The original Sony Walkman is 30 years old as it was originally introduced in 1979. I do distinctly remember these things from my childhood. I never specifically owned a true Sony model (only the cool kids were able to afford one), but the word Walkman was so widely used that it was the standard term used to describe a portable cassette player. In today’s age this hasn’t changed, except that we call any portable MP3 player an iPod whether made by Apple or not.

The Walkman was originally blue, however this didn’t last long as the vast majority of models were gray. And for whatever reason, Sony was able to make gray look cool in the 1980s.

As a sorta/kinda experiment, a teenager was asked to use one of these clunkers for a week instead of an iPod to see if he could figure it out.

A few quotes from that article:

• "When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks…"
• "It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape."
• "I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser…"
• "I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly…"

Go ahead and rest the rest from the link above. Good stuff.

As an interesting end note, audio compact discs were released to market only one year after the Walkman was introduced - and it’s still the standard audio format sold today.

Being that I hadn’t used Apple’s Safari browser for some time I decided to check it out again. It’s now at version 4 beta. This is the exact version I have:

The install completed easily, however on attempt to load www.google.com (yes, that Google), this happened:

Not good.

Everything with my internet connection was fine as my other browsers worked with no issue. Eventually Safari started working properly. Must be a beta bug thing (it is a beta browser, after all).

When you first start Safari you are presented with “Top Sites”, which is a paneled/skewed thumbnail collection of the sites you visit the most.

The panels are clickable, obviously. And yes, Apple thought enough to put an “Edit” button at the bottom left to edit out sites you don’t want to appear here.

If you’re saying to yourself, “I’ve seen this feature somewhere else..”, you’re right. The Opera browser has had this for a while. Safari’s Top Sites is just a fancy version of Opera’s Speed Dial, with the difference being Safari fills in the panels automatically whereas Opera doesn’t (and if I’m wrong there, feel free to comment and correct me).

Tabs in Safari are placed on the very top of the browser. You will either love or hate this. Users of Safari on OS X give mixed reviews on the above-bar tab placement, so you’ll have to decide for yourself whether you like it or not.

The Flash plugin works fine and I didn’t have to install/reinstall anything from Adobe. Browsing YouTube or any other Flash video-enabled site won’t be a problem.

The menu bar, like in Internet Explorer, is hidden by default and is accessed by pressing ALT. However you will probably never need to do this since everything important is accessed via the sprocket-looking icon.

From that menu is all the necessary stuff, like preferences, Private Browsing and so on.

Speaking of which, Safari’s Private Browsing is nice to have but the problem is that there is absolutely no confirmation to let you know it’s enabled after the OK, other than going back to the menu and looking for the checkmark next to the phrase.

By comparison, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 make it very obvious you are have private-mode enabled.

If you used Safari on Windows before, you’ll immediately notice the browser now uses Windows font smoothing (OpenType/ClearType) by default and not the thicker Apple-style font rendering. Is there a way to enable this, which was arguably its best feature? Yes. Go to Preferences and then Appearance and you’ll find it there:

Compared to previous versions there are now several different types of smoothing to choose from. Windows Standard is the default choice, but if you want the fatter/thicker style, use Medium or Strong. Light (at least to my eyes) tends to be too “fuzzy” looking.

If you have bad eyes, you will really like Safari set on Strong. Here’s an example:

“Windows Standard”

“Strong”

It does looks a bit “smudgy”, but for those with bad eyes this may really make a big difference when reading web pages.

If you use “Strong” in combination with increasing the size of a web page (CTRL and plus-key to enlarge, CTRL and minus key to reduce), the larger the font, the better it looks.

Will this browser switch anyone off of what they normally use?

Save for Mac people who want a Mac look in Windows and people who want a browser that renders thicker fonts, not really.

Safari is a decent browser but is trounced by other offerings. It’s not as extensible as Firefox (FF is king of the add-ons, no question). It doesn’t have as much support as IE 7 (and soon to be 8 once more market share is gained). It doesn’t have any super-whiz-bang features no other browser has like Opera does (such as voice  recognition).

