This post is to test out the Wii browser.
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Well the six week wait is almost over. I should be receiving a letter from the U this week sometime. I'm hoping on tomorrow since I've been going nuts for the past couple weeks. I got excited last week to see an email from the admissions office at the U. Unfortunately, the only information included in the email was the explanation that is was policy to only notify through the US Mail and that everything would be sent out on Monday the 14. How long can it take a piece of mail to get sent from Minneapolis to Champlin?
It started with not being able to get to my email from Jason's server, but then I couldn't even bring up his site. I've had service interruptions a couple other times using his server, never anything serious. This time it was bad, real bad. He ended up losing his entire server to a "catastrphic disk failure". That meant his blog, my email, Michelle's email, and my blog were all toast. I never thought that it would be a big deal until I realized how much I use email. I had all my contacts and othe emails I keep for reference. We were in the process of buying a new house so the realtor and mortgage people were using that email to send me info. The blogs were pretty much gone. I was able to get my posts from Google's cache but that took me a good 4-5 hours to copy and paste them into the new blog software. I've migrated off of Jason's server to Blogger (as some may have noticed). It seems to have the same functionality but with the annoying banner at the top. I hope that this will only be a temporary stop, but I'm not sure if Jason is going to open up a server anytime soon. He lost a lot of work he did on ComputerJargon through the years. I do know that he may have learned a lesson and has a one touch backup on order.
Many other changes are on the horizon but I'll save that for another day.
I know I've been neglecting the site for awhile. So I thought I'd take a break from studying and watching Big Brother 6 to officially welcome Apple to the 21st Century.
With the introduction of the Mighty Mouse Apple has finally acknowledged the need for a right-click. I'd like to point out not only did they add a right button, but also middle and side buttons. This increases the click options by 4 times over their standard mouse. There is also a little trackball that functions as a up-down and side-to-side scroll wheel. It seems that they have gone from extremely simplistic to somewhat complex in one fell swoop. They have increase their click options by 4 times!!
The single mouse button made people new to technology comfortable. They didn't have many options. It was either a single or double click. Apple seemed attached to the simple is better approach for so long. The Mighty Mouse seems to go against what Apple has stood for. I do think they are smart in not packaging the Mighty Mouse with a new Mac. Only the power users and PC converts are going to want the right-click. And if they want their mouse to match their iMac, they get to pay $49.99 plus tax.
Apple finally announced that they are moving to Intel chips. I have read about the possibility since OS X was released. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs has already said that the consumer will not be able to get OS X without buying Mac hardware. I would happily plunk down the $129 for OS X to run on my current box.
The one thing that I'm hoping for with the switch to Intel is a cheaper Mac. Since OS X came out I have been yearning for a Mac. When I was having computer troubles I priced out a Mac Mini, but the cost was still more than what I wanted to spend. I'm hoping that an Intel Mac will be competitively priced against a Dell with a similar configuration.
All I want is a useful Mac Mini under $500. The base Mini needs a couple upgrades to make is useful to me. The Mini needs to have a minimum of 512 RAM and Wi-Fi. If you price these options out on a Mini you are in the $630 range. My current computer system (computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse) cost around that. I've always been a value shopper and the Apple premium is too much.
Apple is missing a huge segment of consumer because of their premium. They are missing people like me, the value consumer. They already have a better operating system. If they came in with a value computer that could compete with Windows machine they could grab market share. I think many people are interested in the Mac OS but the start up cost is prohibitive.
The minute I can buy the Mac I want for under $500, I'll be the first to place that order. Better yet, let me buy OS X and dual boot my current machine.
