Enter Vista and two brand-new copies of Outlook 2007, setting us back about $160.  We were still on Outlook but now the new Outlook was even more bloated and slow, and its e-mail client still couldn’t seem to figure out how to manage IMAP mail any better than its predecessor.  Now we had more frustration than less.  Then Traci bought an iPhone, replacing her Palm Z22, but still used Outlook (this time via MobileMe).

Outlook persisted, like a virilent fungus growing between the toes while I burned the midnight oil looking for a replacement that would do everything we needed.  Evolution looked good but I couldn’t get it to sync with the PDA on Windows.  I couldn’t just ditch everything and move to Linux either.  OpenOffice had a stagnant project designed to replace Outlook but I gave up on that.  Syncing Horde didn’t seem any more of a reality either, particularly with the new iPhone.  We needed something special, something unique and capable to make this a reality.

Then came the iMac.

We bought Traci’s iMac first and as she explored it she discovered iCal.  Within a few minutes we realized that we could e-mail appointments to each other using iCal and that iCal could sync with her iPhone (via MobileMe).  We assumed we could use iSync to sync my PDA to iCal as well so we decided to ditch her copy of Outlook in favor of iCal, Address Book, and Mail.

The transition away from Outlook went off without a hitch for Traci but I had a problem.  The version of iSync that shipped with my Mac did not work with my PDA.  I spent a couple hours trying to get it working and then followed the advice of others on the web and bought The Missing Sync.  Sure enough, it did the job perfectly.  It was a breeze to install and configure; it practically did it all for me.  Within ten minutes I had my entire PDA synced to my Mac and Traci and I were also in sync again.  It even handled my Palm memos.  What was also cool is that it required no Palm software or conduits; The Missing Sync does it all.  It was well worth the $39.

So now it’s been a little less than a month and we’ve had no issues resulting from going Outlook-free.  iCal, Mail, and Address Book are more than capable and they’re all lightweight and responsive.  No more waiting for thirty seconds while Outlook painfully tries to read my inbox, no more long pauses while switching from mail view to calendar view, and no more unexplained crashes.  The Apple software just works, and that’s all I really wanted in the first place.

Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost the third. Each of these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten – just the same before as after.

So, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.

According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction, if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one, we have but one …

How is it possible to prove the existence of the Trinity? Is it possible for a human being, who has been born but once, to comprehend, or to imagine the existence of three beings, each of whom is equal to the three?

Think of one of these beings as the father of one, and think of that one as half human and all God, and think of the third as having proceeded from the other two, and then think of the three as one.

Think that after the father begot the son, the father was still alone, and after the Holy Ghost proceeded from the father and the son, the father was still alone - because there never was and never will be but one God. At this point, absurdity having reached its limit, nothing more can be said except: ‘Let us pray.’

-Robert G. Ingersoll

As a result I decided to take another look at the Macs. It had been a few years and since then OSX had been released and the prices had dropped some. Long story short, I began to think seriously about a Mac and began researching what it would take to switch from Windows. I found that it was easier than ever to make the switch.

So after about a year of Vista Traci finally had had enough. We decided to pull the trigger about two weeks ago on a new iMac for her. We received it on a Friday and had her completely moved over to the Mac by Sunday morning. After spending the weekend with her Mac I decided it was time to make the switch myself and ordered mine.

I originally thought I wanted the 24″ display but after working on Traci’s I decided 24″ might be a little too large. I instead opted for the 20″ display but increased the hard drive to 750 GB and the memory to 4 GB. I also bought the wireless keyboard and mouse because the cords were so short and I wasn’t sure they would reach once I got a new desk (sometime in the future).

The Bad

There really aren’t that many negatives about this computer. My biggest disappointment was that the wireless keyboard had no number pad (or the buttons in between the number pad and the main keypad). It was a shortened keyboard missing many keys I regularly need. I called Apple and they shipped me a replacement wired keyboard at no charge. Now I have the full-sized keyboard and love it. I can’t really call this a problem since Apple fixed it promptly for me.

There are only three USB ports so they go pretty quickly. The keyboard has two USB ports which gives you back an additional port at least. I don’t consider this a show-stopper; I could pick up a USB hub for a few bucks if need be. Five USB ports would be better.

The speakers are adequate but not great. I’m not too surprised considering it’s an all-in-one solution. It wasn’t a big deal to me in the first place so I’m not too worried about it.

Also iSync didn’t work so I had to buy a replacement which set me back $39.

The Good

Now here’s where the list gets long. I love this thing! I like so much about it it’s tough to know where to begin. First off, it’s not Vista! That’s a big deal to me because I really didn’t like Vista and the thought of spending maybe a couple grand on a new box, only to have to put Vista on it, made me ill. I’m running Max OSX 10.5 “Leopard” and it’s top notch. It’s what Vista should have been. It’s clean, it’s consistent, it’s rock-solid, and it looks beautiful. It’s also Unix which I really love.

One of the biggest gains for Traci and me is that we were finally able to get rid of Outlook. I’d been trying for years but I was stuck; nothing else did the job completely. Outlook moves like a bloated cow and its IMAP support completely sucks. It did the job but not without pain. Now Traci and I are using iCal instead. She can e-mail appointments and tasks to me just like we did with Outlook and then she syncs her iPhone to iCal. I sync my Palm Z22 to iCal as well. Unfortunately due to iSync not working I had to buy a copy of The Missing Sync to sync my Palm to my Mac. That software works perfectly though so although it was an unexpected expense it was worth the money. It also syncs my tasks and address book.

I’m using Mac Mail for my IMAP e-mail and it works beautifully; much faster and better than Outlook ever did. Things truely work the way they’re supposed to now.

