Version 4 at first glance gives you a very refreshed feel to it. I think it’s mainly because the icons were made to be brighter, and the default screen brightness was a bit higher than my original… but none the less I liked it. The responsiveness of the OS also improved quite a bit over OS 3.x. This is especially evidential on older hardware like my iPhone 3G. The homescreen transitions are smoother, and icon animations are silkier. All of my apps from iOS 3.x worked flawlessly and games ran as they should.

To the more negative end of the spectrum. I wasn’t a big fan of the “you can never quit your app, unless you really try” scheme Apple used to manage background apps. It reminded me of the Windows Mobile 2003 days… you had to download a Task Manager app just to kill processes… On iOS 4, when you press the Home button once the app falls back to the background but still remains in RAM in an inactive state. If you want to kill the program, you have to double tap Home then tap and hold its icon… then tap on the little red “X” on the top. It’s just too many hoops the user has to jump through to quit an app. I’d much rather have something like the Backgrounder (jailbroken app) and let it default to “quit” and double press to background.

One other thing I want to mention, and this is to all iPhone 3G users like myself.  Our somewhat ancient toy can in fact multitask! Enabling it will require a jailbreak but the end result is worth while. My best experience with jailbreaking was achieved with the help of redsn0w. This little app runs on Windows and MacOS, it jailbreaks your iPhone 3G and 2G iPod touch directly. This means you can simply go to iTunes and update your iOS and then use redsn0w to jailbreak without wiping any data.

One tip to remember, older hardware like the iPhone 3G cannot run very well with the wallpaper enabled, the responsiveness of the screen greatly deteriorated when a wallpaper is set. Therefore, I highly recommend you to NOT enable wallpaper and just hack multitasking if you need it. Also remember to periodically quit your apps in the background because the iPhone 3G does not have a lot of RAM to work with.

iOS 4.0.1
This little update to the iOS is perhaps the most embarrassing update Apple ever had to release. It “fixes” the reception issue seen on the iPhone 4 and subsequent iPhones. Primarily, Apple realized they have been too generous when calculating the iPhones’ signal quality bars… so they made this fix to give you a better idea of your signal strength. Therefore, installing the update will give you less bars… but that is as it should be… at least that’s what Apple is telling users.

You can jailbreak iOS 4.0.1 with the same redsn0w release. Simple update your iPhone 3G or 2G iPod Touch to 4.0.1 and then fire up redsn0w. Instead of pointing it to the 4.0.1 firmware, point it to the original iOS 4.0 firmware. This is possible because the 4.0.1 did not change the baseband code, so you are good to use the old firmware so it’ll pass redsn0w’s verification.

To sum up, I think iOS 4 is a winner for the most part. Apple has done a good job to make it friendly to older hardware like the iPhone 3G. Furthermore, it is also a free update to all iPod Touch users as well! We can see that Apple is really trying to push this release to everyone. I’m not going to get into iPhone 4′s antenna issue since it won’t be available in Canada until July 30th. Until then… I’m glad iOS 4 gave my good old iPhone some new blood. =p

Update: For those who are having issues with iPhone 3G overheating after updating to iOS 4, I sometimes have the same problem and pretty sure it has something to do with the 3G/EDGE radio. I find that if Data is turned off or if I use WiFi, the problem is less evidential. It might also have something to do with Exchange and multiple Exchange accounts. I heard some of these problems will be fixed in iOS 4.1. So let’s wait and see how Apple does it.
For all jailbreakers, remember to not turn on Wallpaper, and don’t get multitasking if you don’t really need it. The biggest reason why I have iOS 4 on my 3G is the ability to do multiple Exchange accounts. If you can do without all these features, then staying on iOS 3.x is probably a wiser choice.

Solution: Go to Settings and clear your iPhone 3G’s network settings. This has solved most of the heating issues and network problems for me. It appears that the network was dead even tho the phone still shows 3G signal. Then my 4 Exchange account probably overloaded by constantly trying to establish a connection back to the servers. Let me know if this works for you.

