Yes, I am talking about that MSN.com. The web site that has the blue background. The one with the text that’s way too small. The one that the only reason anybody ever has it as their home page is because they don’t know how to change it to something else.

That being the case, MSN’s upcoming changes are sure to get noticed. The logo changes both with the butterfly and font, the blue background is (finally) gone and said honestly the overall experience of using it is a whole lot better. Heck, you might even find it useful because we all know the current MSN just plain sucks.

Why does the current MSN.com suck? Because the design coddles to a bygone era where web designers were deathly afraid of making anybody scroll for anything, hence the stupid tiny text on the current MSN. There’s this ridiculous belief that if anybody has to scroll down for any content on your web site, you lose. This is only true if your content sucks. Scrolling down is not evil, never has been and never will be. If you’ve got something worth reading, the reader will happily scroll; there is nothing wrong with that.

What makes the new MSN.com a notable improvement?

Color coded organization:

This is a big deal and it’s not easy to pull off design-wise, but the new MSN makes it work. And when hovering over menus, a nice dotted border appears with menu choices below.

Tabs:

The blue "Games" in the screen shot above is an example of a tab in the new MSN interface. These are located in several areas and yes, they work well. Like with the top menu, some (but not all) tabs will have different colors compared to others.

Social connectivity:

Oh yes, it has it. The old-school Web 1.0 portal finally jumps into the modern age with Facebook and Twitter connectivity right from the same page. This is a really big deal because it gives people a reason to use MSN as their home page other than for just looks and information.

The beauty of the way it works is that the new MSN doesn’t shove you elsewhere, such as a "my.[web-service-here].com" just to get this feature. It’s on the home page right where it should be. That counts and counts huge. And YES, you can post status updates right from there as well for Facebook or Twitter. I tested it myself.

Microsoft said a few years back that they were going to put a huge effort into making their offerings modern. This started with Windows Live, then Bing and now MSN. I never thought I’d ever see MSN get out of Internet Stone Age, but it looks like it finally will – and do so in a way that truly will wow you and prove to be useful at the same time.

I am not a journalist. Or am I? Keep that question in mind as you read through this.

Dave attended BlogWorld Expo this year, and one of the things he noted is that Leo Laporte stated in so many words that new media will be the new standard in journalism soon enough.

"New Media" is a very overhyped term, but is the only one that accurately defines the difference between traditional news outlets and the newer ways of getting news and events. In other words, it’s the difference between print (old) and internet (new).

As a writer for PCMech, I make my best effort to follow the tenets of traditional journalism. In that vein, reports are to be as factually accurate as possible, opinions (editorials) are to foster meaningful discussion, humor is to be inoffensive to the reading audience, and so on.

A journalist in strict definition is, "a writer for newspapers and magazines." I don’t think that definition accurately applies any longer. It should be changed to, "a writer for media outlets", meaning print and/or internet. If a traditional journalist has an online column or authors one exclusively but used to have a print column, does that mean a journalist doesn’t classify as one any longer? I don’t think so.

Definitions aside, something that I’ve always been aware of is that for whatever I write here, I’m responsible for it. This is another tenet of journalism. You, the reader, expect that whatever is written here is true, be it a report, documentation or otherwise. With the increased readership to PCMech as well as a ton of other web sites, that responsibility is something to be taken seriously.

Authors of blogs with wide readership understand this responsibility. We understand it to the tune of, "Wow, there’s a lot of people reading what I write, so I’d better not steer them wrong."

What makes New Media differ from Old Media the most?

1. Instant delivery.

You don’t go to the store and buy what you read here. It’s delivered instantly any time you want, for free, simply by typing in the web address.

2. Two-way communication.

Old Media has always hated this. The old way was the (in)famous "Letters to the Editor" section of whatever publication you were reading. Out of the hundreds of letters received, only a scant few would ever appear in print. The rest were all tossed and would never see the light of day.

New Media has reader discussion right on the article itself, and if you want to contribute, you can do so easily.

