• It works. My Macbook Pro works. OSX works. I cannot state how amazing it is to work on a machine that has never crashed. I have never gotten a blue screen or red ring or any other color screen of death. It has never had to be hard rebooted (where you hold the power button down for a few seconds to turn it off) or rebooted for odd behavior.

• A couple days ago, I had my first experience where my Macbook did something odd. It had a very strong red hue to it. I moved the monitor back and forth, and the screen corrected itself. When it did it again, I took out my camera and made a video of it. I did a quick Google search, and it appeared to be a cable issue. This morning, I went online to apple, made an appointment for an hour later, and showed up for my appointment time. They were running a bit late. My appointment was for 11:15 and I ended up getting helped at about 11:30. I showed the video to the genius bar guys. He immediately said it looked like a cable issue and he would reseat the cable and see if that fixes the problem. He also ordered a replacement part just in case this did not solve the problem. He took my phone number so he could call me when the part comes in and see if I still needed it to be replaced. He gave me a receipt showing what he ordered, reseated the cable, and let me go on my way. It did not cost anything because it is still within warranty I was there for about 45 minutes. So far the issue has not come back, however, it has only been a few hours. Also, the people there were really nice. At no time did they try to make me feel rushed or that I was a bother and they rather be focusing on sales.

• Update from the bullet above: Apple called me on Saturday. They had over nighted the part to be delivered on a Saturday, so it could be fixed as soon as possible. I took my computer back in on Tuesday. They did not have enough people there at the time to fix it while I waited. So I left it with them from 10:30 until 12:45. It is now working perfectly again. That is great service. The problem is not even that severe. I was told this part they replaced was $600 and it was covered under the standard 1 year warranty. This had made me really consider getting the extra 350 dollar warranty to extend the warranty for a total of 3 years (an extra 2 pass the 1 year included warranty). Also the problem really appears to be fixed.

• There are apple stores all over. It is so incredibly nice to just be able to walk into one with a question. They can fix a lot on site while you wait. No sending you parts for you to install or asking you to do a bunch of diagnostics to figure out the problem.

• The sales experience was great. I have bought and helped people buy 100s of computers. I have gone with people to Best Buy and Fry‘s, ordered online with dell and other manufactures, online at merchants like tiger direct, and been called with someone in tears at trying to set a computer up. So many places focus on up selling and don’t really understand what they are selling. I mean seriously 500 dollar laptops with 2GB of memory to run Vista???? That is just not powerful enough to fun Vista the way it is meant to be run. It is no wonder so many people hated Vista, they were sold computers that really had no business running Vista. I went to the Mac store and talked to multiple sales people for hours before I bought asking 100s of questions. I actually stumped even their most technical people and we all got online and started and they worked and researched until they found the answer. They never rushed me. Never tried to sell me another device (ipod, a new monitor for my laptop to plug into, etc). They did offer me a free printer (with rebate). When I asked about software such as Parallels, Office for Mac, iLife, and iWork, they were knowledgeable. They did not take that opportunity to try to sell me software I never asked about. I cannot express how nice it was to not feel like I was just a dollar sign. Not once did I feel they were trying to snow me into doing what they wanted that was not in my best interest. And now that I have a lot more experience, I know they didn’t.

• OK, I said it once, but really, it bears repeating, my Macbook works.. It really just works.

• I only turn it off for the night about once every 2 or 3 weeks. It is so nice to leave open everything I am working on, so I don’t have to take the 10 minutes to close everything down and shut it off, and start everything back up and open every doc and every program again every day. I just put the computer to sleep at night and wake it up in the morning.

• Not a single OS update, or upgrading my OS from leopard to snow leopard has caused a problem. Not even a little problem.

• No application update (example iphoto or itunes) has caused any problems with the system or the data.

• Time machine.. an awesome backup utility. MS backup and restore programs are a joke at best.

• Built in programming languages. It is great to have at my finger tips the ability to program in perl, php, ruby, python, shell script, and many others. No extra programs to load and having to worry about nonnative platform issues. This comes in handy for me all the time.

• A shell with root access. Seriously, this is one of the most awesome creations ever. Sliced bread has nothing on this. For those of you who are not Linux users, a shell is a very powerful tool that can make life so much easier for computer savvy people.

• Apple’s website has all sorts of web videos on how to do things if you are new to them.