The Goal
The story here is simple – we are building a DIY storage appliance that is not only FASTER but CHEAPER than the Drobo. I have owned a 2nd generation Drobo for about 8 months. For the most part, it did its job. However, all the weakness of the device surfaced when I dug into the world of Network Attached Storage or simply NAS. I have written about my attempts to put the Drobo on my LAN …   http://frankleng.me/2010/02/11/droboshare-alternatives-tonidoplug-gigabit-switch/ I did not want to spend another $200 for the Droboshare! That setup worked for the most part, but performance was not even close to production-worthy.
I mean try to live with a 4TB NAS that transferred at 3-5MB/s… which is actually on par with Droboshare’s throughput… need I say more?

What I needed was:

1. Energy efficient, lower powered machine. (It’s a NAS after all, not a media center)
2. Able to let me swap a drive when it fails, and not lose data.
3. Able to expand, swapped out the smallest drive and replace with a larger drive.
4. Costs a lot less than $350USD. (that’s the price of the Drobo, not including drives)
5. Easily manageable, settings can be tweaked and system status can be monitored.
6. Speed, Speed, Speed. Must be able to sustain Gigabit throughput, even for larger files.

The Facts
Most BYOD (Bring Your Own Drives) storage devices on the market today do NOT offer the features that the Drobo does. The Drobo was never designed as a NAS, but rather a DAS (Directly Attached Storage), and it did that job fairly well. So if you are an average user who favour ease-of-use than anything else… then read no more… you are better off with the Drobo. However, if you are like me and you want that blazing fast performance for the smallest price tag… you have found the right place. =)

NAS devices are computers too. The basic rules do apply – the faster the chipset the faster the throughput; the more RAM the better, etc.

Lastly, and most importantly NAS devices’ throughput depend largely on caching and the CPU’s ability to translate between different storage and communication protocols.

Intel D510MO

The Hardware

CPU
It is really quite difficult to find a blazing fast computer by today’s standard without killing your electricity bill. Most high end processors run 100W + and even lower end chips easily go over 40W (That’s almost the same as the Drobo’s power consumption with 4 drives inserted… so it’s quite a lot for a single chip!) Thankfully, Intel created the Atom series of processors. Originally made for netbooks and mobile devices, the Atom series chips are Intel’s smallest and greenest – consume only about 10W. You can buy Atom from most local computer stores, but note that they are bundled with a motherboard and not sold separately.

I picked the latest generation, and the fastest Dual-Core Atom chip -D510 @ 1.66GHZ. This chip gives the equivalent performance of a Single-Core Celeron running at 900-1000MHZ but uses 1/4 of the power, TDP rated at 13W. Because the chip is so new, very few motherboard manufacturers have them shipped to stores. I grabbed the Intel D510MO motherboard bundle for $80 CAD.(It was the cheapest option I found, and had the same features as the more expensive ASUS and Supermicro boards).

RAM
The D510MO takes DDR2 memory, and  I happened to have two 1GB sticks. Obviously the more the better, DDR2 RAM sticks are super cheap nowadays and you don’t need the fancy ones. 2GB RAM – $30

Modded PCI SATA Controller

Add-ons
I want to talk about add-on cards because you will need one for this build. Like most Mini-ITX boards, the D510MO only has 2 onboard SATA ports and it’s not enough to have a more robust ZFS setup. Therefore, I searched online and bought a PCI-X/PCI SATA II controller card and gave me two more internal SATA ports. Later, I modded one of the the eSATA ports to SATA by replacing the connector head. The card was the SYBA SD-SATA2-2E2I – $36. There is a 4 SATA port version of the card, but I wasn’t able to find one at the store. I also liked the idea of having an eSATA port.

CHENBRO ES34069

Case
I went through 2 cases for this build. I originally bought the Chenbro ES34069 because it had 4 swappable drive bays. However, the proprietary power supply, the lack of space in the case and noise from the case fans(fans were not user replaceable as far as I could tell) eventually made me return the purchase.

