Day one with the new printer is done and overall I’m very pleased. While I bought the printer from my local Apple reseller, TRG in Aurora, it was delivered direct from Xerox by Purolator. The driver got the box to the front hall and I took it from there. The printer weighs about 60 pounds so once it was on the stand it was simply connecting power and Ethernet. Then I loaded the wax ink blocks into the proper trays (impossible to mess this up) and fired it up. I then put the install CD in the Mac Pro and launched the installer. It discovered the printer on the network without issue and installed the drivers and configured the connection. The test print failed from the installer software but one launched from the print queue directly worked perfectly. I then ran Apple’s Software Update and it fed me new drivers automatically.

The printer is nearly silent unless printing and consumes little power at idle. It generates a bit of heat because it keeps the wax liquid, but no worse than a colour laser. Print quality is incredible, better than any colour laser I’ve seen using toner and nearly as tight as a photographic inkjet printer. Paper handling so far has been trouble free.

What is amazing is how fast this thing is. I have been using an older Minolta QMS Magicolor 2210 for a few years and while it’s been a good unit it’s starting to go through parts. I was becoming frustrated with it because graphics rich PDFs or Keynote presentations were taking a long time to print. I ran a 20 page analyst report, double sided, through the Xerox and had beautiful rich output in under a minute. The colours are bright and snappy, the tables are sharp and the charts just pop.

The unit uses wax blocks with excellent longevity in four colours, black, cyan, magenta and yellow. You buy block kits like toner. The colour kits include 3 blocks and the black kit comes with six blocks. Each kit is about $140 from Xerox (cheaper from Amazon) and delivers several thousand pages. Xerox posts all in prices per page of from 2.9 cents for a business letter to 25 cents for a full blown graphics page. Their models include all the consumables not just the ink, so a fairly accurate overall costing in my opinion. Prints last well but could fade in sunlight according to my research.

The only issue I ran into with the unit had to do with the Windows 7 driver install. I tried the install both from the CD and from Xerox’s Web site. It took a really long time to discover the printer and when it installed the management console something caused the printer to freeze. Since this happened more than once and only when I tried to get the Windows 7 drivers working, I think that the problem is related to the driver. I’ll try again without installing the console since it seems of little use anyway. It’s not a big deal for me because we’re finally all Mac here at the castle, except for the test machines needed for Windows and Linux.

This is only the first day so stay tuned for further updates, but so far I’m very pleased.

In my recent post about ninite.com, I made mention of a similar service with a larger list of apps called AllMyApps.  I said I didn’t care for it and explained that my reasons were partly because of the need to install a client, but mostly due to what I felt was phishing behaviour or bouncing me around in the hope I would click on the wrong download link.  That’s the kind of behaviour that makes me nuts.  I should have been clearer that the second set of issues had everything to do with the app download site and not with the AllMyApps application.

I was very impressed to receive a direct message within a couple of days from one of the folks who build AllMyApps.com explaining their philosophy and asking my help in identifying the apps that annoyed me, and therefore had a negative effect on my perception of their service.  This is indicative of a very professional group and the fact that instead of being defensive, the person was so engaging, I agreed to go back and share with them what annoyed me.  Their model is that if one of the apps does something outside their rules, it gets dumped from the list.  I really appreciated the fellow’s concern about customer satisfaction.

So while I am not a fan of installing client software for web oriented services, I am changing my tune on the service itself.  A group that shows this much interest in doing a great job and listening to their customers has the right attitude and so I do suggest that if you have an app install requirement, go have a look.  AllMyApps.com supports Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.  They also have apps for the Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10 distro builds.  Readers know that my preference is SUSE but I have to give these folks credit for leveraging their talent to populate apps into Ubuntu.  WORTH A LOOK.

