Peering into Macworld

The idea of buying a Mac for my next laptop has been buzzing in my head for a while now. As an entirely practical matter the concept is viable since you can now run Windows on the thing through BootCamp or Parallels. What's even more intriguing is not having to run Windows. It's not really about the computer, is it. Definitely a life thing. It's all that such a change represents...

1. Apple has Buzz!. People camped out to get the iPhone. The only line in the Microsoft world is the Vista return line
2. Macs are the tools of artists and musicians so its only logical that owning one puts you in that group
3. It's beautiful, shiny and new. No Windows laptop is going to give you that little rush
   
4. It says I'm not from around here! Well, it would in the my world
5. It also says The change has begun and nothing sounds sweeter than that right now

This flirtation is just an act in a larger play that stages a battle between two forces.
In this corner, wearing black trunks, and weighing, like alot - is Responsible Man. Business owner, father, serious homeowner and all-round model citizen
And in that corner wearing, actually, no trucks. is California Dreamer, the blogging artiste.

Nasha Semya

Take the elevator down from a Moscow Hotel room. Walk gently through the lobby (remember you're holding a five year old). On the street take the car down the road for four years and here you are.

I know where we can get a large Mission Accomplished banner that nobody's using and we could certainly hang it in the upstairs of our house. Aly and Jack are safe and sound and sleep like angels. We left the orphanage four years ago today and two frightened people began a whole new world (come to think of it so did the kids). But now they thrive.

But that positive light filters through a gauze of exhaustion. We have never been so stressed out. Too much business, family, life. Too many notes. My whole focus lately to to find the creative solution to THAT problem. I just need to do one more clever thing.

Could Microsoft Become Irrelavent*?

I'm a a bit slow on the uptake so I may be a late arrival to this realization but I suddenly see how the use of computers could change in the very near future. The standard for many years has been to load up with Microsoft products in order ensure compatibility. Now there may be an appealing set of alternatives thanks to the convergence of 4 trends

• Web 2.0. The maturity of Web 2.0 means that there will be no down side to running applications inside a browser. We already see context-sensitive menus, drag-and-drop, and a host of other features once the exclusive domain of locally installed apps.
• VMWare. You no longer have to select your operating system based on the applications you run. Now you can run Windows in a Parallels session on a Mac or use VMWare on a Linux machine.
• Connectivity. I think we can now presume that Internet connectivty is always available so why do we need to save data locally? If fact, maybe the standard should be to save on the network and backup locally.
• Terminal Services. Looks to me like every OS sports a Windows-friendly remote desktop client. So if you were totally sold on running, say, Ubuntu Linux on your laptop but balked on your reilance on Quickbooks, a painless work-around could be to set up a terminal server that runs Quickbooks (and any other Windows-only program you fancy).

There is something very appealing about this model where the configuration of your computer is incidental to the data. The browser rules and connectivity trumps format.

*Can someone explain why the vowel between the l and v in relevent is not the same as in irrelavent. In fact the definition is \Ir*rel"a*vant\, a. Not relevant;