The case requirement here is simple, find a small case (mATX or mini-ITX) that has 4 drive bays. Do note that besides the Chenbro case, there really isn’t an alternative that has swappable bays. So go spend the $200 and buy it if you want ease of access. The case I ended up using was the Antec NSK-2480 – $100. It has plenty of space for the two 5.25′ and 3.25′ bays and a 380W standard power supply. It has the best cooling arrangement I have ever seen in a media center case. Head over to SilentPcReview for some professional opinions.

Antec NSK2480

I also considered the NSK 1380 case, but spacing arrangement inside the case was nowhere near what the NSK 2480 had. However, the first does have much smaller dimensions.

Antec NSK1380

Drives
First of all, you will need a set of drives to store data and one other drive to host the OS. I have purchased 4 WD Green 2TB 5400rpm drives because they are quiet, efficient and more than fast enough for a NAS. However, do know that you will need at least 3 drives to take full advantage of ZFS. Also, the current version of ZFS does not allow you to add physical drives to an existing ZFS pool. Although you will be able to REPLACE one of the four drives for a bigger one, adding a 5th drive without rebuilding is not possible at the moment. This means if you started out with 4 drives, you will always have 4 unless you recreate your logic pool and lose all the data in the process.

I guess this is the only spot where Drobo may have an edge over our ZFS build. You can add more drives into the Drobo at any time until the slots are full. I believe Drobo accomplishes this by pre-populating its storage pool with virtual devices, and a virtual total size. That way, any new drive can just slide into these pre-made virtual slots without affecting the storage pool as a whole. Lastly, the ZFS development team has plans to resolve this limitation in the near future. So let’s stay tuned.

For the OS drive I decided to use USB sticks. They are much cheaper and much more energy efficient than having another disk spinning at 5400rpm to keep the system running. I used a USB port expansion cable to make use the connector on the motherboard and keep the sticks inside the case. Check out the picture and you’ll know what I mean. =p

Adapter with dual USB sticks

Accessories
The D510MO board does not have an IDE port to hook up a CD-ROM drive. It does support booting from USB. However, most OSes do not offer a .usb image for install. Therefore, I purchased an IDE to USB adapter so I could boot from my DVD drive. My IDE to SATA adapter was not recognized by BIOS for some reason… so please be aware if you are thinking about getting one of these things. It’s safer to get a SATA optical drive instead. I see them on sale now for under $20. Anyway, since FreeNAS supports USB images, there was no need for any additional accessories. (Note: Other OSes mentioned above will require a optical drive to install.)

Total cost: $246 (shipping included, taxes not included)

Next up… the software.  Turn the page.  =p

March, 31st 2010
First of all, thank you to those who tweeted and replied to my original post about DIYing a NAS! I hope I’ve answered most of your questions and concerns.

My parts just arrived a couple of days ago… however the store did not include a PCI riser card for my SATA controller. Big FaIL to NCIX

In case NCIX cannot send me replacement soon, I’v ordered a PCI Riser on eBay (was only $1.5 shipped from Hong Kong) along with a 4GB SSD in which the OS will run on. These parts will take another week or so to ship.

In the meantime, my plan is to install FreeNAS on a USB stick and create a ZFS pool of two of my drives.

I will post some pictures soon, and please do come back to this post for more updates.

On Google’s blog an article titled “A new approach to China: an update” Google blamed the move on the alleged cyber attacks originated from China to various US companies including itself. It has also posted an accessibility report to indicate which of the Google services are currently being blocked. Bold move Google!

Now to a more serious note… Was Google absolute right to do what it did? Was the Chinese government absolutely wrong to censor content on the Internet? Lastly, how will this affect the Internet users and companies in China?

We all know that the Chinese Internet market is the largest piece of the pie. That is to say there are more users in China than any other country in the world… surprised? However, looking at the revenue report from Google… the Chinese market was only about 2% of the total revenue… not a big number for a company of Google’s size. While its operations in China was growing at a rapid rate, censorship from the government greatly prohibited its every move. Youtube was blocked… Picasa partially blocked… so was Gmail at some point. This sort of a hostile landscape probably made it quite difficult for an open company like Google to compete with native Chinese companies who are in total compliance with state censorship laws. Therefore, in order for Google to operate in China it will have to essentially become one of the censor dogs…

Google CEO Eric Emerson Schmidt repeated said on numerous occasions – Google is not about revenue, it is about expediting the flow of information and innovation. However… here is the catch… he did sign an agreement with the Chinese government to perform censorship on its search results… Is it legal and totally righteous of them to pull out from something they agreed to?

