James Kendrick finds MobiPocket delightful

[Ravenflight]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm a professional programmer, Ravenflight, and use both Macs and PCs. I'm a great believer in using the right tool for the right job, and when it comes to buying commercial eBooks, a PC is very definitely the right tool for the job. Why not just get a cheap 2nd hand XP machine and use that for buying Sony/MobiPocket eBooks? Like it or not, there's so much stuff out there that's PC-only I consider it essential to have one.

Well I could do it a lot cheaper just by running Windows XP on my Mac using VMWares Fusion or Parallels Desktop or even Apple's own Boot Camp. I particularly like the idea of Fusion where you can have Windows programs in your dock running right alongside your Mac programs at the same time.

My problem is (besides cluttering up my pristine MacBook with the same unstable OS that drives me insane at work) I have to pay twice what it cost for a new version of OS X for a copy of XP or Vista (say around 200.00), then add another 80.00 for Fusion, then deal with the inevitable pain of installing Windows, sharing devices, ports, etc, all to run one free program? If there were any critical apps I needed Windows for, then maybe. I just can't imagine going through all that just to run Sony Connect or Mobipocket. I'd happily pay 20.00 for a Mac version of Mobipocket. 300.00? I'll stick with e-Reader for Mac.

[HarryT]

The reason I suggested buying a cheap 2nd hand PC is that you can get one a lot cheaper than the price of buying a copy of XP to install on Bootcamp or Parallels .

[Ravenflight]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The reason I suggested buying a cheap 2nd hand PC is that you can get one a lot cheaper than the price of buying a copy of XP to install on Bootcamp or Parallels .

The thought of buying a used Windows PC has about as much attraction to me as buying a 10 year old Yugo- probably going to end up being a lot more trouble than it's worth.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ravenflight

Well I could do it a lot cheaper just by running Windows XP on my Mac using VMWares Fusion or Parallels Desktop or even Apple's own Boot Camp. I particularly like the idea of Fusion where you can have Windows programs in your dock running right alongside your Mac programs at the same time.

Don't do it. It turns out you can really screw things up if you do a firmware upgrade via an emulated Windows. You need a true Windows system so you get proper USB support.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Don't do it. It turns out you can really screw things up if you do a firmware upgrade via an emulated Windows. You need a true Windows system so you get proper USB support.

It works fine with Bootcamp. With that you are booting "real" Windows on the machine - nothing's emulated. The people who've had trouble are those using "Parallels" which runs Windows on a "virtual machine" under OS X.

[Ravenflight]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It works fine with Bootcamp. With that you are booting "real" Windows on the machine - nothing's emulated. The people who've had trouble are those using "Parallels" which runs Windows on a "virtual machine" under OS X.

Not sure what you mean by "real windows". All three solutions require a copy of windows. My biggest concern with them is the ones that allow you to run windows and OS X at the same time are both so new im sure they need more work. It'll take some really incredible windows only app to convince me to drop a Yugo engine in my Mercedes before I try it though.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ravenflight

Not sure what you mean by "real windows". All three solutions require a copy of windows. My biggest concern with them is the ones that allow you to run windows and OS X at the same time are both so new im sure they need more work. It'll take some really incredible windows only app to convince me to drop a Yugo engine in my Mercedes before I try it though.

Apple already sold you the Yugo engine. They call it OS X these days.

[Ravenflight]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Apple already sold you the Yugo engine. They call it OS X these days.

Well by "Yugo engine" I was referring to the os that won't start after you put it to sleep, sputters along for a couple of hours before dying for no reason, the one who invented the term "plug and pray" for USB, and who's definition of security is to add a couple hundred more viruses to a list of 200,000 every single day. I don't have any of those issues with OS X.

Don't worry though about Windows dominance. I was just talking to a customer today- a little old lady who was telling me she just paid a company 550.00 to come over and fix her windows system, install a firewall and antivirus software. She told me "I was going to get a mac, but the Dell was cheaper."

