I am totally ecstatic about my new Mac. I have been using it all weekend, doing everything imaginable. Once I oriented myself and got the feel of the system, I have to say it is truly fantastic. My trials with Linux were a good primer for the Unix-based principle of the OS and its file structure. But this is 1000x better than anything I have ever experienced with Linux. It automatically did everything I could have asked, including printing to my outdated HP DeskJet 845c printer, and installing every other one of my devices. Everything has required so little effort, it’s ridiculous.

I have most all of my major apps installed and they all work beautifully. I purchased Quicken Mac 2007 while at the Apple Store. That is a must-have app for me. I have really enjoyed using that one. In fact, every app I have used for whatever task I want have been among the best I have ever used in their class.

My Mac Mini is such a joy to use! It is hard to explain how slick and cool it is unless you really use one. Transitions and overall response from the computer itself are outstanding. The interface, super-cool graphics, effects, clarity, multitasking, size, and speed are all without question absolutely flawless. I have no regrets. I’m now in first class.

My birthday just passed and I found myself at the Apple Store in Raleigh. I bought myself a shiny new Mac Mini! I am ecstatic. For now, I am transferring my files from my old PC over to my new Mac, and getting accustomed to a whole new way of computing. I am already in love with the Mac OSX Tiger. This is a giant leap into another world; one I have wanted to take for many years. This day has finally arrived!

I have added a new category to the blog. This is the first post to Mac. Also, while this post is still hot, expect a lot of new Mac and Apple related material from my del.icio.us bookmark feed on my Links page.

I made a post a while back that praised Comodo’s personal firewall program, in which I made negative comments about ZoneAlarm. It’s true that I have had my ups and downs with ZA, but I have been back to using it again for a while now. The free firewall that Comodo offered turned out to be very cumbersome and slow. I can’t exactly remember my grievances because I uninstalled it months ago. I want to say something kept crashing on me while I was using it. For a time after removing the program, I used only the basic inbound Windows Firewall, which in my opinion does a fine enough job. I later read that ZoneAlarm had released a new version 7 of its firewall, so I downloaded it to give it a try (free version). I have never tried a paid version, so I can’t comment on its offerings. My computing needs are met using the free product.

So far, I have really enjoyed version 7. The best thing so far the new version is that it doesn’t slow down my Windows boot time as much as previous versions seemed to. Setting up my home network traffic was made a little easier this time, too. Overall, ZA hasn’t been as much of a nuisance as it used to be. I don’t know how much of all this is attributed to new features and how much of is my part of my imagination.

After trying other free firewalls such as Kerio and Comodo, I realize that ZoneAlarm has a lot to offer. Kerio stopped offering a free personal firewall program, so I quit using that long ago. I thought Comodo would be cool after reading a good review in a PC publication. It turns out, I was less than thrilled. ZoneAlarm, on the other hand, has always kept on a steady course by continuing to improve a great product while still offering it to the world for free. I am quite pleased with their product this time around.

You know what drives me nuts? The fact that Firefox has a built-in password manager but it doesn’t work for all sites. I am not taking my angst out on Firefox, necessarily. They have provided us with a decent password manager that automatically fills in your username and password on websites you choose to save. I like it. The problem is, any site is able to add some bit of code (or something) that blocks your ability to save your information for that site. The website for my bank works this way. I have to type in my login every time I go to their online banking site. Sure, this is for added security, and I do appreciate that, but I want my computer to save this one for me as well. Why can’t the Firefox folks create an override option in the browser that would force it to prompt to save your password anyway? Better yet, why doesn’t someone create an extension that would make this possible? I am not going to pay $30 for a bloated version of Roboform to do this for me.

I don’t like to have my browser’s default start page linked to a complex website. I like to keep my start page very lean. In fact, I used to use nothing at all, opting for a simple “about:blank” in Firefox, which brought up an empty browser window every time I loaded the program. I also have gone through phases where I use google.com or yahoo.com. Google is a terrific choice, but since I have the Google search box on my toolbar, I don’t necessarily need to see the Google page itself. The problem with Yahoo is that the home page is very complex and while it probably only takes an extra second to load, I don’t want to deal with all that right out of the gate.

If you like a simple page, like Google’s page, but also want a couple of important news headlines on the screen, try making your start page search.yahoo.com. I much prefer Google as a search engine, but this is just for something to look at when I load the browser. Yahoo Search has an extremely basic, clean page with a few links to the top news headlines so that you don’t miss anything important, as well as indicators from Yahoo Mail. I have my browser set to Yahoo Search for now, though I am bound to change it without notice.

Before I begin, I must say that I don’t prefer to use Internet Explorer. I use Firefox as my primary browser and I much prefer it over Internet Explorer, but I’ll admit that Microsoft has done pretty good with version 7. If you use Windows XP and are still using IE6, I’d recommend upgrading it to IE7. I have had it on my laptop for a while, but have hardly ever used it. The program came through as automatic update a few months ago, an action which I thought was a tad irresponsible of Microsoft. They called it a security update and pushed it out to everyone. If you chose not to allow the update, perhaps because you didn’t want to be forced to run the Genuine Windows (GWA) validation check, then there is a workaround for that issue on this page, effectively allowing you to install IE7 anyway. I have tried the instructions for that workaround on my desktop PC and it was a complete success.