My hunch is that… everyone thought of the Chinese market as the biggest pile of cash to be made. However, Google really wasn’t doing well in China to start with! It watched as competitors like Baidu continue to gain marketshare… not by innovation… but by simply doing what the government tells them to do. Not wanting more revenue? Give me a break… everyone wants more money… enough said.

One must understand,  in such a sensitive country… politics and money are two of the dominating forces that drive its local economy. Political power = money, and the reverse is also true. This ill-designed system is being governed by a single political body that gains power by silencing the people who dare to speak up about its corruptions. Therefore, in order to keep this delicate platform, the Chinese like to keep its businesses local. They can’t possibly control a company like Google… at least not in the same way they do with Baidu!

So was it right for Google to pull out? As a strict legal matter, no it was not. You cannot change your mind about a legal agreement simply because you are not profiting from it to justify your costs. Was the Chinese government right to censor content to begin with? From a pure economic perspective, I have to say YES. By keeping the businesses local and discouraging foreign companies like Google, the Chinese economy is becoming self-sustainable and is growing at a rapid speed. There is corruption in the government, but they are not idiots. They designed the system, they know how to work it!

So who is this sudden game changer affecting? What are the end users saying? Well according to reports, there seems to be a divide… again…surprised? Some people have cursed Google to get out of China altogether. Others are saying they’ll just switch to Baidu. I think in the short-term Google’s exile will not likely affect the average Chinese user. When I was in China in 2008… people were already treating Baidu like their Google. Many people didn’t even know what Google was… others simply complained about its lack of localized Chinese results. However, in the long-term… the lack of competition is never a good sign for any industry.

Now the real beneficiary is definitely Baidu.com. It stock in China and US had gotten a much anticipated boost from all this. The same can be said for the Facebook clone – RenRen.com and video sharing site – TuDou.com. As Google said its long goodbyes to the Chinese market, I think there really wasn’t a real loser this time around. It looks to me that everyone went home with something in their pocket… Google has its publicity and seemed righteousness. The Chinese government successfully kept competition on the other side of the gate in order to grow its own economy. The users… well the users didn’t win anything but didn’t lose much either. We might even see a boom of local Chinese Internet start-ups because of this… especially when everyone knows that the government will help them kick their competitors out.

Update: GoDaddy.com has suspended registration of .cn domains in China due to the fact that the communist government is asking the company to submit personal information of its customers. I must say that I am quite disgusted by the Chinese government’s stance on these privacy issues.

HOWEVER… I’m getting 3-5mb/s Write, and 3-20mb/s Read. The speed fluctuation is related to the limited CPU and I/O resource on the TonidoPlug. For a $550 setup (2.3TB) the speed just doesn’t make any sense. Even a 300mb file takaes 10min to write… this is clearly not a viable option for any power user.

After speaking to a friend, I was quite inspired by his ZFS rig that actually cost less and is capable of delivering 3x the speed I get. The rig’s 75W power consumption wasn’t too great in my books, but I’m sure by using something less powerful I can crank the wattage down.

My checklist for this rig:

• - Cheaper than the Drobo and TonidoPlug, in other words less than $400USD.
• - Efficient, low power consumption.
• - The rig must have at least 4 swappable drive bays. As it turns out, consumer grade swappable bays are prone to drive vibration. Especially when used with high speed drives 7200RPM+. Be warned.
• - Must be fault-tolerant like the Drobo.
• - Space must be easily upgradeable, again like the Drobo.
• - Must be faster than the Drobo, and is able to sustain read/write speed even for large files.

At first glance this looked to be a tough find, but the worry eased up after some research. It was clear that my rig will need to be in the mITX form-factor, and it will need an energy efficient CPU.

