An Eclectic Mind

Too funny to not share.

Thanks to @jebro on Twitter for the link.

How many updates can a person stand?

I’m off the Internet grid these days. Indeed, every single time I post to my blog, I’m doing so by connecting my MacBook Pro to the Internet through my Treo 700p’s Dial-Up Networking (DUN) feature.

This is not a fast connection. In fact, it can take over an hour to download a 30 MB file. When I need to do a real update, I have to find an Internet cafe with a fast connection. Or sit in my truck in front of a neighborhood home and use its connection.

So imagine my annoyance when Windows Vista on my Dell laptop popped up with this message today:

Are they kidding?

I just updated three days ago when I was fortunate enough to pick up the neighborhood connection in my trailer. Yet Microsoft has 67.1 MB more of “important” updates for me. That doesn’t count the 43 “optional” updates or the 2 “extras.”

No wonder the Internet connection at the local library is so slow. The five or six Windows PCs at the workstations there are probably spending all day every day downloading updates.

Why I need to order a new Mac.

I write books about computers for a living. That’s a blessing and a curse.

It’s a blessing because I get to buy new computers and related hardware (like cameras and scanners and printers) and software to keep up with technology. I can write most of this stuff off as business expenses because I actually need them to get my work done. Some of this stuff is really cool, so using them is almost like playing with new toys. I also often get prerelease software, so I can work with it before anyone else.

It’s a curse because I have to buy new computers and related hardware. I don’t get most stuff for free. And because I often have to buy new hardware right after it comes out — when the prices are highest and their problems haven’t been identified yet — they’re costly and sometimes problematic. My goal is always to buy a computer that’ll last at least three years so I don’t have to do this too often.

And if you think working with beta software is fun, try running Office 2007 on Windows Vista four months before the scheduled release dates. Not only did I have to buy an expensive computer just to run this software on — Vista has some pretty serious system requirements for all those pretty graphics — but I have to struggle to work around bugs and incompatibilities caused mostly by unavailable driver software updates.

I have three computers I use for work, as well as a laptop for business and home use:

• My production Mac, which is currently a 2-year-old Dual G5 tower, is the computer I sit at when I’m writing. It has a 21″ Sony monitor (the old, heavy CRT type) which is really great when I’m doing layout on Visual QuickStart Guides and Visual QuickProject Guides. It also has all the built-in and attached equipment I need to get my job done, including three printers, a scanner, and numerous mobile devices like cameras, digital video cameras, iSight cameras, external hard disks, and more.
  
• My Macintosh test mule, which is currently a 3- or 4-year-old G4 eMac, is the computer I run software on when I’m writing Mac books and articles. I like the all-in-one design of the eMac and the price when I bought it was within reason. When I bought it, it had the bare minimum I needed to get the job done: a G4 processor (at the time, G5 had just come out), a SuperDrive (because I often need to write about creating CDs and DVDs), built-in modem, networking capabilities, and adjustable screen resolution. When I went wireless last year, I installed an AirPort card. This computer was the machine I used to run beta Mac OS software for my Panther, Tiger, Word 2004, Excel 2004, WordPress 2, and QuickBooks 2006 books. Maybe even my Jaguar book, although I admit I can’t remember that far back.
  
• My PC test mule, which is currently a Dell Latitude D820 laptop, is the computer I run Windows software on when I’m writing Windows books. (The computer recently replaced a 4-year-old Dell Dimension tower, which was really showing its age.) This computer is loaded and it isn’t by choice. As mentioned earlier in this entry, I needed souped up graphics and a fast, modern processor (or two?) to run Vista with the Aero Glass effects. It has a CD writer but not a DVD writer, although it will read both. (This became a rather ironic thing when I downloaded the Vista beta from Microsoft’s Web site and had to use my Mac to create the DVD I needed to install Vista on my PC. It worked. Of course.) I’m hoping this computer, which cost me a small fortune, will last at least four years.
  