Simply put, Safari is at the back of the pack. But as said above, it is decent. Version 4 brings good new stuff to the table.

Try it out, you may like it.

And by the way, the claim of “world’s fastest web browser” isn’t exactly true. That honor belongs to Lynx. A GUI-based browser cannot outrun a text-based one, period.

If posed the question as to what you think the worst possible thing could happen to a PC is, your answer would probably be, "when the hard drive dies".

Wrong.

The worst possible thing that can happen is fire. This is when something in your computer overheats, catches fire and starts melting the "guts" (motherboard, chips, etc.). Fire is the worst because it makes any computer literally unusable - and that’s far worse than a hard drive that croaks.

A small and true story before continuing:

Years ago I was working for a large corporation and the LAN Administrator was delivering a brand new laptop to one of the six-figure guys in the corporate office in Boston Massachusetts. The laptop in question was a Texas Instruments TravelMate 5100. This was at a time when the Pentium processor was still new and laptop makers didn’t really know how to cool those things down just yet.

The guy goes into the six-figure employee’s office, sets up the laptop, plugs it in, presses the power button, and..

POP.

Sounded like a small gunshot.

Smoke comes streaming up from the keyboard. The smell of burnt silicon stunk up the office and more or less the whole floor soon after that. The stench stayed there for a week it was so bad.

Modern-day PCs and laptops thankfully rarely if ever catch fire and start melting stuff, however the threat of fire is not 100% out of the question.

Two common situations that may set your PC ablaze

1. Unbound wires/cables

Dangling unbound wires in a PC case is a fire threat. This is because a wire can get too close to a fan, a fan blade chops the wire, that sets off a spark and if that spark hits the right spot (which it always does), it’s burn city.

Or..

A wire gets too close to a hot item in your case, the wire wrap melts, wire is exposed, throws sparks and produces the same disastrous result.

I cannot stress enough that you should never have dangling wires in a computer case. Ever. Bunch your cables, keep them as far away from fans and sources of heat as possible.

2. Dead fan(s)

A fan’s job is to cool. If a fan dies and for some crazy reason the computer doesn’t shut off like it’s supposed to when it gets too hot, whatever it was cooling will overheat, burn up and possibly take the whole computer with it.

Indicators that your computer is running too hot

1. When you touch the side of your case, it literally feels hot to the touch.

This is bad news. It is normally okay for a case to feel slightly warm to the touch, but if hot, that’s a problem.

If you have a laptop, that’s a different story. Many laptops run hot on the backplane (a.k.a. the bottom) due to the very limited space inside the chassis and there’s really not much you can do about it other than deal with it, or use a laptop stand with built-in fans.

2. Your computer randomly shuts off for seemingly no reason.

There probably is a reason - it’s running too hot. And your computer is saving itself by powering off to prevent itself from burning up. The solution is more fans or better fans if you can’t add any. Maybe a cooling system if you’ve got the cash for it.

What type of PCs have a higher risk of fire?

Custom built. Many people who build their own PCs cut corners and this can lead to disastrous results like fire later.

Bear in mind that I’m not talking about just high-powered gaming rigs here. Any improperly wired/fan’d PC box can burn up.

OEM boxes on the other hand, be they by Dell, Apple, Gateway or the like almost never have fire threat issues, much less actually catch on fire. The manufacturing process is done in such a way where extra special attention is given to ensure fire (almost, repeat, almost) never happens.

Got a disaster story with a computer burning up?

Whether it’s your story or someone else’s box, let us know in the comment section. Bonus points if you have pics (although not required).

Over the weekend I had a discussion with a friend who has recently switched to Mac, and he brought up an unbelievably good - and I mean good - point. I’ll get to it in a moment.

The friend I speak of is a Mac convert. He switched over, is very happy about it and has nothing but nice things to say about Apple. Granted, there are a few things he doesn’t like, but overall he’s satisfied with the way his Apple boxes work.

He knows that Microsoft is a software company and Apple is an OEM (something many Mac vs. PC debaters always forget). The super-good point he made is this:

"I have only one product made by Microsoft in my house, and it’s an Xbox 360. If Microsoft built a PC as good as the 360 like Apple builds a Mac, it would be the best PC made."