The slower Celeron chips caught my eye for a second, but it was the new Intel Dual Core Atom that shined. With a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of around 13W, the dual-core Atom D510 offers faster performance at a cooler temperate than the previous generation N330 it replaces. (FYI, TDP only measures the amount of thermal energy that need to be dissipated to keep it at an optimal temperature, it does not measure total power consumption). The D510 offers a fast front-side bus, and dual-core architecture clocked at 1.6GHZ. According to previous performance comparisons, a single core Atom running at 1.6GHZ is equivalent to a 900MHZ Celeron.

Therefore, I’m assuming the dual-core will performance similar to 1.2GHZ Celeron M chips. For the purose it is going to serve, it got a gold star in my books. Lastly, since Intel does not sell the Atom chip as  a standalone product, I was looking for a bundle with a motherboard.

Due to the low cost of these parts, most motherboards offered will only carry 2 SATA ports. That is a big NO NO for a NAS box! The good thing is that most of these boards do have a PCI slot for expansion, so you can put a SATA controller card in there to expand its ports. (Note that in order to have Sata II  3Gbit/s , you will need a PCI-Express based controller).

I eventually nailed my choice down to the Intel Atom D510MO bundle. It has 2 SATA, 7 USB, 1 PCI and 1 PCI-E mini slot. The board isn’t the most full-featured product, but it was cheap and made by the mighty Intel itself. Other alternatives from ASUS and Supermicro offer similar specifications for a higher price, and to be quite frank I don’t trust those vendors as much as I do with Intel. (Supermicro does offer a board for the D510 chip with 6 onboard SATA ports, but costs more than twice the Intel board). Price $80 CAD

The D510 uses DDR2 memory, but I already have 1GB sticks laying around. so no need to buy more. but they go for $30 nowadays.

Along with my Intel D510MO I ordered a PCI SATA II controller. The model number is Syba SD-SATA2-2E2I, and it was the only SATA II controller I could find with a PCI interface. I know I won’t be able to get full SATA II speeds, but I’d rather not play around with the jumpers on my older SATA II drives to get it to work. Price $36 CAD.

Lastly, I needed a small yet stylish case to house everything. I know my budget allowed me to have a case with at least 2 hot-swappable bays, but I really need 4 of them. The obvious choice was the CHENBRO ES34069. It comes with 4 hot-swappable SATA drive bays and either 120W or 180W power supply. The package I ordered from NCIX also included a riser card and a camera card reader. For more than $200 it wasn’t the cheapest option, but it certainly looked worthy and it had exactly what I needed. Price $ 207 CAD.

CHENBRO ES34069

Antec NSK2400

After testing the Chenbro case for a week, I must say that the swappable bays are not exactly what I expected them to be. They share the same flaws as many consumer grade screw-less systems… DRIVE VIBRATION and NOISE! Since each swappable slot was not held tightly enough, drive vibration can be heard quite clearly. (Same problem we have with the Drobo actually…) The two fans in the back of the chassis were also inaccessible by the user, and there was no speed controller connector to allow the user to adjust their speed. Therefore, you end up with a system that spins 100% RPM at all times – something the Drobo solved by adding thermal sensitive cooling fans. Lastly, the external power supply is proprietary! The cable that plugs into the chassis looks more like a PS/2 port… rather than a standard PSU connector. You know what this means… if your PSU on the Chenbro ever give out on you… you are going to have fun finding a replacement… then burn a hole in your wallet to pay for it.

So without anymore ranting… I introduce to you the final piece of the puzzle – Antec NSK2400. It costs half as much as the Chenbro, it has 4 drive bays – two 3.5 inch and two 5.25 inch. Click here for a thorough review from slientpcreview.com
I bought two 3.5 – 5.25 drive bay adapters to fit all four of my 3.5 inch SATA drives. Obviously the bays are swappable, but I don’t plan on having multiple drive failures everyday that I need to be swapping drives. =p

This case can accommodate up to mATX form factor, so it will make a good media center chassis as well. – Price $101.91CAD

Finally, the total came to $230 after shipping and taxes - That’s almost half the price of the Drobo, even after you add the cost of RAM.