Further update.  Since receiving the very courteous email from the people at AllMyApps, I did another complete test on the Windows 7 machine.  While I am a bit frustrated by some of the machinations employed by some of the app providers, the updated interface and ease of use raises my review of AllMyApps to RECOMMENDED

So you got a new Windows machine, or you’re doing a migration to Windows 7. Trust me, the last thing you want to o is migrate old apps to a new machine. You want a clean install. But getting all your key apps from all those places you downloaded them from is a pain.

Not with ninite. It’s a really simple service. Go to Ninite.com and select the apps you want from the simple graphic table. Then click the Install button. Ninite builds a custom download and installer for you that downloads. You run the executable and it installs the apps, but leaves no footprint of itself or phone home annoyances behind. I compared this with a similar service called AllMyApps that lists many more apps. I prefer Ninite because I like keeping the amount of dreck to a minimum plus AllMyApps installs its own client and some of the downloads lead you through a number of scam and phishy sites. So I don’t recommend AllMyApps at all. Ninite is simple clean and effective.

The selection of apps is sufficient for most needs including Office apps, image manipulators, antivirus and malware protection, browsers, utilities, and very useful services like Dropbox, Evernote, Google Earth and KeePass.

Even if you think you have all the core apps you need, it’s worth your time to look at Ninite. I discovered it only before the holidays and used it during that week of fixing family and friend’s computers. Big time savings and reduced hassles. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

You know you want to participate in the Twitterverse, but you run Windows and the Twitter apps you’ve looked at all leave you cold. They aren’t creating a lot of value for you.

Enter Blu. It’s from a neat company called thirteen23 They build utilities for Windows and Blu, as you will have guessed by now is their Twitter client. The web page says it is the Twitter client for Vista and I guess both people who run Vista are pretty excited. Fortunately Blu also runs on Windows 7 and does so wonderfully. thirteen23 does some other neat stuff but their killer app is Blu.

One of the things that challenges me with Twitter is that I’ll get a reply to something I posted but the reply doesn’t pull together the entire conversation, so I have to hunt for it. Blu does this automatically. Want to reply, DM, or retweet? Blu makes it simple, just click the reply and the original tweet flips over to give you an entry box. Could not be simpler.

Adding shortened URLs is easy with no buttons or sites to select, it’s automatic. You may have seen apps that run out of Twitter api uses pretty quick. That’s annoying. Blu stays on the mark so just scroll for more tweets. It’s so good I wish it had a Mac version. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Browser syncing is not a new idea, and many browsers provide a means to keep themselves in sync across different computers. I’ve standardized on Chrome on my Windows machines and still move around between Safari and Chrome on my Macs and use Firefox on the Linux machines. Xmarks is a tool to keep your browser bookmarks in sync across machines and across browsers. So far it’s really working well. It’s been updated significantly since my last foray and while I still will not use it’s password sync function since I don’t have the time to fix it if it breaks again, the browser sync does what I need.

Installation is simple. Go to the Xmarks site and click on the browser you are using. This will prepare and run the installer for the browser you are using. Then follow the prompts to create an account if you do not have one, or sign in to your existing account and then perform the sync and you are set. Let the browser remember your identity and it will keep your browser in sync transparently.

One trick I use is that I go to the machine with the authoritative source of bookmarks if I have a so-called “master” and perform a one time sync to overwrite the server from my master. Then as I set up new machines and browsers I select the Advanced tab after signing in and force an overwrite of the local bookmarks from the server. You could of course sync them all up and then make your changes on one machine so it uploads automatically and then syncs to all your other browsers, but I had already gone through the work of creating a master and I did not want to go through it again. Plus some browsers come pre-configured with a bunch of craptastic links and I didn’t want to have to wade through them with the delete key. Can you hear me Internet Explorer?

