tech ronin

Dell Reinstates Windows XP as an Option

You can now buy a Dell PC with Windows XP instead of Vista. Since the launch of Vista in late January, you had no choice but to buy a Dell PC with Vista. Ofcourse Dell prefers to support one Windows operating system rather than both XP and Vista, but supporting XP is a cakewalk compared to supporting Vista in the early days.

Vista will ultimately prevail, but it is not ready for prime-time in the business world. It is fine if you know what you are doing and are up for some risk. Otherwise, my PC IT friends advise waiting another 9 months to a year for better knowledge and better compatibility with software and peripherals.

If you are a Mac user and want to play with Vista, that is different perhaps. As long as you can switch into OS X when Vista acts up and get your mission critical work done, you are good to go.

I should talk. I'm not ready for putting any brand of Windows on my Intel Mac yet. But then, I have an XP notebook which I hardly ever use. I fire it up if I need to test something or play with something Windows that is not Mac-compatible.

Since most Windows folks are still using XP, I need to keep XP available for testing purposes. I can't afford to wipe my XP install and install Vista on my PC laptop. I'm sure not going to buy another PC notebook when Intel Macs can run Windows if desired.

Interesting dilemma. I don't want to sully my Mac with Windows and refuse to buy a PC. Can you install XP and Vista on the same machine? Not I. Life is too short.

Technorati Tags: Vista

How about boycotting the other 3 major labels for a while?

I suppose I should bias my purchases in May, June and July or something to just EMI music. This sounds like a nice option for a huge number of people who have a strong opinion about DRM and buy from the iTunes store. This is the perfect opportunity to send a message to the music labels. I don't think we should pass it up. [Thanks: Screen grab from one of Apple's current iPod ads.]

Technorati Tags: DRM, EMI, iTunes, Music

Higher quality non-DRM music from iTunes Rocks

Yes! I don't know how many purchased tracks I have from EMI, but I plan to upgrade all that I still like when iTunes starts offering that option next month. I applaud EMI and Apple for taking this important step. I have to say that I am equally excited about the quality improvement as I am about the elimination of DRM.

Thirty cents is about the top of my range for that extra value, but I might pay even more just to encourage Apple to offer music at a higher quality. Doubling the bit rate from 128 AAC to 256 AAC moves it to about the level I use when I encode music for my iPod (320 kbps AAC).

I was a little disappointed that the quality was not Apple Lossless, but satisfied with the compromise of 256 AAC.

I personally expect to buy more music in this format than I have previously.

The introduction of Apple TV might have put more pressure on music quality. If you are playing your iTunes in the living room, you may be playing it on a fancy stereo or home theater audio system. You can hear quality differences there that wouldn't be apparent on the average iPod.

Hopefully, people will buy lots of this new EMI music and other record labels will follow! [Photo: New York Times]

Technorati Tags: DRM, EMI, iTunes, Music