As you can see, the case I decided to get was a bit more expensive than most. There are a lot of cheaper options out there, especially if you don’t need hot-swappable bays. Secondly, if you are adventurous DIY is another way to go. Check out the DIY project here: http://paulstamatiou.com/diy-200-dollar-pc-part-3 to build an awesome looking acrylic case for your NAS!

Please check back for Part 2 of this NAS adventure. My parts should be in next week, but since the case was re-ordered it might take some time before I can post updates. Please stay tuned! and big thank yous go out to all the people who tweeted and commented on this thread. Thank you for the interest. I won’t let you down!  =p

Think again,

Google Sync has been having a lot of technical problems lately. Just today, the service was complete offline for hours. The only thing Google said was they were having issues with a datacenter and no ETA on fixing the problem. see this support post here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=35f2df27a467e56c&hl=en

Now here is the double edged sword… Microsoft Exchange… or more accurately its implementation on these “smart” phones. When the service was down today… users (including myself) noticed that our contacts, calendar events, and emails were wiped out! Completely gone! I didn’t even know who was texting me anymore… because my iPhone could only show the caller ID.

Shouldn’t the iPhone be smart enough to say… “ok, the Google server is down…” or “what I’m about to do will wipe out 100% of the phone’s contacts… maybe I should ask the user before I do this…”

The server went dark… doesn’t mean the data on the phone needs to as well. Even if data on one end is wiped out… the user should be consulted in order to make an intelligent decision.

So guys… Google isn’t perfect… free services like Sync are even less perfect… However, if Google is serious about making Sync into a business oriented service they could at least be more transparent and responsible about technical issues. For example, adding Sync to the App status dashboard. http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en

Lastly, since Android and Blackberries have their own layer of protocol for sync, they were not affected by the Google Sync downtime today.

Update: as of Thursday, March 04. 10: 27 EST   Google Sync is still not pushing emails through in a timely manner. It is working for some users as mentioned in the support forum, but most users are still experiencing delays.

Update x2: Thursday, March 04 11:30 EST   Sync appears to be working, emails are being pushed with little to no delay. We’ll see how long it’ll last.

Upate x3: According to this post on Google Support. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=00d6bd3123867436&hl=en Another maintenance was performed for Sync and all issues have been resolved as of March 4th.

I was a bit puzzled at first because I have never seen that before, and the upgrade process is dramatically slower this way.

After googling, I realized that all the WP files are now owned by my webroot account and apache no longer has exclusive access to them.

the simple fix was to give apache ownership of the WordPress directory.

#: chown -R   apache-user: wordpressRoot

This does pose a potential security risk. However, this already exists on every WP site that has auto upgrade working. Most shared hosts will run the apache instance under your username so you don’t see this problem.

If you are concerned about security, I would suggest you leave the permissions as they are… or use Drupal. =p

Short answer… Fresh Install > Upgrading

Long answer… it depends on how the upgrade went and what you are looking for. I recently did an upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard and noticed very little problems. the most noticeable problem was the long bootup time… and I know that Snow Leopard had specific optimizations to decrease boot time. Furthermore, I had some apps that were incompatible with Snow Leopard… so I finally decided to give the system a good wipe and install from scratch. and since then… all the problems have been solved… especially after installing the 10.6.2 update. Just always remember to backup your data and apps before wiping things out. Time Machine is very useful in this respect.

On the Windows side, I successfully upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 without a glitch. The two systems are extremely similar under the hood, and I did not notice any problem after upgrading. I even did a clean install of Windows 7 and noticed no improvements. To be fair, I didn’t have anything installed in Vista anyway… just Office and Adobe CS.

Since now I own both systems… I think I can bring some new perspectives and observations to the table.

First of all… I’ve been a loyal Windows user since the 3.0 days. and I guess that’s how long this endless debate has been going on for… However, we are looking at a completely different landscape than those old days.

The common myth that Apple made “better” hardware than your average PC is dead now that everyone is on the Intel train… and we have normal PCs running hacked versions of MacOS… and Intel Macs booting Windows XP and Vista. (official Win 7 support is also coming.) So if you really look at what Apple is offering and charging for… is basically your average hardware stuffed in a fancy chassis. Surprisingly enough… according to official stats there are now more people who are willing to pay the premium for Apple’s fancy design.

