All 5 entries tagged Windows

The Server I wish they made

Writing about web page http://www.apple.com/uk/xserve

While most houses are happy with a laptop or a desktop or perhaps both, I’m generally not. I don’t trust myself to always make regular backups (hence I think Apple’s Time Machine is a good invention for me), nor do I trust single hardware with all my life on it not to fail. In fact my Archive/Backup NAS just last week decided to fail and I may have lost all my work I did at uni. Fortunately I think I have a set of CDs stashed away with it on, but I can’t be sure until I get to Sussex to check. I also like the idea of shared things and things that I can access from anywhere. I like centralised redundant data storage and meaty appliances that let me share information at will. So my home will need a server. Not one of those Microsoft nancy home server jobbies but a proper, decent spec server that allows me to monitor things. Is it overkill? Probably. Is it fun? Of course it is. Does it allow me to do things I couldn’t otherwise? Of course.

So what is the ideal server for me? Well it’s got to be rack mounted and I’d like it to run OS X (File server and Web server), Windows (Exchange) and Solaris (Database Server). This of course points to an XServe as the only real option, and it’s a damn good 1u server at that. The only thing that I wish it had that it doesn’t is the use of 2.5” drives instead of 3.5” drives. I want to be able to have a RAID-1 pair of SAS drives running the operating systems with a nice 4 disk RAID-6 for the data. To do that on an HP DL380 G5 is easy and I’d even have a couple of bays spare. On a DL360 G5 I’d be ok too. On the XServe I only have three bays though and that limits my storage capability. I was happy with the idea of an XServe RAID but they discontinued it, and I’m not paying £7k for the Promise replacement idea because I just don’t need 16 drives. All I want is an XServe in 1u with 6 drive bays and 2.5” drives. Make it so Apple, make it so.

Christopher Hinds : 20 May 2008 21:31 |  Tags: Computers Data Mac Os X Servers Windows |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Is the Enterprise ready for Open–Source?

If you look at the market share these days for internet web servers it’s clear what the winning Web Server is… Apache with a market share of about 56% currently according to Netcraft while Microsoft’s IIS comes second with 31.59%. Interestingly if you compared these figures in March 2006, Microsoft were down on about 18% and Apache had 75% of the market. Some of that is down to IIS 6.0 (Windows 2003) being noticeably more secure than IIS 5.0 (Windows 2000) but some of it may be down to the increase in availability of shared hosting solutions based on Windows not Linux. Nonetheless the principle development stack of dynamic websites today is the LAMP stack of programs – Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. All of these are available for free and all of them are used widely by sites like Wikipedia, Google and Amazon.

What I’ve been searching for is a content management system with an integrated Wiki for a side project I’m working on for my secondary “day job”. Of course that lead me down a couple of paths in the end… the high-cost, high-end solution and the Open Source solutions. At the end of the “Evaluation” phase I’d come up with a few systems that looked plausible…

• Alfresco which was started by the guys that originally wrote one of the early big players, Documentum. Based on Java, PHP, Apache Tomcat as the JSP server and any database you like behind the scenes… I’m using MySQL to keep things common. Available free or with a support contract.
• DotNetNuke based on VB.NET and Microsoft SQL Server and must of course be served from IIS for ASP.NET 2.0 support.
• Jadu Intranet 2.0 is a commercial package that is built on PHP, Apache Tomcat and either MySQL or you can use Oracle or SQL Server should you so wish.
• Jahia uses Java, which means Tomcat again, with MySQL behind it but you can use SQL Server, Oracle or others.
• RedDot is a propritory solution, built on Windows only with support for using just about any language under the sun in the content, but server from IIS with Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server behind the scenes.
• MediaWiki is the engine behind WikiPedia and while it’s not a content management system as such, Novell have used it as one successfully, it’s also probably the most developed Wiki engine in the world too built again on PHP and MySQL.

So those are the contenders and the only ones I can’t get samples of are RedDot and Jadu as they are commercial and rather pricey with it.

So the big question after all this is whether the open source solutions can offer the same as the commercial ones. It certainly seems that Jahia and Alfresco offer just what is needed in a CMS from an Open Source but supported solution.

