Computers – Page 14 – Auxiliary Memory

The Senior Sleuth’s Guide to Technology for Seniors by David Peterka

The common joke is if you need help with technology, find a kid. Well, David Peterka wants us older folk to be our own tech gurus with his book The Senior Sleuth’s Guide to Technology for Seniors. His book covers a spectrum of technology, not just computers, like robotic lawn mowers, cell phones, iPod, GPSes, remote controls, medical alert necklaces, home entertainment systems, pill reminders, medical monitoring and so on. Peterka also covers social networking, texting and all the trendy communication systems kids embrace. You don’t have to be a senior to find this book useful.

I help older people with their computers all the time and I know they often get stressed by technology. Some just flatly refused to embrace it. And that’s too bad because technology is enabling by its very nature. This book is a quick overview for people new to gadgets and computers.

Recently I help a woman about to retire who likes to do oral history interviews. For years she had been relying on a cassette recorder and just typing up transcripts, but she wanted to be able to give people MP3s and CDs of edited and cleaned up copies of the original recordings. For awhile she relied on the kindness of tech strangers to help her, but I’m the kind of person who likes to teach people to fish rather than just giving them away.

So I showed this lady how to install, configure and use Audacity. At first she was hesitant and afraid to try stuff, but since I wasn’t offering to do the job for her, she stuck with it. I’d come back every week to see how she was doing. At one point she explained her interviewee cough frequently. I showed her how to remove the coughs. She mentioned some of the tapes had hiss. I told her Audacity had a noise-reduction feature and sent her a link with instructions. She figured it out. She’s learned a lot, and now she’s confidently producing digital recordings of her interviews.

I’m in an online book club for audio books and one of the members is a guy who lives in a retirement home but he has become an Internet expert on MP3 players, helping hordes of online users to play digital audio books, collect music and old time radio, converting and watching movies, and other handy tasks for small players. He’s in several online groups, include some for the blind. His knowledge and willingness to help other people, many seniors, is a tremendous resource. He proves that if you gain a skill, pass it on, and he also proves you don’t need to be a youngster to be a tech whiz.

I’m not sure how big the market is for Mr. Peterka’s book because old people are jumping online fast. Ronni Bennett after she retired started Times Goes By, a web site for elder bloggers that is a wonderful resource for wise people wanting to share their experiences online. I wished David Peterka had a supporting website to help his readers once they get beyond the book. This 2009 book is still current, but technology books age fast, so Mr. Peterka will need to keep coming out with new editions until everyone is up to speed.

The advice in David Peterka book for seniors is quite broad and a good place to start if you’re nervous about gadgets and electronic doodads. He provides a wealth of URLs to find additional knowledge, plus he teaches about how to find your own solutions online. The print in the book is nice and large, easy to read.

At work people are amazed I know so much about technology, but often when I meet a new tech problem, I just search on Google. So this Senior Sleuth volume will be best for complete newbie’s who haven’t learn that trick. It nicely distills lots of information in one handbook, and is a good volume for older children helping their aging parents.

It’s a Catch-22 situation. If you had more knowledge, you’d use it to find the same information online. So David Peterka book is a stepping stone. Like I said, I wished he had an web site devoted to the same subject because having all of this information in one convenient location would make a very useful web site.

I’m hoping, as I get older there will be more and more technology solutions for aging. In fact, I hope by the time I get frail there will be robotic caretakers.

JWH – 4/22/10

Will Internet TV Make Cable and Satellite TV Extinct?

There are two kinds of TV, live and recorded. Internet TV sites like Hulu have already proven how well they can handle recorded TV shows. Internet TV even does away with the need for a digital video recorder (DVR). Think of a show, find it, watch it. Internet TV like Hulu is even better than broadcast, cable or satellite for sponsors because viewers are required to watch the commercials. And as long as they have such limited commercials as they do now, I don’t mind watching them. Otherwise I’ll pay for streaming services like Netflix to be commercial free.

Where Internet TV is weak is for live broadcasts, like for sports and 24/7 news. The infrastructure of cable and satellite systems have far more bandwidth for handling live television. That won’t always be so, because I’m sure some kind of broadcast Internet technology will emerge to solve that problem and people will be watching live TV on their iPhones, iPads, netbooks, notebooks, desktops, HTPCs and Internet TV sets.