• Full screen view in journal programs (many programs have this, Mac journal for one). Literally, my whole screen right now is black with bright green letters – no dock, no menu bar, nothing. Great to just sit and write without being distracted by chat, email, stumble, and other activities. This is something I don’t think I could ever live without again.

• So much is already integrated into the OS. The average user has a lot less they need to download and buy. It has itunes for music, preview to see docs, garage band, iphoto, time machine to do backups, and a whole host of other apps. If I were to set this up for one of my non technical family members or friends they would only need a couple other applications for their daily work (MS office being the main one).

• MS office is cheaper for Mac at about $100. I bought iWork when I bought the computer and it was only $49. Both of those are full versions, not upgrade prices. Typical MS Office with all the trimmings can be over $700.

• Spotlight is awesome. Hit command space bar and start typing. You can look up a work in the dictionary, open a file, or do a math problem. I use this mostly to open programs and docs. There is also Quicksilver, a free small program that is much more powerful but does similar things such as open programs but also has the ability to run commands.

• The dashboard appears and disappears with a quick hit to F3. It tells me the time, date, weather, the song that is playing on itunes, and a host of other information. I use this most for the temperature and the date.

• Growl notifications

• Built in ISO burning. No more 3rd party programs like Nero for that.

• My keyboard auto brightens and dims when as the light conditions change in the room.

• OSX is very user friendly. Insanely user friendly. I think puppies could use it to find other puppy play mates. Some friends of mine bought 2 new Macs and one new PC – all laptops. They had never used a Mac before and were PC users. They are power users compared to most but not tech geeks or programers. Both Macs they get setup and working within a few minutes. Even got them on the wireless network I set up for them. The PC no such luck. I ended up on the phone for over an hour helping just get it online. When I changed some minor settings on my local network, it took me an hour per PC to get them back on correctly, and less then a minute on my Mac. I put a friend on front of my computer who never used Mac before and they were up and running in no time. This same person has cried in front of their computer.

• Mutitouch scrolling. Being able to sit with my laptop and scroll down a webpage just by brushing 2 fingers down the pad. With Windows I have to use a mouse or I am just frustrated by the amount of time it takes. I still like my mouse at my desk, but it is not as big of a deal to be without it.

• My laptop is just plain sexy. Thin, sleek, and eye candy. It is at least 3 or 4 pounds lighter then my superpowered dell laptop, but it is heaver then it looks.

• The little things Mac has that just make it easier to use. For example, the power plug into the computer is magnetized so it clicks into place and stays in place. It has a dot that glows green when it is charged and orange when it is charging.

• I used to start my windows PC, walk away and wash my breakfast dishes, and it would be finished booting when I came back. To shut down and reboot takes about 2 minutes. What takes me longer is closing everything and opening everything back up. I keep a lot of things open. Since I usual just put my Mac to sleep, it is under 3 seconds from sitting at my desk to being able to work.

• Programs load much faster compared to XP and Vista.

• 8 months later, my computer boots and loads programs just as fast as it did on day one. I will be very interested to see if this keep up as time goes on since this is a huge issue with windows.

• All the ports on the side so they are easy to get to. No having to put the monitor down (close the computer) to easily reach behind the computer to plug and unplug. Of course this machine has fewer ports then my Dell.

• Owning a Mac is like owning a Prius or an Amazon Kindle, everywhere I go that people see it, they want to talk about it. It is kinda fun usual since I love my toys! Today at the Apple store, I had 3 people stop to talk to me about my kindle. I was reading while they reseated the cable.

• Mac is less customizable then Windows, but it has most of the important things like being able to customize the desktop, screensaver, what programs boot when you login, time, date, etc. These options flow a lot better and are much easier to find. I have never had to hunt through the system preferences to change things. There are also quite a few free programs to add more system preferences if it does not do something you want. For me, it works just fine the way it is.

If I had to pick my top 3 awesome things they would be:
• It works. How easy it just works and does not crash, and help is close if needed.I

• Build in programming languages and shell.

• Speed of how fast programs load, and how fast I get to start working in the morning.

My top 3 cons of my Mac are:
• No built in autocorrect. That fact I had to buy a 40 dollar program (Spell Catcher) to not drive myself nuts. I got spoiled writing long docs in The Journal, Word, and Outlook. The good news is, if you write mostly in MS Office for Mac, then you will have MS autocorrect in those programs. I suspect as I get Spell Catcher working the way I want I will soon forget how annoying this was.