The current release as of this post of Xmarks is excellent if you work with more than one machine or more than one browser. RECOMMENDED

Mice are integral to our use of computers but in my own experience a bad mouse can make your day go poorly and even cause you physical pain. Earlier this year, I switched from the Apple Mighty Mouse on my Mac Pro to the Logitech MX Revolution. For general use, I think that this mouse is the best one on the market. It’s not cheap, being priced around $130 CDN at retailers and on the web. It’s no longer a current release from Logitech but they still exist out there and it has more functionality than the model that replaces it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

New up for me this year is the Logitech MX Air. I wanted a mouse that could be used as a presenter controller since my venerable Logitech Wireless presenter stopped working when I upgraded my Macs to Snow Leopard. The MX Air literally works in the air, allowing pointer movement and clicks without having to rest on a specific surface. The buttons are fully programmable and my only missing wish is side to side scrolling as it only has controls for vertical scrolling. Like the Apple Magic Mouse, the top is touch sensitive so there is less actual clicking to be done when scrolling. Expensive at around $200 CDN. RECOMMENDED

Next up is the Logitech Performance Mouse MX. This is the follow-on to the MX Revolution and offers pretty much the same set of functionality. The MX had two scroll wheels, one on top and one on the thumb side. The Performance Mouse MX eschews the second scroll wheel for a surface button on the top of the lower edge where your thumb falls. I set this mouse up on my Windows 7 desktop and use this button for the Aero window selector and it works well for this. On the Revolution I used the wheel to activate OS X screen management functions so it was pretty simple. There is a simpler button to control the gearing function for the main scroll wheel making clicking the scroll wheel another programmable action. This mouse uses Logitech’s new DarkField technology so it tracks on pretty much any surface. Around $100 CDN. Includes the new Logitech UNIFY connector technology.RECOMMENDED

The next mouse from Logitech is the VX Revolution. Like the MX Revolution, this one is no longer current in the line but is found in retailers and online still. I’ve had mine about six months and it is the default mouse for my Acer AspireOne as I really don’t care for the trackpad on that machine. Very programmable and easy to use, the smaller size makes it convenient for the Netbook. Lots of buttons and easily customized. Works very well with Windows 7 Home Premium on this machine. Last seen at $60 CDN. RECOMMENDED

When this little guy appeared it sold for over $100 CDN which is a lot of money for a notebook mouse but now you can find the no longer current line VX Revolution online and in stores for around $55 CDN. It’s very small and has the first generation Logitech USB stub receiver that you can leave in your USB port all the time. Ideal for notebooks and Netbooks, it takes up little bad space and is very customizable. Small enough for an airline tray, back when you could actually get your notebook open back in steerage. You probably wouldn’t want to use this as your primary mouse, especially if you have big hands as I do, but for short term use or as an alternative to lousy trackpads, it’s great. I use them with my MacBook Pro and the Dell Mini 9 all the time. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

VMware is well known for its enterprise class virtualization solutions and of course as noted previously here at thehumantouch.ca for VMware Fusion the awesome virtualization application for OS X. But long before Fusion there existed VMware Workstations and those of us who have had to build complex demonstrations involving multiple servers and workstations have used VMware Workstation to accomplish these goals.

With Version 7 of VMware Workstation, the VMware team have made an excellent product even better. It runs on both the Windows and the Linux platforms. The new version is fully tested on Windows 7 and even offers DirectX 9.0c Shader 3 and openGL 2.13D graphic support in virtualized Windows machines. It also supports the Aero graphics routines in vm’d Windows 7 implementations. It continues to support a wide variety of Windows and Linux guests and I have yet to be unsuccessful in building a VM of anything that could be installed natively on an Intel processor (excluding OS X of course) with VMware.

If you are doing any kind of development work, well you probably aren’t reading this site, but in case you are, the new version integrates directly with Eclipse, Visual Studio and Springsource for app development and debugging. Virtualization is a great way to test the execution of your app on multiple platforms without building up a lot of physical hardware.

