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Windows 8 looking good

I was an Apple guy for years, but the company gradually lost me. My old eMac started out fast and furious, but gradually got slower and more prone to crashing.

I was an Apple guy for years, but the company gradually lost me. My old eMac started out fast and furious, but gradually got slower and more prone to crashing. It became impossible to upgrade software past a certain point, which meant I couldn't use various browsers and software I liked - a compatibility issue that people who bought Windows XP computers at around the same time have never had. There was a whole big jump from their "G" line of processors to Intel that that caused a lot of headaches at home and at work, and that made files incompatible from one program to another.

All that has been sorted out more or less by attrition - essentially throwing out old computers that still work fine for most things and starting over with new ones.

In the past I have also had issues with pricing, with iTunes, with memory (my work iMac came with a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a measly 1 MB of memory). I find the whole "cult of Mac" thing a little creepy.

But while I'm off the bandwagon, I have to give the company props for what they did with the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac, App Store, etc.

There's a good chance that I'll be buying a tablet in the next six months or so to replace the iPod Touch that my daughter decided to wash because the screen is dirty, and I will seriously consider the iPad 2 - though I won't actually buy it, it's overpriced and lacking in the hardware and port department, not to mention downright hostile to Flash, but I'll seriously consider it.

What I'm really waiting for is Windows 8 - an update to the Windows 7 operating system that I love more than I thought was possible as a former Mac owner, that has been optimized to run on tablets.

Last week Microsoft showed off Windows 8 at D9, and early reviews are generally positive. Basically, it's a fully featured version of Windows 7 with thousands of upgrades and improvements including a new interface that is tablet friendly - very similar to the well-regarded interface of Windows Phone 7. You can also toggle between the traditional view with the Start menu and Taskbar and the tablet view on any device.

While Apple, Android, Blackberry and WebOS have a huge head start on Microsoft in the tablet market, Microsoft won't take too long to catch up after release in early 2012. Over 90 per cent of computers in the world are PCs and a Windows 8 tablet would be compatible with all of them.

A big selling point is that you can run pretty much any PC software on a Windows 8 tablet that your system specs allow. That includes fully featured Windows Office, which comes in handy if it's what you use at work.

For another, Windows already has a massive built-in developer base - and they're making app development as easy as possible by using all the same programming languages that developers are already using for Windows, plus Java and HTML 5 - the most commonly used languages out there.

In the end, my decision will be influenced by hardware and price but the most important thing will be software. Water-resistant would also be a strong selling point.

 

Back to School...

Speaking of the Cult of Mac, I had the joy of visiting an Apple store recently during the Back to School rush, and it was insane - not so much that a computer store would be busy, but that people were willing to pay so much for laptops.

If you have the money then by all means buy an Apple. They are very good and regularly top the review lists.

But consider that you can almost buy comparable computers from other manufacturers at a much lower price. At the Apple store, $1,250 buys you a 13-inch MacBook Pro. The 15-inch model is $1,850.

Go to Dell.ca and you could get a top-of-the-line XPS 15z with a faster processor, larger hard drive, arguably better HD screen, better speakers, double the memory and a speedy dedicated graphics card for gaming for $1,350.

In fact, I'd recommend looking at comparable laptops from HP, Samsung, Toshiba, Gateway, Asus, etc. before you buy a Mac. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

The money you save can be put towards some other back to school technology that you'll need, like a wireless mouse (all touch pads are annoying), a good laptop case and bag, a back-up solution like an external hard drive and a good set of external speakers so you can use your laptop for movies, games, music and other multimedia (I recommend getting the Logitech Lapdesk N550 which comes with speakers and a laptop tray to prevent you from cooking your legs, and the Creative Gigaworks T20 series).

Some other items you might want to consider include a Livescribe Smartpen (www.livescribe.com, $100), which helps record your pen strokes and even sounds as you take notes, a backpack with a built-in solar panel to help recharge your laptop and gadgets, a USB battery and memory backup (check out www.usbcell.com) and a wireless laser printer. Laser printers are bulkier than inkjet varieties, but they will cost you less in ink.