Digital technology ate the music industry, and is about to eat the book, newspaper, magazine and television industries. I gave up cable TV months ago and for recorded shows I’m in hog heaven by using the Internet TV, which includes streaming Netflix. I also supplement by viewing diet with snail-mail Netflix discs, but I see where that habit could be phased out too. The only reason to get a disc now is for the picture quality of Bluray. Future bandwidth will wipe out that technology too.

Owning music CDs and video DVDs seem so pointless now. I wonder how that’s going to impact the economy and effect the entertainment business. It also makes me wonder about my efforts of building an easy to use HTPC. I’m struggling to get perfect Bluray playback through my HTPC computer, wondering if I should spend $80 for better software, knowing full well in the not too distance future I’ll phase out Bluray too. The HTPC has phased out the LG BD390 Bluray player I bought just last year, and an Internet TV set could phase out my HTPC.

Last night my friend Janis had us watch Bigger Than Life on Bluray because NPR had praised this old James Mason movie so highly. The flick wasn’t very entertaining, but it was fascinating. The Bluray presentation of this 1956 CinemaScope production was stunning in 1080p high definition, showing intricate shadows and vivid colors. Internet TV and streaming Netflix can’t provide that kind of resolution right now, but I imagine it will before 2015.

Technology is moving so fast that we buy devices we want to throw away in a year or two. Growing up my folks wanted appliances and TVs that would last 15 years. I remember Ma Bell phones lasting over twenty years. I’ve had my 52” inch high definition TV for only three years and I’m already lusting for a new set. Will technology ever settle down again so we can buy something that will last a generation? I think it might. Of course it will be terrible for the economy, but I can imagine TV technology that would satisfy me and take the ants out of my pants to have something better.

My perfect TV will still be a 1080p HDTV like we have today. I’m pretty sure we can go decades without changing the broadcast standards again. It will have a digital tuner to handle over-the-air broadcasts (in case the net goes down) and an Ethernet jack and WiFi for Internet TV. It will have two removable bays. One for a computer brain that can be upgraded, and another for a SSD hard drive. As Internet TV is perfected the need for a local DVR will be diminished. That will also be true for an upgradable CPU. There will be no cable or satellite TV. Everything will come to us by TCP/IP. Broadcast will remain for the poor and for when the Internet fails. Cable and satellite TV will go the way of the record store. I also assume all Internet access will be wireless, but it will take 5-10 years to phase out wires. Now that doesn’t mean cable and satellite companies will go under. I expect them to buy into the Internet TV revolution. I do get my internet access from Comcast.

Most people will think I’m crazy by predicting the extinction of cable and satellite TV. They can’t picture living without all that choice. That’s because of the channel switching mindset. We have always thought of what’s on TV by flipping through the channels, even though very little TV is live. Most of TV is recorded, and we fake immediate diversity by offering 200 concurrent channels to watch. Eventually the only channels to watch will be live, because other technology makes it easier to find recorded shows ourselves.

Live TV will go through a renaissance. Cable and satellite TV systems are still the best technology for live TV, and they will hang on to their audiences for another ten or twenty years as Internet broadcast TV is perfected. However, guerrilla TV is emerging on the net, and micro audiences are evolving. For the big networks, how many Today like morning shows will we need for live TV? How many channels to promote sports? How many to 24/7 talking head news and reality shows do we need? How many live PBS networks will we need? Will audience gather around central networks or seek out specialized Internet broadcasters catering to their personal interests?

Ultimately, how much TV really needs to be live? Even 24/7 news shows spend a lot of time repeating themselves. Live TV is leisurely. The hours of the Today show are filled with just minutes of quality content, most of the time is fluff and commercials. And if an opera is filmed live for PBS does it really need to be seen live? Survivor and Amazing Race would be tedious if live.

When the flipping the channels metaphor dies out, and library checkout metaphor gains popularity, TV viewing will change. People love football, war and car chases live, but will even that change too? If you were sitting with you iPad killing some time, will you think, “Hey let’s watch the game in Miami,” or will you want to play a game or watch something recorded? I can easily imagine sites of “WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW!” start showing up, listing thousands of events going on around the world. TCP/IP technology will work better to provide that kind of service than cable or satellite.

Until you play with Internet TV you won’t understand what I’m saying. You’ve got to sleep with the pods or drink the Kool-Aid to buy in. Start with streaming Netflix and Hulu.