VMware Workstation costs about $190 USD but there are promos running from time to time where you can save money. If you don’t need to build VMs, just to run an existing one, such as the prebuilt machines in the VMware marketplace, you can also get VMware Player as a free download. Recommended

Microsoft has made the beta of Office 2010 available via a number of different channels. The shipping product for PCs running Windows is Office 2007. This was the first iteration of the ribbon interface and a very different look and feel for Office as well as the first instantiation of The Soft One’s open XML files format. In fairness Office 2007 works fine with the old file formats that are the default for a gazillion docs out there already, but MS is trying to be more open and that’s not bad at all. That said, I simply could not get my head into Office 2007. It was powerful, feature rich, and worked decently enough. Office is an established brand and drives good revenue to Microsoft but it is a stable offering and respectfully a lot of money when you can get OpenOffice that does 90% of what Office does with a very similar UI to Office 2003 for free. The ribbon required a lot more retraining for folks than was expected and in 2010 Beta, MS has made real efforts to make the ribbon interface much easier to use. Good on them for that. Unfortunately the suite is not smaller or lighter than its predecessor, although in fairness this is a beta, and hopefully it will slim down by the first customer ship date. Overall I think that they’ve done a really nice job so far. I’m not yet sure that the web versions of the apps are strong enough to beat Google or at least not yet. I was also disappointed with Outlook as it is bigger than in the past and while I can see an individual wanting direct integration to Facebook and Twitter, this will give enterprise architects serious concerns about security and user focus. Office 2010 in beta is definitely worth a look whether you are an individual user or a corporate IT professional. Now if MS could only update Office for Macintosh with the long promised macro support so the 2008 version wasn’t something you want to pat on the head in sympathy.

I hear a lot that Windows 2000 was the last good version of Windows. Up until the release of Windows 7 I would have to agree. XP looked like it was designed by Fisher Price, who do great work but are not a leader in operating systems, and Vista was, well until the last service pack, it was like Vger from Star Trek the Movie (4 out of 5 sucking chest wound rating) and the reason I kept referring to it as Veester.

Well we’re a month post release of Windows 7. Updates post release have been minor, and while it is highly unlikely I will ever make a switch from OS X to Windows as my production environment, W7 is superb. Many folks that I respect greatly have made the same determination. Where running Vista was like removing your own appendix with only a jackknife, a bottle of Vodka and a hand mirror, Windows 7 has been a no pain zone for me. I have done clean installs and using tips from Ed Bott and Paul Thurrott done upgrades from the RTM releases and have not had any issues so far, even when running it on old junk like the IBM Thinkpad X41, a previously documented piece of crap that left the factory with an 80% lobotomy. Windows 7 just works, and even the tablet services are so usable, you actually enjoy using them.

I found a badly beaten Dell C400 in a box and will try W7 on this ancient critter that was born in the days before laptop builders understood the concept of “wireless” I think it will be faster than the Windows 2000 that is on the ginormous 30GB hard disk. Why will I do this? I actually believe that Windows 7 will run better on this aged machine that was pretty darn cool when it was born.

I have also done VM implementations of Windows 7 using VMware’s excellent Fusion 3 and they work flawlessly. In fairness I didn’t keep them running because I was doing an experiment only and dont’t own enough licenses to keep all this stuff live and running.

Congrats to the Windows 7 team, great work! And if you are going shopping for the holidays and some dorkstick offers you a Vista machine because “it’s really the same”, run do not walk from that establishment and go somewhere where they sell machines with Windows 7 preinstalled. You do not want XP and you definitely don’t want Vista.

In my world you really want a Mac, but Windows 7 is wicked good if you tend to fall that way.

Credit for this tip has to go to Tekzilla from Revision3. If you are a Windows user and want a simple and free way to build panorama photos, Image Composite Editor from Microsoft Research is a really elegant solution.

Downloads are available in 32bit and 64bit versions. There’s no official support but there is a user forum that is pretty good. ICE allows you to insert a bunch of digital photos and line them up together as a long form panorama, and then intelligently stitches them together. You can adjust how the photos appear (projection) and the automated functions also map exposure and maximize the image size.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/