I’m using VMWare Fusion to run Windows on my Mac. There are a couple programs that I haven’t been able to completely replace yet; Quicken and my family tree software primarily. I’m also using it for my scanner. My scanner is old and won’t work on either OSX or Vista. No matter which way I went that scanner was dead. This way I’m running it on XP in VMWare and giving the scanner a second lease on life.

Virtually all the software I used on Windows has a port for the Mac or an equivalent. I’m finding that I use Windows on my Mac very, very infrequently. I’m using OpenOffice, Firefox, and TrueCrypt natively on the Mac. KeePassX and Adium are Mac equivalents for KeepPass and Pidgin, respectively. There’s a lot of pre-loaded software on the Mac that replaced applications I was using on Windows. No surprise that my iPod works with the Mac.

Speaking of the VM I’m also running Ubuntu and will soon install Fedora 9 in a VM as well. The beautiful thing about WMWare is that it has allowed me to get rid of a physical box in my office for Linux. I added extra memory to the Mac to handle the virtual machines and everything is performing beautifully.

I love the look and feel of all the hardware. The wireless Mighty Mouse feels great and the keyboard looks and feels smooth and natural. I love the low profile keyboard with the near-silent keys. The display is beautiful and the 20″ screen feels comfortable and has enough real estate for everything I need to do. The all-in-one design works nicely in my office, eliminating the CPU unit on the floor and freeing up space in a small room.

My old computer had six case fans and two power supply fans. It sounded like a C-130 taking off and you could hear it all through the house. The Macs are silent; I can’t them at all. Our entire house is now free from computer noise (but not from the noise of a three year old!)

Backups used to take me an hour and a half every other week but I’ve been using Apple’s built-in backup utility called Time Machine. Time Machine is wonderful; I plug in an external drive and it recognizes it and asks me if I want to use it for backups. I say yes and it does the rest. I’m now backing up my entire system by simply plugging in a drive. Brilliant.

I bought a Linksys print server a few years back to put our printer on the network. It took me three hours to get my Windows box to see it and to print to it. It took me five minutes on the Mac. Seriously.

Conclusion

It’s been a little less than a week now and I’m completely satisfied with the iMac. I couldn’t be happier with the decision to switch.

I also find it somewhat humorous how predictable, ill-informed, knee-jerk, and just plain stupid the counterarguments were.  I can’t say I’m surprised.

Anyway, it’s an interesting appearance and it shows just how pervasive and reason-suppressing religion can actually be.

Listen to David on WAJR

It was particularly insightful because O’Brien was very progressive and tremedously logical, reasonable, and smart.  His stance on religion and the protection of secular society was refreshing and thoughtful, and it reminded me that not all religious people are insane or stupid.  I’ve been so innundated with the barrage of fundamentalist idiocy that rules the airwaves and drives the Bush administration that I’d sort of forgotten that there are intelligent progressives out there.  The significance of a Catholic being interviewed on an atheist/agnostic radio show and having so many shared goals shouldn’t be trivialized.

Protecting and enforcing the first amendment are essential in preserving both our secular and our religious societies.  It protects all of us, including religious folks.  Progressives like O’Brien and his group understand this and are making great strides in bringing Catholicism up to date and making it more viable and reasonable to people who need it.  I know some very progressive Catholics (one who I believe is really an agnostic) so I know they do exist, albeit not in the numbers I’d like to see.

If you get a chance to check out the broadcast it’s worth it.  I just with they’d interviewed him longer.  You can download it as a podcast or you can download the mp3 and play it on any computer or portable music player (at the time of this writing I don’t think this one has been archived just yet).

This is perfect timing with my attempt to tone down my rhetoric against religion in general and to refocus it on fundamentalist attempts to quell free thought and undermine the first amendment.  I’d like to see a rise in awareness among the progressives out there to stop sheltering reactionary zealots and to appreciate and protect our first amendment rights.  After all, it protects all of us.

Never is this “tune in and turn off” message more clearly stated than on the back of a t-shirt I saw some teenager wearing about a year or so ago:

The Simple Life: eat, sleep, pray.

Now this is actually considered virtuous by these people.  In this equation there is no thinking, no discovering the world around us, no attempt to learn how the world really works.  There is no attempt to realize our place on the planet, the solar system, and the galaxy.

This mantra is isolationist, disassociating the adherent from not only the rest of secular society but from the world itself. It’s the mantra of cults.  And what’s even more amazing is that some parent thought sending their teenager to a place that adopts a creedo such as this was a good idea.

I wonder sometimes what kids are “learning” in places like this.  Are they sitting around a campfire while an “elder” tells them stories about a 6000 year old Earth where Jesus walked around with dinosaurs and talking snakes tricked gullible women into eating magical fruit?  Are they listening to stories about a world-wide deluge, about an angry god who would slaughter virtually all life on the planet, and about how this god loves them?

Maybe I’m reading more into this than I should but with the inroads fundamentalists have made into out schools, our government, and our society I think this is the time to be very aware of its existence and it pervasiveness, and the potential harm it can do.  All one has to do is take a peek into history to see thousands and thousands of victims.

Most people are religious, I understand that.  It has a place in our society, regardless of my like or dislike.  Where we go wrong is teaching our children fundamentalism, extremeism, and intolerance.  Reactionary mantras like this have no place in modern society.

While we were there we also decided to get first crack at the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, since it was showing at a theatre within walking distance of our hotel.  We caught the midnight showing on release night and it was worth it; it was unbelievably good (as I’ve already posted).

All in all it was a great trip and, although I missed the kids, it was still good to get some time away from everything.  Next stop: Holiday World!