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When a user tells you a computer is acting funny it generally means they did something and don't want to tell you.   Since he was here to start work on a renovation, I set the water boarding equipment to the side and set the funny box up.  Funny, general means a virus, a virus that was acquired from the general users urge to click click click anything that shows up on their screen like its a whack a mole game except they can't click the little X they just have to go for that YES.  I groaned as I booted the machine and as I stared at the XP boot logo I thought of all the nasty little trojans that were loading that would be disappointed to find no network.   As the wallpaper loaded and the plethora of icons spread all of the place made their appearance, as predicted, the machine sat their with that damn little spinning hour glass grinding away.   An hour glass???  do people still use them?? does the younger generations even know what the hell the are... when are we going to kill these stupid metaphors.  Anywho, its time for a three finger salute to see whats going on and it does live up to the funny description.  Its not a virus holding up the show, but the damn virus protector itself.  AVG is stuck in an infernal updating loop (notorious bug) and windows defender is have a CPU war with it.  Now, I didn't just fall out of a floppy disk drive (hmmm, not sure people remember them either) so I am very suspicious about this activity as it could be a virus gumming up the way.  I kill the AVG process to see whats going on and whap, I'm hit with the nastiest of all virus loading screens, Yahoo Messenger and oh goodie a yahoo and ask search bar.  The fix, thou time consuming was easy and after many uninstalls I switched guard duty over to MS Security Essentials.  Now your saying MS??  WTF you moron?  Security Essentials has been reviewed extensively as one of the best and I personally use it on my machines.  Light, fast, and protects against viruses, malware, yada yada.  Run a little CCleaner and boom I am done right?  Wrong!

He breezes past the now fixed machine that I was surfing the web with and he begins to explain this neat little white computer he saw with this great scrolling, make icons biggie, click able thing at the bottom. (groan, Mac)  He really liked using that so "No problem, we can do that"  RocketDock, a task bar killer, a clock widget and a little theme skinning and tada, XP looks and acts almost like a Mac. (I said ALMOST, no i-fan mail needed)  He is quite happy with his now icon free, clean and fast system and took it home.  (I even duplicated the apple/start button using KKMenu) I had tried many of these task bar replacements in the early days of XP but they tended to slow the system and hog the limited resources.  Fast forward 9 years and the surviving dock programs are very well written (lots and lots of revisions) and have a plethora of add ons to customize the dock the way you see fit. (not to mention, even the lowliest system far exceed the suggested requirements for XP)




This of course made my head echo with questions I have been asked recently.  When are you going to move to 7, everyone says 7 is stable and great you should get it.  My rebuttal was and remains why?  It's new and shiny?  has a cool look?  has nifty new features?  What's wrong with my 9 year old, highly vetted, super patched XP?  Yea yea, MS says they will stop supporting it in June trying to force people to upgrade but we all know thats a bluff.  They can't abandon a large population of users.  Change over will likely be forced only when peripheral manufactures stop writing drivers for XP (bahahaha, never walk away from profit)  So back to whats wrong with XP?  The system I am writing this on is a 5 year old dual core laptop with docking station that supports dual monitors.  Bleeding edge when purchased, now a low end machine.  The funny thing is its been running for five years never having crashed and still the original install.  I only reboot the system when forced to by an upgrade/patch or when on a long trip.  XP has worked flawlessly for me from everyday pedestrian uses to hard core web development.  Periphals have come and gone, extended the wireless with a pcmcia card (hmmm, do laptops still have those?), talks with/coverts with a Nook yada yada yada.  So really whats wrong with XP?  After mac-ifing my father-in-laws computer I did some of it to my computer and tried to see how many cool Win 7 stuff I could jigger into XP... and MS themselves are a big help.  Of course you should do all the updates, which gives you IE8, the most recent media player, silver light yada yada.  Since I use Chrome and a variety of media players this matters not for me but eh.  The desktop search on Win 7 is oh so much better but thats easily added to XP.  A quick download from the MS site and I have the New MS Desktop Search 4.0. Yes yes, Google desktop, but I wanted to go for Win 7 and honestly, I can't believe I'm saying this, Search 4.0 is better.  Aero skins.. no problem with UxTheme patcher. New Task Switcher, stickies and a free pandora app and a few other apps and it looks good.  In the end its not quite Win 7, but pretty darn spiffy for a 9 year old OS that you can easily find for free.  Funny isn't it?

