When A2 announced that she had to go on a trip to the Northeast in the fall, my mind immediately shot back to the time when I learned the phrase “leaf peeping”. It was from an episode of The West Wing where President Bartlet is upset because he has to forego a radio address packed with policy and issues for a more tempered one about “leaf peeping” in the Northeast.
Neither of us have much northeasterly experience, so it proved to be an exciting new experience for both of us. Here is a recount of our exploits and our impressions of our dear Yankee friends:
Apple’s newest ad poignantly notes that we’ve been told the same thing over and over again by our friends at Microsoft:
With every launched operating system, they’ve promised that it’s better. They’ve promised improvement… and they’ve delivered baby steps forward with every (other) OS. (Vista & ME… sorry…)
Well, they’re going to have to do better than that. They need a leap forward. They need a grand slam out of the park home-run.
Notwithstanding the anecdotal evidence suggesting that Windows 7 appears to be lighter-weight, faster, and a smidgin‘ better than Windows XP, it is only that. Slightly better. Not great. Not near what it could be. It’s just a bit better.
This is a true disappointment, given that XP was launched in 2001, and launching an operating system 8 years later that is only an incremental improvement is hardly impressive.
The truth is that Windows continues to play catchup to Mac OS X. While Apple is focusing on stuff like hyper-threading and optimizing for multi-core processors (aka making your apps run faster, better, and preparing for the future of processor hardware and 64-bit software), Windows is still trying to figure out startup and standby times.
Sorry for the dearth of blogging, but since I am now sitting here listening to the radio (in other words: stuck on a conference call I don’t necessarily have to participate in) I will post a few random thoughts that have been mulling for a few days… Continue reading Random Thoughts
Author’s Note: For those not familiar with my religion, once every six months our church has its semi-annual general conference. This conference is broadcast by satellite and internet around the world, and church members forego meeting in their usual congregations in order to tune into five 2-hour sessions of church leaders speaking kindly from behind a pulpit, and singing by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Last night I had a dream about General Conference. I dreamed that they had decided to make Conference a lot more ‘accessible’ and ‘relevant’ to children. They did this by making it a lot less of a stable camera pointing at the podium. In fact, most of it wasn’t filmed at the Conference Center at all.