If you look at where Apache and IIS are used, you find that the top companies, the Fortune 100 companies are where IIS is more popular. It stands to reason, they run Windows anyway and they have more than enough licences in their site licence to drop a couple more on their Intranet hosting. Large companies also have security implications to consider, not DoS attacks, but who can see what information. IIS allows authentication against Active Directory, Microsoft SQL server also allows authentication against Active Directory. While you can do LDAP authentication with Apache it’s a bit of a fudge and MySQL would be reliant on specific servers authenticating against each other. What this really means is that a Windows host is needed so with that in mind my host environment is a Windows 2003 SP2 (not R2) server fully patched.

So far I’ve installed Jahia and MediaWiki on a Server running:

• Active Directory/DNS/DHCP
• IIS 6.0
• MySQL 5.0.24
• PHP 5.2.3
• Java SDK 6.0.1

I have to confess I had issues with everything to start with. I began with MediaWiki. I could not get things working for love, money and I even tried seduction. I was trying to use MySQL 5.0.41 and a cryptic note I eventually found told me that there is a problem with MySQL beyond version 5.0.24 when hosted on Windows. I have yet to find out what the problem is, but it did worry me because I tend to use the latest version of any software if I can.

Installing MySQL under Windows is a breeze, I simply set it up to run as a service and used all the defaults. It went really well up to this point and I was totally impressed with the improvement in installations give that the though of compiling source code filled me with dread, I’m an administrator not a coder.

Next up came PHP 5.2.3. Now a search of MediaWiki’s installation instructions showed me thatin actual fact there were a few potential issues if I wanted to serve with IIS. However it seemed that the guide had been written and not many people had bothered to correct it here and there, just appending notes rather than doing a full rewrite. This means I got completely lost. The PHP installation could be better. I opted for a CGI/IIS Installation, but despite this I still had to:

• Create Sessiondata and Uploadtemp folders that were not associated with the user account I was downloading to
• Edit php.ini to turn off forced cgi redirects.
  Both of these tasks could easily be done by the install process, but they aren’t. On the plus side if you select the add ins during install (like the MySQL driver) then you can save finding which lines to comment in to support your database.

Now we come to installing mediawiki. I haven’t worked out how to configure mediawiki so I can use

http://mediawiki.server/

at present if I try and change it from the URL

http://server/

using an IIS host header I get some nasty things happening and that scares me. Learning some PHP here so I know what I’m telling it is what’s going to be needed. You can see my install steps here where steps 2.1 through 2.3 indicate how I did the install. I didn’t like to get rid of all the rest of the data.

So we come to Jahia. Jahia runs on Java, which has necessitated the installation of a Java engine and Apache Tomcat to host it. I’m reliably informed that by adding the isapi_redirect.dll file to IIS I can use that to serve my Java applications but I haven’t gotten that far just yet. The first time I installed the wrong version of Java, having picked the Enterprise edition which I assumed would be the same but more fully featured. I was wrong.

Jahia requires you to add a path to your Environment Variables in windows in order to function and because I had the wrong version of the Java SDK this caused all manner of problems. With the right version however Tomcat, Java, MySQL and more all play well together. I had to create the MySQL database and user manaually however because Jahia’s generally good install routine couldn’t do this automatically. In use Jahia seems very neat and presentable but I feel I should give my poor (256Mb RAM) server some more to play in, because it’s really beginning to struggle now. I have also managed to get Alfresco to install on the box, but again this needs Tomcat and more and I haven’t gotten that far. Again you have to configure your database yourself.

Opensource Software clearly can offer what the enterprise needs but there are penalties. As IIS cannot server Java natively the fudge of running TomCat as well places extra load on the box. MySQL works perfectly well as a database and for basic use seems to be an equal of SQL Server, though SQL Server wins by miles in terms of ease of use with the Database manager application. PHP needs some install work done on it still in order to have things auto configure on installation, but otherwise works fine.

Web applications are a new area for me and it’s only one day I’ve been properly working on them. It has to be said though, if this is what they can offer someone who doesn’t know too much about them, then Open Source has a bright future. It still needs some tweaks to get the ease of use up with a Windows or Mac OS.X native coded application but it’s not so far away and the eventual end user experience is as good with any of them.

