There's an iMac in the house

I've been hankering for an Apple iMac for a while now, but could not bring myself to buy one because of the price discrepancy between the Intel powered iMac and a PC with similar hardware specifications. However, this thanksgiving, that all changed...

My Daughter is in her senior year of High School and she applied to several colleges, of which her favorite was Dowling College. She wants to get a "degree in computer graphics" as she puts it. All during High School, she was using Photoshop on a PC to edit pictures and photos and she also uses it to help with the publication of the school news paper. Well, earlier this year, she was lamenting about how unsafe PC's are with all of the viruses and problems that people have. While I run a pretty tight computing ship around here, both my daughter and son have managed to sneak three viruses through my defenses in the past 4 years.

In celebration of my daughter being accepted into Dowling College, and in order to give her experience working on operating systems other than Windows, ...and yes in order to satisfy my hankering for an Apple iMac, I purchased an early Hanukkah & Christmas (yes we celebrate both holidays) present for her: A 27 inch core i5 iMac. I bought it on Black friday when Apple was running their Black Friday sale.

If you haven't been following the news about the iMac, Apple has been having quality problems with the 27 inch iMac; specifically, the screens are cracking and, of course, with my luck, I had to get one. I had heard that they think that it is a packaging problem related to the stresses that the computer experienced during shipping. It is a pretty large and heavy computer.

In any event, after unpacking the computer and getting it hooked up, just before I was about to power it on, I noticed the small crack in the lower left corner of the bezel. After noticing it, I immediately called the apple store that I purchased the computer from and explained the problem to them. They told me not to worry about it, and to pack the computer up and bring it back to the store.

As I was driving to the store, before I knew about the quality issue, I kept thinking to myself that they are never going to believe that I didn't crack it. You can imagine how relieved I was to find out that this was a known problem. They quickly inspected the computer and after doing the necessary exchange, they promptly brought out a replacement computer. I insisted that we check the computer before I leave as it was getting close to closing time for them. As it turned out the replacement had no crack and my daughter loves working on it much more than the PC.

From my perspective, I like the polish of the user interface on OS X better than the windows user interfaces (even windows 7). The best analogy I have been able to come up with is that the Windows user interface is like a nice looking car that only has a primer coat, whereas the OS X user interface is more like the same car with an expertly primed and painted finish that is buffed to a high gloss finish.

How do I keep on top of the technology world?

I was thinking that it would be a good idea to fill readers in on what I do to keep on top of technology.

Aside from the obvious, reading magazines, I find that the most productive way to keep on top of technology is to listen to pod-casts. In general, it takes me about 20-45 minutes to commute to and from work every day. So, what I do is listen to pod-casts during this time. I find this much better than public radio, and I get to learn at the same time. What about traffic reports? You might ask. Who cares? When I'm listening to something that keeps my interest, staying in the car a little longer is not such a chore.

Here is the current list of podcasts that I listen to:

• Security now - Published weekly.
• Windows weekly - Published weekly.
• Buzz out loud - Published daily.
• This week in tech - Published weekly.
• Maximum PC podcast - Published weekly.
• PC Gamer podcast - Published weekly.

I'm always open to suggestions so if you are reading this and you have a suggestion for an additional podcast, please feel free to post it as a comment.