Vista Pre-RC1 Invitation!

I got an e-mail in my inbox inviting me to the Vista Pre-RC1 test. Naturally, I took Microsoft up on this offer within moments of recieving it, and I am currently in the process of downloading the offending operating system. I will be installing VPC7 on my powerbook g3 shortly, and trying this out. I wish there was some soft of "insane projects test lab" I could use on the campus to do something like, actually install Vista Pre-RC1 on real hardware. I'd love to see the results on real  hardware, not just in VPC7 emulation on my powerbook g3. Though, my results should prove to be fairly indicative of the status of Vista on "old hardware" (think of my setup as a slow Pentium II with 4meg S3 Trio graphics, and only 128 or 192 megabytes of memory.)

"Vintage Mac"

This is an interesting thing that LCGuy pointed me to - the first of the dualprocessor PowerMac G4 systems are now officially "Vintage" along with such venerable machines as the b/w g3s, the firewire powerbook g3s, and other interesting pieces of equipment.

It's interesting to see the change in attitude about any given piece of equipment, from the day that macworld prints their glowing review of the latest professional desktop or workstation, to the point at which it's considered to be "vintage." For what it's worth, I do remember reading about b/w g3s and early g4s while I was in elementary school, in macworld and macaddict. I was always super-excited to read about the latest revision, update, price-drop or speed-bump.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304210

I wonder if this could be any potential indication regaurding  the type of hardware that Leopard will easily run on, not that I'm particularly interested in that, after a) the fiascos I've had with Tiger, and b) with my slow hardware.

Interesting things to say the least.

Mac Pro, No more!

For what it is worth, I've decided to go ahead and not get a Mac Pro. I still have all of those job applications in, and I will still probably be saving for a new computer, albeit a bit slowly. Instead of a Mac Pro, I am going to see if my parents will be willing to bring me my PowerMac G3 and its monitor, and I'll be using either the Power Macintosh G3 for OSX and photoshop stuff, or the PowerBook G3 for that, and the other of those two computers for OS 9.

Loads of fun with old technology!

New Printer

I talked to dad today, and have just placed an order on a new printer. It's a Xerox Phaser 6120 from Xerox. No auto-duplexing built in, but I can do manual duplexing page-by-page when needed, and I can order the duplexer later on.


Everybody, get ready for a special 2nd run of 3am! In full glorious colour!

At NAU

I apologize sincerely for not having anything up for awhile, I seriously have several blogPosts from the past few weeks that are on my computer, and that I fully intend to put up.

 

Anyway, I'm at NAU and I've met a lot of awesome people - mostly through Glenn. I've already met several people through him, and I already have lots of ideas for photos to take here.

 

Tomorrow, I am heading to Target to see if they have a particular printer, and then to see if I can put it on layaway until Dad gets here on Saturday. That one's a network printer. However, I'm going to look at campus surplus sales too, I may be able to find an excellent old LaserJET or so in there. Glenn and I have discussed it - if I do, we will probably share it, and the printer will be our sexy printer ho, and we'll all print our long books and stuff on it - Of course, Glenn will be buying some of the toner. :)

 

Sexy printer hos aside, I am amazed with Target, their online store has laser printers, VOIP phones, among other crazy things - They don't have the brother printer I wanted, but dad and I talked about it and I may get a Lexmark E210n (I think that was the model number) It's only three digits of modelnumber powah, (vs. the HP LaserJET 1022, the Brother HL-2040, and the Xerox Phaser 6120) but it's an "n" model which means it's networkable, and it's lexmark, which in the laser arena is okay I hear, I have no personal vendetta against them.

 

As far as getting a MacPro goes, I'm still not sure, I'm fairly certain that I want it, but I'm not exactly certaon on how I'll get it, etc. The desks in Reilly hall are not as big as in Sechrist, I think, so my estimations are wrong, but a printer, and my stereo will fit on top, and there's definitely room for an LCD monitor, be it the nice 20" Cinema Display, or the cheapest dell 17" LCD (which is not that bad, actually), I don't know if I can go back to a CRT for my photos, unless it's suepr-nice and gargantuan, which won't work well with NAU.

 

Anyway... I'm rambling. :D

 

http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~clw249/

Just a note on the Mac Pro

Yes, it looks almost exactly like the Power Mac G5
Yes, it is a Revision-A product from Apple, Computer Inc.
Of course, I don't have $2500 to drop on a new computer right now.

But I still seriously believe that this machine will be my next Mac. It will be a significant upgrade from the PowerBook G3 and PowerMac g3 I am using right now. A collective... 10.66GHz of Woodcrest (XEON 5100) awesomeness, how can you deny that? I honestly think that the Mac Pro is slated to become one of those machines that's around ten years past discontinuation, still chugging along with every imagineable upgrade, with a few software hacks, running the very latest version of Mac OS X and a variety of applications, with users still reporting that the machine is very useable.

Naturally, I hope that's how mine behaves, because I fully intend to keep it, and upgrade it a bit every few months, or year, or whenever. In ten years, my system probably will have eight monitors, 3 terabytes of hard disc space, 16 gigabytes of memory, and it may be upgraded to the 3GHz or an even faster variant of the Woodcrest. Who knows?

Anixter Warehouse

Today I am at work with dad at the Anixter warehouse. It’s fairly interesting because there are various Frontier guys running around on their side of the warehouse, and I’ve learnt various things today. For example, there’s a company called “Calix” which I need to research. Also, Siemens makes a higher-end ADSL gateway called the Speedstream 5930, it is apparently a business model. I’d love to see what it looks like, and get my hands on one. Unfortunately, I think that those are tracked a little bit more tightly than, for example, the Linksys Wireless-G notebook adaptor that dad has allowed me to try in the Pismo.

Unfortunately, the building has wireless-blocking metal walls, so I won’t be able to take advantage of the card and link right here. However, I was surprised that the computer did recognize the card, and Airport was going to let me connect with it – I think. I am unsure if I’ll be keeping it, closer to the end of the day he’ll either tell me I can pack it in my bag, or to repack it and put it back on the shelf from whence it came.

It’s just too bad that those SpeedStream 5930 ADSL things are probably tracked better than this, or those ADSL pci cards… either would be an awesome upgrade from the SpeedStream 6520 that we’ve got at home now. If it were me, I’d pop the PCI card in my g3 and redo Mac OS X 10.4 server. We’ll see though. There are also wireless-G routers (WRT54G) among other cool things. However, I doubt I’ll be able to nab anything like that. :P I do get to keep the card though, and that has a broadcom chipset, I think… either that, or whatever chip it does have is useable in the Pismo. I’ll test it out this evening.

Long Walk

Today mom came home at about 2:30 pm and told us that we’d be going to dad’s house. Unfortunately, I didn’t prepare properly and didn’t have any real decent spare clothes… I need to wash them shortly.

Anyway, we went to dad’s house, and then I went for a big walk. I did the old 1-mile around the “former forty” (we sold 20 of it a long time ago), then I walked around a different 40-acre set. Then I walked up and onto “something-Griff” road. I forgot its exact name. Then I walked down Kirkland up Patagonia then around some other road whose name I forgot. It was a very long and tiring walk, but I’m supposed to feel good because it counts as having partaken in the activity referred to as “exercise.”