Category: Tech

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Preach!

Words I could've written myself, from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet:

"These are words I never thought I'd be writing.

After more than two decades of being a dedicated Windows power user, someone who over that time has installed and supported countless systems running versions of Windows spanning from 3.0 to 8.1, I've now all but given up on the platform.

It might sound odd, but writing these words actually makes me sad. I devoted my 10,000 hours to mastering the platform, plus thousands more, and got the point where there wasn't a file, registry entry, or command line trick that I wasn't familiar with.

I knew how to make Windows work.

But now, other than for test systems and virtual machines, I carry out my day-to-day work on a variety of OS X, iOS and Android systems. I barely give my Windows PC systems a second glance. My primary work system is a MacBook Pro, and in the ten months I've had it it's flawlessly done everything I've asked of it, from run Microsoft Word to render 4K video. I've lost count of the number of notebooks I've owned over the years, but this MacBook Pro is, by far, the most reliable system I've owned, and I put part of that down to the fact that it doesn't run Windows.

Sure, I've downloaded and installed Windows 8.1 onto a number of systems for testing, and I've put an awful lot of hours into getting to know this latest release of Windows, but I see nothing in this new version that excites me sufficiently to tempt me back into the Microsoft ecosystem. If anything, the effect has been the exact opposite, confirming my belief that parting ways with Windows was the right thing to do.

So what's bought me to this point in my tech career?

Support fatigue

I've spent almost my entire adult working life involved with PCs, and the more PCs you are around, the more sick and dying PCs you encounter. And I've encountered a lot.

I've also cajoled and coaxed countless ailing systems back to life, but during that time I've come to realize how fragile the Windows operating system is, and how something small and insignificant as a bad driver, incorrect settings, or the stars being in the wrong position can bring a system to its knees, and result in hours of work searching for a solution. That's great if you're being paid by the hour to solve PC problems, but if your dealing with your own systems, and you have better things to be doing with your time, then you want to get them up and running as fast as possible so you can get back to real work.

Troubleshooting is costly, time-consuming, and frustrating, and while I once used to relish the challenge, I now try to avoid it whenever possible.

Of all the desktop operating systems that I've used, the modern Windows operating system is by far the most fragile. It didn't used to be like that. I had Windows NT 3.5/40 systems, and some Windows 2000 machines that were rock solid. Partly this increase in fragility is down to the vast ecosystem of hardware and software it has to support, and partly it is down to the years of legacy that each version drags behind it. But part of the blame also lies at Microsoft's door for not putting enough effort into hardening the system, reducing the effect that fault – in particular software faults – have on the system, and providing better information when things go wrong.

Adding a 🙁 to the Windows 8 BSoD screen isn't enough.

Windows systems keel over, and most of the time the only clue you have as to why is an ambiguous error message, which may or may not be a red herring. This sends you to Google – or Bing – in search of others before you who have suffered a similar problem, and whom you hope may have found a solution, which might be in the form of an updated driver, a registry tweak, command line incantation, or patch.

Sometimes you get lucky. Other times you have to try a number of things before you're successful. And sometimes you end up deciding that it's quicker to nuke the system and start from scratch.

And all the while I'm doing this, precious time is slowing through the hourglass.

The shift to post-PC devices

Another reason why Windows has been relegated to the sidelines at the PC Doc HQ is the proliferation of post-PC devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Now I've been using mobile devices for years, and remember Windows CE and the like running on devices with exotic sounding names such as iPAQ and Jornada (remember those?), but these devices were, without a doubt, companion devices. Basic operations such as installing software or moving data required a PC, and so these devices spent a lot of their lives tethered to a Windows PC.

Then Apple changed everything, first with the iPhone, and then with the iPad. Here were devices that were standalone, leveraging over-the-air software downloads and updates, and cloud storage.

I found that I could do more and more with less and less. Tasks that once required a full-blown desktop or notebook PC could be carried out faster and more efficiently on a smartphone or tablet. Unless I want to use full-blown applications such as Microsoft's Office or Adobe's Creative Cloud suite, then I can make do with post-PC devices. What's more, I can usually get things done faster since I'm not tied to my desk.

And the great thing about these devices (and I'll throw Android in here with iOS) is that they're there when I need them. I've had an iPhone and an iPad for years, and I can only remember a couple of times when they've let me down.

