SteveWords

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Do You See The Vista?

Miscosoft’s new successor to Windows XP is called Vista. I have been hearing a lot about Vista lately. If I used a PC would I buy Vista? Probably not. Here’s why. (Remember that I use a Mac to do most everything I do. My opinion might be slightly slanted-or refreshingly observant as a spectator, as I have no intentions of ever becoming a Windoze user in a regular basis, other than repairing them.)

1. Vista, from what I have learned is just a rehash of XP. Windows XP really has a lot of problems with malware and other issues like drivers, security and crashing. Will Vista be any better? Probably not if it is only a bloated XP.

2. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make Vista so that you can’t use one copy on multiple computers. So much so that there will probably be millions of people making the change to Linux or Mac OSX. Windows is probably good only if it is free. Why pay for problems when you can get them for free? Linux is free and Ubuntu is a good choice to rid yourself of the Evil Empire. Although Linux is ready for corporate environments where everything is carefully controlled by fearful administrators, Linux in the home is not quite ready yet. It will be ready when we don’t have to use the command line to do basic tasks like install Flash into Firefox. Apple, with OSX is already there. OSX is based on Unix like Linux is, but the user interface is very good and everything is easy to install and uninstall. All this makes getting away from Windows easier every day!

3. Microsoft is cocky! McAfee and Norton as they are now won’t work in Vista. Even though I don’t use either, a whole lot of clueless people will be very lost without their old virus checkers. This will slow adoption considerably. Maybe M$ needs to realize that people do not change easily and will want Norton and McAfee to protect them. Even though there are other better free solutions the two giants still prevail. and will continue to. To make Vista really work and be a success, Vista needs to be more like Linux and Mac and be impervious to viruses.

4. Vista requires a very fast, heavy duty computer to run on. If you bought your Dell or HP cheapie computer at Wally World, most likely it won’t run Vista very well, even if it is only a year old. It won’t have have enough speed or memory or the special video card required to run Vista correctly. Buying a cheapie computer today will leave you unable to upgrade.

Microsoft, in my opinion is crusin’ for a brusin’. Mac and Linux are very much on it’s tail and gaining market share daily. In the server market Linux is king. In the graphics and creative market Mac is king. 40% of laptops sold today are Macs. The percentage of total machines in use is now about 10% Mac and growing every day. This leaves Microsoft in quite a position as their solution is still to try and be more Maclike. Why not just buy a Mac and solve the problem? It seems that the future belongs to the Unix-based machines, not to Windows.

What do you think? Leave me comments!

Politics Ain’t Fun!

Have you been ignoring the political ads recently? Have you been disgusted? Alarmed? Feel like vomiting on a candidate?
I have-all of the above. Maybe we should vote for someone who isn’t smearing his opponent. Do you really want a guy that can sling the mud like that? Do you want a guy who thinks that smear is more important than issues? Think seriously when you vote. You might end up with someone who really knows nothing about things that are important like the real issues beyond who screwed who. Would an honest guy smear his opponent like this? Probably not. Leave your ideas and opinions here and I will write more!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

An Interesting Scam by the State of AZ!

The State Of Arizona is making millions off you and you probably don’t even realize it! This scam is a rather interesting one. Just buy an item using a manufacturer’s money off coupon. Here’s how it goes: Say you bought a mattress set that was originally $500.00. You have a coupon for $50.00 off. What do you have to pay tax on? The tax on the $450.00 that you actually paid for the item, or the original price of $500.00?  You guessed the tax on $450.00 didn’t you? WRONG!!! You have to pay the tax on the full $500.00 price! You end paying tax for something that you didn’t pay for. Yes! You get the honor of paying the tax on the $50.00 that you saved with the coupon! Kinda rips doesn’t it?

The interesting part that this is all perfectly legal because of this ADOR rule:

R15-5-129. Discounts, Refunds, and Coupon Redemption

C. When coupons issued by a manufacturer are redeemed by a retailer the amounts refunded to the purchaser are not permissible as deductions from the selling price of articles sold by the retailer. In these cases, the gross selling price is taxable.

It took me a while to find this out as I originally thought that the store was ripping me off. It even took me three calls to the Department of Revenue to find someone who actually knew about this!

This is just the type of thing that needs to be changed. Our government looks very greedy when they do this type of thing. Any Idea how we can fix the problem??? I would love to hear your comments on this!