Christos Kalantzis’ Blog

I am often asked to comment on which major computing category one should invest in, and for what reason.  It used to be easy.  Desktop or Laptop were the 2 options.  However, with the recent success of the Netbook market, and the upcoming tablet market, which is poised to launch in 2010, the rules have changed.  This post will take a look at what to buy, for whom and for which use-case.  Please note that this article is biased towards home users.

In the beginning

A desktop used to be the traditional way of computing. However, with the cost of laptops falling in the mid 2000′s, their increased computing power and wifi proliferation, laptops have now overshot desktop sales.  Then the recession hit in 2008.

The Rise of the Netbook

Asus gambled and won with the netbook (EEE PC), a category they created.  Soon Dell, HP, MSI and others followed.  This new category of low powered, conveniently sized machines, along with cloud applications such as Google docs and streaming video, opened our eyes to choosing machines that were “powerful enough” for what we wanted to do, on the go.

Tablet, Anyone?

2010 is poised to be the year of the tablet.  The iPhone/iPod Touch, N97 and Android phones have whet our appetite for touch based internet devices to consume electronic media.  Those devices, although the perfect form factor for a phone, aren’t ideal for long term use.  Enter the slates!

Lenovo, Dell, HP all showed off tablets at CES this year.  Apple is even rumored to be working on a tablet.  It will probably be overpriced and Steve Jobs will be praised as inventing the tablet, even though three weeks earlier five other vendors showed off tablets….don’t get me started!

The Breakdown

OK so here is my take on these 4 form factors and when each one makes sense.

• The Tablet is a luxury item for consuming electronic content and surfing.
• The Netbook is a cost effective, small form factor machine, useful for those who want to create written content and surfing.  Great for students.
• The Laptop should be considered a mobile workstation.  Surf, write and do things that require more muscle and a bigger screen like sketching, sound recording and some simple video editing and programming.
• The Desktop is a workstation, in the old sense of the word.  A powerful computer used for complex computational tasks or gaming.

The winner?  The Laptop is the sweet spot.  However, if you are on the go alot, and live in the cloud, one could get away with just a Netbook.  Get a Tablet if you have some spare cash lying around.  Got to play Crysis?  Then the desktop is for you.

There you have it!  That is my take on the different form factors.

Happy computing!

It Works!

During installation you have to make certain BIOS changes identified on the EFI-X webiste to get this thing installed.  The forums are a great resource if you are stuck, and they answer questions within 24 hours.  I had reseated some drives, which made me loose the EFI-X chip in the BIOS.  I was quickly told to reset the CMOS, and it came back.  Thanks Forum guys!

I am now rocking my new MacPro!

Cheers!

Parts

So the EFI-X website has lots of  parts to choose from.  I have settled for the following:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz)
• Radeon HD 3870 Video Card
• 2x2GB 800Mhz RAM
• LG DVD Burner (SATA)
• 2X500GB Hitachi HD (SATA)
• Cooler Mater 550W Power Supply
• Cooler Master Case

I hadn’t assembled a computer in a while, and it was fun to get my “hands dirty” again.

I got the hardware from  various sources.  At the time I purchased them, Amazon, Fry’s and NewEgg where my friends.  Look around for the best deals.

Next Step….Installing Mac OSX.

I have decided to upgrade my iMac to a Mac Pro. However, have you seen the price of those things? Can you say Apple Tax? Too bad you can’t build your own unless you want to go the hackintosh route and deal with hacking the kernel and updates that you cannot apply. Until now!

EFI-X is a German company that developed a chip thatplugs into your motherboard and duplicates the EFI hardware instruction set. So once it’s installed all you need to do is install using a retail copy of OS-X. I do mean retail. Not advocating piracy here. Just a little EULA breakage.

On their website they list a bunch of supported hardware. As long as you choose the parts they support, your golden. So follow my next few postings as I choose my hardware and build a homebrew Mac Pro.

Have you seen the latest Apple add? Actually you saw it the first time. It’s the same add over and over again.
I, personnaly, have gotten a little tired of that theme. All they are, are pot shots at Microsoft. Why not tell me what you can do, instead of spreading lies (and i mean outright lies) about your competition? Funny that one of their selling points is that you can run Windows!
The adds no longer are aimed at getting new users, but to make fan-boys chuckle.
By the way Apple, a PC also runs Linux. Latest numbers show that there are more world-wide Linux users than Mac users.
So tell me what you can do for me and how much it will cost to switch to you (hardware and software), instead of just spreading FUD. It’s getting a little old.

So they released the SDK this week. That was inevitable, and very important to pickup the sluggish sales of the iPhone. New third-party software will empower developers to create much needed new apps for this new platform, which is way behind Windows Mobile or even Symbian in third-party apps. Most will probably be junk, but I would love to see an ebook reader and universal Instant Messenger and even Truphone to make a VOIP client for it.

However, for me the real news, and what could really propel iPhone sales, is the announcement that it will be Exchange compatible. Once again, being more compatible with the company Apple loves taking pot shots at, makes it even more appealing to the masses and will help its bottom line.

Seems that Microsoft is behind the reason of Apple’s success over and over again. In 1997 Microsoft bailed Apple out of potential bankruptcy. Then the iPod didn’t really take off until they made iTunes for Windows. Even today, most iPod users are Windows users.

Then they switched from Power CPUs to Intel. This speared rumors of being able to run Windows on a Mac. Well the rumors were not only true, Apple created the software to make it happen and even supported it. Macs flew off the shelves.

Now they will support Microsoft’s Exchange, and it will undoubtedly skyrocket sales of the iPhone as corporations will buy them up by the truck-load. Once again its Microsoft compatibility to the rescue!

