Tag Archive for: Vista

The Borg and Seinfeld

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In a memo to all Microsoft employees on July 23, Ballmer said “Now it’s time to tell our story.” And that later in the year, Microsoft would roll out an effort to redefine the meaning and value of Windows.

The Globe and Mail reported yesterday that Microsoft has signed Jerry Seinfeld as part of a 300 million dollar branding campaign. The comedian who championed a television series about nothing will champion an advertising campaign about Vista. RealDan provides an interesting perspective on the campaign.

The negative public perception of Vista is well known to Microsoft and evidence for their concerns can be found at the Mojave Experiment. Remember when Coke tried the same tactic with their failed New Coke product?

We’ll see if the Seinfeld ads have the same impact as the PC/Mac ads.


Mac and PC

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I used Migration Assistant to move all of my applications and data from my old Mac to the new Mac. And, as expected, everything just works. The new Mac has everything from the old Mac. It took about ten hours to move all the data — roughly 300 Gigabytes — from the old machine.

Then the big test. Running Vista on the new Mac. I downloaded VMWare Fusion for the Mac. I originally intended to use Parallels except that Fusion was getting a lot of great reviews. I can see why. The easy install brought Vista up and running within 30 minutes. I have never installed a Windows operating system from scratch in such a short period of time.

I put up Vista Ultimate and I can either use it in full screen mode where it looks and acts just like a Wintel machine or I can keep it in a window just like any other Mac app.

I can finally ditch the second box in my office. I can run the few apps I still use from my PC on the Mac. The best of both worlds.

So cool. Below is a screen shot of Vista on my Mac desktop.

The Real Decision

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I had a number of readers poke me about yesterday’s post on the real decision that is at play. After all, getting a new Mac is hardly worth a long-winded perspective on decision-making frameworks. And I did get the new 3.06Ghz iMac last night. Beautiful machine. Stunning industrial design.

The real decision was obviously more significant than getting a new Mac. The real decision was whether I would run Windows on the new Mac.

In my office I currently run two PCs: a Vista machine that I use for managing my personal finances and a Mac that I use for everything else. The Mac is a great platform with two gaping holes from a software perspective: gaming and personal finance. Quicken and Money on the PC are simply head and shoulders above any Canadianized personal financial management software available on the Mac.

This new Mac is my first Intel-based machine. I can run Parallels and have Windows co-exist on the Mac with little, if any, performance degradation from my current setup. And with one less box, display, keyboard and mouse in the office.

I’m just not sure how to de-activate my current Vista license so that I can install it on the Mac. I guess I will find out. And the ability to have both platforms simultaneously available is quite appealing.

My decision has been made. I will run Windows on the Mac.

There is also another big decision that I made. More on that one next week.