Hey Hey, just get Linux right?  Sorry Linux fans, but XP has tons of free software, every driver you need, large user base yada yada.. and with modern hardware, XP zings along.  If I have ancient hardware I go for the tiny tiny Puppy Linux the fits onto aand can boot from 512MB USB key.

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Google is spreading out into almost every area on the internet these days.  The introduction of Buzz (Google's socialization add to G-Mail) caused me to assess how much Google has slid into my life.

Google basic search is the homepage for my browser (hmmm Chrome, another Google product) Google didn't invent web crawling, indexing and the many other facets of making a search engine.  All they did was make it better at its number one job, find relative stuff on the web for people... oh and provide a simple clean UI.  Google continues to be a leader in its primary function.  Bing is providing a good challenge but I see now compelling reason to switch especially since they have entered and failed so many times in the search field.  Yahoo! is all but dead.  Both Bing and Yahoo have small web 2.0 niceties that I like but these small shinny objects really don't distract me from the fact that their results are not on par with Google.  The search field is pretty incestuous already with each major player pulling on some level from the other.  In Google's case they just buy company X to fill in the designated service gap. (much like Microsoft of yore).

My email all streams through G-Mail.  G-mail is hands down the best web based free email system out there.  Yes yes, some people still use AOL mail, Hotmail yada and yes, people do lots of stupid things out of habit, fear of change and/or ignorance.  Email is still the killer application of the web (sorry twitter fans, you don't even come close) This means whether computer or mobile based, email becomes the primary goto for the majority of users.

An so the sucking sound can begin..because once you logged into one system why go else where for services?  I need a calendar that can be shared with the family and accessed from multiple devices, no problem, Google has it.  I need MS Office functionality but I don't want to buy it/deal with it, no problem G-docs does all and files can be easily accessed from any connected device.  Organize the blogs, news and other feeds I like to read... yup there is G-reader.  Leaving comments on  the stuff you read, no problem just use your universal Google login.  Photos, youtube, blogger, shopping, voice... its all there tightly organized, no annoying flash ads, one login and down right zippy compared to other providers.

All of these services are of course an outlet for Google's #1 revenue stream, Ad-sense.  This is the cornerstone of their success and why it will be tough to challenge them no matter how many agreements other service make with each other.  The only glaring need that Google hadn't filled was a social connection like Facebook, linkedin etc etc... and hence why I stopped and assessed Google's "control" of my internet life.

Google entry into the social frey is Buzz, which is tightly integrated into G-mail. Orkut you say. no no thats a community builder and is an entirely different beast.  When I go to a community about (insert favorite hobby) you likely don't know everyone there, don't want to.  Its merely a great place to expand your knowledge, help other people, ask questions and possibly find people you like.  Once you've made a connection with people the conversation then moves to a more one to one system. (messages, email, IM, phone etc).  Wave?  no no wave is a collaboration tool.  This is for project groups that need to work closely together on objects.  These could be "friends" but likely not.  Buzz is Facebook without all the annoying games and a different class of users.  Facebook is everyone and grandma too which is great for some people.. Buzz, well I don't expect non-savy users to find it anytime soon, and thats a good thing.

The crown for the G-kingdom is its new browser Chrome.  Fast, clean, add ons, optimized for Google services... If your using G-mail, G-docs or something else why not move to the Chrome browser that is optimized for them, and renders just as fast or faster than other main stream browsers.  IE is dead to me, and firefox is still installed but doesn't get used.  The gem in the crown will be the Chrome OS that will finally realize an OS based solely around a browser (not a new idea... Google will just make it better and viable).

Wait wait stop..what about Zoho??  Zoho is awesome you say.  Why yes it is... but its not entirely free and honestly its services are slow.  What happens to your data when this India based company shuts its doors, scales back or gets gobbled up?  Personally, I'm not worried about Google closing shop and again like MS or yore, Google is grabbing all the good ideas they can find and implementing them.  They with the most staying power will ultimately prevail.

Google has me in its tentacles for better or worse.  I didn't even touch on Android based phones and the integration into these services... don't even have to pay for an app. They are the new MS.  Do you switch or hope Word Perfect stays in business?

Ad-sense, privacy and other fears.... for a later day.

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