CaptnJack's Profile

Ah, can you cite references about government and the military? I have personally seen state of federal government office sections that are using Macs that have been part of the government's scheme to diversify across multiple platforms. My daughter has been visiting military installations over the past year and has seen the same - officially-sanctioned Macbooks and iMacs in the military. Try again with better research before suggesting that *horror* Apple will never penetrate certain segments of the computing world.

test yourself

Slightly OT comment: Hadley, here is a bucketful of commas for your next article, the better to separate clauses with. ,,,,, ,,, ,,,,,,, ,, , , ,,,,, , ,,, Nice article, by the way. I think that the followup OS to OS X will depart radically in design (especially the finder, as you are hoping) as well as in its name. It certainly won't be OS 11 or OS XI or anything like that. I actually liked the direction that "OpenDoc" was taking as a "Finderless" model, but that's so 1990s that is has no chance.

Dumb newbie semantics question (I'm not trolling here, just really curious...): What is the difference between the phrase "price point" and the single word "price?" What information does "price point" convey that simply using the word "price" doesn't? Thanks for a great article and the interesting comments.

By the way, anyone know how well the Zoon is doing? It's subscription-based. I haven't read a thing on blogs or in the MSM about what it's (oops, I mean its) sales figures are, how many actual users, what kind of selection in the catalog, total songs in the catalog. I'm curious because I'm out and around, traveling and hanging out in coffee shops all the time and I haven't seen a single Zoon. Ever!

I once read a story/interview with Michael Dell. He was quite proud of the fact that Dull uses off-the-shelf and cheap parts. He said that very little of Dull's profits were ploughed back into R&D. Who cares what Dull computers look like? Michael Dull himself certainly doesn't. They sell cheap stuff to large businesses that like the bottom line. Dull isn't doing so badly doing what it does, so why invest in style? I have one good thing to say about Dull: At least they are doing a little bit to buck the M$ hegemony by offering Linux on their computers. Dull has also realized that Vista is one big fat ugly OS that adds no value to PC makers to the extent that Dull is loading XP SP2 on computers.

@11 (Schop): Here are some details that will help you decide how to set things up. Three years ago I upgraded the internal drive in an older Powerbook. The old drive was fine - just "only" a 40GB. I shopped on ebay and found a great enclosure that allowed me to take this drive along on trips. I don't have an iPod so I downloaded all my music CDs onto this external drive, plugged my earphones into the PB, and had my own "iPod!" This enclosure still works - it gets its power directly from the Firewire bus so there's no external power supply needed. Then a few months ago I thought of the idea of using those laptop drives as a means of backing up since our safety deposit box is a tad too narrow for optical media to fit. That's when I began searching eBay for cheap drives as well as enclosures. Here's what I found: Most (99.9%) of the current enclosures for 2.5" drives are very compact devices - 4.75" long, 2-7/8" wide and <1/2" thick. You can get them for USB 2.0, FW, or a combo. I suspect that all of these are made in sweatshops in China :-) . I bought several to try out and found that the only drawback (a deal-breaker if you want to use them with a PB without a power supply) is that they need two USB2 ports to get enough juice to work, especially if you have 5400rpm drives. Some sellers were saying that you need to use 4500rpm drives. They came with a three-ended USB cable - two ends going into the laptop's USB ports, the third into the drive. Another thing wrong with this idea is that the provided USB cable wasn't long enough to span the width of the laptop - mine has a USB port on each side, not two together. However, these enclosures work great when connected to either of our Mac Mini computers' USB ports. In the end, I have four 80GB hard drives and two enclosures attached to our two Macs. Two of the hard drives are in the bank while the other two are backed up weekly (we have other external 3.5" drives doing the daily backups). These weekly backups back up *everything*, not just things in the User folders. Every month or so, we need to go to our bank anyway, so one or the other of us will swap the current drive with the older backup drive, bring the older one home and begin the cycle again. In a real pickle these drives can be inserted into a FW enclosure and the machine will boot from them. I've tried and tested that. Here's a tiny URL that will get you a listing of 2.5" USB drives on eBay: http://tinyurl.com/3co7vt If you're looking for FW or combo drives, just use this one: http://tinyurl.com/2zenb6 If you're looking for the drives themselves, go here: http://tinyurl.com/2a6wh7 Lastly, when I checked that last page above, I noticed a number of auctions for 3.5" to 2.5" adapters. If you don't think you'll need the case, one of these might work well for you. Newertech has a more comprehensive gadget the plugs into a USB port and AC power and you can plug 2.5 and 3.5 hard drives as well as 5.25 drives and optical devices. I have one of these and it's great for checking out a drive prior to installing it in an enclosure. Note: I'm the neighborhood "gadgeteer" who test people's drives before they run off to a repair service and pay $100 for diagnostics, and this little device has been great. I surely hope that the above helps you decide on your own backup strategy. Incidentally, Newertech sells only through OWC. I find OWC to be fast, courteous, knowledgeable about their product lines.