Would you trust your computer to THIS
GUY!
Dance
MonkeyBoy (movie 3mb)
Microsoft Product |
Alternative |
Microsoft Windows (XP, 2000, Milleneum, NT, W98, ad nauseum.) |
Mac OS X -
Apple's latest
operating system is based on a Unix foundation with the Aqua graphical
user interface. It is elegant, stable and has the ease of use that
Apple is famous for. Integrated into Apple's hardware and OS are
technologies not yet
included with Windows (e.g. Rendezvous zero config networking,
802.11b-g wireless networking, Apache web server, Quicktime, PDF). Best
of all it comes with a host of revolutionary applications (Mac only)
that are brilliantly designed to ease your digital lifestyle. These
are the iLife apps;
iTunes (with iTunes Music Store), iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iCal and iSync.
At the core of the OS is the Unix implementation called Darwin. Apple has released Darwin's source code to the OpenSource community. Darwin open source projects allow developers to customize and enhance key Apple software. Through the open source model, Apple engineers and the open source community collaborate to create better, faster and more reliable products. In contrast, Microsoft is closed and proprietery. |
Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access) |
Google Docs
offers web based office apps, that goes beyond MS Office with sharing
and mobil access to your documents. This is the future of the common
office applications. OpenOffice.org (OOo) - OOo is a product of the OpenSource community. It is an integrated suite of word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics programs. Several years ago Sun Microsystems released the source code of their Office Suite called Star Office to developers to port to several different operating systems for free distribution and development. It is an incredibly feature rich program that also has file compatibility with MS Office documents. It will open and save Word and Excel files far better than any other competing software claiming compatibility with MS Office... and it is FREE! On the Mac, it currently runs on X11, a Unix based windowing system. So the interface is more Unix-like than the standard Mac OS X environment. OOo also runs on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris OS's. Neooffice is currently the best implementation of OOo for Mac OS X. It does not require running under X11, and uses your current Mac fonts and printing services. If you need a robust database, FileMaker Pro is a superior alternative to MS Access. FMP is cross-platform (Mac & Win), has a point and click scripting language, and a Web publishing feature that can put your database on the Web with a click of the mouse. A free open-source database alternative for experienced programmers is MySQL. iWork - Create, present and publish your work in style. Keynote delivers stunning, interactive presentations. Pages word processor has all the tools you need to create graphically rich documents. Numbers offers a graphically rich, full featured spreadsheet. |
Internet Explorer |
MS forced this weak, mundane,
feature deprived browser on the world, and made it the defacto standard
through unfair competitive practices that landed MS in court and
convicted for anti-trust violations. Yet it continues to have
overwhelming market share and is the standard that all web pages must
be tested against for compatibility. There are many other superior
products to chose from on all platforms. To name just a few... Opera, Firefox, OmniWeb, Camino, Safari. I choose to use Safari,
and Firefox.
Safari offers faster rendering of pages than MSIE, and tabbed browsing. Seamonkey is a fine basic web page editor (this
site was created with Seamonkey). Firefox, Seamonkey, Camino and many others are
products of OpenSource and are free. |
Windows Media Player |
mplayer for
OS X - Another product of Opensource, this media player was written
for Linux and ported to OS X. It plays almost any media file including
MS's WMV AVI, and DivX. VLC is another great free cross-platform media player |
Outlook Express |
Mail.app
- Apple's email client has all the features you need to organize and
deal with your email efficiently. It has an incredible Junk Mail
feature that uses "adaptive semantic analysis" to filter out Junk. You
train it... it learns. |
MSN, .Net, Hotmail |
.Mac - Apple's unique internet services
are so
robust and varied, that it would be difficult to explain them here. Click on this link to
learn more. Yes it costs $100/yr, but the services are worth it IMHO.
Web page authoring and hosting, Internet file storage, webmail, are
some
of the features. One of the overlooked features is the
ability to use the Internet as an intermediary to syncronize your
calendar, contacts, bookmarks and files between several
computers,
PDA's, and the Internet. Its really an incredible service if you can
utilize all the features. Lots of free software and other giveaways for
.Mac members. |
Questions or comments, feel free to
email me.