H.I.T.S.
I hope that by the time you read this, our blast of Arctic air has moved on. Maybe I feel the cold more because I’m getting older, but this week has been a freezer. Many of my young guitar students have loved it, because they got time off from school. Hopefully, they spent their time off practicing guitar — and not playing video games.
This week, I caught some of the HSTV program with Mark O’Keefe and Val Laub, and I was really enthused to hear them talk about all of the additions to the Herald-Standard Web site at a href=”http://www.heraldstandard.com http://www.heraldstandard.com end
.
As we’ve mentioned many times before, the Internet can be a great tool for keeping in touch with your roots, news from home and pictures of where you came from.
When you’re far away, it can be very powerful and moving.
I, for one, know, because thanks to the Internet, I can “visit” England every day via my computer.
With computers becoming cheaper and faster every day, more and more people who were nervous about using a computer are actually purchasing one.
Doren and I talk to many of these folks in our daily travels.
In fact, the father of one of my students has been telling me all about his experiences with Apple. I’d actually put him into the category of more seasoned computer user, as he’s also used Windows-based computers for quite some time. His name is Richard Kaplan and he’s a medical doctor, but he’s also a pilot who teaches flying at a href=”http://www.flyimc.com/ http://www.flyimc.com/ end
.
Our Apple talks began one morning when he brought his daughter, Megan, in for her lesson. Megan let out a whoop of delight when I pulled out my Apple iBook, and she told me how she recorded herself singing using GarageBand, the software that comes with the Mac.
She’s since learned how to record herself, playing guitar into the Mac, as well.
Even better, the Kaplans own two Macs. Megan’s sister, Elyse, even worked out how to make her own Web site without ever having used a Mac before. That’s how easy they are to use.
Richard also told me that he’s been shopping for a medical records storage system for some time now.
After using Spotlight on the Mac, a system that allows you to type in the name of any file on your hard drive and easily find it, he has decided that it’s feasible to scan in records using OCR software and store them on his hard drive.
Decades of records could be safely kept and easily called up this way.
We’ve also discussed why more people seem to buy Windows machines than Macs and agreed it pretty much has to be price — because Macs are more expensive.
Richard also told me that he uses software called Parallels on his Intel chip MacBook Pro. You can find it at http://www.parallels.com, and it allows you to run both Windows XP and your Mac OSX at the same time.
He reports that applications like Microsoft Word and other Windows-native applications run as fast as on his former IBM Thinkpad laptop with Windows XP.
Maybe we should try to coax Richard onto the H.I.T.S. show.
We’re also trying to get our good buddy, Jeff Morris from Microsoft, to come and do a show about Vista, the brand-new Windows operating system.
He’s on the road a lot now, and we’re trying to match schedules with him. Not only is he busy doing computer stuff for work, he’s also the lead singer/keyboard player in local band Area 51 (at a href=”http://thearea51band.com/ http://thearea51band.com/ end
).
Jeff’s been an incredible source of info about Microsoft products for us on H.I.T.S. for years now, and we’re always happy to have him appear.
Before we go, don’t forget to visit www.bloodylimey.com
, where you can click directly on any of the links that we discuss in the column each week.
This will, of course, stop you from mumbling all kinds of unkind things about us for putting such long urls in for you to type.
Also, keep the e-mails coming, as we’re always glad to hear from you.
On our next show, we’ll be giving away another big prize to some lucky viewer, so keep watching.
Until next time, happy surfing.