theOlster.net

I find this report from BBC news very interesting on two counts.

Firstly, it highlights the BBC’s inept ability to report news. I know that this is a minor point, but both sides of the coin should be highlighted when reporting. Such as the difference between consumers wanting greener PCs and consumers actually paying £64 - £108 more for a PC because it’s an environmentally friendly one.

Which leads to my second point. Everyone agrees (except stupid white men) that we are suffering from a global climate change crisis which we must act upon to sort out. One of the ways of reducing CO2 emissions would be to have more wind farms and become less reliant on fossil fuel technology. So we want wind farms… Oh, unless they are built anywhere near where these people live. If one of the fields near us were building wind farms I might put up with it, but would my neighbours? As one of the most respected men of our time once said: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.” - Agent K

The same issue applies to these environmentally friendly, but more expensive PCs.  Another options of course, would be if the PC manufacturers gave us no option but to buy these PCs - but that will not happen!

These are interesting comments that I whole heartedly agree with.  All the more so considering the author is an ex-Beeb employee!

I somehow doubt that Bill Gates is going to be bleeding internally at
this news, and suggesting he would completely distorts the story.
Readers are supposed to be able to trust their media sources to help
them determine what’s really important in the world. Or at least that’s
the BBC’s job, surely? Very disappointing.
From plasicbag.org

I write this little blurb in a moment to spare in between some particularly nasty exam revision.  Eugh!  Anyway, I have been having a little ponder over my future desktop use.  Win XP is so outdated and should I go down the Mac or Linux route or continue with Windows in the guise of Vista?

I have been using Linux (mostly the Red Hat Fedora flavour) for over a year now, not much as a desktop solution but as a home server.  Linux is a fantastic operating system, especially when it comes to upgrades and server stuff, but it does not have the tools to be quite good enough in the desktop side yet - specifically with office (i.e. OpenOffice.org).  When Microsoft first started to dominate the world back in the eighties it was not because of their superior operating system (some others were much better e.g. RISC OS) but because of their decent office applications like Word.  These may not have been the best office applications but their widespread use have resulted in heavy re-investment and development by MS which in turn has resulted in a fantastic office suite which is highly widespread on a global basis.  Don’t get me wrong OOo and its brother Star Office are pretty good, but to compete they must be able to use MS Office documents perfectly before I would be happy to replace the Microsoft flavour.  Anyway, that’s the office rant over…

I also need to be able to run two other programs on Linux before I could switch.  Firstly, Quicken – my life is not complete if I can’t continue to manage my finances with Quicken.  Some may say that I’m being a little narrow-minded and should try the open-source equivalents (like GNU-Cash) but linux is such a hastle sometimes I just can’t be bothered!  Secondly, Macromedia Studio 8 – I spend about £700 on this fantastic internet development suite and I sure ain’t going to start using an open-source equivalent for free (especially since I have tried some and they are rubbish – with a notable exception of the GIMP which I actually find I use more than fireworks on my existing XP machine – because it’s better…).  OK, so there’s one last argument I can think of to switch me over to Linux which is to use Wine to port over my XP programs MS Office, and more importantly Quicken and Macromedia Studio 8.  I spent about 4 evenings trying to get Quicken to work with no cigars (not even a tiny hamlet) and would happily envite anyone to try and get these three programs working, and I’d make the switch.

So the Mac… If I were to switch over to a Mac I would probably get the MacBook, as I really need to think about getting a laptop (I just can’t seem to stop working these days, sad isn’t it!).  Mac OS X is beautiful; actually I think it’s a work of art.  But before I get too carried away I need to think about the cost.  Bearing in mind my requirements for switching to Linux it goes like this:

£749.00 …. Lowest priced 13-inch MacBook
£297.02 …. Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Standard Edition
 £92.77 …. Microsoft Virtual PC for all that software I’ve spent so much on…
£197.77 …. The Taxman (VAT)
£1207.01 … TOTAL

Or I could take a risk and try risking Apples version of office at (iWorks) which would bring down the whole price to £923.01 which is much better but still a pretty penny… hmmm.  Still this sounds a lot more promising than a Linux solution even if you don’t get the same value for money.

So how about Windows Vista?  Well I don’t know…  I’m currently 14% through downloading Beta 2, and look forward to giving this a go.  I think the outlook is pretty good, but we’ll see.

Really it’s a bit of a toss up between WinVista and MacBook.  Both would cost about the same amount (once I’ve bought a Notebook with Vista pre-installed) so the next six months (when does Vista come out) could be an interesting wait.  Watch this space.

[UPDATE:  I just realised that I’ve used a transparent png image at the top of this page, for those of you using IE6 - sorry about the white background - I understand MS have sorted this in IE7, but this is another reason to query moving to Vista.  How long will it be before the next update?  By the time it gets to the end of it’s life cycle will it be very much out of date like XP is now?]