• The battery life is just so little compared to what I am used to and it charges so slow. However, I hear that people who had cheaper laptops before switching to Mac, think this battery life is on par with what they had. (Update: I asked apple to run a test on the battery to see it if was still running OK. The test was covered under warranty. They said nothing was wrong. However, after this test, my battery is working much better.)

• Not being able to switch between different windows of the same program with a universal short cut key. However, I think I found a program that might fix this. So this might stop being an issue. The program is called Witch. So if that is taken out of the running, it is that my phone, the palm pre, does not sync with Mac without a 3rd party program that does not work very well. I realize this is not the OS’s fault, but it is still a drawback.

Regardless of what OS you end up choosing, the real goal is to make it work for you. Find the programs, the settings, and support structure that make it work the way you need it to.
In the end, for me, OSX pros far outweigh the cons. Most of the issues I have with OSX can be fixed with programs. Most of the problems I had with Windows were with the OS itself that no program could fix. So for right now, Mac for me is where it is at. I do however reserve the right to change my mind

Adrienne

Windows does a lot of things I always just took for granted because it was the main OS I used for day to day work (except for command line Linux for some things), and Mac does them very differently if it does them at all.  So here is a list of problems I encountered and what I learned moving from Windows to Mac and what I think about it now.

•    Mac can not natively read external hard drives that had my Windows files on it.  I had to install a program that could mount and read and write NTFS file systems.
•    My phone (Palm Pre) does not sync with Mac without a 3rd party program which costs 40 bucks and works, but is a bit frustrating on occasion.
•    I have an iPod touch and it syncs well with my computer
•    Sucky auto correct if any.  This is a big one for me. OSX has a built in dictionary and spelling that many programs use.  I ended up having to get another 3rd party program, Spell Catcher,  to use for some applications.  For example, i was never corrected to I automatically.  It does not even get red underlined without a 3rd party app.  On top of this, I have switch back and forth between what spelling programs to use as I am writing because other programs like web based input (think twitter and facebook chat) don’t interface well, and all sorts of funky things happen as I type.
•    Little freeware compared to windows freeware.  I ended up buying quite a bit of software to make my Mac usable for how I use it.
•    I still needed anti virus software.
•    I ended up buying Parallels and Windows so I could run some of my old programs like Quicken that doesn’t have good Mac versions.
•    I also ended up not using one of my favorite programs anymore.  The Journal is a great program, but using Parallels to run it is clunky and annoying.  Also using Parallels is a major battery drain, so I only use it when I am plugged in.  Since Parallels uses a lot of system resources to run, I only end up booting it up once in a while then shutting it down again.  There is another app, pretty much a windows emulator, but I found the journal does not work very well with it, the fonts get all messed up, and it takes forever (2 – 6 seconds on average) to change tabs or screens etc. This also meant I had to pull all my data off of those programs that don’t have Mac versions so I could still access it in a new way.
•    I have a 15 inch MacBook pro with all the upgradable options I could get.  It runs HOT compared to my old Dell Precision 17 inch laptop which I had at the same time I had my desktop.
•    The battery life sucks.  My Dell (which was a top of the line Dell) usual lasted for over 3 hours with me programming, surfing the web, etc.  After about 3 hours, I would plug it on and take a break for an hour, and come back and it would be mostly charged again.  Enough for me to work another 2 hours without plugging in.  My Mac book only lasts about 2 hours on a charge and it takes forever to charge.  It charges fast when the battery is very low.  But often takes more then 2 hours, to get the last 20 percent of the battery full.  I timed a complete battery charge after draining it to 1 percent in a little over 2 hours.  It took just over 4 and a half hours to charge.  I asked Mac about that and they said that was normal.  I plan to investigate this more.
•    There are a lot of great programs, many of them are pretty cheap too.  I love Bookpedia, Firefox, Mac Journal (which is the best journaling program I found for Mac but pales in comparison to my old one) … But I hesitate to use some of them because if ever go back to windows, I don’t want to lose all this data I put into proprietary formats.  It was a pain trying to get old data from other programs out.  The same things goes for iPhoto.  You can spend hours using the software to organize your photos, but if you ever switch back to windows you lose it.  Heck, the info does not even stay with the picture when you email it to someone for them to save.
•    Mac does not shot by folders at the top when looking at a folder view.  So I ended up having to redo my folder structures for ease of navigating.
•    All new shortcuts.  It is no longer control C to copy, but command C.  Since I still work on windows I end up hitting the wrong buttons a couple times on each computer when I go back and forth.
•    I have spent hours trying to get my xbox to interface with my Mac but I still have not gotten it to work.  I have tried using Parallels even and other 3rd party software.  I have not given up, but I have spent hours with what took me 30 minutes originally (MS likes MS products it seems )
•    I bought iWork which is Mac version of MS office.  Pages and I fought too much and I ended up just getting MS office for Mac.  I liked some of the other programs, but Pages/Word is what I use the most.  For me, Pages did not have the options I needed.  Not to mention, everyone else I typically send docs to uses word and I was always having to save everything as a word doc anyway.
•    Everything is the same but different.  I don’t have a start bar anymore, I have an apple menu and a dock.  I don’t have a task manager anymore I have an activity monitor.  No more msconfig from a run box, but startup info is kept under accounts (also, most things do not default put crap in there the way it happens on windows).  I can’t just hit the red close button to close an app, the red X in Mac closes the window but leaves the window open which is wonderful for some things like closing 1 word doc, but sucks while I figured that out with firefox since doing that loses all your tabs.  In firefox, you have to close the whole thing for your tabs to be saved next time you start up firefox.
•    There is no remote connection.  I use remote connection a lot to help fix IIS servers and computers.  I now have to use windows in Parallels to do this.  I could not even connect to another Mac to fix my aunts computer when she was having printer problems.
•    Installing software is very different.  Sometimes you just drag an icon to the apps folder and sometimes you actually have to click a couple next.  You always get asks for your password.  It was just a learning curve, but not a bad one.
•    In Windows, you can force your windows to have their own space in the start bar (so if you have 5 word docs open, you see 5 instances of word in the start bar).  So when you use Alt-tab to switch programs, you can change from one word doc to another.  Mac does not do this.  If you have 5 word docs open and you want to go to another one, you cant use alt-tab to do it.  You have to use spaces or expose, or right click on the doc icon or go to the window.  I don’t like these options because I have to take my fingers off the keyboard which slows me down.  Eventually I found a shortcut “command ` “but it does not work with all programs (it does not work with word) and some other programs have yet other short cuts.  I recently found a program called Witch which I am looking into to solve this problem.
•    The blue dot under the program in the doc means the program is open.  To actually close a program, I have to hit command Q.  Originally, I found this odd, but now I really like it.
•    Many programs don’t have the Mac version ready at the same time the Windows version is.  If they even come out with a Mac version.  For example, Google Chrome.  I had been looking forward to trying it for a few months before I switched, and they launched Chrome without a Mac version.

