canon Utilities
Easy-PhotoPrint EX Version 3.0.5 for Mac OS Instructions
Copyright CANON INC. 2007-2009
*******************************************************************
——————————————————————————
CONTENTS

Before You Get Started
Introduction
About Trademarks
Product Contents

*******************************************************************
Before You Get Started
*******************************************************************

Introduction —————————————————————

Thank you for using Canon Utilities Easy-PhotoPrint EX.
This product is a handy application program that allows you to create and print your own album, calendar, and stickers using the images you recorded with your digital camera. And furthermore, you can easily print borderless photos and so on.

About Trademarks ——————————————————–

- Macintosh and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in
the U.S. and other countries.
- All brand names and product names mentioned in this document are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Product Contents ———————————————————

This product includes the following items.

- Canon Utilities Easy-PhotoPrint EX
(hereafter called Easy-PhotoPrint EX)
Easy-PhotoPrint EX is an application program that allows you to create and print your own album or calendar, etc. using photos and other images.

- ReadMe
This file. It provides important information about Easy-PhotoPrint EX.

I am still looking for the important information. I also had to do two restarts of the Mac as part of the process of installing the Canon drivers. Did I mention yet that doing it under the Windows XP environment under VMWare Fusion it simply connected and worked? The buttons still don’t function under either OS, but I can now scan under both environments. To make things even more fun, the auto cropping and color is different between the two.

Macintosh Scan (Click for full size):

Macintosh Scan - Click for Larger

Windows Scan (Click for full size):

Windows Scan - Click for larger

I figured I would post here what I learned from a quick study over the past week.  I am following 40 streams, 32 posted something in the past week, there were a total of 522 tweets, or an average of 16 tweets over the past week. However there was one person who posted 208 Tweets in one week, the vast majority of which were very repeative and redundant. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a graph worth?

40% From one stream

In addition the person also put down an identifier so that they would trend and are getting much of the information from AlertDeck. So that person is now not being followed now. The disappointing part is that they actually have something valuable to say; they have just started adding to much noise in trying to market themselves.

So my warning is that marketing via Twitter can be done, but if there is no content everything gets turned off. Stay tuned… I might decide to reveal who the offender is.

Oh yeah, I have also decided that Apple’s iWork’s Numbers ‘08 is not very powerful when it comes to collating data as I still had to do much manually instead of just doing a Pivot Table in Excel. I also still can’t activate half my applications…

So I had decided to upgrade the operating system on my Mac Book Pro to Snow Leopard. When I did that I received a warning on the battery being in need of service. So I checked the Apple site and was prepared for it not to be supported and having to buy a new battery. However since I have AppleCare, which is still in effect, after answering a few questions over the phone they indicated that it would be covered. The downside was that I would have to go into a store to verify it and find time to do that. With all the traveling I would be doing, I would not be able to do it for a few weeks. They indicated that as long as I kept it under 300 cycles on the battery it would still be covered – I was at 179 so it was not a problem. I made my appointment with the Genius Bar for last Friday, I showed up, was greeted at the door and signed in. About five minutes later I was talking with a Genius, explaining my challenge, and getting a brand new battery as well as instructions on how to condition it. I also got a few minutes of Snow Leopard questions since I was done early…. I was figuring I would not have that option I would have to do a 1:1 appointment but they volunteered. It was very easy and fast.

So the other challenge was my Jawbone headset, and replacement parts not being available. I sent the e-mail and got a response on Sunday, one day later. The response was very generic so I was not excited:

Hi there Brad,

Thanks for your e-mail!

While the accessories for the Original Jawbone are no longer available for sale, we would like to try and find a solution for you.   Please call us during the week at 1-877-254-7426 and press 2 to discuss further options.  Any of our Customer Service Representatives will be happy to assist you with this — we open to take calls from 6am PST to 9pm Pacific Standard Time.

Thanks!  Have a nice day.

So I got around to calling today, the person was very apologetic and explained how the parts were obsolete because their supplier stopping building them. However they were going to send me a demo set of the suggested replacements (a $10 value on their website) that should fit but are not a direct replacement. No charge. They even sent me a confirmation e-mail indicating what we talked about and closing the loop. Completely different than I expected.

Hi Brad,

Thanks for calling! It was a pleasure speaking with you today.

Your accessory replacement has been initiated and you should receive it within a week.  If you do not receive your package in a week, please reply to this e-mail and let me know.

Thanks again, Brad. I hope you enjoy the rest of your week!

So maybe Customer Service isn’t dead. I know that SmugMug proves it isn’t dead, but then again based on a friend’s experience Comcast is proving that it might be hiding.

Click the image to go to Amazon

What is the most frustrating about this issue is that I had a perfectly good networking infrastructure working with the Linksys WRT54G hardware I was using except for the fact that I could not share a drive on the network. The reason I went to the Airport was for N speed and to share the drive on the network. I even travel with the portable version of the hardware the WRT-54GC and have been relatively happy with it. Yes, there are some issues with the DHCP server in it, but hey for the price it is pretty good.

I bought a new Iomega 500MB Apple Formatted hard drive from the Apple Store to make sure that the drive was powered and formatted properly, just in case. No change in the connection success rate, low.

