Windows 2 Apples

We apologize to our faithful subscribers for the long hiatus between episodes.  In our defense we have been productive during our absence … focusing on producing podcast for clients and moving into full fledged production and publication of audio as well as printed books.  We have been fortunate to sign three excellent published authors one of whom has produced an exceptional reading of her autobiography “Bent Not Broken”.

Please see our iNetSynch.com website for links to additional podcasts and audio books.  We believe that you’ll find Lauren Kim Roche’s  reading of  Bent Not Broken an inspirational adventure.

Much has happened since we last produced this podcast.  We have acquired and have begun using Leopard as well as iWork 09  and experimented with the new release of GarageBand and iMovie 09.  Microsoft has issued two public beta releases of Windows 7 and we have installed both on two PC’s with impressive results.

We attempted to upgrade our Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking speech to text software and ended up sending version 10 back after wasting almost two days trying to work around an issue with the C library used by Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9.5.  I think it’s safe to say that this was one of the worst experiences I’ve had in trying to upgrade software over the 30 plus years I’ve been working with computers.

We have repeatedly returned to the MacSpeech Dictate software hoping that minor updates issued by the company would make it usable. It remains a disappointment and we continue to rely on the free Vista Speech Recognition software for most of our dictation requirements. MacSpeech Dictate software has improved since its initial release, but, I still can’t withstand the trauma of watching my text disappear or become scrambled especially after spending 30 or 40 minutes dictating.  I will address MacSpeech in more detail in future podcasts … assuming I’m able to acquire the latest upgrade.  That in itself is an interesting story one I will wait to tell when my frustration level has ratcheted down.

In previous podcasts,  I have attempted to estimate the percentage time spent on my Mac as opposed to my PC and in most instances the outcome was lopsided and favored one system or the other.  As I look back over the last few months of work, I can honestly state that I use each machine approximately the same amount of time each day.  My Macintosh is used primarily to maintain websites and the PC to edit audio files and dictate documents.

I am still enamored with the Apple based RapidWeaver web creation and management software. Despite my best efforts I have not found any equivalent package on the PC side of things. The last experiment was with WebPlus2 by Serif . It has many attractive features but the webs created using available templates are uninspired and it requires considerable more effort and expertise than RapidWeaver.

MixCraft 4  is still by far the superior audio edit software and only still available for the Windows PC platform.  I can’t imagine or rather I can imagine trying to edit complex audio files such as a audio book chapters on my Mac using GarageBand, but I rather not.  Just for kicks I did try to return to GarageBand to edit Lauren’s superb reading of Bent Not Broken and found it too painful to spend more than a few wasted hours on that experiment.

In this podcast, I would like to briefly address my impressions of Leopard and the Windows 7 Beta.  Of the two it’s easy to proclaim Windows 7 beta as the more impressive update.  To tell the truth, I noticed essentially no enhancement in feature set or performance when Leopard was installed and only installed it so that I could take advantage of the new iWork and iLife 09 applications.  The Leopard experience highlights a significant difference between Apple and Microsoft . Microsoft rarely requires customers upgrade the operating system in order to use a new release of major Microsoft software suite such as Office but Apple seems to depend on the revenue generated by tying the adoption of iWork and iLife upgrades to an OS upgrade.

One rather unsettling change in my Mac since shifting to Leopard has been a less reliable connection between my Mac and PC network via the shared Linksys router. In past, my Mac would always find and list my PC and HP MediaSmart Server under Shared Places. I could immediately access public files on my PC and shared folder on the Server. Now I have to reboot the Mac or toggle my router on and off several times before the Mac joins my network. What a waste of time and unnecessary anxiety.  When I revert back to the Tiger OS image on my external firewire dive the issue goes away. If I were not dependent on Leopard to run the now upgraded RapidWeaver, I would gladly reinstall Tiger.

Windows 7 on the other hand has allowed me to give new life to my old Sony multimedia tower PC.  I had  been using it with the original XP Home Media center software to provide streaming video and audio to my  flat screen television.  It worked reasonably well however the XP Media center software is simply not as capable as that shipped with Vista and it seemed to get slower and slower each passing day.

I was amazed at how quickly I was able to install the initial public beta release of Windows 7 and impressed with the enhanced speed and utility offered by windows seven.  It was also reassuring to see that even though I had selected the clean install my original data files had been retained in their original directories.  Since then I have installed the release candidate windows seven beta and continue to be pleased but was disappointed that I was unable to get my Belkin USB Wireless adapter to work with this version of Windows 7.  I’ve not yet determined why the original vista drivers that work so well with the first Windows 7 beta are unable to recognize the Belkin interface under the RC release of Win 7.  After several days of downloading drivers and considerable frustration, I drove to my local Best Buy and picked up a Linksys USB adapter and am happily back on line again.

Recently, a relative complained that her ancient Vista Home edition computer was too slow and inefficient to use inspiring her to look at new vista machines.  She was choking a bit on the idea of having to shell out the cash for a new system. I suggested she backup her data and try a clean install of Windows 7. In our last conversation she was exceptionally happy with the increased performance as well as the high end features such as Aero not part of her original configuration … and the cost, as in free, was a much appreciated bonus. Her son plans to upgrade his aging XP machine when Windows 7 is officially released. For the first time I can remember, Microsoft has developed a major upgrade to the Windows OS that requires fewer resources to run and does not force customers to upgrade their hardware.

I suspect this will be plus for Microsoft and a negative for the likes of HP and Acer. I  had considered purchasing a new small foot print PC to use as our home media center but saw no reason to make the purchase after installing Windows 7 on the Sony tower. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the market place, especially in this age of recession and record unemployment.

In our next podcast we will review an Acorn based Acer NetBook and share a few tips on how to use a low cost webhosting service to backup and share files between Apple and Windows machines.

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