The reason I say Old Media hates two-way communication is because they’ve never been able to handle it properly. As most know, Old Media was pulled into the internet kicking and screaming all the way. They labeled it as simply a fad that would go away. It didn’t. Instead it steamrolled right over them and they were forced to go online. But they still don’t know how to handle two-way communication and struggle with it consistently. I don’t believe this is going to change any time soon.

3. Edge.

Traditional journalism is not edgy and is best described as sober – almost to a fault. It’s bland reading that has no bite whatsoever. In other words, boring.

Edge in this context is not meant to imply gimmicky, sell-your-soul type of garbage. Rather it means that the author has to be willing to (gasp!) have an opinion and stick by it. With Old Media this is almost nonexistent, hence the blandness.

New Media more or less dictates, "It’s OK to have an opinion. Do it."

4. A chance for others to write and contribute their voice.

Something that everybody takes for granted is the ability to link web pages. At any time, you could start up your own blog for free (Windows Live Spaces, LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, etc.), write up your own article and link back to this one as a reference. Or maybe you want to post a rebuttal article against this one. Or whatever. It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that you can do it. You can’t do that with print because you don’t have the circulation. With internet, your circulation is the world.

Is Old Media scared?

Yes, and has been for a while now. Print media readership has been dropping like a brick. All of them missed the boat with internet, and even though they’re all online now, they’re still not doing it right. New Media continues on its path of ushering in a new era of journalism.

I want to make clear that I do not want print media to go away. Newspapers and magazine are established and well-respected sources of news and information. I do not wish even for a second that they vanish into obscurity, as it would be very sad if that happened.

What Old Media needs to do is to stop treating New Media as "something we deal with only because we have to." Instead of rowing against the stream they should simply go with it. Otherwise they will be stomped out. Yes, stomped.

Are internet-only writers journalists?

The only person qualified to answer this question is you.

Do you feel that you get the same level of news and information online as you do with print?

Do you consider online content to have inferior, on par, or superior quality compared to print?

Does personality (with edge mentioned above) in content matter to you, or just the facts and only the facts?

If we added a comics section and a daily crossword puzzle, would PCMech be a "tech newspaper?"

Interesting questions, to be sure.

Yahoo, yes (that Yahoo) made some significant changes to their main web site. While this angered some, to those I say this: Yahoo is not Google, and I’m glad it’s not. If you’re expecting Y! to be another Google clone, it isn’t. And it shouldn’t be.

The first thing I do on Yahoo is switch over to the compact view and change the color to blue (just my preference). This is located at the far right:

From there, Y! is slim and trim, the way I like it:

For those using 1024×768 displays, yes, Y! is still very friendly to that resolution (even in Y’s "full" mode).

Above: Adding in (or removing) favorites is easy. And yes you can add in non-Yahoo sites.

You will notice that at least in compact mode, Yahoo.com does not scroll-scroll-scroll down like it did before. It’s been cleaned up considerably and yes it is easier to use.

My only immediate complaints are these:

No links are underlined

I’m a fervent believer in having as many links underlined as possible to there’s no guessing whatsoever, especially for the color blind who cannot distinguish black text from blue.

Should have more my.yahoo.com features

My.yahoo.com has things like tabs and moveable boxes. The main Y! site should have this also.

If you’re going to have a logo color change, it should be universal

Pick a color and stick with it, Yahoo. Yahoo.com has a purple logo now. My.yahoo.com has a red logo. Mail.yahoo.com and several other Y! services still have the red logo.

If you’re going to commit to the purple, then, well.. commit.

Are you a Yahoo?

Many of you out there use Yahoo.com as your home page. Are the changes welcome or should Y! have stayed with the old format?

It’s not just a keyboard, it’s the whole computer. A keyboard with the computer built in and an 800×480 touchscreen display/trackpad on the right.

I had two initial thoughts when I saw this thing on Engadget.

First, there’s going to be a lot of strained necks. This is absolutely not ergo-friendly whatsoever. Cool, yes, but not ergonomically sound.

Second, I immediately thought, "Hey, this is reminiscent of the old Commodore 64!" Several comment posters on the link above said the exact same thing.

This computer is not available for purchase yet, but most likely soon will be. Yes, it will have XP on it.