• My business/personal laptop, which is currently a 12″ PowerBook G4, is the machine I keep at home and take on the road with me. It’s used for e-mail and blogging these days, although I sometimes use it for podcasting. And, every once in a while when I need to do a presentation, I plug it into a projection monitor and do demos. I love the size and configuration of the computer, although I admit that the 40GB (really 37 GB, but who’s counting?) hard disk is a bit small. I recently had to offload a bunch of music and podcasts just to make room for some other stuff. And with only 640 MB of RAM and 867 MHz of processing power, it sometimes slows to a crawl when taking on heavy-duty tasks like sound conversion and iMovie visual effects. I also noticed that its fan starts more frequently than usual these days, like its always hot and bothered.
  

Why all these computers? Well, I’ve found that the best way to write about a software product is to run two computers side by side. The test mule runs the software I’m writing about. My production Mac runs the software I’m using to write — normally InDesign or Word. I perform a step on the test mule, take a screenshot if necessary (which is automatically dumped over the network to my production Mac), and write about what I see on my production Mac. Not only do I have the benefit of seeing what I’m writing about as I write, but I can keep that test mule in pristine condition. In fact, it’s common for me to reformat the hard disk and reinstall all system and application software I need to write about each time I start a new project. I really do use those two computers just for work.

I used to buy a new production Mac every two years and a new personal laptop every three years. Earlier this year, however, when my production Mac was only a year and a half old, the motherboard went on it. I faced a tough decision: fix it (at a cost of about $700) or put that money into a brand new Mac and throw this one away. But it still had a lot of life in it and there wasn’t anything really better to trade up to. So I fixed it. And life went on. It’s still serving me faithfully, running all the software I need to run. Keep in mind that I don’t update software unless I need to — for example, I’m still using Photoshop 7 (don’t laugh!) and InDesign CS (not CS2).

I can usually get 3 to 4 years out of a test mule. My old PC test mule lasted about 4 years (at least). I think the G4 might be close to 4 years old now, too. I basically keep using them until I have to upgrade — in other words, until the software I need to run needs more processing power than an old mule has.

Every once in a while, the moon and stars align in such a way that I need to buy two (or, heaven forbid) three computers all around the same time. This is one of those years. I absolutely had to get a new PC to run Vista with the Aero Glass effects. I went with a laptop because I’m trying hard to downsize my office and make it something I can take on the road. A laptop test mule is just the thing. Close it and stick it on a shelf when I’m not using it. Throw it in a bag when I decide to get some work done on the road. Why the hell didn’t I think about that before?

Of course, I do hate the keyboard on the Dell PC — it’s so awkward after years of typing on the PowerBook’s wide open keyboard. And I had to buy a wireless mouse for it, mostly because I can’t seem to find the right track pad drivers for use with Vista and the track pad tracks very slowly, no matter how I set it. But I don’t use the computer every day (and hope I never need to) so it really isn’t such a hardship. And the video on that machine really is incredible. It should be, considering it’s the newest in my stable.

As for the Dell Dimension tower…well, I still have it. It runs Windows XP and as soon as I’m done with these two Windows books I’m working on, I’ll use the laptop’s restore disk to bring it back to factory settings. That’s when I’ll be donating the PC tower, along with its ancient Gateway monitor, to my local library.

And the stars have also told me that I need a new Mac test mule. Why? I’ll need to run Leopard, the upcoming version of Mac OS X, pretty soon now. While I’m not sure whether it’ll run on a G5, I’m pretty sure it won’t run on a G4. And besides, I have to write about Boot Camp and that’s going to require an Intel processor Mac.

So that’s why I need to buy a new Mac — to run the upcoming new stuff.

In keeping with my downsizing plan, I decided that I wanted to get a Mac laptop. After struggling and finally succeeding in understanding the differences between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, I decided on a MacBook Pro. 15″ monitor, 1 GB RAM, SuperDrive (need to write about iDVD a bit), 100 GB hard disk. This is going to be one hot computer.

