For the most part the Mac is a good platform, it’s not that disimilar to say Windows.  Both Mac and Windows have evolved leading with innovation as well as taking features from each other.  The big question that I had to ask like most people was, will most of the applications I use be available on the Mac, and if not, is there a suitable alternative?  For me, a good handful of apps were available (and of course being a different platform you have to purchase these again), for the ones that weren’t (like Jasc PaintShop Pro that I use a lot) there’s other applications like Pixelmator and other free alternatives.

For the most part I’m very happy with Mac OS X Lion (and Snow Leopard before that), it’s a good OS.  There’s a lot of good innovation like the gestures on the trackpad that Windows still doesn’t have, dashboard, mission control and more.  I use the Mac primarily for Blogging, Facebook, Google+, Gmail, internet Surfing, Photo Editing and it works extremely well.

What should you look at when buying a Mac?  Don’t go for the entry level model.  When you look at prices you’ll say “£1000+ for a laptop?  I can get a PC Laptop for £399!”.  Yes you can, but it’s an entry level laptop.  It might be a 15″ or 17″ laptop but it’s running a slower processor, less RAM and the build quality is probably pretty plastic.  MacBook Air’s and MacBook Pro’s are much more robust, build quality is superb in a single aluminium unibody (single block of metal hollowed out).  Take a look at a windows based laptop for around £1000-£1300 and then compare those specs to the Mac’s.  If you’re not looking to pay £1000 then quite simply you’re not looking at a high-end laptop, so the Mac’s may not be for you (likewise the better higher-end Windows laptops aren’t for you either).  If you’re okay with paying this amount of money for a laptop then you’re going to get a good laptop.  Get the best processor and RAM you can afford, ensure you get a laptop with an SSD (Solid State Drive) and one that’s the largest your an afford (yes you will need it).

The Mac’s with Snow Leopard have the AppStore as a download, Lion now has the Mac AppStore integrated fully into the Operating System. The Mac AppStore is similar to what you would see on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which offers a lot of inexpensive applications (and games), and is a good first check to kitting out your Mac’s.  Apple do take 30% cut from developers through the AppStore, so you some developers still prefer to do a slightly cheaper version outside of the AppStore and to make a little more revenue per sale. However then you have to know how to install DMG files (which the Mac AppStore is just plug and play), tap on something, purchase it, it downloads and installs automatically without having to do anything else).

So if you think you’re ready, there’s no better time to make the switch or to at least try out a Mac with the Mac AppStore making it so easy.

Hard Disk drives you may not know have been around since 1956 and introduced by IBM.  Hard Drives have grown in both strength and size.  They now have shock protection, parking of heads all built-in but also incorporate imminent failure warning systems.  The sizes have grown massively over the years, and we’re now into terrabytes for some users or gigabytes for most users.

SSD’s are the newt way forward, they’re Solid State Drives, e.g. no moving parts.  No latency on having to spin the disk up to speed, e.g. 7200 rpm (revs per minute) and then having to have a head (needle) touch the disk (which can sometimes scratch the surface and damage it under movement/shock).

Think of SSD’s like a memory chip in terms of Solid State, they’re efficient, their quick, there’s no need to spin up a disc, there’s no need to have a head touch the surface.  If you try to access it, it’s there and ready.  When you take an average laptop that can take easily 45 seconds to 1 minute to boot up to the Operating System, be it Mac OS X or Windows 7, swap the Hard Disk Drive out with a Solid State Drive, and you’ll then see speeds of around 13 seconds boot time to the Operating System.  That’s about 3x times faster than a manual Hard Disk Drive.

The speed gain isn’t only seen on boot up, try to run any large weight application like Word, Excel, PowerPoint on Windows and you’ll find that it loads in <1 second.  If you try to do anything that does very heavy Hard Disk Drive access then this is really where you will see great improvements in reduced wait times.

SSD’s aren’t all that rosy though.  They’re still new for one thing, there’s still no average as they’re new on how long they’ll last.  Most manufacturers of SSD’s claim that they will most likely last less than a regular Hard Disk Drive.  Likewise if they start to die, the suggestion is they will die quickly as opposed to a spinning Hard Disk Drive, although I’m not too sure of that.  On average I find my hard drives in laptops last around 2 years or less, so if an SSD were to last 18 months, then I would still be happy if I could get the speed gain that I really crave as a power user.