And he’s right.

Microsoft’s "PC" is the Xbox. It runs like a top. Gamers of all ages love it. Microsoft controls every bit of hardware and software that goes into it. It’s ultra-proprietary being that it’s a gaming console. And the fact it’s proprietary in and out is a huge reason why it runs so well - just like a Mac.

It should be noted that many Mac fans do own an Xbox. These people who positively can’t stand PCs will applaud the Xbox for working properly just like their Macs do; it is the single product made by Microsoft they don’t complain about.

I had to sit back and realize that yes, being proprietary does have its advantages, with the main ones being stability and reliability.

With Xbox, you pop in a game, turn it on and go. Simple as that. No fuss, no muss. It just works (and doesn’t that phrase sound familiar?) It’s networking also works without any hitches to speak of.

When you’re the OEM and control both the hardware and software, the box does what it’s supposed to do. There are no questions involved, such as, "Do I need a driver for this?" or the like. Everything is ready to run. When you’re not the OEM, yes, the box will crash. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but it will do it.

If Microsoft did actually manufacture a PC, and it was as good as the Xbox is, and it was priced right, they’d probably put Dell out of business.

Fervent Mac users are quick to say, "You get what you pay for" to justify the price of owning an Apple Macintosh computer or portable Macbook computer.

Laptops are outselling desktops like crazy right now and have been for some time - and this counts for Apple as well. Their desktop line, like all other computer manufacturers, have taken a huge hit sales-wise.

In the "get what you pay for" realm, with the Macbook line the one thing you don’t get for the money is screen size - and that matters. For many people that’s the make-or-break decision on whether to buy a laptop or not.

If you want anything over a 13-inch screen on a new Macbook, it will cost you over $1000, period.

Microsoft has capitalized on this:

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:0bb6a07c-c829-4562-8375-49e6693810c7&amp;showPlaylist=true&amp;from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion">Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion</a>

BUT… and this is a big BUT…

A 17-inch screen on a laptop is just too frickin’ big for most people. Yes, the display is nice, but it’s when carrying it around that it proves to be quite cumbersome.

The be-all/end-all perfect laptop screen sizes are 14-inch normal aspect and 15-inch widescreen. There has not been a size before or since that matches up for more people’s eyes better. It’s also more portable and lighter.

Those laptops can be had for under $400 new.

That’s less than half the price of a 13-inch Macbook. Now that’s a deal.

For the Mac fans that would say, "I don’t care, it’s still got crappy Windows on it", shaddup. It’s $600 less, the screen is a full two inches larger and if I don’t feel like using Windows I can put Ubuntu on it.

The best line from the commercial above is, "I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person."

In today’s economy, nobody wants to be "cool". If to be "cool" you must shell out $1000 for a Macbook with a 13-inch screen while other makes are larger and less than half the price, you can take your "cool" and shove it.

Three Mac computers from Apple’s line have been refreshed recently, that being the mini, iMac and Mac Pro.

Odds  are you’re probably not interested in the Mac Pro because it’s out of the range of what most people can afford these days ($2,499), however you might have been interested in the other two.

The new Macs don’t bring any significant design changes but do put more horsepower under the hood. The iMac in particular gets bumped to a 320GB hard drive and has better processor offerings, but for some strange reason still only offers a 8x speed SuperDrive.

It should be noted that Apple’s Macbooks are far outselling the desktop versions, and to be honest are a better deal. People are switching more towards laptops these days compared to desktops. The entry level 13-inch Macbook is priced correct at $999 and will hold higher resale value compared to the desktop version, so not only is it lower in price but will sell for more later when you trade up.

The Iphone is just cool. Calling it a phone is almost a disservice because what it really is is a full mobile computing platform. And in that vein, it can also be a mobile GAMING platform.

Now, I’m not a big gamer (my regular readers know that). But, I did spend a little time playing around in the App Store looking for some decent free games for the Iphone. I wanted to see what the phone could do. And I came across Maze Finger.

