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It’s May 31 and I’ve had my Mac for one month. This is my report. I HAVE: 1. Upgraded OS X from 10.3 to 10.4. I slept thru it. a. Done no OS X configuration other than screen saver and wallpaper. Moved the ‘Dock’ or task bar. b. No security add ons. c. Upgraded to 10.4.1. Seamless. Painless. But, yes, it does require a reboot. 2. Installed a "legal copy" of MS Office for Mac. a. Macros in Office apps. From everything I have seen and heard from my new 108,745 close personal friends, OS X viri in the wild...

Even though I am a security guy, my day-to-day work is pretty much like everyone else’s. I live on laptops and use my desktops at home and the office for geeking and experimenting. My pair of day-to-day laptops (Mac and Vaio XP Pro) are religiously backed up and so are my business machines. I don’t need them to do a whole lot – except reliably work, and that is why I am so damned aggravated with WinTel. (My Dell/Linux is for fun when I have the time, and to determine when it would be safe for OO.o to go Prime...

A couple of weeks after its unveiling, the budget-priced Mac mini has begun shipping. Targeted at would-be switchers and “adders,” the mini is easily the lowest-priced Mac desktop ever. There are always Mac owners who are looking to upgrade older equipment or looking to own a small form factor Mac. Many of those have snapped up Mac minis. However, some of the new Mac mini owners are Windows or Linux users who have always wanted to fool around with Mac OS X, but have been turned off by the Apple’s price structure. A dual-CPU G5 tower will set you back...

Sidebar: The iPod Factor FEBRUARY 28, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Apple's recent emphasis on consumer gadgets and services such as the iPod and iTunes are boosting its position in the home computing market. According to research by Minneapolis-based financial services firm Piper Jaffray & Co., 6% of Windows users who bought iPods have switched to Macs, and 7% more plan to make the jump. Kim Vichitrananda, a desktop support engineer at The Dallas Morning News, says the iPod helps Apple not only in the market, but with its bottom line, as it did in the most recent quarter, when Apple reported...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - State transportation officials faced intense questioning Tuesday over their proposal to replace the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with a structure that is less spectacular but presumably less expensive than the badly over-budget project currenty planned. Will Kempton, director of the California Department of Transportation, attempted to persuade skeptical lawmakers to scrap the approved design - a so-called single-tower suspension bridge - and instead complete the two-mile span with a towerless concrete skyway. "We need to get a seismically safe bridge built as soon as possible," Kempton told lawmakers at the Senate Transportation Committee...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

ATLANTA - Party switching used to be a risky business in Georgia. Now some politicians see it as a key to survival. "If you're in the minority and from rural Georgia, you're not going to have very much of a say in the legislative process," said Rep. Chuck Sims of Douglas, one of the most recent in a fairly long - and perhaps growing - list of Democrats who suddenly have turned Republican. Sims took the plunge Monday along with Rep. Hinson Mosley of Jesup, who held onto his House seat by only about 220 votes after a fierce challenge...

My friends are scratching their heads these days and staring blankly at me. For the benefit of those that don't know me, let me tell you a brief story. I am married to Microsoft. I have been married to Microsoft for the better part of 15 years. It began when I became a Windows 2.0 (286/386) programmer. I have been using SQL Server since it was owned by Sybase (and Ashton Tate, but we won't go there). I have written seminars for Microsoft, spoken internationally for them at their events, written training and shot video tapes on Microsoft C/C++, MFC,...