Christopher Hinds : 16 Jun 2007 14:39 |  Tags: Apache Content Management Systems Iss Lamp Linux Microsoft Mysql PHP Sql Server Windows |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Week with Vista

Over the last week I’ve been making an effort to use Vista Business Edition instead of Windows XP SP2, which has meant much of the last week has been spent running in a virtual computer. Despite being a home user I’m running the Business Edition of Vista because that’s what I have a legal licence key for. I don’t do games so I don’t really miss anything gaming related in that respect either. In addition to Windows Vista Business I’ve been using Office 2007 Enterprise, and this blog entry is being written in Word 2007 following the dramatic loss of it last night while typing direct into FireFox. In addition to this due to various things going on at work I’ve also ended up looking at Wiki/Server hosting solutions this week too, with focus on Windows SharePoint Services 3. It’s going to be a bit of a big entry…

Taking Vista first, there are undoubtedly some good points and undoubtedly some places where it’s not quite right too. First off let’s talk about the applications that I couldn’t get to run initially. Dolby Lake Controller will probably run fine on a proper machine rather than a virtual one. Virtual PC 2007 limits video memory to 8mb which is not enough for v4.2. Both the D5 and D1 editors work fine, once you put them in XP SP2 compatibility mode, otherwise they run slowly. This was the cause of the previous error as I tried to shut them down before they’d finished starting despite having been able to edit the configuration of the surface. Again though, this could be down to Virtual Machine issues rather than Vista.
So that done, what’s good about Vista? You’d expect a new operating system to have some improvements, and it most certainly has got some, what’s more disappointing is that not everything is an improvement.

• The user interface is improved over the “Luna” scheme in XP. Despite the fact that I’m only running Vista Basic graphics and not Aero, things do look a little smarter, it’s a bit neater, a little more intuitive a little more, dare I say it, Mac like. Having said that the interface has its quirks which I’ll look at under what’s bad about Vista. Other nice tweaks are having the desktop on Alt-Tab switching and a “Show Desktop” option on the start menu. Once again the parodies between Vista and OS.X’s Finder are difficult to ignore here.

• Speed is very good, despite running a supposedly bloated operating system in a virtual machine with only 512Mb of RAM this feels quicker and snappier than XP SP2. This might be something to do with having less programs installed (just Office, iTunes, Sound stuff, Firefox, Acrobat Reader 8) but generally it feels faster all round which can only be a good thing.

• The Windows Firewall is now a 2-way affair not just incoming.

• Backup and restore is improved (it now supports using CDs and DVDs at last), but it’s not close to some of the custom applications like Restrospect of course. The major advantage of it is that every Windows Vista machine will have it making the data that bit simpler to recover should you need to by using another Vista machine.

• ReadyDrive is given as a feature but actually should really be a case of “supported hardware”, the support for hard drives with a flash memory cache on them, a brilliant idea for laptops everywhere.

• Networking and Wireless in general seem to be somewhat better supported, especially wireless security, but I can see the Network Map being banned in corporate circumstances as you don’t necessarily want everyone being able to see what goes where. Having said that it’s a great tool for an admin to find out who’s got illegitimate shares going on within the company.

• Network projector support, this is possibly one of the best features in my view. No more playing with USB key drives to find a presentation, just log on to the project and send it all over Ethernet.

• Windows Update is no longer an IE kludge; it’s an application in its own right and much better for it.

• Mail and Calendar are a big improvement on Outlook Express, but then so is a bowl of muesli. Most corporate users will be replacing it with Outlook 2007/Exchange, Groupwise or Notes anyway. The feature set is about the same as Apple currently offers in iCal with shared calendars etc being available.

• Windows Meeting space is quite clever, but may be seen as insecure by some admins as it would give potential for easier transfer of files outside the company. While thinking about the sharing of files the local shared folders thing might be useful but most companies have network based shared data, which is far more useful because then you aren’t tied to one computer and your network servers are RAID backed with central backups… they are, aren’t they? The updated Folder Redirection and Roaming Profile support is also most welcome. There’s nothing worse than waiting hours for profiles to be dragged across the network, not only is it messy and inefficient, there’s just no need. I’m not sure about leaving all a users profile on each machine they visit, that could very quickly get space inefficient, but being able to use a roaming profile and redirect certain folders only is very handy to get stateless computing.

• WIM and Image deployment is much better than previously, but I suspect most admins already have a nice XP SP2 image they load from their server anyway, along with a set of machines like the HP dc range which use common driver packages. On the same note BitLocker is a great idea and could make all computers really secure, so why isn’t it in every copy of Windows Vista not just Enterprise and Ultimate?!

• Data transfer control… if one thing is going to sell Vista into the Enterprise it’s being able to ensure your data isn’t leaving the enterprise without authorisation.