This game is simplistic as hell, but the graphics are pretty cool. I decided to create a quickie video to show you. NOTE: I was using a Flip Video in the dark to record this, so yeah, it is kind of out of focus. But, you’ll get the idea.

What do you think? Do you think the Iphone and the Ipod Touch could be Apple’s competition to some of the other popular mobile gaming platforms? I do.

Mandriva Linux 2009 now available

Back in 1998 (a long time before many people ever heard of that thing called "Linux"), Mandrakelinux (sometimes just called "Mandrake") was released. People liked it. A lot. Well here we are ten years later and Mandrake, now under the name Mandriva, has a new release.

It’s packed with GNOME v2.24, OpenOffice 3, Firefox 3, kernel 2.6.27 and a bunch more stuff. Read more about it (and by all means, download and try it out for yourself).

Google will (finally) get RSS for web search results

With just about any Google service you can get an RSS feed for it. That is everything except the one thing they do best - web search.

In about a month or less you will finally be able to get search results as RSS feeds. This is great for those of us who use RSS often (such as yours truly). Read more about it.

YouTube puts in audio preview feature for comment posting

As many people are aware, YouTube has the absolute worst web "community" on the face of the internet. It’s horrible. Actually, scratch that - it’s beyond horrible. So horrible there is absolutely no possible way it could ever be fixed.

However, YouTube (owned by the GOOG) continues to try to make sense out of that mess and has put in a new button when you go to post a comment called "Audio Preview". It’s exactly what you think it is. Write a comment, hit the button and the site speaks back what you typed.

And no it will not pronounce "OMG WTF THIS IS SO STOOPID GIVE ME MY 2 MINUTES BACK" correctly. Read more about it here (or go try it out for yourself).

The Woz says iPod is a dead horse

Do you know who Steve Wozniak is? If you’re an Apple fan you do.

Well anyway, he basically more or less said the iPod is dead. Yep. Woz also thinks the iPhone is going to live a very short life also. Read more about it here. (Be sure to read the part about how Apple’s stock is completely in the toilet too.)

I’ve mentioned on the PCMech Live show many times my disdain for the fact that if you’re one of the few running a 64-bit processor, your options for native 64-bit applications are few and far between on the consumer end.

Chances are very high that the computer you’re using right now has a 32-bit CPU in it.

Here’s the short-short definition of the difference between 32 and 64 concerning your CPU: Continued

Continued

For development and testing reasons, I wanted to set up a local server on my Mac Pro so that I could operate a local copy of PCMech.com. I thought I would document how I went about it for the benefit of others down the road.

The easiest method to set up a quick LAMP server under OS X is to use MAMP. MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Now, both Apache and PHP do come bundled with OS X, but you’re going to get into command line hell if you want to set it up. MAMP is much easier because you just download, drag to the Applications folder, and you’re done.

Once you’ve done this, let’s do the following:

1. Navigate to the new MAMP folder and start the MAMP app.
2. Change any preferences you might want to change, but otherwise go ahead and click “Start Servers”.
3. Click on “Open Start Page” and your default web browser will load up the default homepage at localhost. You will see a menu of options, too, because MAMP has PHPMyAdmin and other utilities built right in.

Being that MAMP is completely independent, it does not run in the background. So, you’ll need to start up MAMP like any other application in order for your server to be operational. To remove MAMP, just drag the MAMP folder to Trash. No config files for OS X are altered, so a simply drag to Trash means everything is gone.

To work with any files, you will need to place your website files into the “htdocs” sub-folder off of the MAMP folder. Yes, this means your website files reside in the Applications folder which is  odd. But, this is how MAMP maintains its independent nature.

Lastly, you might want to get command line access to MySQL so that you can run MySQL commands via Terminal. For instance, I needed to import the PCMech database into my local database and it was way too large to be imported via PHPMyAdmin. The tedious way would be to manually split up your SQL file. The much easier way is to set up the MAMP version of MySQL to be able to take commands via Terminal. To do so, execute the following commands in Terminal:

sudo mkdir /var/mysql
sudo ln -s /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock
sudo chown _mysql /var/mysql/mysql.sock
sudo chmod 777 /var/mysql/mysql.sock

Once that is done, you can import an SQL file via the following command via Terminal:

/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql -hlocalhost -uroot -proot [DBNAME] < ‘/Users/[USER]/Documents/Database Backups/[NAME OF SQL FILE].sql’

Replace [DBNAME] with the name of your local database, [USER] with your username under OS X, and [NME OF SQL FILE] with whatever the file name is for your SQL backup from which you want to restore. You’ll want to make sure the file path for your SQL file is correct, too. I use a folder called “Database Backups”, but that’s me.

