Captain's Quarters -

HP.
Out.

I've always had good results with Dell. Their tech support is great - although sometimes you have to deal with an accent. I've even called with problems that weren't due to the equipment after my service agreement was out, and they helped me through with no charge.

Sure, with Apple there is less worry about security, but what about Alar?

;-)

Firefox doesn't work as well with the Movable Type interface.

To the maintainer of the Movable Type interface, I say "shame on you".

In this era of multiple browsers, there is no reason to make your code browser-specific, as the Captain is stating appears to be the case.

Any of the AJAX toolkits out there now support IE6/7 and Firefox out of the box, and, by extension, Opera as well.

Captain, I have Gateway, Sony, and HP laptops at home.

The Sony is the worst for warranty repair -- don't expect Sony to own up to anything -- look at the recent battery fiasco. In my case, the capacitors on the main power board went after two years (just outside warranty); in retrospect, examining the bbs' run by laptop owners, I found that Sony has by far the worst record with power regulation issues, and there is even a guy who will fix the caps for $150 if you mail him the laptop (I'm doing this now). If I'd read the boards earlier, I would have made a preemptive strike against Sony with my FR130.

With regard to the Gateway, I've had one issue -- a busted hinge on the screen. After a brief discussion with the online help guy from india, it turned out to be a known problem; DHL dropped a box the next day, I put the laptop in the box and called DHL the day after, and two days after that I had my laptop back all fixed nice. The only problem with Gateway is that the tech support won't handle more than one problem at a time, so I'll have to ship it back again to get the heating problem taken care of which is blistering the paint off the aluminum CPU cover.

The HPs have been pretty solid, if unexceptional. The big problem with the HPs (I own three) is that their air intakes are on the bottom of the case, so it's real easy to cover them up and have the unit overheat. For AMD units, overheating is the KOD, while for Intel units, you are liable to have the dad burned thing just shut down on you after you've typed that irreplaceable paragraph (Intel being slightly ahead on internal monitoring of core temperature).

Anyway, good luck with your Gateway. I've got two Vista coupons which I won't redeem until after the first service pack -- from everyone I've talked to with Vista, you are on the bleeding edge with regard to application and anti-virus support.

I made the move to Apple but discovered a big downside: the unavailability of at-home service. I don't expect my computers to be free from defects, so I didn't automatically fret when I had to send my MacBook Pro in. But when I realized I'd be away from my machine for 7-10 days, with no guarantee that they wouldn't wipe my disk clean if necessary for repairs, I longed for my ThinkPad :) Fortunately, my budget allowed purchasing a Mac Mini to serve as a backup machine for these eventualities. But I do have to agree, now, that lack of professional service is a real downside for Apples.

I would never recommend to a friend that he buy Apple, mostly because of the horror stories I've heard from Apple users about hardware-related problems. If you have to buy Apple-care, plus a backup machine to get you through the 3 weeks it takes to get your primary back, is it really worth it?

(Note: I live in a PC world, so this info just comes from Apple cultists, not from personal experience.)

A security expert's take on Vista.

If you're not versed in DRM doublethink this concept gets quite tricky to explain, but in terms of quantum mechanics the content enters a superposition of simultaneously copied and uncopied states until a user collapses its wave function by observing the content (in physics this is called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox). Depending on whether you follow the Copenhagen or many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, things then either get weird or very weird. So in order for Windows Vista's content protection to work, it has to be able to violate the laws of physics and create numerous copies that are simultaneously not copies.

M. Simon:
Thanks for the link.

More Vista Info.>

“Poor test results for Windows Vista security software”
http://rawstory.com/news/dpa/Poor_test_results_for_Windows_Vista_03172007.html

AND, if you want to use an outside vender’s security software, ie Symantec or McAfee..>>

“Vista does not assign standard rights to many antivirus programmes to access all folders, Vahldiek explains.

Yet if a virus scanner cannot check through certain parts of the computer that might potentially contain bugs, it is not performing its duty. In such cases manual configuration is required.”
http://rawstory.com/news/dpa/Growing_pains_for_Vista_By_Sven_App_03172007.html

Anthony, you know that Apple is far-and-away the leader in service, support, and reliability in the industry, right? Don't spread FUD because of anecdotal "evidence."

mshiman
Don't go with Vista. It's a nightmare. Buy any PC and overwrite Windows with any version of Linux. I walked away from Windows in 1997 and never looked back and I could never be happier.

How 'bout them Golden Gophers? NCAA Grappling Champs...

