NY residents - call to action

Here's a call to action for all you New Yorkers - please repost! (I'm sure most of you have already taken action, but this is just in case...)

The NY Senate is going to vote on the marriage equality bill soon, and Governor Paterson has vowed to sign it. But a handful of senators are still sitting on the fence, and yours might be one of them. Even if your state senator supports marriage equality, it is important that they hear from constituents that they are doing the right thing – opponents of marriage equality are trying to convince them otherwise.

Will you tell your state senator to vote YES on marriage equality? Here's a link to an action page with a pre-written message – simply enter your name and address and click "send message," and an email goes to your state senator automatically:

http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/nysenatemarriage?source=200906_adv_ny_taf

If you want to make even more of a difference, you can call your state senator at 518-455-2800.

And be sure to send this to everyone else you know in New York.

The Mac/PC wars redux

A question came up on another list today, and rather than respond there (since this topic isn't really related to that group) I decided to comment here.

If you have been a Mac user forever, and you have a modern Mac, and you want to run Windows applications, I can't think of any reason you'd buy a PC. You can install Parallels (or VMWare, or any other virtualization package) and run a copy of Windows on the Mac.

If you have a PC, and want to move to a Mac because it's a cool machine, or it has software or features you want and don't have on your PC, then again, I don't see why not.

But what about a life-long PC user with a large investment in Windows software who needs a new computer? Why would they move to a Mac? The faithful on both sides can argue about ease of use, system crashes, viruses etc. But if you've been using a PC happily until now, and just need a new machine, what would push you over the edge?

The argument I hear most often from Mac fans is that you should buy a Mac, then install Parallels, then install Windows, then install all your PC apps on the Mac. That'll work for sure (and may even give a performance boost over your current system), but the fact is if you are already happy with a PC, you will be paying a heavy price premium for a Mac to do the same work. Not only will you end up paying more for the base equipment, you'll also have to buy the Parallels software, AND a full license for Windows. Windows Vista retails at $250, and Parallels at $80; that's an additional $330 on top of the cost of the Mac itself.

And don't think about copying the Windows environment from your old PC. That's not legal. Windows is almost always installed on PCs under an OEM agreement that restricts that copy of the OS to that one hardware platform. Yes, technically you might be able to do it (though you'll have to get around Microsoft's anti-piracy software checks), but you would be infringing Microsoft's copyright.

Personally, I wouldn't mind having a Mac. I wouldn't even mind migrating to one as my primary machine; but there is no cost-justification for doing so. I can replace my current computer with a very capable Windows machine for about $1,000. I'll have 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, fast dual monitor support, and a quad-core processor. To get the same type of configuration on a Mac, I'm looking at either an iMac ($1,500) or a Mac Pro ($2500) - and I'll still have to add $330 worth of software in order to use my PC applications. For the moment, I think my next machine will be another PC.