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Apple products, and with the announcement of the SDK and Exchange compatibility, I might trade in my N95 for an iPhone this summer. I even bought a brand new Macbook Pro. However, I hate the constant hate coming from Apple fan-boys towards Microsoft.

So lets all thank Microsoft, because without them and the platforms they have built, Apple products wouldn’t be as popular and good as they are today.

Thank you Microsoft!

So its been a year since Vista made its debut and the verdict is not positive. Complaints are rampant about software not being compatible, hardware not working and usage not as it was before.

I am a Mac user, however I have dabbled with Vista over the last year and have had extensive experience with XP since its release in 2001. Although I prefer Leopard, I must admit that Vista is pretty slick. I fail to see what the complaints are all about. Its a more secure OS and they made it a lot more usable than it was before, with features like Desktop Search.

So why all the fuss? There are complaints that old hardware doesn’t work. Since when is it an OS manufacturer’s responsibility to make sure every piece of hardware on the planet works on your OS? The OS’ API was out a year before it was released. So why didn’t the manufacturer of the hardware not make a Vista driver? I think the blame should go to them not Microsoft.

Another complaint is the fact that not all software works. Software compatibility is a privilege not a right! Steve Jobs taught us that when he went from OS9 to OSX. Software developers have been given guidelines on how to program correctly for the new multi-user versions of Windows since Windows 2000! How is it Microsoft’s fault when software developers make half-assed software that doesn’t follow the OS’s guidelines? Actually, the only blame I could put on Microsoft is that they didn’t force software developers to follow their OS’s guidelines sooner.

The most ridiculous complaint is the one about UAC (User Access Control). Microsoft finally put in place a mechanism to force users to run as limited users. Only when software requires system access will it request access from an administrative user. What is wrong with that? Mac OSX has had that for a very long time! You can’t install anything that requires system access without OSX asking you for an administrative username and password. The complaint? “I can’t do anything without UAC always popping up.” Ahh! The problem once again is related to the latter issue about half-assed software that tries to access system resources instead of following Windows software development guidelines.

That is my two cents.

So I am down in San Jose for a couple of weeks, and of course I had to check out the one product all Canadian Apple users want but can’t get at home. I made my way down to the Oakridge mall Apple store with my N95 in hand and was immediately “attacked” by an Apple store employee, immediately seeing my N95 and asking begging me to see the N95 phone.

I immediately obliged and handed my phone over to him while I turned my attention over to the iPhone. We were both gawking at the respective phones in ours hands, and a crowd of Apple Store employees huddled around the guy with my phone. I then found out that he was an ex-Nokia employee and knew all about the N95 and was always raving about it to his coworkers.

After comparing both products and even showing it to some customers, my wife ,who isn’t a tech lover, walked over and said…”OK dear time to go”. There was an immediate sigh from everyone huddled and we all looked at each other like kids who had to stop playing because the kid-who-had-the-ball’s mom was calling him for supper.

Before I left however, we all agreed that although the iPhone is the slickest looking phone out there, the N95 is a better device, feature wise. Too bad a phone with the N95′s features and the iPhone’s looks doesn’t exist. That would be the ultimate device!

I was looking forward to this trip to buy an iPhone, unlock it and be the first in Montreal, that I know of, to have one. Now I think I will stick with my N95.

Who would of thunk it!

So Apple and EMI announced no DRM music. This is great…its the end of DRM!….Well hold your horses there a second!

Apple will sell non DRM EMI music at $1.29 a song and continue to sell DRM’ed versions of the songs at $0.99. However, the non-DRM version will be of higher quality 256 KB/s instead of the standard 128 KB/s.

OK so why is this so important? For a while all so called specialists and bloggers have insisted that if you remove DRM you will sell more, or at least the same amount and piracy would not increase. That seemed like a very unlikely scenario to music companies, who have been insisting on stricter DRM to protect their content.

Enter EMI, who has been lagging behind its competitors of late, and so wanted to try something revolutionary to possibly shake up their image…and hopefully sales.

Now the ball is in the buyers’ court. Will all those college students buy the more expensive non-DRM music or will they just “share” it amongst themselves?

Interesting experiment, curious to see what will happen. My guess is that all the other record companies are looking closely as well.

I have written in the past about MySQL and how I thought it wasn’t ready for prime time. Well, I take it back! MySQL ROCKS!

After spending some quality time with the solution, my opinion of the product has taken a complete 180. Its fast, easy to setup, replication is a breeze, it supports more platforms than you can shake a stick at and its free!

Now obviously the nay-sayers will say that its too new, unproven for the production environment. Its OK. I was one too! However, after using it for a while and even developing and implementing it in my company for production, I can honestly say that it performs wonderfully and so far, reliably.

I love this product so much, I want to learn everything about it and then share that knowledge with the online community, and in person in the Greater Montreal Area. I have registered themysqlguy.com and soon this site will be up and running. It will contain MySQL-centric blog entries as well as a podcast to guide users through a multitude of MySQL subjects. Everything from installing it, to locking it down, etc.

The site will also contain a schedule for conferences I plan on holding in person (in both English and French), for those who wish to have a more personal approach to learning the software.

Its an exciting time in software development. The open-source community believes that development tools should be free as well as the platforms they run on. MySQL fits perfectly in that model, and I believe it will fit perfectly in most companies’ infrastructures as well.

The website should be up by mid-February 2007. A donation button will be up as well for those who wish to donate to the project. Funds will be used to pay for bandwidth, hosting costs and equipment.

Join me on this journey. I think we will have a great time together.

Follow the Dolphin. Bye and thanks for all the fish!