Jon Nalewajek

The following is an e-mail I sent to CNBC after watching the video above:

Dear CNBC,

I am a computer scientist, and was appalled when I heard the claims made by your “tech analyst” Jim Goldman.

When it comes to Windows vs. Mac, I take neither side because I use Linux. (Hey, how about you do a story on how Linux and other open source software is free, and can save people hundreds of dollars?)

The information that Jim Goldman provided was incredibly false. Here are a few things:

Claims:
1.) PC’s need a $50/yr Norton Anti-virus subscription. This is simply not true. Colleges have been promoting FREE alternatives such as AVG and Avast. You do not need to pay for an anti-virus software.

2.) Jim Goldman claims that Mac’s come with Photoshop. This is simply not true, and incredibly misleading.

3.) Multimedia Software – $80-$104???? Why? What software? Windows comes with Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and you can get iTunes for free. In terms of pictures, Windows Picture Album works fine, and there are also free alternatives to use.

4.) Video Editing – What about Windows Movie Maker? Does that not count? It comes FREE with Windows.

5.) Music Software – $100? I am sorry, but this is beyond ridiculous. Windows comes with Windows Media Player. Also, iTunes is FREE. Mac’s use iTunes. There are also many free, and popular alternatives such as VLC, RealPlayer, etc. If you are taking about recording music, yes you can get a version of ProTools, or other recording software for $100 for PC. However, this software is MUCH better than garage band which comes with a Mac.

6.) Geek Squad Visit – $129? You can get a local computer shop to fix a PC for much cheaper.

7.) Mac Battery life 4x better – This is just completely false. If you want battery life, get a netbook which runs for 9 hours on a single charge. Also, my Lenovo laptop gets 3.15 hours on my battery, while my friends MacBook gets 4-5 hours. That is not 4x better.

8.) Faster Chip – This is absolutely terrible. Mac’s use the SAME PROCESSOR AS WINDOWS MACHINES. The Intel processors that Mac’s use are also available on PC. Oh, and guess what, Mac’s do not use the latest Intel processors. When Intel releases a new CPU, it is immediately available for PC users, but it takes awhile for Mac to offer them in their products.

I cannot believe that Jim Goldman is your “senior tech analyst”. This is some of the absolute worst journalism I have ever seen. These claims NEED to be clarified and the truth needs to get out to the people who are shopping for PC’s. If you want to help people save money and get quality software, why don’t you do a story on Ubuntu and Open Source software?

How dare you try to convince people, especially in a struggling economy, that they need to spend more money based on completely false evidence.

jonnale Uncategorized

Earlier today, I realized that the Provider for Google Calendar add-on that I use with Mozilla Lightning does not add events in my Google Calendar with the “SMS” notification option. In fact, no matter what settings you have in your Google Calendar, Lightning will always add an event with the “pop-up” notification.

I google’d for a bit, and found this blog post, which described editing a java script file in the Provider for Google Calendar add-on so that events added to Lightning would set up a SMS notification on Google Calendar. However, the problem with this is that it will only set the notifications for SMS. Some people might want E-mail, SMS, and a pop-up notification.

After looking at the Google Calendar API, I realized that there is an “all” reminder setting, which will cause an event to have all of the default notifications you have setup on your “Notification” settings in Google Calendar. This does not mean that you will receive pop-up, e-mail, and SMS notifications, but rather, you will receive all of the notifications you have set under “default notifications” on your google calendar (for example, I have it so it is pop-up and SMS notifications only).

Getting Set Up:

(Note: If you want to manually do this, open the Provider for Google Calendar .xpi using an archive program, go into the folder “js”, and edit the file “calGoogleUtils.js”. Goto line 508 and change “alert” to “all”)

If you currently have Provider for Google Calendar installed, you do not need to uninstall it. Installing my modified version will simply replace the version that is already installed. I have tested this several times, and have not experienced any issues.

My modified version of Provider for Google Calendar: http://jonnale.org/apps/CUSTOM%20-%20provider_for_google_calendar-0.5.1-tb+sb.xpi

To set up which notifications you wish to receive on all events, go to your settings page in Google Calendar, and add all reminders you wish to have.

Note: The only downside to my modification is that EVERY event you add in Mozilla Lightning with an alarm will have all of the default notifications set for its reminder (if there is no alarm, no notifications will be set). This should not be an issue if you want every event sent via your default notification methods. I personally want all events sent via SMS + pop-up, so this is not a big deal for me, but I realize this might be a concern for others.

jonnale Tech-stuff e-mail, gmail, google, lightning, mozilla