With this, you should be good to go. I now have a copy of PCMech.com running locally on my Mac.

Continued

One of the most exciting things you will ever read in the world of technology is a keyboard review. I was, however, super interested because my Microsoft keyboard failed - yet again. What to replace it with? And this time, no Microsoft crap.

Continued

As many of my readers know, I have converted pretty much everything to Apple products. I am now a Mac user and recently I switched to the Iphone. As of a few days ago, even my keyboard is built by Apple. I am a fan of the company and their products, but I am seeing big red flares that are showing signs of trouble on the horizon.

Continued

The fire that rages on concerning Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux as far as “which is better” continues to burn hotly. You will find zealots (a.k.a. “fanboys”) for each party, but the plain fact of the matter is this: that they’re all wrong because that’s not what the future of computing is about. Continued

A report has resurfaced today from Daily Mail that Apple is working on releasing an Iphone Nano before Christmas.

This is pure rumor, and could very likely be pure BS. Since when has Mail Online become a source for breaking news about Apple?

But, they “broke” the story and it is currently taking up a lot of space over at Techmeme. Because it has to do with Apple, it resonates with the tech echo chamber. But, it is very likely based on a really thin rumor that has very little basis in reality.

Let’s look at some facts:

1. Apple is barely keeping up with demand for the new Iphone 3G - which they JUST released.
2. The Iphone is, in case you hadn’t noticed, pretty damn small already.
3. It is a phone. How small can it go and still be useful?

If we see this hit a site like MacRumors or AppleInsider, perhaps I’d put slightly more stock in it. But, when I think about British news organizations, I think sensationalism with a mix of bullcrap.

This story is link bait through and through. And who found it interesting enough to comment on, despite the obvious hook? This guy.

ComputerWorld reports that MobileMe users (Apple’s replacement to .Mac) were quite upset due to the fact the e-mail service had a four-day outage. In the world of e-mail, days can seem like years and this is especially true for mobile users who send tons of e-mail.

To the best of my knowledge I have never known any e-mail service to be down for 4 days in a row; this is absolutely unheard of.

And it’s even more rare that paid e-mail service (which MobileMe is) has this kind of outage. Ouch. If you’re e-mail is free then it might take the sting away a bit… but when you pay for it? That’s just bad all around.

It would seem that Apple users are better off using free Gmail.

The Iphone is the cool gadget of the times. And proof of that is that when I wanted to go look at (buy ) one recently I found that both Tampa Apple stores and all local AT&T stores were out of the Iphone 3G. Damn.

But, the device is not without issues and one of those issues is battery life.

Continued

When Apple OS X Leopard (10.5) was launched, one of the biggest marketing points was the inclusion of Time Machine.

Time Machine is the backup program that goes on automatic when using OS X and backs up every file on your Mac automatically to an external hard drive. If you ever want an old version of a particular file, just find the file in Finder and then activate Time Machine. You’ll take a very graphical trek into time (pictured to the left) where you can find the old version of the file you want and restore it.

But, did you know that Windows Vista has something somewhat similar to this? Yes it does and it is called Shadow Copy.

Shadow Copy is built into all versions of Windows Vista, although only Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate have the necessary GUI setup to work with it from Explorer. But, the idea is that it allows you to browse back in time and restore a file from a past restore point. Shadow Copy is more or less the replacement for System Restore in Windows Vista. If you are running Vista, it runs by default as a Windows service.

Using Shadow Copy, you can restore a single file relatively easily. To do so, right-click on the file you wish to restore. You can also right-click on an entire folder. Then choose “Restore Previous Versions” from the context menu. You’ll be presented a list of dates for which you have restore points for the file. Click Open to view it as it was on that day. To restore, just hit Restore.