Even with all this, I am glad I switched.  I had to do a lot of googling and there was a step learning curve.  For the average user, there is a small learning curve, but since I like to understand exactly how something works and I want it to work exactly the way I want it to, I had to learn how to do all this on a new OS.
Later this week, I am writing an article of all the awesome things I love about my MacBook and OSX – basically what I miss when I am working on a Windows machine.

Adrienne

I played a lot of online typing games to practice and now I type at around 30 words per minute on this keyboard. Not too shabby but that’s needs to triple for me to not be annoyed when I use it. I think I might write a program that is a game that is meant to learn Dvorak because I couldn’t find any good freeware or shareware for this.

The main trick was giving up QWERTY for a week. That was hard. Once I did this, I now find I can switch back and forth on the keyboards. Now, as I spend more time on the Dvorak, my typing speed is naturally increasing which is nice.

I keep practicing both keyboards because I don’t want to lose my ability to type on either. I am continuing to work on this skill of Dvorak, and so far I am glad I did. I know I try a lot of new things, but this was one of the most frustrating; however, it is rewarding and I like it. So far it is a mixed bag of positives and negatives.

Well, I am going to continue to play with it and hopefully I will see my keyboarding speed ramp up! I want to practice a bit more before I really levy a decision and give a lowdown on the ins, outs, good, bad, frustrations, and hopefully ultimate victory!

Adrienne

For me, its like I lost my ability to communicate. My work does not flow well because I can’t write as fast as my brain thinks, so I go over the sentence again and again in my head until it appears on paper. By the time I get to the end of my sentence, I can’t remember where I was going with it.

Where was I??????