[JSWolf]

I run WindowsXP Pro and I've been able to keep my system up and running for over 4 months without a shutdown or reboot. I find Windows quite stable. On my mother's laptop, the hibernation functionality works wonderfully. She has XP home on hers. My wife''s computer is very stable with XP Pro.

XP does not sputter along and then die for no reason. I can plug and play with the USB just fine as long as the system recognizes what's being plugged in. The virus nonsense has nothing to do with Windows. It's assholes who want to try to screw people over. AVG Free keeps me well protected. Some people just don't know how to use a computyer and then do things that screw it up no matter the OS and as for the firewall and antivirus, that's not the fault of Windows that she needs help installing.

So all-in-all, WindowsXP is very reliable, very stable, and works very well.

[Ravenflight]

well everyone's milage must vary. The sleep problem of not waking up I had on NT. Now that my work upgraded to XP pro it does wake up quite reliably- problem now is that after you wake it up sometimes the wireless works, and sometimes it doesn't. Till you reboot that is. Also I tried to install Thomas Guide software that came with my paper maps. Apparently when they said XP compatible, they meant some other version of XP. So after a few days of trying to make it work, I decided to remove the map software. Have you ever removed software from a Windows machine? No, you don't just delete it like you do on the Mac. You have to "Uninstall" it. "WARNING-the file blah blah and blah are used by another application would you like to delete anyway or cancel?" Say what? I just installed it two days ago, how is that possible? And why are the pieces of the application scattered all over the system? Why do you need a program just to keep track of all the changes caused by installations just so you can uninstall safely? On my Mac i just highlight the application, control delete, and poof it's gone.

As for viruses and worms, i can't help but feel microsoft has some responsibility for not designing it more securely. Why are they just now including a firewall? OSX has had that for years. As for viruses, I don't even have antivirus software- and I have yet to meet a mac owner who does. Why are there so few worms and viruses for the mac? Is it because nobody knows how or because UNIX is inherently more secure?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ravenflight

Not sure what you mean by "real windows". All three solutions require a copy of windows. My biggest concern with them is the ones that allow you to run windows and OS X at the same time are both so new im sure they need more work. It'll take some really incredible windows only app to convince me to drop a Yugo engine in my Mercedes before I try it though.

I'm referring to the fact that, with Bootcamp, one is running Windows natively on the machine's hardware. With Parallels, Windows is running in a virtual machine under OS X and that introduces timing issues with things like USB drivers.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ravenflight

As for viruses and worms, i can't help but feel microsoft has some responsibility for not designing it more securely.

The chief architect of Windows NT was a guy called Dave Cutler, who was the chief designer of DEC's VMS operating system, an operating system famed for being secure and reliable; NT's security architecture is based on that of VMS.

Why are they just now including a firewall? OSX has had that for years.

I'm not sure what you mean by "just now"; a firewall has been standard with Windows since XP SP2 which has been around for what? 3 or 4 years? I suppose that firewalls didn't really become necessary as "standard" system software until the majority of people were on-line. 5 years ago, only a relatively small percentage of people were on-line.

As for viruses, I don't even have antivirus software- and I have yet to meet a mac owner who does. Why are there so few worms and viruses for the mac? Is it because nobody knows how or because UNIX is inherently more secure?

Heavens - Unix certainly isn't "inherently" more secure than NT. The only reason that it gets "targetted" by the criminal scum who write viruses is because of its market dominance. There have been plenty of Unix viruses and worms over the years - remember the original "internet worm" in the late 70s which pretty much brought down the internet? (Perhaps before your time?) That exploited a buffer overrun vulnerability in the Unix "sendmail" application.

XP is extremely secure if you set it up correctly and use reliable device drivers. As I said, I'm a software developer, and none of my XP machines have ever "Blue Screened", whereas I have managed to crash my Mac .

I'm no "fan boy" for either Windows or Mac; I just use whatever the best tool is for the job at hand; sometimes that's Windows, sometimes the Mac. It's useful to have both.