If you are not running a version of Vista which has this built into the GUI, you can still use the system by downloading a utility called ShadowExplorer. Using that program, you can browse to a particular restore point in the date dropdown, then find the file or folder you wish to restore and select Export.

An Equivalent to Time Machine? No.

On the Mac, Time Machine backs up every hour. In Windows, it creates restore points on a schedule you set. Usually once a day. Any file you wish to restore would need to be tied to a restore point. A restore point is just that - an entire set of files for your computer so you could restore the whole thing. So, given the nature of it, this is certainly NOT Time Machine. Apple’s Time Machine is much easier to use and is much more thorough in the backups it does.

Also, Time Machine is set to back up to an external drive. Windows Shadow Copy creates restore points on the system hard drive. This defeats the point usually because hard drive failure is one of the more common reasons to have this type of system in place.

So, Shadow Copy certainly should never be your replacement for a good data backup policy. Mac users, Time Machine can be your backup policy and you need not worry about it aside from that.

As Rich reported yesterday, Apple finally got around to filing a lawsuit against Psystar. The lawsuit was filed in the northern district of California and alleges all of the obvious charges, including license infringement, copyright violation, etc.

Psystar very blatantly entered this market - almost as if they were wishing they’d get sued. They very blatantly poked Apple in the eyes and started selling hackintoshes. The only mystery is what took Apple so long to react.

But, filing a lawsuit isn’t enough. Now Apple is asking Psystar to issue a recall on all the Mac clones they sold since Psystar’s debut in April. “Psystar’s actions have been committed with intent to damage Apple and to confuse and deceive the public,” Apple claims (according to ZDNET). “As a direct and proximate result of Psystar’s infringing conduct, Apple has suffered and will continue to suffer lost sales and profits in an amount not yet fully ascertained in an amount to be proven at trial.”

IT goes to show that Apple is going for the jugular on this one. However, a recall isn’t practical. People paid money for Psystar systems (bonehead move, but they did). Do you really think somebody who purchased a system is going to send it back? So, a recall is likely wishful thinking.

Winning the lawsuit, however, is not. I expect Apple to wipe the floor with Psystar in court.

Apple. Who else?

From the Captain Obvious and Duh Files, sources say (as if there weren’t enough of them) that Psystar has been sued so bad they’ll be owing money to Apple well into the next century (give or take a decade).

Steve Jobs himself has said that the reason people want a Mac is because of OS X. And he’s right. Granted, the box looks nice and all that jazz, but the utilization of the hardware inside (which is what counts) is from OS X itself. But you need a true-blue Mac to experience what OS X is all about.

I make it no secret that I’m not a Mac person. But if I were, I’d never buy a cloned Mac. Ever. The packaging, design and execution of Apple products can only be experienced when you specifically buy Apple products and not cheap knock-offs.

More or less everyone universally agrees that Psystar was asking to get sued into oblivion. Well, they got their wish.

The interest in Mac is an at all time high these days. The public follies of Windows Vista, coupled with the superb marketing and positioning of the Mac by Apple, has led to an increased presence of the Mac in the eye of the computer user today. A tech bloggers like myself really enjoy covering Apple because they really are on the cutting edge of things and cause a lot of hype.

I pretty publicly switched to the Mac last year. A long time Windows user, I am now using 100% Apple hardware. But, the reaction to many might be: “must be nice to be you. YOU can afford it!”. So, the question is: How can you switch to a Mac without breaking the bank?

Continued

Don’t Make Me Think is a book about web usability. It’s an older book but required reading for anyone who designs web sites. In a nutshell it states that if you want a successful web site, make it stupidly easy to use. Go complicated are it’s nothing but a big ball of fail.

In the world of tech commerce there are basically two types of consumers: The 18-27 market and everyone else. I fall into the “everyone else” category as I’m 33 years old. Many PCMech readers also fall into the same category as well - and that’s just fine.

Given our choices with internet tech shopping, who wins and who loses? Let’s find out.