I have a lot more compassion for people as they learn to type. I find myself trying be as concise as possible. I even have cut down on blog posts even tho I spend more time writing them. I have over 10 post that are running tho my head with no outlet. I feel about ready to burst with words. I have started making handwritten notes . I have 600 pages to edit this weekend and about 100 pages to write (not to mention blog posts). If this does not make me a dvorak expert, I don’t know what will.

I think it will be worth it tho. I just need to give up qwerty completely. I feel like an addict. One more email in qwerty… just one more!

I know the layout, it is just getting good at it. So here I go. I am going to try going cold turkey on qwerty. Lets hope I have a slow typing week.

I have a lot of writing to do this week and programming.

Dvorak or bust!

Adrienne

See a picture of the layout

Dvorak layout is supposed to be a great layout to do the following:

Increase typing speed

Increase accuracy

Ease wrist pain

The idea is the more common keys are in the homerow and the most commonly used constants on left hand. There are many tools available on line to show the distance your fingers cover when typing.

There seem to be a lot of evidence to show this is a superior keyboard layout. But as we all know, theories can easily be broken with common application. So how has my common application going?

Well…

It is hard at first, but I do notice my fingers do a lot less jumping all over the keyboard. Typically for me, typing is a reflex; I don’t even think about it. I think a word, and it appears on screen. Now, every letter takes thought. If I didn’t think there was something to this, I would happily go back to not wanting to bang my head against the desk when I have a lot to type.

I am off to go practice more. Hopefully, soon I will be good enough at to give everyone all the gory details.

Adrienne

In all the game searching, I came across a a few websites talking about how much better it is to use dvorak layout instead of the qwerty keyboard. This perked my interested. Many people claimed typing is must faster and much easier using this layout.

For those people who are not geeks reading this, the keyboard layout is what you are typing on. They keys are laid out in a way that says when you hit a button a certain letter or symbol appears on the screen. Well, when you change layouts to dvorak, you hit the “f” and a “u” appears.

Well, sounds interesting to me. I don’t want to learn awhile new keyboard layout, but I am willing to try it. Of course there are many “ridiculous” claims out there saying all sorts of things about the benefits of switching including upping your typing speed, saving your fingers 4 miles of travel a day, less stress on your arms, hands, wrists, and fingers, and a bunch of other stuff.

I did some research and it turns out there is a online place to learn how to do this (besides just switching your keyboard and banding your head against the wall in frustration).

So here is what I am going to do. I am going to practice the new keyboard layout for a couple days, then try and see if I can last all weekend without giving in and see how fast I can adapt and if I see progress in my speed and accuracy. If all goes well, the update I do for this experience will be done on a new keyboard layout. If not, I am willing to give myself a couple weeks to adapt at most… then I wonder I can switch back and forth at will…

Adrienne

Now, I am a geek and this OS installation had be questioning how hard I could hit my head against the wall without permanent injury. I first tried to install the beta, and had little luck. Since GR (general release) of Vista was November, I thought I might as well wait. I loaded Windows 2000 on it and it had some driver issues, but I did not care since I Vista would be out soon. Well, the PC sat there for a couple months on yet more Vista delays. To get to the good part. End of January Vista Ultimate came out.

I bought Vista Ultimate OEM DVD from Tiger Direct and proceeded to install it. It installed without errors. Then I made a fatal mistake… I did windows updates. Blue screen of death.. over and over and over again.

About 2 weeks later, I actually got it installed and it appears to be working ok. I occasionally get the blue screen of death. But this is much better then it was. I am thinking this might end up as a Linux machine. Time will tell.

So that ends the building the PC fun. It was an awesome experience and I am glad I did it again. However for me, I realized I have little use for desktop. Here are some tips for anyone who wants to try this:

1. Don’t use the newest, best hardware out. Drivers are all messed up and it is a headache. All my issues have come from buying the best before the world is ready for it.

2. Vista. Well, as pretty as this is to look at, the jury is still out on it. It needs serious power (which I have) but I am not sure it is worth it.

3. Take your time. Be patient, and make sure all your parts match (example, your motherboard is build for the chip, your memory speed is what your motherboard takes..etc). A little bit of extra research at the beginning will save you a lot of extra time later.

In conclusion. I built this machine for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to see what it was like to have a desktop since I am laptop girl. Two, I wanted to see vista first hand. Three, I wanted to live under the delusion that I have enough free time to get to play some windows video games. Four, it just plain sounded like fun.