So now I am getting frustrated, after my calls to Apple, they still have no solution. When I do a search using Google restricted to the Apple Site (site:apple.com airport hard drive connect), no solution.

So now I am kicking myself cause I am thinking, for all this hassle, I could have just purchased a network storage device from the get go and saved the money and head banging. Yes, it would not have been N, but at this point in time my machine is connected to the network via a 100BaseT connection which is still faster than N at 54Mbits. I am almost to the point of writing a letter to Apple Corporate explaining the situation and asking them for direct proactive intervention, I figure it happens to me enough at the office.

What cracks me up even more is that one of the new features in Leopard that they have been hyping is that in iChat one can share a desktop. So theoretically they could log in and see the same things I am seeing. So why doesn’t their tech support tema use that tool. I know that I will launch WebEx when I need to help a customer at work.

87 “Critical” Updates. Did I mention that I purchased the Install CD three weeks ago?

So now to see how it really works out. I am definitely going to be doing some exploring and tweaks. Some things have me stumped such as how to access a thumb drive through VMWare Fusion.

However the thing that really cracks me up is trying to figure out a way to make it easier to use the MacBook Pro as a desktop machine. The idea being that I want to have the portable MacBook for when I travel but when I am home I would like to have a full keyboard (10-keypad for example), a bigger screen, wired LAN connection, mouse, iPod… etc. however to do all this I have to hook up everything manually. Seems small, but it just is a hassle to connect the following:

1. Power Supply
2. Ethernet Cable – turn off wireless also
3. Plug in USB hub that connects the following:
   • Keyboard
   • Mouse
   • Compact Flash Reader
   • Printer
4. Plug iPod in (it does not work on the hub)
5. Connect Video

However my Gateway laptop that this MacBook Pro replaced has a dock that has all of this hooked up, and even came with a second power supply. So when I used to bring the Gateway laptop home, I would click it into the dock, all the things were connected, the Wireless connection even turned off when it was docked.

So I went to the Apple store and asked if they had a solution. Their answer was that there were third party solutions available but that it was not something that they were concerned about. Perhaps look at Mac Mini and network stuff for data consistency.

The end result of this experience is that it appears that Apple has not thought about the complete use experience and how a laptop is not only for portable use but is often a portable workstation that when at “home” is just a CPU.

On the plus side, iTunes is a lot more integrated with the OS than it is with Windows. This is not really that surprising given that the iPod and iTunes was designed to sell more Macintosh computers. I have found that iTunes and iPod synchronization is a little better than it is on the Windows machines. Now as to what the differences are, that is harder to quantify but I perceive the differences to be a few things. It seems that the iPod sync process is faster on the Mac. I am using the USB port on both operating systems. Yes, I know that USB is a standard and the speed should be the same but the Mac OS seems to be faster to the iPod. Yes, they are both USB 2.0. It also seems to handle using the iPod as a disk better than Windows does.

On the negative side, it seems that stuff is too integrated into using the Apple software and the .mac service. An example of this is trying to send a page from Safari using Microsoft Entourage results in an error window saying that one can only send the link, not the content.

Why I am using Entourage you may ask, well to be honest I am not 100% sure. When I installed Microsoft Office it installed with it. I might try migrating over to Mail to see if it is any better. What is interesting is what happens when one gets a file with a PowerPoint included. When I double clicked it to open in Entourage, the result was a window telling me that I had to authorize iWork.

Click for larger image

Kind of interesting that it did not just open up PowerPoint. Rather I had to save the file and then open it through PowerPoint. It appears to me that the way the software association is setup is that one should just be using the Apple software or else it is not as integrated.

Then comes the fun of the Internet. I am still looking for a good FTP client. I have tried a few and well they all seem to have their little flakiness. I am still looking for a good client. I think that the next one I am going to look at is FileZilla as I am pretty happy with it on the Windows machines. Of course next I have to figure out what the version to use is. I also have found that Safari does not work as well as Firefox on some websites. An example is the control panel for my website, this includes the admin panel as well as Blog entries. Also Safari does not work with the Google toolbar, which I have gotten to like quite a bit. The chat stuff seems to work better on the Mac, but that is mainly due to iChat and Adium. I highly recommend Adium, I like it better than Trillian that I use on the Windows machines.

I am very happy though with the speed of Adobe Creative Suite 3 under Macintosh instead of Windows. I am comparing it to my work laptop which is about equal in power. It just seems to work faster.

I am a little disappointed by some of the stuff that is not as available on the Mac. I can not find a mapping software package that works with Mac. So I have a Garmin GPS but if I get rid of my Windows machine I will have no way to program it or load maps. I also have not been able to find a batch download program for SmugMug.

I have already purchased VMWare’s Fusion but still have not pulled the trigger on installing it yet, cause I have to have an install CD of Windows XP and all my XP installs are OEM and I am not 100% sure that they will work.

What is interesting is that while talking with the L&T Jennifer, she is not having any of these issues. I think that is mostly because I am a little bit more of a power user. Maybe the Mac is a better personal machine and Windows is a better work/power user machine.

Back to looking at FTP clients so I can download my website to back it up before doing a major update…