An $800 Apple laptop could really cost Microsoft

The blogospheric din is rising about Apple’s supposed $800 laptop, which if it ever happens (and I have my doubts) will really hit hard on the Windows-based laptop market.

With Linux starting to eat away at the very low end of the laptop market on the ASUS EeePC and other netbooks, Apple dominating on the high-end (where it’s share is considerable), the mushy middle is where most of the action is.

Having an $800 Macintosh laptop hits the bulk of the market and would steer plenty of people away from Windows and toward OS X. And like the iPod and iPhone’s tendency to get their users to think about going all-Apple with an expensive desktop or laptop machine, a relatively inexpensive laptop is a hell of a game-changer.

Should this actually happen, Apple will have what looks like the right product at the right price — and at the exactly right time.

Let’s see: Windows Vista not doing so well, and certainly not driving PC sales. Economy in the tank. The holiday season upon us.

If anything, it’s a good time to buy some Apple stock.

Make your PC even more green with Faronics power-management software

Heather Clancy at the Green Tech Pastures blog from ZDNet writes about Faronics’ power-management software, which now runs in Mac’s OS X in addition to Windows:

The Power Save Mac 2.0 software includes intelligent shutdown functions; the ability to schedule when a system should be awake, asleep or in standby; the ability to customize what “inactivity” means for a particular system; enterprise control; and a reports feature that generates records of energy and cost savings. The report generator creates a “before” record of your computer, as well, which serves as a benchmark against which savings are calculated.

Faronics estimates that using the utility will save you $25 per year. How much does the package cost? $14.10 per year.

Power management has been one of my biggest headaches in Linux and the BSDs. For me, even getting the CPU fan under control in my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop usually requires a bit of work. For a short bit of time, the 2.6.18 Linux kernel did this automatically, but since then I’ve had to write simple scripts to get the fan to only turn on when CPU temperature warrants it.

And as far as CPU throttling goes, — slowing down and using less power when it’s not needed, I haven’t yet been able to implement that, even though it seemingly should work on a Celeron M processor.

The biggest power-management issue I have is with suspend/resume. I suspect that suspend/resume hasn’t worked that well for that long on most PCs even in Windows, but these days I figure that hardware manufacturers of Windows-compatible PCs supply drivers to implement power management to at least some degree.

Power-management is great on our iBook G4. Using that laptop has made me expect good power-management from all of my other machines. And yes, I’d like to get it.

I’m even willing to work at the command line to make it happen, but the information I have, for the Gateway anyway, is sparse at best, and plain wrong at worst.

Make your PC even more green with Faronics power-management software

Heather Clancy at the Green Tech Pastures blog from ZDNet writes about Faronics’ power-management software, which now runs in Mac’s OS X in addition to Windows:

The Power Save Mac 2.0 software includes intelligent shutdown functions; the ability to schedule when a system should be awake, asleep or in standby; the ability to customize what “inactivity” means for a particular system; enterprise control; and a reports feature that generates records of energy and cost savings. The report generator creates a “before” record of your computer, as well, which serves as a benchmark against which savings are calculated.

Faronics estimates that using the utility will save you $25 per year. How much does the package cost? $14.10 per year.

Power management has been one of my biggest headaches in Linux and the BSDs. For me, even getting the CPU fan under control in my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop usually requires a bit of work. For a short bit of time, the 2.6.18 Linux kernel did this automatically, but since then I’ve had to write simple scripts to get the fan to only turn on when CPU temperature warrants it.

And as far as CPU throttling goes, — slowing down and using less power when it’s not needed, I haven’t yet been able to implement that, even though it seemingly should work on a Celeron M processor.

The biggest power-management issue I have is with suspend/resume. I suspect that suspend/resume hasn’t worked that well for that long on most PCs even in Windows, but these days I figure that hardware manufacturers of Windows-compatible PCs supply drivers to implement power management to at least some degree.

Power-management is great on our iBook G4. Using that laptop has made me expect good power-management from all of my other machines. And yes, I’d like to get it.

I’m even willing to work at the command line to make it happen, but the information I have, for the Gateway anyway, is sparse at best, and plain wrong at worst.

Is the future of open source on the Mac?

Matt Asay thinks (and has thought for some time) that the Macintosh is the best place to do open-source development. And he points out that he’s not alone in this opinion. (And here’s another post along the same lines.)

I happen to have a Mac — a 5-year-old iBook G4 running OS X 10.3.9 that I just recently gutted to replace a dying hard drive — and I’ve been thinking more and more about running Unix apps on it.

I’ve been reading an O’Reilly book on the subject, and here are two places that seem essential for bringing free, open-source apps to the Mac:

• The MacPorts Project
• The Fink Project

If anything, the relative uniformity of hardware in the Macintosh world, and the tight integration between OS X and the machines on which it runs, makes a lot of the Linux/BSD problems we have in terms of hardware compatibility go away.