I have to say, after this, I appreciate my laptop more then ever. I will stay a laptop girl. I think this PC will just be for games and a music storage device. Now, I have never had the time to play games, maybe now I will get to. I can almost hear Guild Wars calling my name. It was fun. It was interesting. I am glad it is over.

The first thing I have to chose while building a desktop PC is what processor.  Since the processor is the brain of the computer, its speed and abilities are very important.  I took a long hard look at all the processors on the market including those that would be to market soon such as the Intel Conroe.  (Conroe refers to the chipset used in making the chip this is different from the series.  The popular series names are the Intel Pentium.  The series name Conroe belongs in is Core 2).

Intel and AMD are the two most popular manufactures for desktop processors. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses.  I found the easiest way was to figure out what I wanted in a processor then I could find the best processor that fit my criteria.  Here is the list:

• Dual Core
• 2+ GZ
• L2 Cashe 2MB or higher and shared.  (I wanted shared memory for faster access for both cores.)
• 64 bit support (for windows Vista)

Once I had this list, it was pretty easy to knock out 99% of the processors on the market.  I went onto www.newegg.com and www.tigerdirect.com and used their advanced search to look at all the features.  What I found was the was a handful of processors that fit this.  The best being the AMD 64 FX which at the time of this writing is 1200+.

Intel’s Conroe has specs that surpass AMD’s top processors for only around 700 bucks (those are the rumors at this time).  Intel’s best Conroe which will be called the Core 2 extreme is rumored to price at around 1200-1300.

Intel’s chip beats AMDs almost across the board.  The extreme version does beat every other desktop chip on the market.  So I picked the Conroe processor extreme edition.  Will it be worth it?  I think so.

This is nice because it tells me the socket type (775) so know I can pick out a motherboard and pick out all my other components.

So far so good.  I got a couple more books from the library on building computers.  Even though I am a computer guru, I am finding them helpful.  There are some abbreviations I done see often as well as some things to look out for.

The two books I found that were the most helpful are Building a PC for dummies and PC modding for Dummies (I hate the dummy name because anyone who wants to learn something needs to start somewhere.  No one is a dummy for wanting to learn /rant).  Neither of these books were extremely helpful, however they did explain some terminology I don’t use often.

So now on to the picking out other components.  Once the processor is picked out, everything else is much easier.

1. What kind of pc do I want, PC or notebook? For me this is easy. I have a play laptop that is almost 5 years old but it does the job. I have a work laptop which is about a year and a half, and I have a ancient desktop that I use as a test system. What I need is a powerful desktop.

Decision: Desktop

2. Do I want to buy it or build it? This took some research. After looking at lots of sites that specialize in powerful PCs (www.alienware.com and www.abs.com,), I looked at customizable PCs by Dell, HP, and Toshiba. My goal was compare all the sites to what was cheapest, but to get an idea of how much a computer made the way I wanted it would cost. The cost came in close to $4,000 if I bought if from one of these companies. Ouch. So I wandered over to www.newegg.com and www.tigerdirect.com and looked at some pricing for the raw components that I would want. Even with some upgrades that were not available via prebuilt PCs, I still came in under $3000. If I build it close to the specs of a Dell, the cost came in around $2000. The numbers made it easy.

Decision: Build it.

3. How long will this take? Well I am a geek, so I could do this without reading books because I already know a lot about hardware. However, part of the fun of this project is learning. I took a glimpse through my local library’s online catalog and picked 4 books that are the most recent and covered my topic, which was building a powerful desktop PC.

Decision: I figure between the reading, the researching parts, and putting everything together, it will take around 40 hours. This time includes the extra time I will spend reading material online on the subject.

After I decided all this, I started looking online at processors that were available to get an idea and something perfect happened. I have been hearing about Intel’s Conroe for almost 4 months. Conroe is the name given to Intel’s new processor. It is a dual core that has been redesigned from the ground up. Preliminary benchmark testing (testing against other top of the line processors to see how it measures up) found Conroe to be promising. According to Tech news sites, Conroe is thought to launch at the end of July or early August of 2006, however, that has not been confirmed yet.

If the reports are true, this gives me a couple months to get my research done and figure out if Conroe is right for me (AMD vs Intel deals with my processor decision).

I emailed a couple other computer friends of mine (yes computer people can and often do have friends) and asked their opinion. I am sure some of their responses will be interesting.