The World of Scott Mindeaux

I’m a Mac and a Regular Guy Too!

I have to say that there is a part of me that actually applauds Microsoft in their 2nd round of ads touting Microsoft Windows (well…actually it doesn’t).

The first two ads in Phase I confused alot of people with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates finding themselves in the “real world”. Earlier this week, the advertising agency released new ads featuring regular folks like you and me saying that they are a PC. At first you see a guy that looks like John Hodgman who plays “PC” in the Mac commercials.

** Yes the above clip requires Microsoft’s Silverlight…
 

Apparently there are three versions of the commercial on TV now. I would like to see an ad for “I’m a Mac…”. Yes, while I’m sure we could get a lot of star power (I was sure a gal like Eva Longoria was a Mac gal) it should feature regular people like moms and students, senior citizens, business professionals, bakers, foodies, decorators, artists, you name it all standing behind their Mac. Show images of people doing kewl things on thier Mac.

Meanwhile, when Microsoft’s ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is making the next round of commercials on their Macs, they should be prepared to do take after take as they deal with the BSOD on the machines being used in the commercial for I’m a PC…

I’m just kidding. As a Mac user, I use Microsoft products. I use Microsoft Office and I run Windows XP on my Mac every single day. I manage servers, I run Outlook, Citrix apps, proprietary apps that I can only run in Windows. Would I ever give up my Mac completely? Hell no. But I also know that I can’t do “everything” with my Mac. However, I do luv the fact that I can run Windows XP on my Mac so I don’t have the need for another machine to lug around.

Continuing Website Woes with WEB.com

So over the last month I have been having this love/hate relationship with my ISP web-hosting company. To recap let’s talk about the following:

1. The have a planned email server move, I got a notice, but after the transfer, I had a lot of email access issues. Then I started get 2, 3, 4 copies of the same email over and over in my mailbox.

2. They moved my website to a new server without notification. As a result, they moved the site, but since they never told me, I never knew I had to update the IP address to access my MYSQL database that runs my site. It took almost 2 weeks to figure this part out.

3. Since the transition to the new site, people have been complaining that they haven’t been able to get to the site. People will access it, but it will take a long time to load or they get a timeout.

4. Access to my WordPress Admin page has been also painfully slow. My ISP web-hosting company has been bought out like 5x now. I don’t even think that anyone from the original company even works for the company.

The company you ask? Web.com. All their technical support is overseas. You can’t talk to ANY systems engineer or admin in the United States. The overseas technical support can’t do a thing. It has been very frustrating.

Have you had problems getting into my site? Please let me know by commenting. Be anonymous if you want, but let me know if you are having problems and what State you are from. Thanks in advance!

They keep closing my tickets and I keep re-opening them and no one still won’t pick up the phone to help me. They try to access my site once and they get thru and they declare it fixed! So it may work for that try, but if they try to go somewhere else, I bet they will get a spinning beachball or an hourglass for the Window’s folks.

So….anyone have any suggestions for a new web-hositng company or will WEB.com redeem themselves? I have been with them for almost 7 years.

The Piece of the Pie

Net Applications based in Aliso Viejo, CA released a report today stating that Mac OS X market share had gone up to a record 7.95%.

Microsoft Windows holding steady at 90.89% and Unix jumping up 16% to 0.79% of market share. Interestingly enough the iPhone recorded a 0.16% market share and the Playstation at 0.03%.

Wide Format Printers

I know this is a weird place to post this…but does anyone of my readers have any experience with WIDE FORMAT printers like the Epson 9800, HP 5500 or the Canon W8400?

More importantly, has anyone used the Onyx RIP software?

I’m in the middle of evaluating these three 36″+ printers with the Onyx RIP.

Tell me what you think!

Ok Geeks out there: Blackberry or Treo

Ok. I have gotten to the point where I have too many email addresses for work and need access to email but don’t always have the time to stop, open the laptop and log in to check. So…being a Sprint customer, I’m looking into the Nextel Blackberry. They have this push technology with pushes the email to me instead of me having to log in to get the emails.

Then we have the Treo. Palm based.

Which one do all of you like?

Everything Hurts, 1 Hour Early

It’s been pretty busy these last few days at work. The last 48 hours has been physcially challenging for me. My calve muscles hurt, my back hurts, my arches hurt, my whole body hurts – my sex life hurts [smile].

At least I get an extra hour tonite to convalesce. I took two Advil and heading to bed. I have to be at a client’s at 10am.

Don’t forget to fall back.