Famous blogger Robert Scoble has published a very interesting post today about Apple's advertising and brand promise following his experience upgrading his Mac computer with Apple's latest updates. He is making the point that Apple claims the Apple experience is better, that Apple builds better quality computers, various hadware and software than its competitors. So when he reported problems with his upgrade, many apple users flocked to his site to post comments blaming him for his troubles and criticizing him for criticizing Apple's marketing.

I don't usually comment on issues like this but I have seen this kind of wolf pack mentality before as well and I find it disturbing. I don't drink anyone's Kool-Aid and I find those Windows/Mac debates tiresome and irrelevant because my computer is ultimately just a tool to me. Not a social standing object and not a way to try and be cool. Both sides will argue that their camp is the best and you are basically a moron for believeing otherwise. But Mac fanatics just have this extra little bit of zeal, that smug self-righteousness of the "true believer". Not every Mac user is like that of course and many of them see their machines simply as the tools that they really are. But there are those who really buy into the Mac lifestyle thing or the "brand promise" Scoble talks about. Nothing wrong with that if it makes you happy but when any criticism of the Mac marketing hype brings on the flames then maybe these Mac users take their little Apple branded gizmos much too seriously...

They're just computers people, it's not the brand name on them that matters, it's what you create with them!

Since I got my new computer, I've been busy installing software, installing Office, email and other basic applications as well as setting my new Vista environment and getting familiar with it. I'll post later about my impressions on Vista.

But Saturday, I finally installed Adobe Design Premium CS3 on the new machine. All I can say is wow! I liked CS3 a lot before but I really LOVE it now. The Suite was workable in my old computer but load times were excruciating. I also couldn't have Dreamweaver and Fireworks open for example and then run a Skype session with a client to discuss a project detail while I was making edits which is a common occurence for me since I do sub-contracting work for other Web design firms on top of working for my own clients.

Now, even the "heaviest" apps like InDesign and Photoshop open in seconds and Fireworks CS3 seems to almost "pop" open. I'm sure the AMD Dual Core CPU helps a lot as well as the 4 GB of dual channel DDR2 Ram on the machine but mostly, I think the 250 GB Seagate SATA NCQ hard drive I use as my main system drive contributes a lot to the incredible application load (as well as system boot up) times I get. Also, I though that once they were loaded the CS3 apps were pretty responsive on my old machine but I was quite wrong...

My only disapointment with Adobe software on my new machine is that I cannot install ColdFusion MX7 on it as I'm getting blocked ports and other problems even if I'm not running a firewall since I'm behind a router now. Worse still is that ColdFusion 8 will not support 64 bit systems (either Vista or XP) which is disapointing. Server apps are exactly the kind of software that could benefit most from using a 64 bit architecture so I do not understand Adobe's decision in this instance.

The workaround I'll be using is to have my old XP box run ColdFusion and I will use that as my local testing server. I'll need to format and re-install XP on it though as Networking is hosed on that box. Vista sees it but the XP box won't let it connect and it does not "see" the Vista box. As soon as I get all of my settings files out of the old machine I'll format it and install a clean copy of XP SP2 on it. I'll leave it as a barebones installation running minimal software like ColdFusion and MySQL and hope it still has a few more years in it like that.

...and it's a screamer! I can't believe I lived with my other one for this long. The new one is so much faster it's not even funny. I'll be keeping the old one as a backup so I got a Belkin swicth to use the same keyboard, mouse and monitor with both and plugged them into a router. That way I'll always have a backup. Now I just have to figure out how to network them together..

If you're interested, here are the key components I chose to build my new power machine.

First, I went with an AMD Athlon 64  X2 5200+ Dual Core processor. I figure the only reason my old 2001 era 1 GHz machine remained workable for this long (it even runs all the CS3 apps very well except for start time) is the AMD Athlon chip in it. The new Dual core chip is another beast altogheter though. I can't wait to install CS3 and my other creative and productivity software but mostly I can't wait to see how my music software will run on it.