The other problem with SSD’s is both price and size.  As they’re new, prices are still high although SSD costs are coming down.  Likewise 256gb SSD’s are within the grasp of most end users but if you want something larger than that, they start to get really expensive.

Which manufacturers make Solid State Drives?  Well there’s a good article over at WikiPedia that shows a comparison of which manufacturers make Hard Disk Drives vs Solid State Drives.

Now both my MacBook Air run an SSD and my Toshiba Windows 7 based SSD laptop, and I’m seeing huge amounts of speed enhancement over regular Hard Disk Drives.  I’ve been running the Macbook Air for around 9 months and the Toshiba for about 1 month.  I simply couldn’t go back to a conventional spinning Hard Disk Drive.  The only problem with costs still being high is that both the MacBook Air and the Toshiba both only have 128gb SSD’s and not 256gb SSD’s.  This really isn’t enough and for a lot of my ‘other’ documents that I tend to have in archive as well as mail PST backups, I tend to still have to plug in a removable 512gb Removable USB Hard Disk Drive, but at least most of my programs are running directly from the SSD speeding up the disk access times.

Unfortunately last weekend Zinio had just under a 48 hour outage and 3 days later they’re into another 12+ hour outage of service.

The service outages means that customers who have paid for their magazines cannot access the Zinio service to download the paid content.

The email from Zinio in the first outage to customers…

I wanted to reach out to you personally to thank you for your patience this past weekend and check to make sure your Zinio access was working properly. As you noticed, Zinio experienced some systems problems that impacted your ability to shop and read your magazines. These have now been fully resolved. On behalf of the entire Zinio team, I wanted to apologize for any inconvenience this unfortunate outage caused.

Zinio was able to restore service on the first outage approx 48 hrs later. However, Zinio’s down again 3 days later and has not been able to provide it’s service for over 12 hours.  It seems like there’s no out of hours coverage at Zinio for it’s service due to the downtime over the weekend and overnight all being outside of core business hours which doesn’t bode well for Zinio. Zinio has been around for a number of years (since 2001) but there are more companies coming onto the scene to compete with Zinio. Apple more recently started selling Magazine subscriptions for the iPad through iBooks and a number of magazine companies have already started offering their magazines through iBooks or through their own apps on the iPad.

I’m an avid Zinio supporter and have spent well over £1000 on magazine subscriptions with Zinio so hopefully that shows my level of commitment to Zinio! However, Zinio being down twice in 4 days for a serious amount of time has now put me off making two further magazine subscriptions with Zinio and I’ve just given Apple the money for these. After the first 48hr outage I purchased some additional magazine subscriptions and I haven’t been able to download these new magazines because Zinio’s service has gone down a second time. Zinio also offered me some complimentary free magazine subscriptions on top of this due to the last outage, but again they weren’t showing in my account just prior to the second service outage.

It’s one thing being bad for Zinio’s customers seriously making them look elsewhere for magazine subscriptions but it’s more serious for the magazine companies that partner with Zinio because new customers can’t purchase magazine subscriptions resulting in loss of sales.

I really sincerely hope Zinio can rectify these outages and improve the level of service to it’s customers and magazine partners and pull through this.

I’ve been finding Dropbox a very good system until today, and I’d like to explain why suddenly I’m reconsidering cloud computing.

Last week I received a new credit card and I did what usually do and that’s update the information into my secure eWallet. The eWallet file is now on Dropbox and when I save this, it should then replicate it to my MacBook Air, which in turn when I sync eWallet to my MacBook Air from the iPhone and iPad, then transfers to these devices and all should be great. A perfect experience! Well I updated the credit card details including my PIN as it’s a new pin and I couldn’t remember what it was, synced my iPhone and iPad to the MacBook Air this morning then went out to do some shopping.

I did my shopping and reached the checkout and was ready to pay for the products I was buying, whipped out my iPhone and opened up my secure eWallet and……CRAP! The Credit Card isn’t showing in eWallet! What happened?! I know it was there because I checked it over several days on my PC. Thankfully I had another Credit Card I could use and was able to remember that PIN but it seriously made me think about how I synchronise between computers to the cloud.

