Mostly: Classical

[Sexton O Blake]

No, I think Kastelco is full-o-.....

Well its Eve of New Years Eve.. so I will let that slide.

Hoof in Mouth..
(A) Ahem, they are speaking of "openoffice". I was speaking of "Star Office" - http://www.staroffice.com/

I would try Open Office with an open mind. Never heard of it until today. I don't have NetNanny but XDandy. It only allows me to visit Investment and Salacious web sites..

Insanity Pricing at Apple.. Everything must go!
(B) I was checking out Apple Canada's Shop.

Their middle/top line systems come with 2x256MB memory (DDR400 memory; PC3200) - for 512MB. To get to "2x1GB" instead, Add $1470. To move to 2GB (so what credit did they give you on the 512MB?. Compare that to my new system - DDR400 PC3200 - Total $400 - mind you that is 4x512MB chips but even 1GB chips would only be at most $100-200 more combined.

Now when I looked at top-o-the-line Corsair memory (2x1GB) - PC3500 (not PC3200), the cost was $600/1GB - approx $1200 for 2GB. And that is better memory than the Mac's.

Mac is charging what - $500 for 512MB? (included) and $2000 total for 2GB? That is still $800 more than I would ever pay.

This is my problem. The prices are insane. And sorry, things like this are NOT "you get what you pay for". I can see spending more at various places, but simple memory no way. Honestly, this is gouging. I would happily pay more for the system as long as the memory upgrade options were reasonable. This is just moving markup all over the place where it does not make sense.

This goes back to my earlier comments. They gotta solve the pricing and retail side of things. They have to get away from hoarding. Look at the success of the PDAs - Palm/PPC - massive. Yet Apple had the Newton.. why did it fizzle and Palm/PPC didn't?

Reminds me of the Business Week story I read once on Xerox. They have invented so many things over the years only to have serious misssteps on execution.

Hell I remember the days - my brother got the parts and build my Apple ][+ (the operators manual had the schematics at the back!). Then Apple changed their tact and "prevented" pirating their systems. I ended up getting a pirated Apple //e - it worked fine. But the damaage was done. People wouldn't pony up the big money (those cheap ass Canucks!) to buy Apple //c's //e's and IIGS's - software houses saw the sales slide and stopped making programs for Apple. I remember the pirate sites - I would log in every few days. So many programs uploaded (games et al). Non-stop, could not keep up. Then out of no where, it was one or two a day, then one every few days, then every week. Totally dried up.

I stopped using my Apple around 1998 - except for Word Processing.. and finally entered PC world in 1990. Apple screwed themselves. Very sad. Microsoft Office? Hah! They had AppleWorks in the 80's - built in Word Processing; Spreadsheet AND useable database application - not this "scratch head" crap with Access. But something the common man could use immediately. My dad entered all his Radio Electronic articles in the database.

And of course there was Beagle Bros.. with their add-in Macro system for Appleworks and DOS Utilities..


Very Sad indeed.

Anyahoo..

Sex-On-the-Brain..