My experience of Windows on tablets closely resembles that of my ZDNet colleague James Kendrick. Bottom line, they let me down too much to want to bother with them. Why would I trade a reliable iPad or Android tablet for an unreliable Windows 8.1 tablet? Why trade a tablet that just works for one that regularly sends me on quests, roaming the Internet looking for the right elixir to fix the system?

Any hopes I had that x86 versions of Windows would be more stable on tablets have gone. In fact, in my experience, the user experience is worse. Sure, most of the time the problem comes down to a rogue drivers or a configuration thrown out of whack, but a problem is still a problem, and these are problems I don't experience with iOS or Android.

Bill Gates was right, there was a market for tablets. Unfortunately, most of those tablets would be powered by operating systems made by Apple and Google. But then, Apple and Google didn't try to shoehorn a desktop operating system onto tablets.

Windows RT is certainly a better choice for tablets, but that's because what you have is the illusion of Windows, rather than the real thing. If Windows RT had come out at around the same time as the iPad, and the software ecosystem matured at the same pace, then Windows RT would be a real contender, but as it stands right now there's little reason to choose it over iOS or Android.

Unless, that is, you want something that look like Windows. Which I don't.

The increasing irrelevance of the operating system

Once upon a time, the operating system was the platform on which people ran applications, but as more and more local applications have been replaced by services running on remote web servers, increasingly the browser has replaced the operating system as the primary platform.

Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and countless other web-based services look the same whether I'm using Windows, OS X, or even Linux. On smartphones and tablets, I have the choice of accessing most of these services either through a web browser or a dedicated app.

It doesn't matter what operating system is running my browser, so I'm free to choose the platforms that give me the least headache.

Change for the sake of change

One of the biggest problems I have with Windows is the way that it inflicts change on the user for no logical reason.

For me, Windows 8 was the peak of "change for the sake of change," removing the Start Menu and pushing the Desktop into the background. Yes, I understand why Microsoft needed the Start Screen (because the Start Menu would be too cumbersome for tablet users), and yes, I understand that Microsoft wanted to give apps center stage, but for hundreds of millions of users running Windows on a desktop or notebook PCs, these changes did nothing but hurt productivity.

Compare this to OS X or even Linux distros. Here you feel a progression from one version to the next. Yes, sometimes there are changes that are disliked, but overall there's a smooth progression from one version to the next. Jarring changes are best kept to a minimum because they have an adverse effect on productivity, adding unnecessarily to the learning curve.

Microsoft backpedaled on some of these changes with Windows 8.1 (which must have been a pain for users who had gone to the effort of learning how to use Windows 8), but for me the damage was done. It's clear that Microsoft is going in a direction that's incompatible with the one I want my operating system to go in.

No appreciation of power users

Microsoft's decision to end the TechNet program, a service which gave power users, enthusiasts, and those who's job it is to test and support Microsoft products cheap and easy access to products, is a strong indicator that the company no longer values what people like this bring to the platform.

Windows is now the expensive option

Windows is now the only operating system I use where I have to pay to upgrade it.

While I don't begrudge paying a fair price for something I need, paying big upgrade bucks for something I can do without makes no sense. PCs easily outlast the lifespan of the Windows operating system, and the idea of paying almost a hundred bucks per system to keep it updated is hard to stomach when it doesn't bring me any tangible benefits.

Going the mac route might seem like an even more expensive option, but having owned a number of systems, including the MacBook Pro that that become my go-to system, the additional cost of the hardware (plus the additional AppleCare warranty) is offset by the fact that these systems have given me months, and in some cases years, or hassle-free use. I've not had to mess around with drivers.

I've not had to go digging through the configuration settings. I've not had to surf the web looking for solutions to obscure error messages.

Shift to console gaming

I used to love PC gaming, but then I got my first console.

While the graphics don't match up, and the gamepad is no substitute for the keyboard and mouse, the years of hassle-free gaming that a console offers, free from driver and patch headaches, more than makes up for the deficiencies. Not only that, but when I consider how long I've had my Xbox 360, It's outlasted several gaming PCs, which has saved me a ton of cash.

Pick the game I want, insert the disc, and BOOM! I'm playing the game in seconds. No patches to download and install, no  graphics card drivers to mess with.

The bottom line

The bottom line is that outside of a few edge cases, Windows isn't for me. If it works for you, then that's great. Stick with what works for you. I for one certainly won't sneer or look down on you or go all fanboy.

After all, I remember – with fondness, and more than a hint of sadness – a time when it worked for me.