I find it interesting that when it comes to computers, history repeats itself often. The Commodore 64 to this day is the best-selling computer of all time. The Eee Keyboard essentially goes back to that winning formula Commodore had, that being a small, low-priced, feature-rich, easy-to-use computer.

Will the Eee Keyboard sell as much as the Commodore did? I doubt it.

But I do admit I’d really like to own one. More so than a traditional laptop.

Put simply, I don’t upgrade operating systems. Ever.

I install any OS new and recommend the same to anyone else. It doesn’t matter if it’s Windows, OS X or Linux. Don’t upgrade. Back up your stuff, wipe the drive and start from scratch with the new OS.

To note, I don’t do this with incremental updates (e.g. XP Service Pack 2 to 3) but rather with significant version changes (e.g. Ubuntu 7 to 8).

In my personal experience, my OS upgrades have consisted mainly with Linux and Windows boxes; neither of them know how to do major version updates correctly and never have.

With Linux, I will encounter some type of upgrade issue without fail. If it’s not X that screws up, it’s the network connection. Or maybe Samba decides to drop all the network shares. Or maybe some other service just magically decided to stop working and absolutely will not work again no matter how many configuration files you manually edit or services you stop/restart or reboots you perform. Or maybe the OS won’t load properly at all. But when you install fresh, ta-da… everything works like it’s supposed to and you can go on your merry way.

With Windows, any OS upgrade will leave an enormous amount of crap left behind by the previous version – always. The drivers that used to work in the old OS will try to load in the new one and BZZT… sorry Charlie, that doesn’t work anymore. In addition, the computer runs slow because it’s got all the preexisting crapola it’s still trying (and failing) to use. But when you install fresh, there’s no crap Windows has to deal with and therefore runs better.

I have never recommended that anyone take an existing OS and install an upgrade on top of it, and I never will.

Most of you out there will be upgrading to Windows 7 from XP when it comes to market. What I suggest you do now is the following:

Take inventory of your software

For every app you use, open up a spreadsheet app like Excel or Calc or Google Docs and list them all there. Include your downloaded stuff, your games and everything else. Consider it to be your own personal how-to guide to “build” your OS the way you like it.

For the downloaded apps in particular, make a separate column with the download link so you don’t have to go hunting for it later.

Keep this spreadsheet up-to-date.

For those that would ask why this is even necessary, the answer is that it’s easier to read a spreadsheet than it is to fumble thru a huge list of files and folders. Also, there’s probably at least a few apps you have to install in a specific order. Having the inventory on spreadsheet makes that easy to follow.

(For Linux users I also recommend doing the software inventory spreadsheet. Note the apps you have installed from your respective repositories. Just because you use Linux doesn’t mean you don’t take inventory of what’s on your box.)

Burn any/all downloaded app(s) to CD or DVD or copy to USB stick

CDs and DVDs are cheap and readily available. Buy a 50-pack of a decent brand (one can never have too many) and a set of fine point Sharpie markers. Set aside some time to burn all your stuff.

Recommendation: I suggest burning each disc twice just in case the first one fails or an optical drive decides “I don’t want to play nice with this disc” and scratches it all up.

Alternative: Use a large-capacity USB stick. 16GB versions start at 25 bucks. And it’s most likely true that all your downloaded app-installer files don’t get anywhere near that capacity when combined.

Need more space? Get a 32GB stick. Still need more? Get a 64GB.

Before you wince at the price of the 64’s, bear in mind this is a little USB stick we’re talking about.

If you can fit all your app installer files on a single USB stick, trust me when I say that’s darned convenient. Having all your must-have apps on a single stick is so much easier to deal with compared to flipping thru disc after disc.

Why don’t I recommend external hard drives?

Because you’re most likely using it as a primary backup for other things besides downloaded apps, and you’re probably using it routinely. When doing an app-inventory backup, it’s best use a store-and-forget method until you need it. Discs and USB sticks allow you to do that.

Collect any/all from-OEM discs, put them all together and categorize

These are CDs supplied with your printer, digital camera, camcorder, digital dictation device, GPS, etc. Buy a disc folder or box and stuff ‘em all in there. The software is probably more important to you than the manuals so you might as well keep it all together.

I’m not saying to throw out the boxes or manuals – but put the discs together.