To run the Athlon 64 X2 chip, the sales rep at the store that built my machine recommended the ASUS Crosshair motherboard. Hard to get excited about a mobo you'll say but this one is a thing of beauty. Things have evolved quite a bit in the last 6 years since I was in the market for a new computer. If I had more desk space, I think I'd run that machine on top of it with the side panel removed just to look at the beautiful lights on that board... ;-)

This motherboard is also a technological marvel with an LCD at the back that gives you error messages and codes as well as the status of the PC in human readable form. It's also a tweaker's and overclocker's delight. If you are in the market for a new machine and you thought of getting an AMD processor, take a hard look at that motherboard. The reviews I have read were all overwhelmingly positive. Follow the link above and look at the specs. You'll want one too. To complement the motherboard and processor, I had them put 4 Gb of Kingston 800MHz DDR2 Ram on it. No more problems running Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Studiometry, Skype and other apps at the same time... And my music software will run so much smoother.

Storage is handled by two Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 hard drives, the system one is a 250 Gb NCQ and the other is a 500 Gb (media, backup, data, etc).

Next and following a dicussion of my needs with the rep, he recommended the NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS 640 Mb video card. I actually got the EVGA version but it's the same card. I haven't run any graphics heavy app or game on the machine yet but the display is absolutely beautiful. I don't play that many games but I'm a huge fan of two series: the Legacy of Kain / Soul Reaver series but especially the Thief series. THose are the most immersive game "worlds" I have experienced and the Thief 1 and II Looking Glass Studios legacy lives on through a large community of fan mission makers and players. My old machine could handle Thief I and II no problem but I really didn't have the specs to run the much newer Thief III Deadly Shadows. Not an issue anymore so I ordered Deadly Shadows this morning... ;-)

Last in the major components, I chose the SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro from Creative. If I only did music I would have bought a dedicated music creation sound card like an M-Audio but since I'll also be gaming and using the PC to watch DVDs for example, I decided on the SoundBlaster. The X-Fi Elite Pro has Digital Analog Converters that are very high quality which rival those in medium range dedicated audio cards, and the break out box is very useful to plug my different instruments into and to control the card itself. I just hope the low latency ASIO driver works well with my music recording and authoring appplication (Sony Acid Pro 6).

But the bottom line is, getting a new powerful computer is so much fun! :-)

I just installed and am now testing a nifty little app called Windows Live Writer which is used to write to your blog through XML-RPC from your computer without the need to log into your blog's admin area.

Among the benefits of using such an app, you can save post drafts locally and have access to more sophisticated formatting options. I already had that since I was using FCKEditor in my blog's admin area but Live Writer also adds spell checking which I didn't have. In any case, FCKEditor did not work in Opera 9.2 which is my favorite browser these days (Firefox is just too slow on my aging machine but that will change soon... more on that later ;-)

Live Writer is just a cool little lightweight app that I can leave open for hours without my Web session timing out and which can automatically save drafts at timed intervals like most text editors can do.

For fellow BlogCFC users, you can look at this post from Ray Camden which links to this post from Dan Vega to get a step by step of how to set Live Writer for BlogCFC.

Update: Just an addition to test Live Writer's ability to update an existing blog post.

Update 2: Updating seems to be working fine...

I completed the host switching I mentioned in my last post sometime last week and this is my first blog post since then. I'm very happy with my new host so far and all the errors with the blog I was getting have now stopped. I'm now testing the posting, pinging and I am also testing a new app called WIndows Live Writer that is still in beta with which I can post to this blog from my computer without needing to log into the admin area of the blog.

Anyway, this post is just a test and you can ignore it.

Last week I started the process of moving 3 sites to a new hosting company including this one, my business site (webfocusdesign.com) and a client site. My business site was registered at Network Solutions and I also switched registrar for that one and, of course, they made the whole process take forever... I'm glad to be rid of them completely now.

While the thew new Name Servers (DNS) propagate, reaching me via email may be difficult and messages may bounce. If you need to reach me urgently use my ISP email which is "stephberg (at) videotron (dot) ca".

The main reason I moved the sites was because my prior host was unable to solve the many database connectivity issues I was having with this blog. They had me move it to MySQL from Access which was definitely a good thing but the timeout errors did not stop and at some point last week they got worse than ever (I get an email everytime there is any kind of error with the blog). So, I'd had it and decided to move and I now pay a lot less than before for more features and better service.

Also and most importantly, you now should see little to no ColdFusion errors when visiting this site and navigating the blog.

This blog is now running on MySQL instead of Access so there should be a lot less timout errors. There are a few things I still need to tweak to get all the blog entries to show up as the MySQL migration tool did not convert everything from Access perfectly but everything should get back to normal soon.