Personal preferences are, well, personal.

Can I see a time when I might go back to Windows? Maybe, I'm not ruling anything out, but for the time being, I see Windows playing a smaller and smaller part in my day-to-day computing."

 

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Analog Rules!

Like most everyone else who came of age in the 70s and 80s and had wrestled with record cleaning brushes, cartridge alignment tools, antistatic sprays and other manner of voodoo that was seemingly required to play vinyl records, I fell in love with compact discs: the convenience, the sound, the general coolness of the damned things…

And like everyone else, I bought into the marketing hype of the time. "Indestructable!" "Will Last a Lifetime!" and so forth and so on. Of course, reality has proven something quite different as we have all come to learn over the years. Scratch the wrong side of the disk (i.e. the label side) and you might as well play frisbee with the thing.

Years ago, when the news of "bit rot" (the tarnishing of the aluminum layer in commercial CDs and the fading of the dye layer in CDROMs rendering them both unreadable) came out, I thought, "Oh Jeez…my collection is disintegrating right before my eyes and I don't even know it."

But along about the same time, I rediscovered the joys of those big black analog vinyl platters. I don't know whether it was prompted by an attempt to recapture some of my youth, or I missed the music (most of which has yet to be re-released), or that I could pick up a pristine copy of some recording for $1 on vinyl that would cost me $16 on CD, or simply because the act of playing a record was so damned satisfying, but I fell in love with music all over again and realized that no matter what happened to my CD collection, my vinyl collection would survive the ravages of time.

And surprisingly, many of those old vinyl records actually soundbetter than their shiny CD counterparts.

As Ted Rall so succinctly pointed out in a column several years ago, because of our rush into the digital age, not only are we at risk of losing some of the musical treasures of our time, we're also at risk of losing most of the record of our culture in general. Even if bit rot weren't a concern, we're still facing the very real possibility that none of our digitalized history will even be readable in the years to come because of the ever-changing march of technology and the obsolescence it leaves in its wake.

And now, as we now start to abandon owning physical media altogether, trusting all our musical memories to bits and bytes in the cloud, I fear this problem has only grown exponentially. I'm not saying it's a bad thing per se, and there's certainly something magic about being able to carry—at least in the case of the classic iPod—60 days worth of music around in your pocket, but when I really want to be in my music, I pull out one of those black vinyl platters, plug my headphones into my 30 lb. wood-trimmed metal mid 70s receiver, and get lost in the sound…if only for a few brief minutes.

Makes you wonder if the ancients knew something we don't. They carved into stone tablets not because they had to, but rather, because they wanted to ensure that their legacy lived on.

One thing I know for certain: as long as someone can affix some sort of pickup needle to a phono cartridge, centuries after the aluminum reflective layer in the last of my commercial CDs has tarnished, the dye on my home-grown CDROMs has faded to invisibility and my iPod is at the bottom of a land fill somewhere, whoever comes after me will still be able to play my records.

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Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt

Yesterday Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's outgoing CEO took the opportunity at what is undoubtedly his last company meeting, to take a swipe at Apple and a couple of other competitors that have largely stolen Microsoft's thunder in the new age of computing. Apple, Ballmer said, is about being "fashionable," while Amazon is about being "cheap," and Google is about "knowing more." Microsoft, Ballmer said, is about "doing more."

Ballmer's swipes and the company's Siri-bashing ads are just the latest in a string of dismissals from Microsoft toward the company's rivals, even as those rivals have gone on to greater heights in the areas where they are head-to-head with Microsoft. Apple, described as a "low-volume player" last year by Ballmer, is the most profitable firm making smartphones and tablets, which appear to be the future of popular computing. Google, too, has been the target of barbs from Ballmer, even as that company maintains a massive market share lead over Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Microsoft has a search engine? Seriously? Who knew? /snark

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This One's Gonna Leave a Mark

I think I've experienced enough "Fuck Microsoft!" moments over the years to totally justify posting this.

From MacDailyNews:

Microsoft is (still!) led by a confused clown and hopelessly polluted at its upper levels with political schemers and backstabbers. It's amazing the bloated carcass can even produce a product at this point, even if it is a product for a market that does not exist outside of Microsoft's delusional dreams/misleading advertising campaigns.

The company is a failure. That's why its products are failures, too. GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

In the end, Microsoft will be a mere footnote; a blotch on the early timeline of computing that nobody will remember fondly, if at all.