And if people love cell phones, Facebook and Twitter to stay in constant contact won’t they love live TV from their friends. Instead of watching the crew of the Today show have fun, why not video link all your friends and create your own morning show? And the emergence of spy networks will also change viewing habits. If every daycare and classroom had web cams, wouldn’t parents spend more time watching them? Won’t all the web cams in the world grabbing eyeballs destroy the audiences of the 200 channels of national networks?

We can’t predict the future. Growing up in the 1960s I never imagined anything like the Internet. All I can predict is change and more of it. But I’m also going to predict that once the Internet and digital upheaval is over, we might settle down to a slower pace of change. Well, until artificial intelligence arrives or we make SETI contact with distant civilizations.

The iPad and Screen Evolution

I got to play with an iPad today for the first time. It was beautiful. I’m going to have a hard time keeping my resolution to not buy one before the second generation comes out. I’ve been trying to find a carry around the house computer for years. I tried a Kindle, iPod touch and a Toshiba netbook. I sold my Kindle to a bookworm friend, and my other two devices just sit around losing battery charge. I use each occasionally, but they have the wrong size screens.

I liked the Kindle for reading fiction, but I wanted something to read electronic magazines, RSS feeds and the Internet while reclined in my La-Z-Boy. The iPod touch lets me read stuff the Kindle didn’t plus my Kindle fiction, but the screen is too small. I installed several ebook reader programs on my netbook, but 10.1” landscape screen is all wrong. Seeing the 9.7” inch portrait screen of the iPad today convinced me it was near perfect for electronic magazines, RSS feeds and Internet reading, and probably for fiction too. It was heavier than I expected, and that might be a drawback. But it was damn close to what I want.

The iPad should do a lot to eliminate paper, which is one of my environmental goals. The iPad also well illustrates the role and purpose of the computer screen. The small screen on the iPhone/iPod touch is perfect for carrying around all the time. The interface is tuned to it’s 3.5” screen. iPhone apps that aren’t rewritten for the 9.7” iPad screen will miss their mark. Putting Windows 7 on a 10.1” netbook screen just isn’t right either. Tiny desktop applications don’t cut it, they need to be redesigned to the screen real estate.

For example, Windows Media Center works great on my 52” television screen. It’s an application designed to work on a TV screen with viewers across the room. It doesn’t need a keyboard. Using regular Windows apps on my big TV is clunky. I can make browsing OK with IE 8 by using the Zoom magnification, so I can play music and read Engadget or Slashdot from the couch, but some pages like Pandora just doesn’t resize or work well on the big screen.

It would be damn cool if Pandora, Rhapsody and Lala all were rewritten to run inside of Windows Media Center. In fact, it would be extremely neat if there was a version of IE for Windows Media Player so I could browse the web with just a clicker. It would need a virtual keyboard like the iPad/iPhone, but that’s doable.

Back in the 1990s pundits started talking about digital convergence. They expected TVs and computers to merge, and that’s rapidly happening, but I don’t think they planned for giant screen TVs. Nor did they expect the convergence with telephones, GPSes and books, or even game machines. Now it’s all a matter of fitting the task to the screen size:

Screen Size	Device	Best Use
1-2”	MP3	Music Audiobooks Voice Recording
2-4”	Phone Camera Video Cam Portable Game	Smartphone GPS Photography Videography Games
5-6”	Ebook	Fiction
9-11”	Tablet	Nonfiction Magazines RSS feeds Photos Games
10-16”	Netbook Notebook	Work on the go
18-24”	Desktop	Work at the desk
26-60”	Television	TV Movies Music Home video Internet TV
> 60”	Projector	Lectures Education

You can watch video on all these screen sizes, and even use all of them with computer applications or games. Telephone features like video conferencing, Skype and web cams have moved to the various screen sizes. I think the iPad has been in development since before the advent of netbooks, and I bet Steve Jobs was sick to see them succeed because that 9-11” screen size was territory ripe for exploitation. I tend to think tablets will win out in that form factor and 12-13” will become the ultimate netbook size for extreme road warriors who want to type on the go, while 16” will be the common size for notebooks. I expect 24” to become the ultimate size for desktop machines, although I’ve discovered I like having two monitors at work, one in portrait and the other in landscape.