I’ll be using a 1 to 5 scoring system. 5 = best, 1 = worst.

Apple

Score: 5

Design is a cornerstone of Apple philosophy concerning all their products. Their own web site is no exception. This is one of the absolute easiest places to shop. Right on the home page it’s obvious you click on “Store” to go to (duh), the online Apple store.

Product pages are easy to navigate, easy to read (important) and prices are listed up front. There’s no hassle involved.

Dell

Score: 4

The recent redesign of the Dell web site is a welcome one. It puts a fresh face on Dell and makes their products look more attractive.

The reason this site doesn’t score a 5 is because it’s not entirely obvious that you have to hover (yes hover, not click) over “FOR HOME”, “FOR OFFICE”, or “FOR DATA CENTER” and then select from the drop-down.

When on a product page you’re greeted with lots of itty bitty tiny text. That’s bad. All the nice large text on the front is gone at this point. But at least the prices are listed up front.

NewEgg

Score: 4

NewEgg’s home page was redesigned a while back and it desperately needed it. All text on the home page is very legible. The SEARCH field is placed on the left side which is smart.

Considering the monster inventory of stuff NewEgg has it’s actually fairly simple to get around and find what you’re looking for. The left sidebar on any product screen is helpful to sort by manufacturer or other options presented. Prices are also listed up front for just about everything.

CDW

Score: 2

CDW is a bit of a mess. Too much really small text. Menus at the top that stretch out to the right.

The links on the left are more or less worthless. If you click on Small / Home Office, you get this:

This tells me nothing. I don’t want to “discover” anything. I want to see the stuff you have for sale, get a price and BUY.

In addition there’s a poll on the home page. There is no reason for polls to be there. This is a place to shop, not take polls.

Circuit City

Score: 3

Circuit City puts categories direct on top of the home page in very easy-to-read format. The drop-downs only go one way - down. And that’s great compared to the down-and-to-the-right way CDW does it.

Product pages suffer from the same fate Dell does - lots of itty bitty tiny text. But prices are listed up front.

In addition, Circuit City puts links on the right that are actually useful, such as the Outlet store, Consumer Reports buying advice and other items. Very nice.

Best Buy

Score: 3

The first thing I notice about the Best Buy site is that it’s aligned to the left. This is 2008! Center your web site!

Aside from that this site is fairly easy to get around and the Outlet Center is directly linked on the home page - that’s good.

For products listed the price couldn’t be any easier to spot. It’s in bright yellow. Ugly? Yes. But effective and I appreciate it.

Alienware

Score: 1

Yeah you just knew I had to put a “1″ (worst) in here, right? I won’t disappoint. Alienware has an awful web site designed with all the “cool factor” in the world but very little in the way of being helpful.

You are immediately greeted with useless Flash animations and images on the bottom that you don’t know you’re supposed to click on unless you hover over them first. On Web Pages That Suck this is called Mystery Meat Navigation.

The product page has LED-looking bars that basically say nothing. It looks like stats for characters in a video game - which is exactly the intent. And it sucks. Bars don’t mean anything.

This is what you get when a company tries to target the 18-27 market. Lots of fancy useless Flash, information that’s worthless and a doomy dark look.

No thanks.

Even though Alienware is under Dell’s umbrella and has been for some time, you can obviously tell Alienware is totally gunning for the 18-27 market.

I’ve been charged with the task of writing this article by the boss because evidently everyone else is deathly afraid to even speak of it. I’m not. That being the case, here goes nothing.

Reason 1: It’s the same OS you use at work.

In the large enterprise environment, this is usually how OSes are typically broken down:

Continued

The last time I looked at gOS I was not impressed. It looked like it had a long way to go. The operation seemed oversimplified and too watered down.

Even though I haven’t tried out the latest version of gOS, I might. Do you see the screen shot here? Does it remind you of an OS made by Apple? If not, it should, leaning app list and all.

Am I saying gOS is any good as OS X? Not at all. gOS won’t hold a candle to OS X, however, if it’s the look you’re after and gOS has it out-of-the-box, well… maybe it’s worth a look-see.