As we explained quite clearly last October in yet another prescient Take that even Microsoft could have read, long before they were forced to swallow a $900 million write-off over their Surface flop:

That dumbass kickstand is yet another ill-considered, misguided, corporate committee-driven "differentiation" squirted out of Microsoft's back door unbidden onto the public.

Microsoft is staffed with stupid and/or lazy people. There's no other explanation besides crippling narcissism – which is a very real possibility. Most people use iPads while lounging around. All Microsoft's Surface "team" had to do was buy some real iPads and use them for a few weeks. Steve Jobs himself even demonstrated the iPad while reclining in a comfy leather chair, not sitting upright at a friggin' desk. Microsoft was shown the way and, once again, they failed to properly follow Apple's lead. By now, that's just stupid and/or lazy.

Microsoft suffers from delusions of grandeur. They think they matter and that people will buy their pretend iPad over other pretend iPads because it's from Microsoft. Microsoft does not matter. Microsoft no longer has the power to sell superfluous products. The world already has iPad. The thinking world finally woke up and moved on from Microsoft's soul-sapping dreck. That clueless Microsoft haven't figured this out years ago (Zune, Kin, how many total face-plants do they need?) is illustrative of the depths of their delusions.

More here.

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Quote of the Day

Sorry Microsoft. No one cares about this one either.

"So Microsoft unveiled its Surface 2 tablet on Monday and there were absolutely no big surprises. The device is priced at $50 less than the original Surface RT at $449 but overall this is basically the Surface RT with better specs and a presumably improved Windows RT 8.1 operating system. It goes without saying that this will once again not end well for Microsoft.

"Microsoft has done virtually nothing to add consumer appeal to the Surface 2. Throughout its presentation on Monday the company kept stressing that the Surface 2 was a tablet for people who want to be 'productive,' and emphasized that it came with the full Microsoft Office Suite… People who need to use Office at home can do so by bringing their laptop home with them. What they will not do, however, is spend $450 on a tablet for their own personal use just because it comes with Office. In fact, they are probably buying a tablet for their own personal use as a way to escape Office and other work-related productivity software.

"The Surface 2′s other problem is Windows RT itself… The Surface RT was a commercial flop, OEMs fled from Windows RT and app developers are less than enthusiastic about making apps for it. Simply making hardware upgrades and implementing very small a price cut to the Surface 2 would have been an acceptable strategy if the original Surface RT had been even a modest hit. But it wasn't a modest hit: It was a massive bomb that forced Microsoft to write off $900 million." ~  Brad Reed

Yes, I'm in a mood today.

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Amazing

I bought these as a birthday gift for Ben about three weeks ago. Apple has a two week return policy, so I had to give them to him early (his birthday isn't until tomorrow) in case he hated them and wanted to take them back. It worked out well because he got to  fully test them out on his recent unplanned trip to Phoenix and ended up loving them . Last night I asked if I could have a listen, and I was amazed at the sound. AMAZED.

I've had to make multiple trips down to our lovely Colorado Springs office this past week (with one more in the works for Monday), so I have a very healthy amount of mileage reimbursement coming my way and decided to pre-spend a chunk of it and got my own pair today.

To be honest, I was initially very frustrated with the purchase because I just couldn't get the phones to fit properly and the sound was nothing like what I'd heard last night, but I finally happened upon the optimal earbud size and after about an hour's listening all I can say is OH. MY. GOD. It's like I have 19-year old ears again. My music has come back to life in a way I haven't heard in years. These would be excellent headphones if they were wired, but the fact that they're wireless is just…well…amazing!

Yes, they're pricey, but worth every penny if you're a "serious" listener (or an aging 1970s-era "audiophile").

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Finally!

It took me four months from the time I originally decided to buy one, but I finally got an iPad. I had planned on getting it before Christmas with my year-end bonus, but we all know what happened to that money.

I'm actually quite surprised by how much I like it.

It will never replace my MacBook, but for reading, Tweeting, and general internet browsing, it really can't be beat. Magical? Sorry, Apple. I wouldn't go that far, (just goes to show how innured we've all become to the technology that would've seemed like magic when I was growing up), but I will say it's pretty damn amazing when you stop to think about it.

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Preach It, Sister

This sums up almost exactly where I am in regard to technology these days and kind of a followup to my post from a couple days ago.

"Over the years I've spent far more time than I care to count compiling scripts, screwing hardware into place and generally tinkering with technology.

