Me and my Mac

How upgradable is your pc? Compared to a mac…

Written by Arnan on February 17, 2010 – 1:07 am

In my experience, a computer is as good as it is put together. In other words. A mishmash of parts put together to form a pc if done wrong is a horrible pc. Even if you got the best quality parts. If they don’t play nice with each other it’s just shit and misery.

A mate of me keeps telling me to get a pc. Even though he never even tried a mac, he seems fixated on the idea that PC’s are infinitely better because they’re “upgradeable” and are “not limited”. In his words:

Its an extremely limited and expensive pc!

Perhaps. There is not much to upgrade to the hardware. Where-as a PC you supposedly can upgrade all you want.

But then my point of view. By the time you *need* to upgrade something in your PC. All you can really do is expand the ram and perhaps add a new video card. If you want a new CPU, you’re often stuck on some outdated socket. Which is not desirable, if at all still available. So you need a new mainboard as wel. But then you probably run into a slot issue with your ram, so you need new ram, too. Making it a much more expensive upgrade. Not to mention lots of issues with your Windows license in terms of validating and re-activating. So really, is a PC a better upgradable computer? I think it’s not.

By the time your mac *really* needs upgrading it will probably either be 3 to 4 years old. And you will buy a new one. Migrate your software and done. Easy peasy. Whereas for a PC you need to check if your new parts are compatible, put it together, hope it works. It probably will. Then mess with more drivers and updates than you can shake a stick at. In that process it’s very likely that you run into issues with conflicting or crappy drivers for days before it works a 100%. Not to mention trying to keep windows alive during that mess.

And that’s just my experience with upgrading PC’s over the past 10 or so years. Every time i wanted something new i had to buy a new PC, except when it was just the videocard or harddisk. I’m sure with Windows 7 it got a lot easier. I use Windows 7 and can tell it made big advances in hardware management. Still, it remains windows… And comparing my windows ease of use on a mac compared to a PC. The mac side of the story is much prettier.

So, seriously, how upgradable and unlimited is a PC? And do you need it? Really?

Tags: crap, hardware, mac, pc, upgrade
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Why Google Buzz is useless and bloat

Written by Arnan on February 16, 2010 – 1:21 am

What is Buzz?
So Google recently launched Buzz. The latest and greatest on sharing thoughts on why your cat is so awesome. Why the wife smells of beer. Why you like those boots. Why the boat of your dad is painted pink for no apparent reason and why you hate your job but love the girl in the metro on the way to it.

Meanwhile, it’s just a new way of sending messages from existing networks with a twitter-ish manner of sending stuff from Buzz itself which end up in your mailbox to stitch it all together. Sounds like…. yes…! Email! And what happens with your email at Google? Indeed, they make money with it.

Reasons Buzz is failboat:
1. It’s powered by Google
2. It’s not a social network as they do suggest
3. It knows everything about you and thinks that that is cool
4. It adds nothing since it relies a lot on existing services
5. The interface is horrible

What does that mean?
1. Google is an arrogant greedy monster of a company which only goal is to “unify” the internet under their terms and rules. And they have two rules: “You click our ads! We make money!” and “Your privacy is ours!” Reason enough for me to not use anything of Google. But that’s rather dificult, sadly.

2. While they sort of suggest that Buzz is a social network, the answer to Facebook and Twitter. I can’t stop wondering why it relies on other social media like Twitter and Flickr. Make your own medium! But wait, Google owns those companies. Most of them anyway. Will they be phased out and merged under the one name Buzz? That would be pretty clever. But for now that’s not the case.
Your ‘thoughts’ in Buzz are treated as mail. Thus they’ve basically re-invented email and called it “messages” or “thoughts”.

3. Since Google is practically everywhere, collecting your every detail. It knows pretty much everything about you. Upon activating Buzz i was confronted with my ex-girlfriend and Buzz thought we should hook up by following eachother. Maybe Google doesn’t know everything after all, but it did scan my emails to find out we were friends at some point. It was highly annoying. Also most of my other “followers”; i have checked them all out, yes all 7. I don’t know these people and see no relation to why they should or would follow me or why i would follow them. Are they picked randomly because we wrote the same keywords in emails recently? Freaky! Bunch of stalkers at Google…

4. For a messaging service, which is what Buzz really is, it should not rely or hook into other social networks. It defeats the purpose of them all! But since it uses Twitter for updates aswell as Picasa, Youtube and Flickr. What’s the point? really… No point! None at all!

5. True to Google, it looks like crap. A boring white and blue layout, like Gmail. Bah! Be innovative for once! At least Facebook makes an effort with a proper site design.

Your thoughts?

Tags: crap, failboat, google, network, social, twitter, useless
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A social spree!

Written by Arnan on February 15, 2010 – 7:55 pm

Since social networking is hip and cool. Apparently it’s the way and the light. So i guess i should adapt.

So, everyone! Quick! Abuse this weakness in my defenses and add me on facebook! It’s here: http://www.facebook.com/adegans.

Also add me on GoogleTalk. It’s adegans@gmail.com! (Don’t email me there though, i won’t read it!)

Yay… I think.

Tags: chat, google, odd, rant, social, social networking, spree
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It’s pretty and starts with a C….

Written by Arnan on February 15, 2010 – 7:41 pm

Today they finally arrived. The thing i ordered back in November last year. Which were promised to be delivered 10 orso days after that. But were delayed for well over 2 months. But now they’re here…

… iPhone Coasters! Woohoo!