What I can’t get with, though, is the high cost of Mac hardware and software (and yes, you are paying for both when you buy an Apple machine).

Still, this does bear thinking about. And so I will.

Why this could work for my company: While there are a great many image-editing programs in the free, open-source software world, the work we do here, fortunately or not, depends on features that only Adobe Photoshop offers. Yes, I’ve been learning to use Photoshop because for some of the things I need to do, there’s no alternative.

And then there’s Flash. I don’t like technologies for which the development tools are not free and open. But there’s Adobe again, with Flash development nestled in its Creative Suite.

And then there’s the print publishing system that our company only supports on Windows.

And I still want to run the free, open-source applications I’ve grown to depend on, including OpenOffice (which is coming to Mac natively in version 3 anyway), the lightweight image editors that I still can use (MtPaint!!) for some tasks, excellent text editors (Geany, the HTML-focused Bluefish) and even full desktop environments like GNOME and KDE.

If costs be damned, the Mac with Adobe CS, Windows and X11 with all the Unix apps I want just might be the ideal platform.

But I’m not throwing Linux over the side of the boat just yet. There’s the part about Apple’s hardware and software being closely guarded and … closed source. Then there’s the cost. More to start with, and more continually for operating-system upgrades and proprietary software upgrades as well.

In the corporate world, where money is supposed to flow like so much water, this Mac solution very well could work.

But in the real world, who can afford it?

For many, the solution remains free, open-source operating systems with greater stability, longer support, better hardware detection and configuration, full power management and better applications that can do all the things we need to get done.

And as Linux in general, and distributions like Ubuntu in specific, gain(s) traction, hardware makers just might start paying attention to drivers that make their equipment work seamlessly with Linux without making the user dive head-first into geekery. That would level the playing field considerably, but the issue of mixing proprietary software with FOSS still looms over the discussion. (And yes, I’m not mentioning WINE on purpose, though maybe I should.)

Why I barely use Internet Explorer 7, even though I was a big fan of IE6

Let’s get to it: I have one Web site that I work on infrequently that requires Internet Explorer, but since I barely have to do anything on it, I am free to use IE, or not.

And I waited at least a year to “upgrade” my IE6 to IE7 on the XP box at work. Yeah, it’s an upgrade because now IE has tabbed browsing — a feature Firefox has had for years, and which IE probably would’ve never added had FF not had it first.

I like IE6 because it was a fast program — it opened fast and did the rest of its thing fast. And I could use it as an FTP client.

Now that I have IE7, sure there is tabbed browsing, and it looks a little better, but it’s way slower than Firefox, and I pretty much only fire up IE for ONE Web site because it’s at the top of my IE favorites and the bottom of my FF favorites.

IE loads more slowly, the favorites come up slower — basically it gets beat by FF in performance by every measure. (I’m running a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM.)

And I can run Firefox in Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac OS X … and I do (though I’m partial to the Mozilla-derived Epiphany in the GNOME desktop, as well as the Seamonkey browser/e-mail client/HTML editor suite — also based on Mozilla).

Truth be told, if it really bothered me, I’d try to roll the box back to IE6, if that indeed can be done. Since IE7 installs over your IE6, I think it might be a problem to “go back.”

Note: While I can’t get the same FTP functionality out of IE7, I have a Windows workaround: Open up My Computer from the Start menu, and type your FTP address in the search bar. The window functions pretty much like IE6 — it’s the same “Explorer”-like interface Windows uses to let you examine your own files, and it does FTP just like IE6. Thanks, Microsoft!

I used to think IE was the best browser for OS X, too — that final version of IE5 for the Mac was a masterful, innovative application, and I’m sorry Microsoft abandoned it. Safari doesn’t have enough critical mass to cut it — many Web sites don’t look so hot in it — so Firefox is pretty much the browser of record for the Mac, too.

And Mozilla is making hand-over-fist money by getting a cut of the Google searches made through the browser. All it means is more money that Microsoft isn’t making.

Hope you’re happy, Microsoft!

If $1,799 fell out of the sky, I might buy … the new MacBook Air

My buddy Stevie (yep, I call him “Stevie”; don’t know what he calls me back) announced the new MacBook Air today. It’s the ultra-small Apple laptop we’ve all been waiting for. And by “we,” I mean people who use hundreds to wipe certain unmentionable areas (note to rich folks: those bills ain’t all that sanitary).

The thing looks absolutely stunning — and for $1,799 it damn well better be. Anyhow, Apple really knows how to break new ground, and this is new ground, alrighty.

Notable: The low-end MacBook Air comes with a garden-variety spinning 80 GB hard drive. For more cash, you get a 64 GB solid-state drive. Hell, the drive alone (the flash drive, that is) must cost $500.