If you don’t feel like doing that, burn copies of the driver/software discs and do it that way.

If you do this stuff now, it will make your new-OS install a whole lot simpler in the future

Most people do the above the day they buy a new OS. Wrong. Don’t do that. Doing it all in a day means you’re guaranteed to miss something along the way. That OEM driver disc you thought you had will end up missing. That file you thought you had won’t be there or backed up anywhere.

And let’s say that you don’t plan on jumping to Windows 7 the week it’s released. That’s fine – but you should still do inventory and back up your apps regardless. There is never such a thing as being too prepared when it comes to computers and operating systems.

Happy ‘09, everyone. Hope yours is a good one.

It is tradition in the United States that people make what’s called their "New Year’s Resolutions", i.e. a  to-do list of things they want to get done. This can be things such as losing a few pounds, paying off a few debts, getting some housework done, etc.

These are my tech resolutions. Will they happen? Maybe.

1. Switch to 64-bit computing.

This is all dependent on whether Windows 7 gets released this year or not. The cost to go 64-bit is roughly the same as 32-bit. Granted, I could go 64 now with Linux or Mac OS X (both have 64-bit releases), but what can I say… I’m a Windows guy.

(Edit: Yes I know there’s 64-bit Vista but I want 7 specifically.)

2. Get better at that whole social media thing.

Social media works. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Bebo, YouTube, Flickr or whatever you use, it does work if you put effort into it. And when I say "effort" I mean creating relationships OTI that translate into IRL. You can have as many OTIs as you can muster but it matters more when human contact is achieved.

3. Host more PCMech Live shows.

There hasn’t been a live show for the past 2 weeks because of the holiday stuff. In addition to getting back into the swing of every Wednesday 8-10pm EST there will also be other shows added in there.

This isn’t a "maybe" on this list. It will happen.

4. Get a netbook.

The netbook is a super-small factor laptop with an 8 or 10-inch screen. These are the ultimate in portability, I really like them and their cheap. I haven’t bought one yet because the specs are not up to par in my opinion. If I’m going to get one it has to have at least a 256GB hard drive on board, 10 to 12-inch screen and a few other things – of which they don’t have yet.

But maybe by 2009 year’s end they will? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

For those that ask why I’m so hot on netbooks, it’s because they encompass what portable computers are all about, that being portable. Not "desktop replacements", not "chuck everything in there under the sun" and so on. Laptops are supposed to be small, light and portable, and nothing does it better than a netbook.

For those that say "iPhone!", you can take your touch-based scrunched keyboard and shove it. No thanks. I want a real computer with a real keyboard and trackpad that DOESN’T REQUIRE ME TO SUBSCRIBE TO A SERVICE just to use, thank you very much.

5. Backup more.

I do backup now but I really should backup more.

I will have to invest is some more USB sticks. Particularly 4GB ones. I’d rather use those over optical media any day because they’re far more reliable.

How about you?

Do you have a tech to-do for 2009?

Pictured right, NVIDIA’s Quadro FX 5800, a video card that has more video RAM than most people have for system RAM.

Well I suppose if NVIDIA didn’t do it I’m sure someone else would have.

Did you just build the most awesomest superest kick-assing-est computer ever (most likely for gaming)? Well, guess what – it’s obsolete. Darn that modern technology.

Okay, in all seriousness, yes this card can be used (obviously) – but certainly not for gaming because what a waste that would be. If you want a real-world example of where this sucker can be put to good use, that would be medical imaging.

Oh, and if you want one, it’s $3,499.

And I swear, if I hear one gamer nerd say, "LOL HOW MANY FPS CAN I GET ON FULL SETTING CRYSIS WITH THAT?!" or anything to that effect, I will personally come to your house and kick you in the jewels.

[Source: ars technica]

There’s a reason I used the odd-cased HoTMaiL in the title because that’s the way it was originally written out. You’ll notice the capital letters are HTML. Hotmail was spelled that way many moons ago to really drive home the fact it was HTML (meaning web) based mail.

Microsoft this week decided to roll out the new-and-improved interface across the rest (if not all) of Windows Live Mail accounts, and this obviously includes Hotmail.