I remember I made a whole host of other changes last week to my eWallet and needless to say these changes aren’t there either. Unfortunately I can’t remember what all the changes were, so now I’m in trouble. I checked Time Machine and these changes weren’t on the Mac, so it looks like either:-

1. The PC didn’t write the eWallet file to Dropbox
2. The PC did write the eWallet file to Dropbox but at some point when I opened it on the Mac it took that as a newer file and overwrote it without downloading the update to the Mac

Either way it’s not good. Looking at the Dropbox Events I see that the eWallet file was modified but unfortunately unlike Windows Live Sync, DropBox doesn’t have detailed logs on which computer modified the file.

I’m going to have to scrutinise Dropbox more carefully now when saving files as it looks like it isn’t synchronising as I would have hoped between devices.

The way I see it, with the App Store fully backed by Apple, that most people will want to go directly for an iPad over the Archos, although the Archos 9 is still reasonably priced for their 60gb version.

For anyone wanting a Linux or Android or Windows flavoured tablet pad, then the Arhcos 9 will definitely be for those people in mind, but for the regular consumer on the street who already has some investment in Apple whether it’s iTunes music, or other Apps on their previous devices, Apple will most likely be the way to go for their purchase of the iPad.

I read a comment from a customer on Amazon that said…”I bought the Archos 9 thinking I was buying into new technology, what a let down.
Windows 7 took ages to boot up was so slow in running I thought the touch screen was not working but the machine is so slow. Also MSN Messenger video always froze the whole thing up I would not recommend this machine to anyone, sorry to archos.”

Hmmm, that’s not a good endorsement for a tablet or for Microsoft Windows 7

This is not new, but what is new is an app called for Windows called SkyDrive Explorer which provides you the 25gb drive as a virtual drive letter in Windows Explorer and allows you to drag and drop files into the cloud and retrieve them effortlessly.

I think it should go without saying but you will need a broadband speed network to use SkyDrive otherwise it will be pretty slow. Anything from 2mbps upwards should be okay.

A lot of people are still perplexed as to why so many drivers using SatNav’s are directed through some small towns and villages. The answer is quite simple….

SatNav’s are programmed to go the Quickest or Shortest route most of the time, and most drivers use the Quickest or Fastest option. So this means if a driver gets lost, say takes the wrong turn, the SatNav application or product will try to guide the driver the quickest way to the destination entered. That can sometimes mean taking short cuts that most local drivers would not take who know the roads.

So why can’t these roads be marked as blocked on the SatNav? Well quite simply put it, if they were marked as blocked or no through road, then people with SatNav’s wouldn’t then be able to drive down them. Some SatNavs are becoming more intelligent and providing warnings to narrow roads ahead. The problem is that there are two main data providers for SatNav products. They are called NAVTEQ and TELEATLAS. So if they don’t have these features in their data, then all the SatNav products that use their data will equally have the same problem.

So if you know a road or village that always has problems, then for the time being put up a “Do not follow SatNav” sign or try to direct drivers away from this area until better data becomes available. In the long term, try to have your local council or road agency inform the data providers of these problems so they can be restricted in future SatNav products and data updates.

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Earlier this week, Intel, Microsoft, and Apple said they were investigating the issue, which people are complaining about on an Apple forum. The problem seems to be mainly affecting Windows 7 64-bit users with Intel P55 chipsets, and it prevents them from synching their iPhones with their computers.

The BIOS update will help people who have the Gigabyte motherboard in their systems, but it won’t help other people who have the problem, such as those with an Asus motherboard.

Microsoft also said it was looking into the problem and recommended that people visit its help page for updates. It does not appear to have posted any information there and did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the Gigabyte update.

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The idea of a SatNav is to guide you to the destination you have chosen. Sometimes (like your passenger in the front seat who may in past years have been the map reader) the SatNav can occasionally get things wrong. So why do drivers blindly follow their SatNav as though it’s the must thing to do?

Most drivers have more common sense and will stop when they think they’re getting into a tricky situation, or are directed down a blocked road, but other drivers can be just plain stupid. Driving cars or trucks down a narrow road or bridge, driving through fords and down windy country lanes, or even driving into rivers.

If you’re one of these drivers, please have some common sense! The SatNav is for guidance, it’s just that, a GUIDE. Use it as a guide, and use some common sense when you are driving!

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I love the way they’re still making the PC to be a Bill Gates. Maybe the next release of Windows will show a bald Windows guy instead?

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