Which makes me wonder…will it replace the 12″ PowerBook G4?

Part of me says no: a test mule is a test mule. It sits in my office, turned off, waiting to run software I’m writing a book or article about. It doesn’t get personal data files; its hard disk is often reformatted and restored to factory settings — or at least the current OS.

But I admit that it’s going to be hard to keep using this G4 when I have Core Duo (is that right?) processor laptop with almost twice the RAM and more than twice the hard disk space and processor power sitting around, waiting for me to tickle its keys. I’m actually kind of hoping that I don’t like its keyboard, so I won’t want to use it more than I have to.

But there’s no way in hell that I’m buying two new Mac laptops this year.

We’ll see what happens. Need to make the big purchase first.

After two months off from writing, I begin work on an Excel book revision.

I dove into a revision of my Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Excel: Visual QuickProject Guide book today. I actually got the first chapter — all 16 pages of it — done.

If you’re not familiar with the VQJ (as Peachpit calls it) series, it’s pretty simple. Written for raw beginners, the books use a lot of full color illustrations, large text, numbered steps, and callout lines. Each book in the series is only 144 or 168 pages long — this one weighs in at 144 pages. It’s not the least bit intimidating for any reader.

The first edition of the book covered Excel 2003 for Windows and Excel 2004 for Mac OS. The two versions of Excel are virtually identical, so it made sense to do one book to cover them both. I think I did a good job giving each platform equal space and showing screenshots from both platforms when they were significantly different.

The idea behind the series is to present a project — in this case, creating a budget spreadsheet, duplicating it for multiple months of information, consolidating the months, formatting the spreadsheets so they look good, creating a chart, and printing. All the basics are covered in one project, presented over multiple chapters. The first chapter covers preliminary stuff like interface elements and terminology. The next chapter is where we start creating the spreadsheet.

I have two books in this series. This one is doing very well and has been translated into at least two languages. The other book — take a deep breath if you plan to read the title out loud — Creating Resumes, Letters, Business Cards, and Flyers in Word: Visual QuickProject Guide (I had to look it up; I can never remember the title of that book), isn’t doing quite as well. I like to think it’s because people don’t really want to create all those things. But it’s probably because the Word book market is full of titles and this 168-page tome just doesn’t stand out enough on bookstore shelves.

This Excel book revision is not cross platform. Tentatively titled Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Microsoft Excel 2007: Visual QuickProject Guide, it covers Excel 2007 for Windows only. (It always amazes me when Amazon.com knows what one of my books will look like before I do.) To write it, I not only had to get my hands on the Office beta, but I also had to get the Windows Vista beta, which my editor wanted running on the computer for all the screenshots. Without Vista, he claimed, the book would look outdated right away. He’s right. And although I wasn’t too thrilled about running beta application software on beta System software, it seems to be working pretty well. Of course, I had to buy a new computer to run all this stuff. My ancient Dell desktop machine would have dropped dead if I tried installing Vista on it, especially with the new graphics-intensive interface. The new Dell Latitude 820 laptop I bought to replace it is handling everything with ease. It should for what it cost me. But with luck, I won’t have to replace it for 4 to 5 years.

Office 2007 is no secret. You can see screenshots and all kinds of training material on the Microsoft Office 2007 Preview site. You might even still be able to download a beta. It’ll run on Windows XP and Vista, so you don’t have to do a double beta like I did to run it.

Over the years, many have complained that Office doesn’t change much with each new version. You won’t hear those complaints this time around. Microsoft has completely reworked the interface. The menus and toolbars are gone, replaced with something called the Ribbon. Click a Ribbon tab to view groups of commands. Click a command to invoke it. Or click a tiny button in the corner of a group to display a good old dialog box.

The new design does appear to be easier for newbies to grasp. But I think it’ll frustrate the hell out of seasoned Office users — at least until they get used to the interface. There’s logic behind it, so if you think about what you want to do, you can figure out where to find the buttons or menus you need to do it. And all the old keyboard shortcuts still work, so if you’ve been using Office applications for years, you won’t be at a total loss in the new version.