I wouldn't trust anything business related to a Vista platform until SP1 is released. Too risky.
I've switched my business over to Mac and wish I did it five years ago. What a relief. Now my wife wants a Mac for home use.

Well, skipper, I'd be saying "buy an Apple" as well, except it's obvious they're not in the right financial bracket for your requirements. :)

I have to say -as someone who's used XP since it came out, and is satisfied with the "old"- requiring someone to "de-crapify" a new computer speaks volumes about an operating system. I've never had to go through that, but on the other hand the last pre-built computer I owned was the original Compaq Portable, many years ago.

If you don't go Apple I would personally recommend Dell, although that Gateway sounds nice, Vista excepted.

I'm assuming you're using the latest version of Firefox, since it automatically updates itself. If you don't mind burning the drive space, Mozilla plays quite nicely with Moveable Type; I'm using v1.7 over here.

Just to clarify, it's not the OS that needs decrapification. That need comes from all the junk programs the manufacturers stick on the system after the OS is installed -- like AOL free trials, 90-day McAfee licenses, Napster trials, etc. The need to decrapify systems goes back to at least ten years.

Buy a MacBook Pro. If you compare it to a similarly equipped Dell ............it is no more expensive.

I installed Windows XP on a 15 gig partition and use OpenOffice on both partitions.

Do you have a valid source Win OS disk(s)? Can you not FDISK and reinstall from scratch? That would seem considerably easier than purging the undesired apps if you don't want any of them. It would also allow you partition the disk to your own special needs.

No. most of these computers come with Day 1 restore disks. I'd have to strip out the crap again if I tried it. A full-install version of Vista would cost me half of what I paid for the computer.

The amount of disinformation, negativity, and pure FUD about Vista is just amazing. It's a major step up from XP in appearance, functionality, and security. (If you don't believe me on security, believe Steve Gibson on UAC and DRM in Vista.)

You do have to watch out for application compatibility, and for podcasters, Adobe Audition is a big one. The anti-virus vendors will come around because they'll have to, but Vista may be the end of the road for them anyway — given modern malware, by the time anti-virus software can catch them, it may be too late to stop them. Vista has a defense-in-depth strategy to prevent malware from running in the first place, but you do need to leave UAC on, and you do need to locate the setting for Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and set it on.

I've been running Vista on 3 systems since mid-November and I've been completely happy with it. XP has been XPunged from my systems!

If I had to buy another Windows machine I'd get a no-name box from a local clone shop with Windows XP installed on it. XP is a decent enough operating system and I see no reason to go to Vista.

Fortunately, I don't have to buy another Windows machine and with any luck I'll never have to do so again. I'm on my second Mac (replaced my first one about a year and a half ago) and neither of them required any "decrapification." Macs aren't loaded with all that AOL type nag-ware junk. Neither of my Macs has ever had a virus or other malware problem either, despite not having any anti-virus software on either of them.

nice try, diane, but no cigar. ;)

True, Vista has improved UAC, and Gibson like that. If you read down through the post on DRM, it's mostly MicroSoft saying "hey, it's not our idea!"

A dirty little secret which pops out is that playing hi-def movies under Vista (Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) will require constant (eg 30 samples/second) sampling in order to be sure the hi-def output isn't being captured or redirected. Or in other words, just playing the movie back eats up all available CPU cycles. That's a helluva thing for a 3Gz processor...

I've been mucking around with micro operating systems since CP/M, and Vista is a bloated piece of junk. True, MS did improve their security model, but what sane OS requires 1 gigabyte of RAM just to run acceptably!? Ditto for all the eye-candy Aero interface, the 3d task pane, etc.

OS X is a more secure and more reliable platform, and it requires fewer/smaller hardware resources. If you want to stay with Windows, just get XP and a DSL/cable router. A hardware router covers 90% of your firewall problems up front. Then get the free version of Zone Alarm and a decent virus scanner, and you won't bloody need Vista's "improvements." At least not if you have a funtioning brain. But then, I learned not to open attachments from strangers a long time ago...

Heck, I'd recommend Win2000 for the do-it-yourselfers. It runs wonderfully on a 128Mb or 256Mb system where XP would gag. Even XP will run nicely on a Pentium III-667Mz if you give it 512Mb RAM.

Considering most folks will be moving to Vista by buying a new system which supports it, I repeat: since you are buying a new system anyway, do yourself a favor and buy a Mac Intel. No viruses, no trojans, rock-solid firewall, a security paradigm light-years better than MicroSoft has for Vista (although they finally seem to be getting serious, TWELVE YEARS after they released Windows 95), and it'll even run Office.