And the thing weighs 3 pounds. That comes out to $599.67 per pound or $37.48 an ounce. At least it’s not worth its weight in gold, 3 pounds of which would cost you $43,320 if you paid today’s closing price for gold futures on the Comex exchange of $902.50 per ounce. So call the MacBook Air a bargain.

But it does look great, right? And while I might suggest that Stevie Jobs make something — any damn thing — under $1,000 (and no, Mac Minis don’t count), he’s a whole lot richer than I am, so why should he listen to me?

If $1,799 fell out of the sky, I might buy … the new MacBook Air

My buddy Stevie (yep, I call him “Stevie”; don’t know what he calls me back) announced the new MacBook Air today. It’s the ultra-small Apple laptop we’ve all been waiting for. And by “we,” I mean people who use hundreds to wipe certain unmentionable areas (note to rich folks: those bills ain’t all that sanitary).

The thing looks absolutely stunning — and for $1,799 it damn well better be. Anyhow, Apple really knows how to break new ground, and this is new ground, alrighty.

Notable: The low-end MacBook Air comes with a garden-variety spinning 80 GB hard drive. For more cash, you get a 64 GB solid-state drive. Hell, the drive alone (the flash drive, that is) must cost $500.

And the thing weighs 3 pounds. That comes out to $599.67 per pound or $37.48 an ounce. At least it’s not worth its weight in gold, 3 pounds of which would cost you $43,320 if you paid today’s closing price for gold futures on the Comex exchange of $902.50 per ounce. So call the MacBook Air a bargain.

But it does look great, right? And while I might suggest that Stevie Jobs make something — any damn thing — under $1,000 (and no, Mac Minis don’t count), he’s a whole lot richer than I am, so why should he listen to me?

Macs about to be all they can be

In reaction to recent security breaches, the U.S. Army is adding OS X servers to its data arsenal.

The Army isn’t exactly saying that Macs and their OS are superior from a security standpoint to competing systems, but I do find the explanation interesting:

The Army isn’t using any particular software package or OS X technology to improve security, though. Instead, it’s hoping that having a more diverse mix of systems will make its networks harder to infiltrate. The security of the UNIX core of OS X, combined with the fact that less hackers are interested in Macs, were also given as reasons for introducing more Apple hardware.

…

Outside security vendors have leveled a number of criticisms against the Army for its Apple program, and have pointed out that Apple issues significantly more patches than Microsoft. The Army responded by saying that a large number of patches shows a greater commitment to security by Apple. Ultimately, the Army seems to be banking on paying off the extra cost of Macs by making its networks at least a bit less vulnerable to Windows security exploits.

I find Apple’s recent efforts in the server space to be an interesting development. The more competition in the server area, the better. I think there’s a definite space for Apple in betwen the high end of Solaris and traditional Unix, the Windows Server offerings and the vast Linux server market. If I knew more, I’d say more, but I don’t, so I won’t.

Think Secret blog settles case with Apple and will disappear

Tom Gapen, who watches Apple way more closely than I do, tells me that Think Secret regularly breaks news about Apple. And Apple doesn’t like not having control over … just about everything.

But now Think Secret and Apple have come to an “agreement,” and the blog will go away.

ZDNet on the Think Secret settlement.

How much does it cost to power your PC?

Ed Bott of ZDnet has been measuring his PC power consumption.

Not surprisingly, you save a whole lot of power by using S3 sleep mode to dramatically reduce power draw during times when the PC is turned on but not being used. Bott seems to suggest that S3 is something that Windows Vista offers and XP doesn’t. I’m not an expert in this realm, other than to report that sleep or “suspend,” as it’s often called, rarely works in most Linux distributions, and that these days a lot of effort is being expended to get suspend working in laptops under Linux.

But here’s Bott on S3 in his experience:

I … attached a Kill A Watt meter to the Dell C521 PC that I’ve been using for my ongoing Media Center experiments. At rest, it uses about 64 watts, and its power consumption is roughly equivalent to the HP server over time. However, it’s dramatically more power-efficient, thanks to Windows Vista’s sleep mode. In the past 24 hours, it has used less than 0.5 kWh. Over the course of a month, that’s about $1.20 in electricity. The secret of its power-saving success is S3 sleep mode. When this system kicks into S3 mode, it uses a mere 3 watts, according to the Kill A Watt device. That 0.5 kWh equals 8 hours a day of full-power usage, coupled with 16 hours in sleep mode. If I were to leave it on with sleep disabled, energy usage would triple. Using the default Balanced power settings for the three PCs in this house will save more than 1000 kWh over the course of a year, or $82.

He promises more on S3 mode in a future entry. I’ll be looking for it.

Suspend works great on our iBook G4, but with Apple and OS X, you expect stuff like that to work — and you usually get what you expect.