The good is good, the bad is disappointing and in some cases just silly. I haven’t commented on Media Centre as I don’t have access or need for it. All my music is in iTunes not Media Player, all my photos are manually sorted though I’m looking forward to getting iPhoto back for looking after them. I’m not big on videos on a computer so I’ve not got many of them. So with those thoughts in mind this is what’s bad about Vista in my view…

• The user interface has icons that are just far too big to be sensible. It might be nice at high resolutions but even at 1280×1024 they are just too big to be sensible. I’ve halved the icon size from the standard and even so they are larger than necessary, smarter looking, but too big. Sticking with the UI, in XP you can hit the start key on the keyboard and then hit the letter that starts one of your pinned applications, in Vista this assumes you wish to search for something starting with said letter. No I just want keyboard access to the start menu, Searching is useful but it’s something that is not needed all the time.

• Automatic Disk Defragmentation, which isn’t. Mac OS.X defrags on the fly so MS implemented automatic defragmentation… but in exactly the same way as it was done in Windows 98, with a task scheduler running to automatically defrag the computer at a certain time. If the computer isn’t on at that time, well sorry mate you missed the boat.

• User Account Control. UAC is a horrendous application as not only does it intrude when it doesn’t need to (since when was changing the dpi of icons a security related task?), it also prevents you doing anything else until you’ve pandered to its requests. People will continually click continue just because it comes up so often you give up reading the requests. Even more people will turn it off and that’s sad, because not only do that mean you turn off UAC but you then turn off the security centre notification icon to avoid having a red warning shield up all the time, this of course means you don’t notice when your anti-virus software has gone out of date or your spyware definitions need updating.

• Some things have been needlessly spread out e.g. display settings, instead of being many tabs in one window, now you have multiple windows making flicking back and forth between settings a bit slower. This goes back to my earlier comments on the Network settings too.

• XPS Format. Seriously Microsoft, we don’t need another PDF. PDF is supported on every platform; the standard is recognised and approved. Don’t give us a format that you say is open but actually is currently only actively supported on Windows by yourselves. IF you write converters for Mac, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX etc then maybe it will go somewhere, but what does it actually add? Not only that but when opening said files in IE7 everything slows down as they are huge, huge memory hogs. Currently IE is using over 200MB of RAM on my virtual machine to show me a 25MB XPS file on the features of Vista. How is that efficient?

• IE7 printing. They actually make a fuss that IE7 is able to shrink web pages to fit a printed page… what like every other browser/application has been doing for years you mean?

• ReadyBoost. Use a USB2 key drive with over 256Mb free on it to act as additional (not very fast by RAM standards but faster than a hard disk) memory. What a GIMMICK, to make it always effective you’d need a USB stick with say 1Gb free on it, which means spending £13 on the stick in the first place to get one that is ReadyBoost supported. For £30 you can get an extra 1 GB of RAM anyway and it doesn’t take up a USB port in the process. OK so it could be useful but it’s a bit like using a bit of duct tape to hold a car door shut, it works but it’s not the proper way to do it.

• I can’t comment on the parental controls because they aren’t in Vista Business but it seems an odd thing to leave out as surely the same engine could be used to control access to applications and the internet in the workplace via ISA server?

• Why oh why isn’t driver signing compulsory in 32 Bit Vista as well?

• Windows Rights Management, I get worried when things start talking about my right to do certain things. I don’t do illegal content, I own all my DVDs but why should I buy a special monitor just so that the computer believes me when I want to watch James Bond that it is approved?

So, 1800 words on, is Vista better than XP Pro SP2? Well I’d have to say yes it is. It’s not the step change the Microsoft want you to believe it is, more of an evolution. There’s enough features to sell it to a home user on ease of use (it is easier to do most things) and there’s enough extra for the corporate market to make it saleable there too.

The only trouble is if you’re a home user, Vista isn’t worth the extra money to buy off the shelf. Home Premium Edition (which thankfully is less of a balls up than XP Home) retails at £182 for an off the shelf box, £130 as an upgrade and £72 as an OEM copy. Of course MS doesn’t want you to buy the OEM copy which is the same as the retail version because you aren’t an OEM, you didn’t build your computer in most cases. I bet they’d rather have some of that £72 though than having nothing from a pirated copy, so I suspect that’s why not too much of a song and dance has been made about it being widely available from Dabs and Scan to name but a couple of sources, and even Amazon are in on the act. By contrast the top version, Ultimate is £304 Retail, £204 Upgrade and £124 OEM. As an OEM edition it undoubtedly offers the best value of any version of Vista given that it can link into the corporate network and be a media centre. MS should just be reasonable and provide one type of Vista (Ultimate) and provide it for say £130. Then they would be much better placed than the fictional price ladder they are trying for.

