Okay. I broke down and bought myself a digital camera. One that's not too expensive, but takes good quality pictures at a lower resolution (max 1600x1200). Specifically the Fuji 2650. I like it. I've been using it for a few days now taking pictures of random things just to get the feel for it.

Until just now, I'd been downloading the pictures to my Apple clamshell iBook running MacOS X 10.1. This consisted of attaching the USB cable to the camera and the computer, at which point it mounts the camera, runs an application that intelligently downloads the pictures (that is, only the ones I haven't already downloaded) and opens the folders into which it stores said pictures. This happened the first time I plugged in the camera.

Now I'm trying to get it to work on my Win2K machine. I say to myself ``It's just a USB Mass Storage device. I don't need their stupid software.'' So I plug it in. Windows recognizes it immediately as a USB Mass Storage device. No big surprise there. But, for some reason, it has no idea what to do with it from that point on. It needs further drivers that it needs to find somewhere else. It's USB MASS STORAGE! You don't need any more drivers, ya putz! But it won't let me do anything, so....

I unplug the camera and insert the driver CD. It comes up with one of those windows that takes a few minutes to figure out which button to push because nothing looks like a button; it's just one big image with words. I press the right button and it goes off, installing several things. At one point, it gets to installing what appears to be some ASPI driver I've never heard of, and it wants to install it in C:\ABCDASPI, using one of those dialogs that's a throwback to Win3.0. (You know, everything's the wrong size, there's that ugly heavy font, etc.) I say ``screw that'' and cancel that installation, at which point, the installation is done, except for this one window:



Also, at this point, the camera is working fine. I can mount the thing, run the Fuji viewer app (though I don't know why I'd want to), and so on.

So that all took me 5 minutes or so, plus a reboot. My Apple did it in approximately 5 seconds. The thing that annoys me the most about this is that Apple simply did it correctly, and people would be amazed. The fact that Windows so consistently does the wrong this has preverted everyone's ideas of how a computer should work.

DAMN THEM!

Recently, I got a USB flash card reader for my Win2K box. It was a different brand from another one that I had already used on this box, but which had worked without needing drivers.

This one needed drivers, I don't know why. Also, every time I tried to open the disk drive, it didn't work, it would get some odd error. Had to upgrade to Service Pack 3 before the thing worked. Now it works fine.

Yeah, I hate MS products, too.

I *like* Apple's ads just fine...

So that all took me 5 minutes or so, plus a reboot. My Apple did it in approximately 5 seconds. The thing that annoys me the most about this is that Apple simply did it correctly, and people would be amazed. The fact that Windows so consistently does the wrong this has preverted everyone's ideas of how a computer should work.

You should sign up for a "Switch" testimonial. The BBS could see Bitt in the flesh, sort of. ....Hmmm, except that you didn't really switch, really. Nice case in point, though.

Plus, they've already got one with the same premise.

And she's a lot hotter than I am.

I hate to say it, but aren't you just running to the board to complain when you run into one particular Windows problem? Do you ever run into a Mac problem that wouldn't have happened on Windows?

Really, I know these things happen with Windows machines, but it's not universal. My girlfriend's camera does the exact same thing you described. She simply plugs in her camera, and a new folder with the date and time of the connection is opened up in her pictures directory and all the photos are downloaded into it and removed from the CF card. She has a Canon S40, and amazingly she is running WinME (the only time I've seen the OS doing something correctly).

That's what I hate about the Mac "switch" commercials. They imply that their testimonials are universal problems of all Windows owners. Frankly, my mom has run into more problems on her Mac at work than she ever did on the Windows machines they once had, and I thought she was the target audience for these commercials.

Hey -- I can solve the ``problem''. It's not even really a problem, as it's the way it was designed. But does the design have to be so godawfully poor?

And, to answer your question, the only problems I've had with my Mac in the, oh, two years or so that I've had it, is the very occasional lockup, about once every two or three months at most (usually coming out of sleep mode), and occasionally having a hard time finding my wireless network (but that's my fault for having an abnormal network). Oh, and the battery is on its last legs, but that's hardly Apple's fault.

And she's a lot hotter than I am.

I have no idea what you look like, but I can't imagine seeing you would possibly change my mind against that statement, either

You more than likely wouldn't have had any issues with XP. My XP see's and installs a lot of hardware without drivers that the same machine with win2k used to need drivers for.

And she's a lot hotter than I am.

Ah, yes, Janie Porche. She does seem like a [guttural Doctor Strangelove emphasis] healthy [/guttural Doctor Strangelove emphasis] young woman!

In the we-can't-have-a-thread-like-this-without-a-little-extra-MSFT zing/tangent, let me link to this column from Monday's Seattle Times.