Now, is there room for a new form factor and unique applications? I don’t know. Will the future just be ones of refining these screen territories? And will there be some repositioning of functions? Do you need a smartphone if you carry around an iPad? Would a dumb phone be good enough? Some people like everything on one device, like an iPhone, but I prefer the right tool for the job. The iPod Nano is perfect for audio books. They are harder to use on the iPhone. Time will tell how everything shakes out, but I think screen size will be the factor that will determine the ultimate use of each device.

JWH – 4/8/10

Building A HTPC

One thing I’ve wanted to do for decades is build my own PC. But whenever I needed a new PC I’d price one in the Sunday ads and always discovered that a PC on sale is cheaper then building one. For the last year I’ve been dreaming of building a home theater PC (HTPC) and I finally did. Best Buy had a much better PC, with an Intel i3 chip with 6gb of memory for sale for $549. So far, my home built HTPC with an AMD Athlon X2 Rigor 240 and 4gb of memory has been about $650, and that’s even using an existing TV tuner card, and I still need to buy some more stuff, like a remote and maybe better Blu-ray software. Even the $549 price would have been a base, because I had to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I based my buying decision on Guide to Building a HD HTPC March 2010 edition.

What finally pushed me over the edge was I really wanted the dang thing to look like a piece of stereo equipment and not a PC, and that meant building it myself. Oh sure, I could have ordered a ready made HTPC, but it would have been hundreds more. I spend a lot of time browsing NewEgg and reading the customer reviews and figured I could build a HTPC too. So a couple weeks ago I started ordering the parts.

The last thing I ordered was the memory (after reading the motherboard instructions very carefully) and I got lucky with free shipping from NewEgg. However, I wasn’t so lucky. The memory shipped from Memphis, and I live in Memphis, so when I saw the tracking info I thought I’d get it the next day. The following day my RAM was in Georgia. I wonder if DHL has a hub there. The lesson here and from Amazon is free shipping means delayed shipping, both from NewEgg and Amazon, and slow travel times. But it all worked out. I had a bad spell with my back and it wasn’t until yesterday that I felt like putting everything together.

A word of warning though to people who are thinking about building their own PC. As the parts starting coming in and piling up on my table it occurred to me that if any of them were defective or incompatible I’d have a hard time knowing. When you buy a PC it comes assembled and tested with a warranty. When you build one, there is no warranty for the whole, and it’s very easy to damage these sensitive parts, so troubleshooting can be nasty, especially if a part is defective from the start. This got me worried about the whole plan.

Yesterday morning, after a good night’s sleep, a shower and breakfast, I jumped into the project. I reread the various instructions and started work. I was very lucky, everything went smoothly. I carefully tested where I was going to install things before I actually installed anything. When I first tried to install the power supply none of the screw holes lined up. Finally I turned it upside-down and they did. Go figure.

I was afraid of two things before I started. Installing the motherboard and installing the heat sink. Both were a snap. The stand-offs were already installed in the enclosure and all I had to do was line them up with the holes in the motherboard. I got a whole bag of various screws and only the smallest fit. None of my instructions explained which exact screws to use at any point. I had to guess. The heat sink had a pad of pre-installed thermal paste and it snapped right on. That’s why I bought the retail box for the AMD chip. I didn’t want to worry about matching a heat sink and applying thermal paste myself.

The worst trouble I had was figuring out where all the wires from the HTPC case went to the motherboard connectors, like power, reset, USB, Firewire, media card readers, etc. The power SW and reset SW gave me the worst time because the pins had a ground pin and I didn’t know which wire was the ground. I got on Google and found out the black or white wire was the ground. And everything was teeny tiny and I have fat clumsy fingers.

When I finally had everything assembled and flicked on the power supply switch nothing happen. I had a sinking feeling that, oh no, I did something wrong. But I didn’t panic. I thought for a second and remembered there was a power button on the front of the unit and I pressed it. All four fans started spinning, but totally quiet. The boot up screens appeared and then the Windows install disc booted. Damn, I was happy.

Here’s my messy table at that point. I used little glass bowls to keep the screws sorted. After Windows 7 easily installed, I threw on the PowerDVD 8 that came with the Lite-On Blu-ray player. I was worried it wouldn’t work with Windows 7 and wouldn’t play Blu-ray discs. It ran just fine and played a Weeds BD disc I had. PowerDVD is now at version 10, and I thought the version 8 wouldn’t be good enough. So far it has.