After I recently upgraded my desktop machine to IE7, I actually tried using it for a night. In fact, I am using it right now as I write post to my blog, something I never normally do. I have to say I am fairly impressed with it. IE6 had become a dinosaur years ago. The new version can render pages much more quickly than its ancient predecessor. Tabbed browsing has finally arrived to IE, although a few years late in the game. Security is supposed to be tighter than the swiss cheese that plagued IE6. Time will tell on the security situation. One thing I do like about version 7 is how it behaves in full-screen mode. When you enter this mode, the browser window literally consumes the whole screen. The live web page reaches all the way up to the highest pixel. Impressive.

A long time ago, before Firefox, I used an overlay program for IE (now called Maxthon) to add tabs and a better interface. What Microsoft has now finally built into IE7 looks to me to be better than what the overlay program once was. The clean, uncluttered interface and overall polish of IE7 certainly deserves a nod. If you like using IE and haven’t yet upgraded, you should do so, and not look back.

I have added a new static page to my site, called Site. This new page will have site news and information about when my blog got started and general tidbits about the site as a whole. I made it a separate page after deciding to remake my About page as a bio page strictly for information about the author (me). In the past, I have made many posts on my decisions to change the visual theme for my blog. In the future, I won’t be making a new blog post for information such as that. You’ll find that info and more on the static Site page.

Do you get a lot of DVD or CD verification errors? I always verify the burn if it is something very important, like raw digital camera files that I am keeping stored away as backup. But day-to-day, I don’t like to waste the time to verify. I usually just trust that everything was a success.

I use Nero 6.6 and after enabling the verification it has reported back an error like 25% of the time. I should tell you that number is a wild guess, so don’t quote me on it. This issue mainly with the DVD burning, which I use a lot to copy movies with DVD Shrink. But when I play these copies in my player, I don’t notice anything wrong with them, regardless.

How often do you get a bad disc verify? Am I alone? My burner is a HP 8X dvd640. I never burn at 8X, though. I always cap it at 4X to make sure it doesn’t try to get slaphappy. I always buy good quality blank DVDs, too. Usually Imation or Sony brands. Hmmm.

I have posted about MySpace before, and a lot of time has passed since I first signed up with the service. In that time, the company behind the site has indeed made a lot of improvements to the speed and navigation of the website. It has been a while since I have noticed the servers moving incredibly slow, which used to be fairly commonplace.

My biggest irk with the website is that I have an old email account listed as my address and it is a mailbox that I disabled and cannot access anymore. In order to change my email with MySpace, they send me a permission request message to my current address that must be verified before I can change my address. Well, this does not work for me. I can’t access that account, you dummies! They used to have a link next to that information saying that if you couldn’t access that account, to click to write customer service. I did that at least twice over a period of two months and never got a single response. Astonishingly, they even ask you to include your MySpace password when writing customer service! What?! That is not cool. Against my better judgment, I did just that (just to try to get the job done), but still I never heard a word from them or ever got my address changed. Therefore, I don’t get any notifications via email from MySpace, so I have to log in from time to time to find out for myself.

I don’t really use MySpace much at all. I don’t know how it is so popular and remains one of the most visited sites on the web. I am a little surprised. Granted, I don’t use every nook and cranny of the site, but there isn’t much to do when I’m on there. Apart from it being easy to find my old friends on the site, if I want to correspond with them, I’ll send a regular email. I don’t want to use the half-assed MySpace mail, which is crummy and where old messages are automatically purged. Posting comments is a nice gesture now and again, but you can’t easily communicate two ways doing that. I guess I don’t use most of their offerings because I have better ones elsewhere.

There are a lot of other things that annoy me, too. Creating and choosing a theme for your page has never improved, and is as difficult as ever. The service should not rely on third party sites to provide HTML code for you to copy and paste in order to change your page’s appearance. That is ridiculous. Also, the video ads I see plastered all over the site are very annoying, and are just a waste of my time and resources. Seriously, the number, size, and frequency of the ads on the MySpace site are enough to turn me off after just minutes of being signed in. They are flashy and cheesy like the ones back in the day when Internet ads first got started, like “punch the monkey” and stupid junk like that.

All in all, the service doesn’t feel very polished. It feels like a work in progress, and that progress is slow moving. I think the website needs a total overhaul, personally.

Why do they censor someone giving the middle finger on TV? This is even true with the shows on cable channels. If they are going to air the act of someone doing it, why bother censoring it? All they do is blur the middle finger itself. It is completely obvious what they are doing anyway! This day in age, you wouldn’t think this would be such a big deal anymore.