Some people like it while others don’t like or outright hate it. You can put me in the camp of people that genuinely do like it because it goes back to the way Hotmail used to be – simple and fast.

The single largest complaint I’ve seen about the new Windows Live Mail interface is that people say it’s "boring" and that the previous interface was "just fine".

Not true.

The previous interface was no less "boring" than the new one and was so chock full of bloat that it made it a chore to use. While it’s true there are some things I miss (the "check mail" button and several icons are gone), the speed more than makes up for it. I don’t remember Hotmail being this fast since the early 2000s.

E-Mail is not supposed to be "exciting" to use. You want exciting and a super-cool animated in-your-face interface? Go play a video game; stay out of my e-mail.

Microsoft is now the first of the big three (Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail) to roll out a single interface and stick to it. Yahoo! Mail allows for a "Classic Mode" and Gmail an "Older version" option. The reason? Because the current-generation interfaces are too bloated. Microsoft was doing the same thing with their own "classic mode" as well – but with the new interface that is no longer the case.

Since using the new interface with Hotmail I can honestly that yes, this is truly new and improved. You can read things easier, it loads faster, the learning curve is minimal and most of all – it acts like a cloud-based app is supposed to act like.

Google and Yahoo! are officially going to have to start playing catch-up at this point.

Note: My upgrade didn’t work but my new 8.10 Ubuntu is freshly installed. Here are the immediate things I noticed from my initial use of the OS:

Above: When I customize my appearance settings to “Subpixel smoothing (LCDs)”, “Slight” is now automatically selected and this is cool. Saves me a few clicks.

Above: You can now create a bootable USB stick of Ubuntu natively within the OS. (System, Administration, Create a USB startup disk). All OSes should have this feature, period.

~ ~ ~

The Ubuntu 8.10 default wallpaper is the I’ve seen since “Dawn of Ubuntu”.

~ ~ ~

The Partition Manager (GParted) is now much more graphical in the best possible way. The previous one was functional but a bit difficult to understand what it was doing. This one, however, shows everything in a clear concise manner. Very much appreciated.

~ ~ ~

Above: Deskbar now operates much better. For those that use Launchy in Windows (which I do all the time) or Spotlight in OS X, Deskbar is now up to par with the others. Works very nicely and is buttoned up compared to what was in the 8.04 Ubuntu release.

~ ~ ~

Above: At the top right (in the default desktop), the icon is redesigned in a way that totally makes sense. Gone is the green “running man”. A red universal power button now shows that on click is a simplified drop-down menu. You absolutely cannot mistake this for anything else (whereas with the “running man” you could). This is a good design choice.

~ ~ ~

Several pop-up dialogs in the panel tray have been re-worded. For example, a wireless network is now labeled as a “hidden network”. For wireless routers that don’t broadcast their names, this makes sense to call it hidden.

~ ~ ~

Above: Panels can now be “permanently” locked. Right click any panel and look for the “Allow panel to be moved” option. This is good to have so panels aren’t accidentally moved.

~ ~ ~

I am still learning the ins and outs of the Ubuntu 8.10 OS but so far I can say yes, it’s easier to use compared to 8.04. There are lots of nice little touches here and there that make this a more enjoyable computing experience.

Note that I didn’t say enjoyable Linux experience – just computing.

Version 8.10 is good step forward in having a Linux based OS where you simply don’t have to care what the engine running it is.

Put another way: You could put someone in front of Ubuntu and that someone could use this OS without having to know nor care that it’s Linux.

As far as a desktop computing OS goes, that’s the ultimate goal. You should not have to ever think about the engine. You should be able to just turn it on and just do what you do with a computer, because said honestly you can cackle on all you want about Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux, but at the end of the day people will use whatever it takes to get the job done.

Ubuntu 8.10 definitely gets the job done.

If you tried 8.04 and were a bit turned off by the rough edges, many of those edges have been smoothed out with 8.10.

Some of you out there who use Hotmail might have seen this today:

(click image for full size)

The reason I say some is because this is a gradual roll-out of the updated Windows Live Hotmail service. If you use this e-mail, you will see this upgrade possibly today, tomorrow, next week, etc. But it will eventually happen.