But here is my story… I’ve been a Windows user for quite a while… and the ONLY reason why I now own a Macbook Pro is because I needed to run the iPhone SDK. It may not have been the wisest 2 grands spent… but the new Macbook Pros are amazing looking machines! I have to say… cosmetically I have nothing to complain about the machine! The fact that I can get a Dell with similar specs doesn’t bother me at all.

What bugged and is still bugging the hell out of me… is when Mac users… Apple officials and loyalists portray their OS as the best in the world for anything you do!

This is simply UNTRUE! MacOS looks fancy but it is not the ultimate saviour when it comes computing! It is not! Even with the latest Snow Leopard release… it is not even close!!!
Like Mircosoft Windows… it has flaws! If you install too much stuff… it will get slow… if you don’t do regular maintenance… something will go wrong… The number one thing about OS… not one system out there right now will “just work”. If you don’t take care of it… it will not take care of you. Get used to it!

I’ll give you an example… ever since Leopard MacOS had this weird problem where it cannot open files if they were downloaded from the Internet. The only thing that will fix it… REBOOT! That is until Apple released an update a few days ago to address the problem. This is a problem that existed in Leopard and Snow Leopard. As you can imagine I was extremely annoyed by this problem… because even my Windows machine didn’t have to be rebooted this many times to fix a stupid problem like this.

Second annoyance – Video playback. The codec support for MacOS is extremely poor. Codec packs like Perian are still incomplete when you ever come across one of those rare codecs. Needless to mention WMV support… trying to play a HD WMV file on a Mac is simply PAINFUL. You can either use VLC or Flip4Mac… VLC doesn’t have great performance and Flip4Mac will not let you seek the file unless the file is completely buffered. Bottom line… video playback is years behind the performance you get on Windows.

Third annoyance – Lack of software. especially quality free apps. Trying looking for a decent MySQL client for your Mac… paid or free… I bet you cannot find a single one worth competing with SQLyog! Also… when Apple wants you to think that their iWork bundle is any competition to MS Office… DON’T BELIEVE THEM! I’m a university student, and I have to say Numbers is years behind what MS Excel is capable of… same thing with Pages. The only thing I like is probably Keynote… it makes your presentation looks a bit prettier. =p

If you are a Windows user. Be ready to tolerate these annoyances because they are likely to stay for a long time. You might miss that good old Windows UI… I’ll bet you on that one!

On the “dark side” of things… Microsoft just released Windows 7 not too long ago. and big thanks to the University of Waterloo I was able to get an early copy of the OS. I have to say… Windows 7 is everything that I hoped it will be. It is a smart and stable system that is light years away from what Windows Vista had become… and performance-wise Win 7 even leaves XP in the dust! I love it. and I am really considering switching back to Windows for my general computing needs… especially when more Windows Live apps are being released Windows-only.

The bottom line is… Mac was never meant to be a mainstream machine! Its design is amazing… but there are so many things that aren’t perfect on the software end. I honestly think you might find it useful to run Windows on a Mac to get the most out of it.
While Apple keeps bashing Microsoft for the lack of innovation… Microsoft has made a very strong point with Windows 7 and their Windows Live series of services and software. It will be interesting to see how the game plays on from now on…
However, as a consumer I think people should always remember that nothing is ever exactly as advertised. nothing is ever perfect. just because you have spent a lot of money on something… doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
To be happy with your purchase… you need to think about what compromises are you willing to accept… it doesn’t matter how much money you have… you can’t have everything. =)

Today I was replying to an email from Mail and noticed something very interesting…

Mail syncs your reply with Gmail as you type.

Then when you keep typing more… you will see the little box on the bottom saying your conversation in Gmail has been updated… Clicking on update will bring in the rest of the things you typed in another thread.

After the reply is sent, all the temporary threads in Gmail will be deleted and you will be left with one single reply message.

this theme is built on the Fusion Core base theme and the Skinr module.

I currently have a few clients requesting Ubercart on their Drupal site. I will be taking a close look at Acquia Prosper soon, so stay tuned for a review and tutorials.