[liff] OS Upgrade: Striding Boldly Into The Brave New World Of 2009

2925.I've cowboy'd up, put on my big-boy pants, got up the gumption, and finally upgraded my iMac to … Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Stop laughing.

Seriously, there were a lot of potential pitfalls here. Before I was working with this machine, I was working (most of the time very happily) with a PowerMac G4 from 2004. That was one sweet machine, and stylish, too. And I've always loved Mac OS X, not because it was Apple, so much, but because it was Unix (Darwin, so to say) at its heart.

Despite unnerving years of experience with Windows, I still have no clear idea of what's going on under the hood there. It's a scary place.

But still, as I said, there were pitfalls. For one, the vintage of my current machine. Not the oldest out there, but a Mid-2007 (built the third week of August, to be as precise as I need to), which is supposed to support up to Mountain Lion. Still, I worried. I seem to be a little snakebit on such things; I have known failure on things that were guaranteed to work. Or maybe it's just my 'worst case scenario' way of thinking; I was sure that, since it was me we were talking about, despite having a machine that was nominally supposed to support it, I would spend the 20 bucks on getting Snow Leopard only to have it spit the DVD-ROM right back out.

It ain't easy bein' me.

I also heard many reports about how Creative Suite 4 didn't run completely well under Snow Leopard. I don't use those apps as often as I want to, but when I need them I need them. In some phases of my life, I guess you'd call them mission critical.

But when your OS is about 4 versions back on the type of Firefox it'll support, it's clearly time to do something. So I ordered.

It sure is cheaper than it used to be. A lot of the upgrade experience is moving away from the monumental thing it used to be, and I guess here is where I show of that I'm moving into the sort of person who feels his POV is a bit 'old fashioned'. I remember getting OS X 10.3, Panther, and it was in a big box typical of what I expected computer software to be in. You had something to hold. The upgrade to 10.4 (Tiger) was in a much smaller box but still had some heft. Upgrading to 10.5 (Leopard) happened because it came installed on the computer I bought from PowerMax. Now it's 10.6 time.

Man, that box is small. I mean, it could hold a box set of The Essential Starland Vocal Band and have room left over for the The Essential Terry Jacks. Yeah. That's small. And I know it's getting smaller yet; you don't even have any boxes to hold when you get 10.7 and  10.8, but … no, not yet.

At least you aren't paying $100 a pop for a complete OS. That's something.

So, I put in the disk and we go to work. Whoop … cancel the install. Almost forgot to put in Rosetta. No Rosetta, no FontLab Studio 5, no Photoshop droplets (isn't that strange).

An hour later (the computer did not spit out the disk, yay!), we're upgraded. Even that experience is attenuated … just a progress bar. No status messages. Just "yeah, it's working. Chill." And, at the end of that hour, I'm logging into my iMac and I'm running 10.6.3 and it's pretty sweet. Though the first runs of the apps under the new regime take a hella long time to initiate. After that, though, pretty smooth.

I'd say the neatest thing about 10.6 is the thing they call "Grand Central Dispatch", which finally makes efficient use of the Intel Core Duo 2 processor. I keep an Activity Monitor live icon in the dock with CPU performance graphs. I've never seen them more equally-loaded. I've noticed better performance. All my apps run. I'm so far satisfied.

10.7 is down the road a bit. Loss of Rosetta means I'll have to give up using apps that I'm not ready to give up yet. But 10.6 is doing for me what I need it to do; keeping me connected and using all the stuff I want to use, and allowing me to use updated browsers and Flash content. So, now, I'm happy.

Welcome to 2009, my mid-2007 iMac. Nice to be here.

[liff] I Tried Out A ChromeBook … At The Multnomah County Library

2803This is a thing I just stumbled on. It's a good thing.

For a while I've wanted a crack at a Chromebook. The way things go round me, chances were hard to come by. But I saw this placard in the Midland Branch of the Multnomah County Library that said something about Community Chromebooks.


I was intrigued, and asked about it. Google has apparently provided Chromebooks for checkout to certain branches of the County Library, and I asked one of the librarians about it.

They're spiffy new machines, so there's a fair amount of rules to follow. You can check one out for two hours only, and if you keep them out after two hours, it's a $10 overdue fine per hour. They'll give you a sheet to read and sign; read it carefully. Take good care of that Chromebook while you have it; if you break it, you'll pay to fix it. Resist the urge to go all hacky on it, and keep your latte off to the side.

All I'm sayin' is, be careful. They have to take good care of them, so others can check them out too.

What you'll get for your trouble is a spiffy little Samsung Chromebook, and you can check out for yourself what they do. And for what they're intended, they work pretty well actually.

When I go out or go to the library, I'll want to check in online, see what's going on. As long as you're near a public WiFi network, you get signal, and all the net's bases are belong to you. If you want new apps, you download them from the Chrome Web Store, just like on your Chrome-equipped laptop or desktop. I don't know how much you can get done without net access, but you can apparently do some things; but essentially because the experience is basically a Chrome browser with a really nifty case, and you'll be using the Chromebook in situations where you're connected, this'll probably not be too much of an issue.

The machine boots up quick, just like they say it does, and runs really pretty well for what it does. Sort of the ultimate netbook really.

If you want to try out a Chromebook, your chance may be as close as your nearest Multnomah County Library. Like you needed any more reasons to go to the Library, Portland.

[tech] The Return of the Commodore 64 - And More?

2604.Everything old really is new, again.

Meet the Commodore 64 again, for the first time:

With a new Intel Atom D525 processor and the ability to read DVDs and various smart cards/SD cards/Memory sticks built in, PC compatibility and modern graphics, this is not the C=64 you programmed on back when all your friends had Apple ][s.

It can support up to 4GB of memory. C=64 is a brand, after all. Good luck shoving that Photoshop into 64 KB …

While the case looks largely the same there's supposed to be improved key action, and the F keys on the right there have media control functions (FF, REW, PLAY, PAUSE, Volume up and down, et. al.) and a key I'd never thought I'd see on a C=64: Internet.

This isn't your old Commie. This isn't even your dad's.

A group has licensed the old Commodore name and seems to be quite serious about reviving the brand, and that includes the Amiga, as well as a line of VIC models that have about as much to do with the old VIC20 as a jackhammer has to do with a can opener. The site, http://commodoreusa.net, is a pretty place to look. They have amazing current ambitions and very lofty near-term goals. Not only will the new C=64 be "PC Compatible" (and that term is beginning to look dated but just works so wonderfully well here) but will also apparently have a legacy C=64 compatibility mode and they're going to be coming out with a "Commodore OS" which is Linux based (and there's nothing not to like about that).

But the problem in concepting the new C=64 wasn't so much finding components that would fit inside the classic form factor. No, indeed. The problem really was in coming up with the classic case color … seems Pantone doesn't have a "Commodore gray".

I don't know how much of a niche is available for the new Commodore USA - marketing tastes are famously fickle. This may fizzle - or it may take the country by storm. There is a significant market for retro hardware, or at least that's my impression. But that this company cares as much about exterior design as interior design (and went to the expense and bother) is a very Apple-esque attitude, and it bodes well. It may not dominate the industry but if they price it right, they'll sell enough to be a solid, sustainable, minor player, and I don't think that's bad at all.

Now if y'alls 'll excuse me, I got to jet: there's an Everything But the Girl concert down at the Paramount and if I don't leave know I'll miss the opening act …