After I ran all the OS updates I moved the unit over to my TV stand. I have an old Samsung 52” DLP HDTV. That’s when I discovered I really needed a wireless keyboard. I had to use the wired keyboard and mouse about 1 foot in front of my TV and it’s hard to see the 1920×1080 screen that close. So a quick trip to Office Depot got me a cheap Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. It only promised 10 feet of range, but so far it’s been good enough.

I was able to sit in my chair and configure Windows Media Center, Hulu, Netflix, Lala and Boxee. For some reason Rhapsody wouldn’t install. I’m worried its not compatible with Windows 7 64bit version. [It installed smoothly on my second attempt and everything is cool.] I also configured the Home Network under Windows 7 so my Jim-TV could see my Jim-PC and access my MP3 files.

It’s weird using a mouse instead of a remote, so I need to research remotes that will work with all my programs. Hulu and Windows Media Center have wonderful interfaces that are usable across the den. So does Boxee, but Boxee is giving me trouble – it can’t seem to play Hulu shows. Is there a remote that works with all of these programs and even IE 8? I wished that Lala had a local client. I can play Rhapsody through the web client, but I want to try the local client on the big TV. Boxee is a wonderful concept, having one central location to play all the media types offered on the web, but it hasn’t worked out perfectly. But that requires more testing, and it’s still in beta.

Windows Media Center reports I have room for 1086.5 hours of recorded TV shows. I bought a 1.5TB drive. I figure I might make my HTPC my home server too. I need to research if Windows Home Server wouldn’t have been a better OS instead of Professional 64 bit. I just don’t know. I also programmed a week’s worth of TV shows from the Windows Media Center Guide.

My goal was to build a machine that replaces my Blu-Ray player, my Toshiba DVD recorder, my Pioneer CD/SACD player, and my SoundBridge M1001, and several functions I could only do from my regular PC. Since I gave up cable TV I’ve had no problem living with just five local channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS1, PBS2) but I missed my DVR and onscreen guide. Windows Media Center gives me a DVR and guide. What’s still missing is an easy to use remote. I need a remote that can power up the Samsung TV and Yamaha receiver – I’ll leave the HTPC running at all times. (Jim-TV goes into a very low powered sleep mode that it can wake from to record shows).

This brings up another issue. When it wakes up my HTPC wants me to log in. That means using the keyboard. I’d like to skip the log in but is that wise when it comes to security? I don’t’ know. Another thing to research. But it would be nice if I could get a remote that turned on everything and the computer would just start working. I want to only use the keyboard if I want to use the Internet at the TV, otherwise do everything from the remote or mouse.

The mouse works fine from a chair arm or side of the couch if I’m lying down, but not everything can be controlled from a mouse pointer. I just got a wild idea. I wonder if I could make the TV voice activated? Now that would be cool!

Ultimately I want to make the entire system extremely easy to use. My wife has been very grumpy since I gave up cable and the DVR. (She works and lives out of town and has her own cable TV – so I don’t feel guilty about depriving her.) She hates not being able to pause the TV. Windows Media Center now gives her that ability, but by using the wireless mouse instead of a standard remote. That’s a weird shift.

I have a remote that came with the Hauppauge TV turner card, and I have an older Logitech Harmony universal programmable remote. I’m going to try to make one of those work before buying anything else. However, that’s a lot to make work together. Sound comes from the receiver, which has its own remote. Windows Media Center works with WMC remotes, but I’m not sure they work with Hulu or Netflix or IE. I can play Netflix through Windows Media Center, so that solves one issue, maybe.

And it’s a shame that Windows Media Center doesn’t have the same ambitions at Boxee. If Windows Media Center did everything I could have the machine auto load it and just stay in that program. It would be wonderful if Windows Media Center made a special browser for viewing the Internet and accessing programs and files on the PC. Seeing the Windows desktop at 1920×1080 makes everything tiny and hard to see across the room even when blown up to a 52” monitor. I had to boost the visibility by telling Windows to magnify the desktop by 150%. That helps, but is not perfect. The TV screen mode for Windows Media Center, Hulu desktop and Boxee is the answer. Their interfaces are design to be viewed from ten feet away.

There is a wealth of TV shows that weren’t available to me before that comes over the Internet. I’m not sure I like that. I love the simplicity of local stations, but I am enjoying Caprica. Sometimes I think I would be happiest with only watching Netflix discs that come in the mail. Except for news and the latest documentaries about contemporary events, I’d be perfectly OK with watching TV from Netflix discs. For example I love the new show Parenthood. But I hear it doesn’t have good ratings. If they kill the show I’ll be mad. I’m getting to the point that I rather only watch a TV series if I know the season is complete, or if its a one season wonder that was cut short but wrapped up nicely, like with Freaks and Geeks.