"But then I got tired of it.

"I had reached the point to where, when I turned on a device, I just wanted it to work. I didn't want things to break so that I could find out how to fix them. I no longer wanted to play with my phone, my computer or my iPad. They were tools, to be used to complete a job. Sometimes they are in use as entertainment devices, but even then the entertainment is the content that they allowed me to access, rather than the devices themselves." ~ Brad McCarty,  The Next Web Top Stories

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iTunes

I have 13077 songs in my iTunes library. Of those, 3946 (11.5 days worth!) have never been listened to, and another 3237 have only been played once. I fear I have become an iTunes hoarder.

Most played track? Clocking in at 40 times is Eppur Si Muove by Enigma from the A Posteriori album.

The most played albums didn't come as a complete surprise, because for a very long time I was using them as my nightly headphones going-to-sleep music:

  • Engima: A Posteriori
  • Bear McGeary: Caprica Soundtrack
  • THP Orchestra: Good to Me
  • Cerrone: Variations of Supernature
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Ha!

And yet Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, isn't lowering (or even extending their introductory price) of Windows 8, they're raising it back to their ridiculous $199 price point next month.

I know we have absolutely no intention of upgrading at my workplace, and from what I've been reading, most sane I.T. departments aren't touching it with a ten foot pole.

And speaking of work, I can't tell you how many people there have told me they want or need to buy a new computer, but don't want Windows 8. "What do I do?"

"Buy a Mac."

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Recommended

To be filed under One of Those Things I Never Thought I'd Want or Need Until I Had One:

I bought one of these for Ben for Christmas, and liked the sound so much I went out yesterday and bought one for myself. Until now I'd been (quietly—open cubes, don'cha know) listening to streaming audio at work through my Air's speakers to try and drown out some of the inane chatter that comes from the pre-cert nurses on the other side of the cube walls. The sound from the Air was okay and did what it needed to, but once I heard this little beast I knew what I'd been missing.  I don't know what manner of black magic is being invoked to achieve it, but even at the low volumes I'm forced to listen to at work, this speaker puts out a good amount of bass that makes music sound so much better.

"Professional" reviews can be found here and here.

$70 at your local Targhey…

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We Live in Amazing Times

Even if it's exorbitantly expensive at this point…

World renowned electronics manufacturer Philips has announced today that it will be exclusively launching its "Hue" web-enabled lighting system through the Apple Store starting from tomorrow. The new system from Philips offers energy saving LED lights that can replace your existing bulbs and they can then be controlled from your iPhone or iPad.

Building on its innovation capabilities, today Philips unveils hue, the world's smartest web-enabled LED home lighting system. Philips hue signals a new era in home lighting both in the way we think about and experience light in our homes. It allows you to create and control the light using your smartphone or tablet. Bringing endless possibilities to help you get creative and help you personalize your lighting to suit yours and your family's lifestyle, Philips hue is available exclusively from Apple stores from 30th October. A starter pack includes three bulbs that simply screw into your existing lamps, and a bridge that you plug into your home Wi-Fi router. Simply download the hue app to start experiencing light in a completely new way.

Once you have your system installed you can fire up the iPhone or iPad app and customize the lighting in your home to your hearts content. You can change the color of the light, control and monitor lighting of your home from anywhere in the world, set up timers and even use light as your wake up call.

The Philips Hue certainly looks like a very nice way to add some home lighting automation to your home. If you want to get hold of some, you can buy them exclusively through the Apple Store starting October 30th. They will come in a starter kit which includes three bulbs and the interface that needs to be connected to your home router; this starter kit will cost $199. Once you have the starter kit, you can add in extra bulbs at a cost of $59 per bulb. The system can currently support a maximum of 50 bulbs.

Source: Philips

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But is it Art?

You know what's depressing? Discovering a 99-cent piece of software that applies an effect to photographs that I've spent the last two decades of my life perfecting with paint and brush on canvas.

A friend of mine remarked that the finished products are similar, but lack the life and sparkle of my paintings. Agreed. But still…

I guess I should really consider it a blessing in disguise; I can apply the effect to the photograph I want to work from before I start painting and then use that as a guide as to where to make the tone differentiations in the painting (the hardest part of my whole process).

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Ouch.

Microsoft shoots…and misses. Again.

