Mac vs. PC

Alright, as a Windows user since 3.11, the end of the road was obvious to me when Vista (ugh) was announced.  Now, I've been very happy with XP, although it does have its warts.  But when my laptop started inhibiting my productivity in media centers and on location due to creeping torpidity and general sluggishness, I knew I had to pull the trigger and bite the bullet (hey, now THERE'S a mixed metaphor!).  Those nasty little .dll pointers that Windoze generates must have been pointing all over the place in the tens of thousands after years of constant use.  I couldn't get any work done without waiting...and waiting...and waiting for thumbnails to generate, or files to process.  And nope, rebooting and defragging didn't help.  Even when in desperation a while back I reformatted and reinstalled the OS, it still ended up bogging down again.

So, viola, my new 17" MacBook Pro with 4 gigs of RAM and, most importantly, my best Valentino Rossi shot as wallpaper:

 Sweet.

Mac and PC, side by side.  How cozy.

But I noticed there was a problem with the new MacBook.  The wireless AirPort kept dropping the signal, completely disrupting any attempts at surfing the web .  But it was strangely intermittent, and worked just fine across the room, or even at the other end of the house.  But not anywhere near my desks, one of which housed the router mere feet away.  What the hell was going on with my new Mac?  This was all too much like, dare I say it, a Windows problem.  Where was my Mac simplicity?  Where was my beautifully unfettered, carefree and hip Mac lifestyle?  Where the hell was my connectivity???

Well, a call to Tech Support (they said "never heard of that before, guess you'll have to send it in"), then some thoughtful independent diagnostic testing and then finally some technical consulting with a couple good techy friends slowly revealed the problem: it wasn't the Mac at all but the PeeCee!  It was emitting electro-magnetic radiation due to inadequate shielding of the power supply and this was causing total havoc with my Wireless-N signals.  That cool translucent window with the nifty blue lights was messing up my Mac!

If the MacBook was near the PC, no internet.  If I stepped away from the workstation with the Mac then *bingo* a raging torrent of wireless data poured into the Mac.  So, how do I shield the MacBook from the harmful radiation field emanating from my workstation so that the wireless internet functions properly?  An aluminum casing was suggested to me.  Hmmm...don't have that, but...

No, I didn't make a tin foil hat for myself too, just the PC.  And no, unfortunately, it didn't help shield my new Mac from electro-magnetic radiation and restore my connectivity.  But it did attract attention...

Hey, if those emissions are affecting the Mac so disturbingly, what are they doing to the rabbit and other nearby life forms?

Mocha could care less about the internet-killing radiation and the new Mac, but boy that dangling new power wire sure looked chewy and tasty to her.  A word of advice about these animals: they simply *cannot* be trusted.  I had a brand new pair of headphones and the wire was nipped clean through after less than a half hour's use.  Gawd that was irritating, especially when the guy at Circuit City said, "You're back for another pair?"

Another suggested solution was re-jiggering the modem on some alternate frequency and updating its firmware.  Lets just say that being on the phone for an hour with Linksys "customer care" in Calcutta didn't sound appealing.  But that empty port looked like it needed filling...

Mocha inspects the newly-installed, tasty ethernet cable providing full internet function at blazing speed to the Mac (at last!).  If any of the wires get nipped, I'm thinking she might make a nice new pair of earmuffs: plush, sleek and sexy.

Just like the Mac.

(Images shot with Nikon D3 @ ISO 6400 in ambient tungsten light and AWB.  Just FYI.)

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