Of course, all this has me wondering whether they’ll use the same interface in the Mac version of Office when it gets updated. That would be almost sacrilegious. After all, didn’t Apple invent the interface so widely used by Mac OS and Windows programs? I can’t imagine a Mac program without a menu bar that starts with File and Edit. I guess time will tell.

What’s good about all this for me is that people will need a book to learn the new versions of Office applications. They can’t just use an old Office book to work with the new version. With luck, that’ll help book sales a little. After all, I have to pay for that fancy new computer, don’t I?

Stay tuned for more information about this book as it is completed. It will definitely make it to stores at the same time as Office 2007 — heck, at the rate I’m going, I should be done with it by the end of the month.

Some information about what I consider to be the “perfect setup” for writing books about computers.

I’ve been writing computer how-to books since 1990 (13-1/2 years at this point). I just finished #55 the other day. Do the math and you’ll see that I average about 4 books a year. (My biggest year was 10; my smallest was 1.)

I write all of my own books, with a few exceptions here and there. For example, I didn’t write the Unix or AppleScript chapters of my Mac OS X Visual QuickPro Guides — I lacked the expertise and didn’t have time to learn. I also co-authored two of my books. But other than that, I wrote them all and will continue to do so until I find someone who has skills that meet my standards.

As you might imagine, my writing setup is an important part of what makes me so productive. I like to tell people that I have it “down to a science,” and I think I do. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to earn enough money over the years to build what I think is the ideal setup.

I have three computers that I work with with when I’m writing a book: my “production machine,” and two “test mules.”

Currently (November 2003), my production machine is a Macintosh G4/866 minitower. It’s about two years old at this point. It has 512K of RAM and a 40GB hard disk. It also has a built-in modem, SuperDrive (that’s a drive than can read and write CDs and DVDs), and Zip drive. It also has all the standard Mac OS ports (USB, FireWire, Ethernet, etc.), as well as a SCSI port, which I thought I’d need but never have used. The computer is connected to a 21-inch Sony monitor and an array of USB and FireWire devices, including a scanner, Epson photo printer, digital camera, graphics tablet, iSight, digital video camera, and iPod (original).

I have two test mules, one for my Mac OS books and one for my Windows books.

My Mac OS test mule is an eMac 800 with a SuperDrive, built-in modem, bunch of RAM and 80GB hard disk. I’m really fond of this machine — it’s a great machine for someone with limited space who doesn’t need a lot of expansion or bells and whistles. And frankly, it’s a lot more “normal” looking than those ridiculous ET-looking iMacs that Apple is selling like crazy. It has a 17-inch monitor and can be hooked up to all the devices I need to write about in my Mac OS X books. It’s about a year old now.

My Windows test mule is a Dell Dimension 933Lr (or something like that). What can I say about it? It’s a Windows PC running Windows XP Home edition. It has a built-in modem and networking card and some kind of Pentium processor. Enough RAM, although I can’t remember how much. And enough hard disk space. It’s hooked up to a 17-inch Gateway monitor that I kept from my last Windows test mule, a Gateway PC. I think this Dell is about three years old now.

All of my computers, as well as my LaserJet 2100TN printer, are hooked up to an Ethernet network. They do file, Internet, and printer sharing using the built-in networking tools in Mac OS X and Windows XP.

My Internet connection comes from my old G3/300, which was my last production machine. It’ll soon be my Web/E-mail/DNS server, connected to the Internet with a cable modem. It feeds Internet to my three desktop computers, plus my PowerBook (when it’s added to the network) and Mike’s Sony Vaio (when he’s in town).