Gizmodo:

In the end though, this is nothing more than Microsoft's tablet. And a buggy, at times broken one, at that, whose "ecosystem" feels more like a tundra. There's no Twitter or Facebook app, and the most popular 3rd party client breaks often. The Kindle app is completely unusable. There's no image editing software. A People app is supposed to give you all the social media access you'd ever need, but It's impossible to write on someone's Facebook wall through the People app, Surface's social hub; the only workaround is to load Internet Explorer. Blech. Something as simple as loading a video requires a jumbled process of USB importing, dipping in and out of the stripped-down desktop mode, opening a Video app, importing, going back into the Video app, and then playing. What.

BGR:

Imagine booting up an iPad for the first time, seeing the OS X desktop exactly as it appears on a MacBook, and then finding out you cannot run any OS X software on the device. As odd as that scenario sounds, that is exactly the situation Microsoft is facing with the next-generation Windows OS…

BuzzFeed:

I've been waiting a long time for somebody to produce tablets and phones that are lock, stock and barrel better than what Apple's been making since the first iPhone. Every year, somebody gets closer. Surface doesn't get close enough. The thing is, Surface is supposed to be so much more than just Microsoft's iPad alternative, the Other Tablet. It may very well be one day. It has everything it needs to be that. But today it's just another tablet. And not one you should buy.

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Bwaaaaaahaha!

From Business Insider:

At first blush, Microsoft's entry-level Surface tablet seems like a good value compared to the iPad and other tablets. That's because you get double the storage (32 GB versus 16 GB) for the same price as the iPad, US$499 (C$519).

But the reason Microsoft started the Surface at 32 GB instead of 16 GB is because the operating system,Windows RT, takes up approximately 12 GB of space.

Those numbers come from a Reddit AMA session with members of Microsoft's Surface team. When asked how much space Windows RT takes up, Microsoft's Surface test manager, Ricardo Lopez said there will be about 20 GB of free space after Windows RT, Office RT, and "a bunch of apps."

It's not a straight answer, but it's pretty clear Windows RT is a massive operating system. For reference, Apple's iPad operating system takes up less than 1 GB. If Microsoft had made the entry-level Surface a 16 GB device, you'd only have about 4 GB free to play around with.

Remind me again why I should care about anything Microsoft does?

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Hospital Computer Hardware Also Suffers From Infections

No surprise there. Until about a year before I left my previous place of employment, all the fetal monitors in the patient rooms had no anti-virus software whatsoever.

From Ars Technica:

Drug-resistant bacteria aren't the only pernicious bugs that hospitals need to worry about.  MIT's Technology Review reports that hospitals' computerized equipment—such as patient monitoring systems, MRI scanners,  and nuclear medicine systems—is dangerously vulnerable to malware, and many systems are in fact heavily infected with viruses.

That's because many of these systems run on older versions of Windows—such as Windows 2000. Medical equipment manufacturers often won't support security patches or operating system upgrades for their systems, largely out of concern about whether such changes would require them to resubmit their systems to the Food and Drug Administration for certification.

The scope of the problem was the topic of a panel discussion (PDF) at a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board on October 11. Mark Olson, the Chief Information Security Officer at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, told attendees that malware had infected fetal monitors in his hospital's high-risk pregnancy ward, to the point where they were so slow they couldn't properly record data.

"Fortunately, we have a fallback model," Olson said. "They are in an (intensive care) unit—there's someone physically there to watch. But if they are stepping away to another patient, there is a window of time for things to go in the wrong direction." The systems have since been replaced with new ones—based on Microsoft's Windows XP.

"The systems have since been replaced with new ones—based on Microsoft's Windows XP." Oh, that's reassuring…

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My Dream Turntable


Technics SL-150Mk2 with an Infinity Black Widow tonearm.

Rare—and way out of my financial reach back when it was new, this has always been my ultimate turntable/tonearm combination. I'm not sure I'd play records any more often than I do now if I had one (I haven't even bothered unboxing my existing 1300Mk2 since the move), but I might be more inclined to. Like I've written many times before, for all the convenience and instant gratification that digital recordings provide, there's just something about spinning a piece of vinyl that digital will never be able to capture.

The 150Mk2 has all the positive aspects of Technics first generation Mk2 line with none of the integrated tonearm-related drawbacks of the rest of the series. And even back in the late 70s, the Infinity (who made some kick ass speakers and is today just a hollow shell of its former self) tonearm was considered one of the best on the market. Its tube was made of carbon fiber, for chrissake. Carbon. Fiber. In 1979!