This rant was inspired by the October 3rd post on Hear Ye! . I'm not singling this person out for my ridicule, but I was pushed a bit and inspired by this single quote out of context with the witty comentary damning my platform choice. Yes, I bought an iBook which had a mechanical failure, but I have had a lot of computer equipment fail on me over the years. It was replaced in a quick manner, and I received the service I expected from Apple. I have received similar service from PC vendors(like Gateway) in the past. I currently have/use machines running the following operating systems on a daily basis: Windows NT, Windows 98, Mac OS 8.6, LinuxPPC, Red Hat Linux, Slackware Linux, BeOS for Intel, and BeOS for PPC. if you pay attention to the bottom of this page, you'll see that I use almost all of these platforms to update this site at one time or another.

Okay folks, I've finally had enough. Every day I'm exposed to people who are evangelistic about their computer platform choice, and that certainly isn't a bad thing. If people weren't making comparisons, what would drive innovation? What does bother me are people who take it a bit further than just recommending what they think is the best choice or making open minded and informed comparisons. These people look down their noses at people who aren't Mac OS/Windows/Linux users. Why am I fed up? Well, I use all three, and I see each as a tool that can be used in a different way(for me.) The problem occurs when I say on these pages anything about a specific platform, people jump to these wild assumptions. "He's one of (insert computer platform and derogatory term here.) Wake up and smell the coffee here people. Computers are tools, just tools. They are rapidly becoming the central tool in our civilization. It's a rampant waste of time to have these platform wars/attitudes.

Each platform has it's own distinct advantages and disadvantages which I won't belabor by discussing them here. All hardware platforms have a certain amount of problem equipment and a fair amount of junky equipment. No single computer platform is well developed and robust enough at this point that I would be proud to defend it with the emotional vigor that I see on the net every day.

With some folks, it seems that they make the assumption that a person can only know one platform, use one platform, and appreciate one platform. This whole issue shouldn't be thought of with binary logic folks. These things are complex systems. It's more logical to view each with an open mind and see it for what it is and what it does well. They all come with their own hangups and are all designed from different perspectives and with different goals. Otherwise, aren't you limiting yourself? How do you know you are using the right tool for the job? What about the alternate platforms? The BeOSes and Amiga's of the world? I want the best tool for any specific job, and that isn't limited to computers. I wouldn't use a hammer to remove a screw, and I won't make computer platform decisions without being well informed.

Comments? Email me.

This is what I want for Christmas . I also want better input devices that bypass this infernal keyboard and mouse setup.