In the corporate world most people are covered by Software Assurance licences that enable them to upgrade to the latest versions anyway. Though it might be effective to buy a small business stuff and then upgrade again in a few years time, for most with more than a dozen people or so it’s far more effective to have a rolling licence plan. The delay here is most corporate desktops are probably not able to cope with Vista, and if you’ve got an installed base of 2-6 year old machines or perhaps even some slightly older running XP Pro or even 2000, with nice network based images set up and a good management framework you might be tempted to ask if the extra hardware expense is worth it.

The final though is that Vista feels nice, it feels slick in a way that Windows generally doesn’t. It’s classier than before and more responsive too. It just feels little puts it well ahead of Mac OS.X back in version 10.3 when I last used it. Apple are about to release 10.5 with some additional features that will beat MS at their game for the home user once again. Windows scores in being able to play games and work on a corporate network. If neither of those is too important then OS.X is better, slicker and more standards compliant while being more secure too. Things like Spaces and Desktop Animation are one ahead of Vista, while OS.X Server 10.5 comes ever closer to offering the same as you can get on Windows with iCal Server and the standard Mail server you can now replicate most of what Exchange can do (though Exchange is still a superior product for large corporate work), you can manage Mac Clients in the same way as you can Windows clients under Active Directory, all the while Windows is also fully supported as a client to log on.

Both operating systems have a way to go, if Apple wants the Enterprise desktop then it needs to have a solution to Exchange and persuade MySQL to implement the same standards of database support that SQL Server offers. On the desktop and for the home user Vista is excellent if you already have a PC, but if you are contemplating where to go, the Mac is certainly worth a look especially with Office 2008 due out this summer.

Christopher Hinds : 13 May 2007 10:17 |  Tags: Active Directory Apple Exchange ITS Mac Os X Microsoft Office 2007 Programs Servers Sound Technology Windows Windows Vista Xp |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

More on Vista

Follow-up to Operating System Nightmares from The Nomadic Manager

So I’ve now finished getting Vista to a useable point, which means the following:

1. Turn back on Ctrl-Alt-Del to Logon using Group Policy (Local Computer Policy/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Local Policy/Security Options. Disable ’’Do not require Ctrl-Alt-Del to Logon’‘)
2. Reduce icon size from toy town (32×32) to 16×16, but they are still double the size of Windows XP. Tweaking lower in the registry to 8 doesn’t work.
3. Reduce icon text size from 9 to 8
4. Turn off UAC – it does just piss you off. Microsoft take hint, you need to authorise for software installs. That’s it. If nothing installs that you don’t want to then your computer is safe. Having a user change a network setting is not a dangerous task and could easily be hidden via Parental controls anyway.
5. Turn off the notification icon for Security Centre which glows red because UAC is off
6. Turn on hidden files
7. Turn on showing file extensions
8. Icon on Start Menu linking to Network Connections

Things are now totally operable. Well I say totally operable the following do work:

1. ESET NOD32
2. Microsoft Office 2007
3. Windows Live Messenger
4. iTunes 7.1.1.5
5. Adobe Acrobat Reader 8
6. Nexo Geosoft2
7. XTA AudioCore 8.20
8. Yamaha PM1d Manager
9. Yamaha Studio Manager 2.1.7 with PM5d Editor, haven’t tried m7CL yet

However the following do not:

1. Dolby Lake Controller v4.2 (Error on exit, can’t confirm if Device control is possible)
2. Digico Offline Editors for D1 and D5 (Error on exit, can’t confirm if Device control is possible)
3. Crown SystemArchitect 1.3 (Failed to install)

Now interestingly of the applications I’ve tried to install, the ones that have errored are all ones that use the TCP/IP stack to communicate with an external device. Therefore it would seem it is because Windows Vista has a new TCP/IP stack in it that the errors are ocurring. I have had them working in virtual Windows XP machines before now so I’m relatively sure it’s not Virtual PC screwing things up.

For now Windows Vista seems operable if all you do is office based work, those specialist applications, especially those associated with controlling devices, do seem to have some issues currently. If I think of any more significant audio applications to try I will give them a go, if people wish to ask then I’m happy to trial.

