This works for me on so, so many levels.  Read more 

Via James Fallows, I found OfficeWatch, and if you’ve installed Vista, and your machine has performance problems worse than Rush Limbaugh, there’s still hope, even if you can’t switch to a real operating system like *nix or its flashy cousin, OS X). The problem is the Vista indexer (“Windows Search”), which doesn’t scale**. But you can disable it:

Do you have trouble with Outlook 2007 and other programs running slowly under Windows Vista? We’ve had more reports of excruciatingly slow running Windows Vista, especially with Outlook 2007, and given that Peter’s main computer has the same problem, we’ve spent some time working on the problem. There’s nothing on the Microsoft web site to help, which figures because to admit a problem of this size would affect sales of both the operating system and Office suite.

What’s particularly hilarious—or tragic, depending on your point of view—is that Vista’s indexing screws up Outlook, so you have to choose between searching your mail and having, like, your machine actually run, instead of crawl, or stagger and fall down. Since, at many corporations, knowledge management is storing years of Outlook mail, this can be a serious problem. Is this the “innovation” we keep hearing about whenever Redmond tries to justify its monopoly?  Read more 

Gloaty, gloat gloat. Read it and weep, Microsloths:

Bye-bye Windows! My three-month Macintosh trial has ended, but my permanent gig with the Mac is just getting started. Apple’s MacBook Pro and Mac OS X are now my computer and operating system of choice.

If you give the Mac three months, as I did, you won’t go back either. The hardest part is paying for it — everything after that gets easier and easier. Perhaps fittingly, it took me the full three-month trial period to pay off my expensive MacBook Pro. But the darn thing is worth every penny.  Read more 

Is there anything more aggravating than being immensely proud of one’s sense of ethics, and never getting a chance to demonstrate them by turning down a big, fat, juicy bribe?

I guess I’ll never know, because Microsoft did not find me a Blogger Worth Bribing with a superhot top-o-the-line new laptop:

Several bloggers reported last week that they had received Acer Ferrari laptops, which can sell for more than $2,200, from Microsoft. A spokeswoman for Microsoft confirmed on Friday that the company had sent out about 90 computers to bloggers who write about technology and other subjects (such as photography and, oddly, parenting) that could be affected by the new operating system.

Parenting?? You need a 2-friggin-grand laptop (you can get a perfectly decent brand new laptop, and a way better known name than Acer, for a quarter of that at the moment) to write about parenting but not politics? I am so pissed. My only consolation is that the teeth of conscience, not to mention public opprobrium, are gnawing at the bones of the undeserving wretches who did get the machines  Read more