For a long time, I tended to see Paul Andrews as a bit of a MSFT camp follower (books on MSFT, etc.). It is frankly amazing to see an article that is so sober WRT MSFT's prospects in one of the local papers...

I gottcha. Fair enough

[guttural Doctor Strangelove emphasis]

Hmm, another UBBThreads bug... For some reason it's not recognizing the [guttural Doctor Strangelove emphasis] tag. I know it worked in the last version...

You more than likely wouldn't have had any issues with XP.

I'll keep that in mind, but I doubt I'll ever intentionally buy or run another MS product again for quite a while. MacOS X kicks its butt in many ways, and the majority of the apps for which people are forced to stay with Windows I couldn't care less about. It's too bad that Mac hardware costs so much more than generic PC stuff (and I'll take a look at building stuff myself, like some folks on here have done), but I'm willing to pay that price for usability.

I don't mean to come off like a shill for Apple -- I run a lot of other Unix OSes, like Solaris, OpenBSD, and Linux, and MacOS X has some issues, too, mostly UI related -- but it continues to amaze me how much Windows sucks, and it pisses me off, again, how everyone now expects computers to not function correctly. XP may well be better, but I doubt I'll ever know.

I'd watch it, but the intrusive and evil Quicktime has been banned from my computer.

Amen to that. That program will never touch my computer. Is that another way they try to win over new customers? By telling them their program will actually work on Macs, without those bloated features and ads? No thanks. That program is terrible, and not for anything Windows does to it.

*edit*
And to prove my point, just clicking on the link to those Apple ads has put a little Quicktime icon in my system tray. There is no entry for Quicktime in my Add/Remove programs, and although it seems to automatically load it's self every time windows starts, there is nothing for it in the Startup folder. Any ideas on how to remove it without having to unload it every time I boot up my computer?

*edit edit*
Scratch that. I did a search for the application that was running. Funny how it was running from the Quicktime folder in my Program Files directory, yet it wasn't listed in Add/Remove Programs. I consider that a step above adware. This is NOT the way for a company to win me over. You would think that Apple would do a little better with their most visible application.

In Soviet Russia, Quicktime hates you!

Sorry.... I'll go back into my corner now.

Simpsons refs have seemed more prevalent recently on this board, haven't they?

About those ads, wtf is up with Fabiola Torres? Her hands just go NUTS when she's talking. If I were in a class given by her, one of us would be dead within a week.

In Soviet Russia, Quicktime hates you!

Where does that come from? It's all over Slashdot like a nasty rash. Is it an advert?

Peter

I was curious about the whole Soviet Russia troll thing myself, so I did a search. It pretty much started out as your average "I'm trying to be funny post" and it just kept gathering steam. Just like any of the other various trolling trends (goatse.cx, 1, 2, 3. Profit!, etc) they weren't terribly funny to start, and they're even less funny now.

I dunno, in a choice between Quicktime and Real Player, I'd have to take Quicktime. Neither will ever be installed on my PC though, I mean, who encodes pr0n in .MOV or .RM anymore?

In reply to:

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Any ideas on how to remove it without having to unload it every time I boot up my computer?

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Most of that crap can be found by opening regedit and going to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE
MICROSOFT
WINDOWS
CURRENT VERSION
RUN

And when I just checked there was a link to quicktime that I didn't see before. A lot of stuff that loads itself without your knowing are executed from there on startup. Granted this is just where the apps get launched....

Well, I think it started as "All Yakov Smirnov jokes are..." but I have no idea how it got out of control.

Where does that come from?

I was close, it's actually a Family Guy reference. I didn't know it was very big on the internet, though. Damn I wish that show were still on. Fox is stupid.

The source of this joke is actually from a Russian comic back when the Soviet Union was still around.... It went around quite a few years ago and has only recently resurfaced. I really don't care enough to look up who or when.

Now, if only I had a beowulf cluster of Empegs..... I could then pour hot grits down Natalie Portman's pants, own all her base and profit!

All of these jokes were funny the first time around. After the second, third, fourth, 807th.....

Hot grits down Natalie Portman's pants?

I think it's a very good thing that I don't know of those jokes...

In reply to:

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I mean, who encodes pr0n in .MOV or .RM anymore?

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Yeah, it's all mpeg nowadays...... oops, did I say that or think it?

Wierd, that's two of you guys that like her. Maybe it's because I don't like the ad, but I don't find her attractive at all. Well, maybe compared to you two, but not given the realm of TV and movie actresses out there. Much hotter girls than that were working at the grocery store tonight - although the store up here always has been good that way.

I used to work for a company who had an unwritten policy of hiring beautiful secretaries. It wasn't a conscious thing, I'm sure.

Speaking of Simpsons references, you may remember Yakov from such episodes as the one where Grandpa steals the car to take his girlfriend to Branson, MO...