Christopher Hinds : 06 May 2007 08:55 |  Tags: Microsoft Operating Systems Sound Vista Windows |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

In answer to the 32 Points, and the 10…

Writing about web page http://www.pcpro.co.uk

As most people will know, I’m a bit of a computer geek and I’m also very ambivalent about what operating system I use. On my laptops I’ve tended to be an Apple Mac OS.X user since about 2001 and on my desktop since 2004 I’ve been running XP Pro Service Pack 2. On the server I administer we run Windows 2003 Server (not R2 yet), and I play with Solaris 10 on the side too. I should add some Linux to the mix but I’ve not found a distribution I’m truly happy with that runs OK under virtual PC yet.

My generally opinion on operating systems is that Mac OS.X is a powerful operating system that you can customise but you need to know how to do so. Most of the simple things like Screen Saver, Desktop Wallpaper and the like are easily accessible through system preferences (I don’t think it’s moved, I’ve been Macless since Xmas due to a hard drive failure and my decision not to feed an old machine more drives). Most of the other things that people commonly wish to do tend to revolve around theming their computer to look like something, usually the latest film or something. Theming has never been something I’ve been that interested in, I use a computer as a tool not as a gimmick to look like a film.

Windows is a powerful operating system that allows you to customise things more readily but in three basic ways. First, and best, you can control the system using group policy and preferably regulated from a Server, all the other little tweaks can be done on either like changing the screensaver or the desktop to suit. This however is generally only done by advanced users and is totally unavailable to XP Home users as Microsoft removed Group Policy support along with Active Directory support. The second option is manually tweaking each instance separately, a tweak in disk management here, and a pull in active desktop there and so on. The only trouble is these manual tweaks get forgotten in time and when things act up you don’t have one source to refer to, you have to check everything. The third way is of course the download that gets a blissful “install” click and thus the computer is modified, themed and the entire contents of your bank account somewhere on its way to Nigeria to a guy who promises to send you $50m that he needs to clear. My objection to downloaded programs is of course you basically have no clue what it is doing or whether the visible routine is the only install running. Sure you could look at the Task Manager, but could you spot an extra single process caused by the install of say a root kit among the other processes windows runs briefly during installs?

This month PC Pro have run an article reacting to Apple’s advertising campaign starring the guy from Peep Show and some other guy pretending to be a PC and a Mac respectively. I should make it quite clear here that neither OS is perfect at all.

OS.X lacks the ability to remotely manage and deploy via group policy like Active Directory offers. Sure you can do it but it’s not as smoothly integrated. OS.X browsers suck at rendering ASP.NET websites, and far too many of those rely on the custom codes in IE6/7 to work anyway. The lack of software can be an issue if you insist on trying to use the exact same application on OS.X as on Windows. You just can’t run Microsoft Money on OS.X, but you can get an equivalent for less that does more. I do admit there are device control issues for things like live sound processors and desks and much of that is unashamedly because of the Mac’s smaller market share. I don’t mind, for the amount of device control I do I can carry a Windows emulation session on my Intel based Mac. I can live with it. There are more flaws of course but these are the ones that come immediately to mind.

Windows isn’t flawless either. For usability when MS brought NT (2000) and the 95/98/Millenium streams together in XP they opted for usability over security. As a result just about every domestic installation has users that run as Administrators with all seeing power over the computer. Mainly because they never told programmers that the “User” and “Power User” security privilege levels were inadequate to allow many things and so because designers (especially game designers) coded as Admins the products only run when logged in as administrators. Electronic Arts even advise people having trouble to nuke all the user accounts on the computer and run only as a single user administrator. This is 2007!!!!! The virus and spyware issue is there, but I believe the main blame for that is the user rather than the OS. Shareware and Freeware at random SHOULD be run in a sandbox environment at least. I’m sampling a virtual machine with Vista (Business Edition) on it currently. User Access Control is a joke. I applaud the principle of all users running as Users, it’s what UNIX has been doing forever, but people will turn UAC off because they perceive it as a hindrance. I think it should be kept but make you enter a password like UNIX would. Very sensible really but why is your default account when set up is still an administrator not a user level account? And why does UAC have to hold up all other progress, it could surely just halt the queried procedure and flash the task bar?

Anyway onto the main crux of this (doesn’t he ever shut up???) which is the points PC Pro has made this month. Yes I know they are extreme, I know they are trying to make a point but extremism does nothing but fuel the Mac vs PC feeling. The hardware is the same now, the differential is the OS but what’s the problem. Windows is hardly going to feel threatened and competition is good for both systems. So why the need for 32 points of why Windows is better?

