Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Till Death Do Us Part... or... The Microsoft Pledge for any Regular User of Windows

The end of June my laptop bit the dust after three years of duct tape, chanting and Tibetan prayer flags. My desktop computer is an eMachines PC that I bought at BestBuy as a back-up computer for $200, six years ago. Just checking my e-mail now requires scheduling an extra half-hour into my day. Somehow, though, that’s not the worst of it… my Sony monitor needs calibration and the software to perform said-such function cost $120-180… so that seems an unnecessary expense for an eight-year-old monitor. Needless to say, I am hanging on by a shoestring until the fall (after the Morris Graves Museum Show) when I plan on purchasing a new laptop.

The calibration on my monitor has led to some washed-out colors in my images when viewed in “normal” monitors and I have caught myself sneaking into friends’ back rooms to check-out the way my website looks on their computer… I’m sure they are confused when they here loud sobbing drift towards the front rooms. Now that my wife is out of grad school (graduated in mid-May YaaaaaaaaaaHooooooooooooooo!); we were wanting to make the leap from crappy Windows-based-PC to MAC, but looking at the price of replacing over $2k in software (Macromedia Studio MX, Photoshop CS, Office, etc)… I may just buy another PC laptop… no matter how much I dread dealing with the latest Microsoft late-term abortion called “Vista”.

To make matters worse, I had just started-up again on the writing of that novel I started five years ago… when the laptop melted down to a glorified paper weight. Writing it out in longhand on yellow legal tablets may sound quaint, but for now it just looks like another hassle, when I should be concentrating on finishing the paintings for my next show. – DN

3 comments:

Nicholas Wineman said...

maybe I missed something (I do that alot) but why don't you take advantage of Mac's new (and legal) software, Bootlegger, which let's you put microsoft stuff on it? Mac is even more superior with this application since it can play both types. (and plus I'm gettin one of my own)

congrats to the wife, btw. happy trails.

danielnorth.com said...

It's not 100% compatible is my understanding. Another option is running windows on a partition, but I figure if I spend all the cash to go MAC... Windows will be dead to me.

Having said that... I still believe MAC is superior regardless of where I spend my money. - DN

Anonymous said...

Sir,
Here is a compiled list of the three reasons why I love Macs, despite the fact I do not have one.

A) Built off the UNIX platform, they do not crash. Idiots who do not know what they are doing(er... said persons with malicious intents... subliminal in fact) crash macs.

B)Anything and everything productive has probably been done a mac. They rule the visual/design/video market... And there is a comparable difference between the same application on both Windows and Mac platforms.

C)They are so more aesthetic and logical then a windows machine. You say it's so, and the mac will make it so.

The only downside to owning a mac is that the majority of applications are developed for windows. But in the last five years the development has been geared for both mac and pc runtime... Especially with the rush of web driven applications the issue of platform is becoming a problem of the past.

Sincerely,
Ben