In other words, having a HTPC might be overkill for my simplified lifestyle. However, I have accomplished something on my bucket list and that was fun. I do prefer watching DVR recorded shows to watching them live. And it’s nice to know I have a machine recording my favorite shows when I’m not home to watch them.

JWH – 4/4/10

Update 8/27/10: Overall I’m satisfied with my project except for the Blu-ray player. First off, it turned out to only be a BD/CD/DVD player. I was expecting it to also be a CD/DVD burner, but it wasn’t. So watch out. But more importantly, the PC Blu-ray software is unusable in my opinion. I pulled the Blu-ray player out of my system and installed a CD/DVD burner, and went back to using my LG Blu-ray player. If Microsoft added support for Blu-ray in Windows Media Center I would try again, but playing Blu-ray discs on a PC is clunky with existing software.

I think for a HTPC to succeed it needs one media center type program that does everything. It’s even annoying to switch between WMC, Hulu and Boxee. I don’t want a dozen competing programs offering me television. What’s happened is I use WMC for watching recorded over the air TV shows, and Netflix for everything else.

Windows 7 and Apple’s Lost Opportunity

I’ve been extremely happy with Windows 7. And I’ve been reading that millions of other people love Windows 7 too, including businesses that’s been holding back from upgrading their zillions of XP machines. This makes me wonder if the anti-Windows crowd has lost their window of opportunity. Microsoft truly stumbled with Vista. I liked Vista just fine, but it was the laughing stock of the OS world for many years. Mac and Linux users thought Microsoft’s success on the desktop was finally over. It could have been if Steve Jobs would have played his cards right.

If Apple had sold OS X to Windows users to install on their machines during the Vista years, I wonder if the Macintosh would have overthrown the Windows dominance on the desktop. What a missed opportunity. You’d have thought Apple would have been offering $49 convert to Macintosh deals to get unhappy Windows users to switch teams. But no. And now that Windows 7 is hot, I don’t think they will.

I did get an old friend to switch to Linux this week. He had a Vista machine that was badly infected with malware. It was a laptop that was given to him, so he didn’t have the original Windows disc. He was thinking about buying a new copy of Windows when I asked if he wanted to try Linux. I first asked if he had an iPhone or iPod, and when he said no, I then asked what he did with his laptop. He did everything on the net using Firefox. He had no stored local files. I sent him a copy of Mint Linux and he installed it with no trouble and he’s very happy. Apple could have had a convert.

I have another friend with a slow Windows machine. I’ve offered to put Linux on her machine, but she said she’d rather buy a new laptop. She’s afraid of Linux. She does use an iPod, so I’m not sure if she would be happy with Linux, but except for occasionally using Word or Excel, and iTunes, she spends all her time on the net. I’m hoping she’ll let me convert her old laptop when she gets a new one. She mostly uses iTunes to rip audio books and put them on her Nano. I’m wondering if I could get Linux to do that.

Because she hates her current laptop for going so slow and acting up, she doesn’t believe it will ever run good again. I’ve also offered to wipe it and reinstall her original Windows, but she doesn’t want to do that either. She thinks only a new machine will make her happy. I’m wondering if the old machine with Linux would have made her happy. If Apple had a $49 deal to switch to Macintosh I bet she would have tried it. She’s always wanted a Mac, but whenever I’ve taken her to the Apple store she freaked out over the Mac prices.

I have Ubuntu on my second desktop at home, but I don’t use it. I’ve thought about putting Linux on my Toshiba netbook. I like the idea of Linux even though I love Windows 7. I would put Windows 7 on the netbook but I don’t want to spend the money. If Apple offered a cheap OS X upgrade I would do it because I’ve always wanted a Mac at home to play with.

I wonder what the Macintosh OS X market share would be if Apple sold its OS to run on Windows machines? And would it lower the price of Windows 7. If I had the choice between Windows 7 or OS X for my netbook for $49 it would be a hard decision. Apple wants us to buy their hardware, that’s not going to happen. If we could dual book our existing machines into Windows 7 or OS X, I wonder what the world would end up preferring?

JWH – 3/11/10