They say:

1. Service packs don’t cost £90. It is true that Apple have released a new version of OS.X each year and some have been bigger step changes than others. OS.X 10.2 to 10.3 was a big step, 10.3 to 10.4 less so. Most of the operations under the surface added tools to what you could do or functionality and integration. You can get a Mac to happily join an AD domain now for example, something that wasn’t readily possible in early releases. Nobody is going to hold you at gunpoint and make you buy the update and they generally add new programs and features that the same publication heralds in Vista (like the Application switching functions, which Apple did as Exposé). OS.X offers the Bonjour networking facility to find printers and the like on a network. Sure you can go with Windows and time out waiting for the network cards to get IP addresses and then hope the printer driver for your network printer also allows communication on this ground, but Bonjour lets other machines on the network know what services are available. So yes it’s expensive, but a full (uncrippled) copy of XP Pro as released costs what £247 and Vista Ultimate is £320.
2. No price premium for flashy design. Yes, it’s true, Apples cost more than Dells. Interestingly enough an Aston Martin costs more than a Subaru Impreza WRX too. Why? Well in both cases the quality is different. Both cars can be quick but I know which one does it with more style. Style isn’t tangible, it isn’t the be all and end all, but it does matter. Otherwise why else do we spend so much on DIY for our homes, Cars that aren’t Protons and clothes? Oh wait; it would be style and design. They do matter, and frankly if you don’t want to pay for it then don’t. So what if Dell will sell you more for less, Dell don’t make their money on £250 machines, they make it on the Servers, the support and the ancillaries and big contracts with companies. Apple don’t have that subsidy option.
3. Thousands of decent games. I can’t comment, the only games I love is Transport Tycoon and any machine these days can simulate a DOS 6.22 environment
4. Two Mouse Buttons. So buy a two button mouse you moron. It’s not a big deal. The whole principle behind a single button was that if you wanted functions readily they were visible functions. Windows programming methods of contextual menus have swept across and now that second button is more important, but key Mac programs still work fine with one. I tend to skip the second mouse button on Windows too anyway, I’m a keyboard driven user but I appreciate for some people who can’t let go of the mouse this could be an issue
5. Broadband just works. Yes, not every Korean ADSL USB modem will work on OS.X, some of them even error on Windows too. But why are you plugging directly into the internet anyway? The most basic level of computer security has to be having a network address translation between you and the outside world. I think the last time I directly linked to the net was when we had a modem. We went ISDN in 1997 and ADSL in 2002.
6. Tailor-Made Systems. You can’t tailor make a Mac, nope totally accept this one. But while I use huge chunks of computing power to multitask and flip images about I don’t game and so the need for the last clock cycle to get 69.8 frames a second not 62.3 doesn’t matter to me. But then your screen only refreshes 60 times a second for a TFT anyway so what’s the point?! (Yes I’m aware this is reflecting a similar attitude so I won’t do it again)
7. Macs are Months behind. Apple just released an 8 Core Mac Pro. They released the first Quad Core Xeon too. How does that make them months behind in the Professional Workstation sector? OK Core 2 took a while longer to arrive, but then you can change a PC chip and nobody really notices a change on the spec page anyway.
8. Life beyond 1st Jan Yes the MacWorld show is in January, this year Apple didn’t release a new MacbookPro or any new machines. Yes Apple are secretive about their launches. They also have control of their market segment which no PC make does. If HP release a new machine Dell have to keep up, and its notable the HP tend to be fairly slow to evolve their hardware and also that their machines tend to be a little more stable than smaller suppliers due to proven components with tested drivers
9. Superior search facilities Resizing windows from any corner is something no Mac OS has ever done. They kept consistency with old Mac OS not with Windows. Windows accentuates the bottom right corner to adjust too. There is no maximise button, but shouldn’t we be working in a multi task world these days, otherwise what’s the point in dual cores? How can you multitask if Word fills the screen to type a couple of sentences? No finder does search in the same way as Explorer but the search facility isn’t bad and it is improving, but yes it’s not perfect, mainly because unlike Windows the Mac has never needed to work at the file level to the same extent.
10. Safety in numbers Yes, there are more PC vendors. There are more Fords than Aston Martins too, but Astons are more the object of people’s wet dreams of cars.
11. Sensible support costs. Mac warranty sucks in comparison to Dell and HP. Fact.