The bad sense of humor comes from the ² at the bottom of the above splash page, which states:

We’ve designed Windows Live Hotmail storage to grow with you, but at a reasonable pace. That means you should have plenty of storage unless you suddenly want to store the planet Jupiter on Hotmail, in which case we’ll send you a nice e-mail asking you to please not try to store planets on Windows Live Hotmail (although gradual storage of moons and asteroids is ok).

"..gradual storage of moons and asteroids"?

Um.. yeah. Thanks, Microsoft.

Anyway, the new interface is notably better. All of it can be seen in this screen shot:

(click image for full size)

Here’s what has changed:

1. Easier management of recipients

Each recipient in To, Cc or Bcc is now surrounded by a border with a small X so it’s easy to add/remove people from a mail. Very nice.

2. Ability to change from Rich Text/HTML/Plain Text at whim.

I am VERY happy this is now here, particularly with the plain text option. In addition, plain text now looks like plain text with the use of a monospaced font.

3. Less icons

Icons were removed to speed up the interface. I don’t like this because they were nice to have.

4. Arrows removed from Junk/Deleted, "Empty" link now present

There used to be a small "swish" arrow next to Junk and Deleted to empty those folders but those are gone now. Instead, when you click on those folders there’s an "Empty" button above the e-mail list. I’m not sure if I like this or not.

5. Ability to set priority on e-mail when composing

The red exclamation point icon means "high", the blue down arrow means "low".

And we’ve still got no way to filter by priority when searching/listing mail.

You can set it and send it, but can’t filter/sort by it.

Ugh.

6. Ability to select themes

This is a crappy feature because there are less color options. I use the Silver theme in the old Hotmail. In the new Hotmail you’ve got 8 crappy theme choices. No customization whatsoever other than what MS gives you.

Bleah.

~ ~ ~

This is about all I could spot for the time being unless there were other things I missed.

Overall, yes – it is faster and better. Even though the themes suck, the plain text option with monospaced font more than makes up for it because that’s a function I’ve been wanting in Hotmail for a really long time.

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.)

Many moons ago when I was attending college getting my Video/Radio Production degree, the primary computers the school used for animation rendering were Commodore Amiga 2000 and 4000 boxes with LightWave software.

For our younger readers, this is before Microsoft Windows 95 even existed. Amiga computers did things back then which were nothing short of incredible. More on that in a moment.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, but there is actually a new AmigaOS, version 4.1.

If you thought Linux had a strong community, ha! Amiga for whatever reason absolutely will not die. I swear that every other quarter someone says "Okay, that’s it for Amiga. Stick a fork in it – it’s done." But no. Amiga continues to bounce back and the community stays alive.

Weird? Yes. But I suppose it’s no weirder than Haiku, the OS originally aimed at the continued development of BeOS. (Yeah. Remember that one?)

AmigaOS 4.1 is, of course, meant for Amiga boxes (certain ones) running the PowerPC processor. No availability for Intel at the moment – but who knows, there may be an edition for that proc.

So.. if you happen to be of the Commodore persuasion, you’ve got a new OS for your Amiga box.

Reasons why Amiga was formerly the best computer box – ever

The Amiga box smashed the notion that PCs absolutely could not do production-ready video. When one of the boxes was outfitted with the Video Toaster add-on, all of a sudden – whoa – it CAN do it. And do it well.

When IBM compatibles were running MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, and Apple Macs weren’t anywhere near OS X, and both those offerings could only do desktop publishing and semi-good multitasking, Commodore Amiga stepped in and showed everyone how it’s done. It was awesome – and it worked.

Related reading: Amiga.org. You’d be amazed what people do with Amiga boxes even today.

From the "Nobody really gives a flying f*#$" category (but a good watch anyway), Microsoft has already unveiled some new ads which are more on target with what they normally do.

Here’s one of them. It’s all about "I’m a PC".

Just to show you how bland the above ad is, Microsoft hasn’t really done any decent ads since Windows 95.

Compare and contrast:

Now ask yourself: Doesn’t that really make you want Windows 95?

You’re darn right it does. Those are the kind of ads that work.