(There is) Something about Mac

I have been “learning” to use a Mac, and I like it somehow. I can’t say much about the differences and similarities between a PC and a Mac, but there is some striking points that I like about it.

A friend of mine bought a MacBook and he doesn’t have any experiences with computers. I do have a good knowledge about computers, but I’ve dealth with PCs for a while. I have used a Mac before but I wouldn’t consider that as a “big” experience, because I didn’t spend a lot of time just to learn to install a software or to costumize all of the applications.

After my friend bought that MacBook, I thought that I could learn more about Mac. However, I used to think that software installation in Mac was “cool,” because everything was sort of “embedded” and it wasn’t fully installed, but the icon could be made as a shortcut on the dock to access the software. So, I thought that the package is not fully installed, but today, I found that to “install” the software, we have to open the package and drag the icon to the desktop. Then, it is fully installed. But, why is everything “saved” in the desktop? It’s kind of weird, because if I just save the .dmg file somewhere else and create a shortcut on the dock, the “software” will just be like an external hardware and we can just eject it anytime. It’s really weird.

Anywho, a Mac and a PC don’t have to be the same. Each one has it’s uniqueness and both can be a big PAIN if we face a problem. I want to buy a Mac someday, but just for fun!

XP Madness

I have a very good knowledge about computers, especially operating systems, but I don’t know why my Windows XP is driving me crazy these days.

My system is a Dell Latitude D610, with a dual boot Windows XP Service Pack 2 and openSuSE 10.2. The processor is Pentium M (About 1.86 GHz) with about 1.24 GB RAM. For some reason, the internet connection under openSuSE is so quick, although it may take some time to start Firefox. However, as soon as I click enter after typing a web address, I am often directed to the site in no time. Other applications run quickly too, such as OpenOffice and GIMP, but starting Firefox, OpenOffice and GIMP under Windows XP in my system is a real big pain.

The internet connection is really slow and sometimes I am not directed to the site at all. Sometimes, the connection won’t respond at all, so I have to release the ipaddress and renew it. Then, it will work, but it is still slow. When I try accessing a different website, the connection is varied, sometimes it’s slower but sometimes it’s faster.

I defrag and clean my system quite often. I always delete unwanted and unnecessary files. I clean the temp and history folders, and I do all of the possible things to make it run just faster. I have a DSL connection and it really doesn’t make sense that the internet just won’t work at all. Could it be because I’m running Ares? I don’t think that’s the problem because it used to be pretty fast and it never failed accessing a website. These days, the failure is so often.

The reason why I still keep my XP is games and cable and analog TV. I am also learning some programming and I feel like doing it under XP is much better. I would love to use Linux for all of those too, but I still need to do a lot to costumize everything to work like what I want. Time will tell!