We apologize to our faithful subscribers for the long hiatus between episodes. In our defense we have been productive during our absence … focusing on producing podcast for clients and moving into full fledged production and publication of audio as well as printed books. We have been fortunate to sign three excellent published authors one of whom has produced an exceptional reading of her autobiography “Bent Not Broken”.
Please see our iNetSynch.com website for links to additional podcasts and audio books. We believe that you’ll find Lauren Kim Roche’s reading of Bent Not Broken an inspirational adventure.
Much has happened since we last produced this podcast. We have acquired and have begun using Leopard as well as iWork 09 and experimented with the new release of GarageBand and iMovie 09. Microsoft has issued two public beta releases of Windows 7 and we have installed both on two PC’s with impressive results.
We attempted to upgrade our Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking speech to text software and ended up sending version 10 back. I think it’s safe to say that this was one of the worst experiences I’ve had in trying to upgrade software over the 30 plus years I’ve been working with computers.
We have repeatedly returned to the MacSpeech Dictate software hoping that minor updates issued by the company would make it usable. It remains a disappointment and we continue to rely on the free Vista Speech Recognition software for most of our dictation requirements. MacSpeech recently offered a .2 upgrade but requires customers shell out a minimum of $69 (with U.S. shipping) to get relatively minor fixes and enhancements. This has set off a firestorm of complaints! See the MacSpeech 1.5 Upgrade forum for this interesting bit of PR handling.
In our Windows 2 Apples podcast, I noted my impressions of Leopard and the Windows 7 Beta. Of the two it’s easy to proclaim Windows 7 beta as the more impressive update. To tell the truth, I noticed essentially no enhancement in feature set or performance when Leopard was installed and only installed it so that I could take advantage of the new iWork and iLife 09 applications. The Leopard experience highlights a significant difference between Apple and Microsoft . Microsoft rarely requires customers upgrade the operating system in order to use a new release of major Microsoft software suite such as Office but Apple seems to depend on the revenue generated by tying the adoption of iWork and iLife upgrades to an OS upgrade.
One rather unsettling change in my Mac since shifting to Leopard has been a less reliable connection between my Mac and PC network via the shared Linksys router. In past, my Mac would always find and list my PC and HP MediaSmart Server under Shared Places. I could immediately access public files on my PC and shared folder on the Server. Now I have to reboot the Mac or toggle my router on and off several times before the Mac joins my network. What a waste of time and unnecessary anxiety. When I revert back to the Tiger OS image on my external firewire dive the issue goes away. If I were not dependent on Leopard to run the now upgraded RapidWeaver, I would gladly reinstall Tiger.
Windows 7 on the other hand has allowed me to give new life to my old Sony multimedia tower PC. I had been using it with the original XP Home Media center software to provide streaming video and audio to my flat screen television. It worked reasonably well however the XP Media center software is simply not as capable as that shipped with Vista and it seemed to get slower and slower each passing day.
Recently, a relative complained that her ancient Vista Home edition computer was too slow and inefficient to use inspiring her to look at new vista machines. She was choking a bit on the idea of having to shell out the cash for a new system. I suggested she backup her data and try a clean install of Windows 7. In our last conversation she was exceptionally happy with the increased performance as well as the high end features such as Aero not part of her original configuration … and the cost, as in free, was a much appreciated bonus. Her son plans to upgrade his aging XP machine when Windows 7 is officially released. For the first time I can remember, Microsoft has developed a major upgrade to the Windows OS that requires fewer resources to run and does not force customers to upgrade their hardware.
I suspect this will be plus for Microsoft and a negative for the likes of HP and Acer. I had considered purchasing a new small foot print PC to use as our home media center but saw no reason to make the purchase after installing Windows 7 on the Sony tower. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the market place, especially in this age of recession and record unemployment.
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For the Windows 2 Apples podcast and blog.
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