To our resident *nix-heads in the audience, has anyone used the latest version of gOS? It is worth trying out? We’d like to know.

To note, there appear to be three types of gOS. “Space”, “Rocket G” (has Gnome) and “Rocket E” (has Enlightenment). Which one is the best gOS? I have no idea, but it’s probably safe to say “Space” would be a good start assumedly.

I will be downloading this to test out in Live mode to see how it fares out.

When Apple came out with OS X Leopard, one of the more innovative things they included with it was Time Machine. This is, of course, the automated backup utility with a snazzy graphical interface which automatically backs up and archives your Mac. You can restore your entire Mac if needed or simply a single file. To use it, though, you need an external hard drive.

So, Apple released the Time Capsule. It is an Airport Extreme Base Station coupled with a hard drive. In other words, network attached storage (NAS) with a pretty face.

Continued

With last week’s announcement of the Iphone 2.0 (due to be released on July 11th), I was yet again pondering the thought of switching to the Iphone. The Iphone is very revolutionary for the smartphone market. The interface is amazing. The fact that almost anyone can actually use the features of the Iphone is amazing. Anybody with a Windows Mobile phone can attest to the difficulty you will have accomplishing seemingly normal things.

But, all in all, what is the real cost of switching to the Iphone?

Continued

Cult of Mac absolutely panned Apple’s new MobileMe service; the replacement for the .Mac service. Their article more or less describes what most of the Apple community thinks about the new service, which can be summed up as Meh.

Is MobileMe good? Yeah, it is if you want to use nothing but Apple services. But what if you want to use Gmail or Flickr? Sorry, you’re going to have to do it Apple’s way with MobileMe - and it’s not better. And by the way, you’ll have to change your e-mail address too.

This is how to keep your digital life connected? This is convenient?

No, this is decidedly inconvenient. As a matter of fact it’s outright frustrating. And you have to pay for it.

Present and future mobile computing is all about using what you want when you want to connect how you want. Using the MobileMe service simply denies you that privilege.

Read more about the frustrations of MobileMe via the link below.

[More info: Cult of Mac]

Sandisk recently acquired MusicGremin, a company who makes wi-fi enabled MP3 players.

For those that ask “Does that mean you can share music between players wirelessly?” Yes. Microsoft has had this feature available on their Zune model.

And for those that ask “Isn’t sharing stealing?” Not in the way this is done. The music is delivered via a subscription service, so all the bases are covered.

What we will see from Sandisk is (hopefully) some portable MP3 players on the lower-cost end of the spectrum in a price range more people can afford.

Wireless goes right along with portable. A portable electronic device today that doesn’t have some kind of wireless option, be it Bluetooth or otherwise, is more or less worthless because you’re still chained to wires in order to bring digital content on the device.

As early as ‘09 we should be seeing several MP3 player choices - all with wireless options - in the sub-$150 range.

For those keeping score with Apple, the iPod touch is the only portable media-specific (this excludes the iPhone) model that has any wi-fi option at all. And it costs $299.

Is a new Mac too expensive? Not to worry, you can always go refurb (or as Apple puts it: “Apple Certified Refurbished Mac”).

You can see all the current offers from Apple here.

Here’s the listings that stood out to me as the best values:

Refurbished iMac 20-inch 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Price: $949

The 20-inch is a decent model, it busts the $1000 price tag and it’s better than the Mini all around. More powerful and comes with everything you need. The only drawback is that it only has 1GB of RAM - but everything else is good.

Refurbished iMac 24-inch 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SuperDrive
Price: $1199

At just a hair under $1200 this is a lot of computer for the money. Remember, a 24-inch monitor is huge. The included nVidia 7300GT makes OS X scream. Once again, the only drawback is the 1GB of RAM. Considering this slab cost about $2000 originally, this Mac will stay current for a good long time.

Refurbished MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Price: $1649

This in my opinion is the best deal of the lot. With a wicked fast processor, 2GB RAM on-board, 160GB HDD (which for a laptop is good,) and an nVidia GeForce 8600M GT 256MB video card - for under $1700 this is really, really good. Whether you choose the glossy screen or the non-glossy the price is the same.