Here’s how it works. Suppose I’m writing a book about Mac OS X. I fire up the eMac test mule, reformat the hard disk, and install the Mac OS X software on it. I also install Snapz Pro, which is the best screen shot software out there for Mac OS X. Then I fire up my production G4 and open the file for the chapter I’m revising or the template for the chapter I’m writing from scratch. When I’m writing a Visual QuickStart Guide, I use InDesign 2.0; otherwise, I use Word X. As I work with the software on the eMac, I write about it on the G4. The two machines are sitting right next to each other and I can swivel in my chair to work on one or the other. I take screen shots on the eMac and copy them from the pictures folder, which I’ve opened on the G4, to my manuscript folder. If the screenshots need editing, I do it with Photoshop 7.0. If I’m doing layout, the screenshots get copied into the manuscript file. I add captions and callouts as necessary. Using this technique, I can turn out a completed manuscript page for a revision in as little as 10 minutes, if very little editing is required. For brand new titles, it takes 30 to 60 minutes for a page. On a good day, I can whiz through a chapter in a day or two.

The whole thing works pretty much the same when I’m writing a Windows book, except I use the Dell test mule and don’t reformat the hard disk before starting. I have to use two different screen shot software packages, because neither one does everything I need: Collage Capture and HiJaak Pro. And the shots always need to be touched up a little in Photoshop on the Mac. The process is generally slower, but not by much. Frankly, I don’t like writing Windows books, but my setup doesn’t have that much to do with it. I just don’t like working with Windows.

I believe that some authors write computer books with only one computer. They write, then switch to the program they’re writing about, fiddle around with it, take screen shots, then switch back to the program they’re writing in. (A very well-known author that I’ve often traded stories with confessed to me that he once wrote a book about Windows software by running the software under SoftPC on his Mac. Is he nuts?) With computer prices being well within the realm of affordability these days, there’s no reason an author should subject himself to such abuse. Two computers — one to work on and one to run the software on — are required, along with a network connection between them. I have three because I write about two different platforms.

By the way, if you were to peek into my office these days, you’d find quite a collection of computers. In addition to the G4, eMac, and Dell, you’d find the G3 that will soon be my Web/E-mail/DNS server and the old 8500/180 that’s currently my Web/E-mail/DNS server, still running on an ISDN connection. The 8500 was my production machine before the G3. (Before that was a 7100/66, which my sister now has. Before that was a Mac IIcx, which is long gone.) On my desk, you might also find my 12-inch PowerBook G4, which replaced my iBook SE, which replaced my PowerBook 3400c.

A production Mac lasts me about 2 years, although the G4 will probably last me another year — there’s no reason right now to replace it; it’s doing its job quite well. I replace each production machine with a current model Macintosh that isn’t top-of-the-line, but has enough RAM, speed, and hard disk space to last a few years. Test mules are good for 3 to 4 years. I replace them with low-end models that can run current operating system software and connect to the hardware I need to write about. I usually pump up their RAM enough to ensure that they operate smoothly. Laptops are good for about 3 years; I hope this PowerBook lasts longer because I really like it. My average annual expenditure on computer hardware is about $5,000, which really isn’t bad.

I don’t buy the latest and greatest gadgets unless I need to write about them. The iSight camera is a perfect example. I needed to write about iChat AV, so I bought a compatible camera. My AirPort wireless network, which lives at home when I’m not writing about it, is another good example. I bought it to write about it. Once or twice a year, I disconnect it and bring it to my office, where I reconnect it and write about it. Only one of my computers — the PowerBook — has AirPort networking built in. I don’t mind wires in my office, but its kind of nice to connect to the Internet at home from the kitchen, living room, den, bedroom, or back patio — without needing a really long cord.

The other thing I need to mention is that I don’t spend long hours “playing” with my computers or surfing the ‘Net. I have a life away from my computers that I enjoy. Computers are tools I use to make a living. Although I find them interesting, I think the other things I do with my life are far more interesting and fulfilling. My PowerBook is the only computer I spend non-working hours with. It’s my notebook, my tool for writing. And since I occasionally do that for pleasure, it makes sense to keep it handy, even when I’m not working.

Like right now.