12. Microsoft is on your team. Yes Microsoft cover more markets with the Xbox etc, and yes they release for Windows before Mac. Office for the Mac is lagging currently, but mainly in terms of VBA functions, in many ways Office v.X has been ahead of Office 2003 since launch, like the way it handles files for example. I admit custom coding in Excel 2000/2003 is easier, but Word is much nicer on the Mac than in Windows.
13. Black’s still the new black. Fashion among iBook owners, who’d have thought it? If PC owners never get criticised for style how does that make it a case for choosing a PC when one of your editorials this month discusses the way style is about the only thing left to differentiate most boxes now?
14. The CD drive has an Eject button. It’s a quirk I admit, but I still habitually eject my CD’s via the OS when in Windows too. I did it before the Macs entered my life too. I accept some people might not, but the easiest way to upset Windows sometimes is to eject a CD it’s not quite done with.
15. No confusing version numbers. _Yes because OS.X 10.3.9 and OS.X 10.4.3 are so confusing compared to “Windows XP SP2 with .Net Framework 1.1a SP1”. If your system is patched and up to date only the first bit matters, they could even say needs OS.X Tiger with latest patches as an alternate.
16. What the hell was that. The Mac startup booong is annoying I’ll grant, but I’ll live with it because it lasts less than a second
17. Cheap OEM versions. These, as they kindly point out, breach MS licence agreements and while I’m sure MS would rather have the revenue from you buying an OEM than pirating someone else’s strictly speaking it’s not in the terms of your contract with MS for their software.
18. Far better media capability. Windows Media Centre does offer a lot I’ll grant, but it’s all basically souped up Media Player. It does have features ahead of Front Row so I’ll let it stand.
19. IT Support Expertise. Yes agreed there are more Windows experts, that’s because there are more Windows boxes and they go wrong more. Yes most businesses are Windows based, that’s because much high end software is Windows based or custom coded to the company. Corporate market domination is clear and simple and Active Directory is, I believe one of the finest ways to manage a large network. Apple doesn’t care about networks of thousands. They care about networks of a couple of hundred people in a design house, their core clientel, just as in truth Microsoft really care about the corporate market and the home market as an afterthought. This explains why Exchange is by far a leading Email and Collaboration server while XP Home should have been buried at birth.
20. Not so insecure. As I’ve said time and time again, if you use things responsibly and have a good anti-virus package, then Windows is fine.
21. Copious amounts of freeware. Much of it totally duplicating other efforts elsewhere in the world. There are more projects for Windows on Sourceforge, but just look at the outputs. Mac even provides all the tools for you, something MS only did recently with the Express versions.
22. What is it with Steve Jobs. Great question but is disliking a man a reason to not buy a machine? I personally am not his biggest fan but hey ho.
23. The menu is where? At the top of the screen, always. It’s back to the Mac habit of things being in repetitive locations so you always go to the same place, it’s a task orientated window not a program orientated one. That’s a good thing for multi tasking people.
24. Full selection of peripherals. Can’t argue that not everything has a Mac variant.
25. Build your own computer. Again can’t argue. But people picking a machine in PC world aren’t pick Mac vs Meccano they are picking Mac vs Acer or something.
26. The Apps don’t crash. Well they do but they take the OS with them. When an App crashes in OS.x you can usually make things work by trashing the Plist file and having it rebuild when you start it again. It is annoying, and I accept that, but neither side is immune to coding errors
27. Tablets and Touchscreens. _You can’t get a tablet Mac unless you go for a custom one from Axiotron and that’s very fair but the tablet market is pretty small really, but they have their uses.
28. You don’t need as much RAM. Windows has better virtual memory facilities
29. A Mac’s delete key doesn’t delete. Damn annoying I know.
30. Apple doesn’t like meddling. No it doesn’t like you getting into the BIOS level. I can’t remember the last time I went into a PC BIOS either though.
31. PCs are Greener. Well ok then
32. Best for Beginners. Yes a PC has more users so there is more advice about. When it comes to non knowledgeable users though the Mac is generally less likely to break and has a less technical more common sense approach

So I make that actually er…15 perhaps giving half reasons here and there along the list. Of course everyone has their own views. Personally this summer I shall be buying myself a shiny new MacbookPro, running OS.X with the latest version of Office on it, with a Parallels and BootCamp load of XP Pro SP2 running MS Money, Visual Web Developer and audio control apps. For everything else I have an OS.X equivalent.

Christopher Hinds : 20 Apr 2007 22:55 |  Tags: Apple Computers Microsoft Os X Windows |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem