Apple: the piracy option

I phoned some of the the computer stores listed in the "Windows Compatible" ad (above) and asked them what it would cost extra to run Windows on a Mac.

Each salesman explained about Boot Camp, and how you would need to reconfigure a Mac's partitions to create a Windows partition. They also confirmed that Apple does not provide Windows support. The sad thing is that both salesmen encouraged me to install a pirate copy of Windows.
They talked about using "an existing Windows CD" and were quite surprised when I asked for the cost of buying Windows new, instead of using an existing copy of Windows. I was quoted R1126 for Vista Home Premium and R 1582 for Vista Business, but with no support. Perhaps those prices are excluding VAT, because PriceCheck lists WinXP Home edition DSP pricing starting at R1168 including VAT. Unless those are (illegal) upgrade prices, but even so they are lower than those indicated on PriceCheck.
The salesmen were surprised when I told them that installing Windows from a CD that came with a different PC was called piracy. The one guy ducked the question by saying "it depends on the number of licenses you have". That may be true for a large business with multiple licenses, but if a home user installs Windows on a different PC to the one it was supplied with, you are technically breaking the law. I wonder what Microsoft has to say about all this?

Update 26th January: Greg Hill, the product marketing manager at Core Group, the Apple distributor in SA, called me.

"The intention of the "Windows Compatible" decal on the marketing material that you came across was not to mislead the consumer at all, but rather to highlight the fact that these fantastic machines are also capable of running MS Windows.
In future we will ensure that the consumer is made aware that the price does not include MS Windows.
We will also takes steps to coach the retail staff to communicate clearly that a legitimate version of Windows is required in order to take advantage of this feature on the Mac."

And on a lighter note:

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Fixing G31M-S Realtek Audio Problems on Windows XP

My Sahara "FRAGG" PC uses an ASRock G31M-S motherboard, which uses the Realtek ALC662 Audio Codec. The problem arises when you try to use Windows XP instead of Windows Vista, because the Windows XP driver doesn't seem to install properly.
Even after downloading the WinXP driver (WDM_R213.exe) from the Realtek site, it wouldn't install. Then I did a Google search for "realtek alc662 winxp" and found this HardForum post, which explains how to delete certain "HDAudio" registry keys. I tried it, rebooted as instructed, and was initially disappointed, not noticing that WinXP wasn't finished. After being asked to reboot again, it now works!

Sabotaging Department Store Computers is Not Nice

Before Christmas I visited my local Game department store to buy a computer and a USB external hard drive. Because the computer was not properly labelled, and for other reasons, I only bought the hard drive.
I returned on Monday to see if the price tags had been fixed, only to find that someone had been fiddling with the machine. What they did was not nice, and clearly the store attendants have no idea how to fix it.
It isn't nice to go to the System Restore utility and restore the system back to a previous point. That effectively wipes out a whole load of carefully installed programs! Not good. In the old DOS days hackers used to type "format c:". At one computer show we renamed format.exe and copied siren.exe to the drive and called if format.exe instead. That caught a few perpetrators by surprise!
Another trick was to press Ctrl-Break on any machines running automatic demos, because the demo programs were usually written in BASIC and it stopped the demo dead in its tracks.
Today, demo machines should have the security locked down tight, or at least have screen savers with passwords on them, known only to the store staff. Alternatively, use Acronis TrueImage to restore the drive to a suitable image. But of course the technical expertise of a mass market department store is severely lacking. I guess PCs just aren't consumer items yet, and stores like Game can only compete on the basis of price.

Benchmarking and Software Decisions

I have been setting up FRAGG, my benchmarking PC, with software and data in preparation for "The 2009 Defrag Shootout". That's the ZAPS logo on my desktop. I added it because I was so impressed with their prices and service. So far I have managed to fill up my 149GB hard drive with a lot of software, and test data. But I am still mystified about which benchmark software, if any, is capable of measuring the effects of file fragmentation on the system in a meaningful way.
Do I have to do "The Great Benchmark Shootout" in order to do "The 2009 Defrag Shootout"? I hope not. But I have a nasty suspicion that I'm going to have to learn a lot about how these benchmarks work before I can get anything meaningful out of them.
One thing I have noticed about Vista Home Basic: the hard drive seems to have a life of its own, partly because the page file size keeps changing. I guess this tells me that 1GB RAM is not enough for many of these benchmarks. I have installed the very useful HardDriveIndicator utility to show whether the hard drive is busy, because the HDD light isn't easy to see from my desk.
Another change to my normal behaviour is that I have forced myself NOT to empty the Recycle Bin or clear any browsing caches. So far I have accumulated 8,515MB of deletable files. It is going to be interesting to see what the various defrag programs make of this. I have also created some compressed folders, and copied several large files, greater than 4GB, to the disk, some compressed, some not.
The data files are a collection of archived podcasts, audio books, Word and Excel documents, PDF files, scanned images, photographs and recordings, made by my wife and I over the last few years. There are recent files and old files, and sizes ranging across the board, in various folder structures.
At the moment the system is a mess, and it sometimes takes a several seconds for the "Programs and Features" list to open (see below). I'm trying to get it to look like a typical home user's PC, or a badly maintained office PC. Normally I use NOD32 as my anti-virus program, but this time I'm using the freeware version of AVG, because it is extremely common, and because the automatic scan of all the files takes over an hour. I figure this may become a useful benchmark all by itself.
For fun, I installed all the major browsers (IE7, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera), and all the Windows Live and Live Mesh stuff, except Messenger. Then I added Microsoft Office 2007, OpenOffice.org 3, Windows Media Player 11, RealPlayer 11, iTunes 8, Quicktime, etc. I also added some extra fonts, the SysInternals Tools, DirectX, and a bunch of other stuff. I used Firefox's DownThemAll add-on to download most of the software, and copied other files onto a shared folder while this was happening, to attempt to get further hard drive fragmentation.
I have purchased PCMark05 (WinXP, Vista) and PCMark Vantage (Vista only), since they claim to be able to benchmark the system's hard drive, and these utilities were used to trash the performance of several defrag programs by MaximumPC. These utilities claim to be able to determine the boot time of WinXP and Vista, although they don't actually reboot the PC. Benchmarks used by the 3DProfessor for their Diskeeper propaganda include SpecViewPerf 10 and SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP2.
Further research on MajorGeeks and Downloads.com have led me to numerous other utilities for benchmarking, including the PassMark Performance Test 6.1 and IOzone 3.311. Here is the completed software list:
Now I have to back up the disk image with Acronis TrueImage and then start all over again with WinXP.

My New Sahara Defrag Testing Computer

Today I unpacked "FRAGG", my brand new Sahara computer. I bought it from the good people at ZAPS in Randburg, after doing a search on www.pricecheck.co.za. The model DT825125-P601 cost me R 3,726 including VAT, and comes with Windows Vista Home Basic and a load of other consumer-friendly software.
My first task has been to disable the scheduled defrag program in Vista, and uninstall some of the "crapware" like Google desktop search. I made a System Restore point before downloading and installing all 41 available system updates. The second task was to do the Windows Update, and get Windows Defender working. I also used SDelete to set all the free space to zero, so that the compression will work better using Acronis True Image, since I'm doing a sector-by-sector backup.
Once the backup is complete, I'm going to decide what "crapware" to keep, and what to get rid of. The Samsung HD161HJ hard drive is enormous: there is 149GB disk space, so it will be possible to install a lot of applications and stuff on this machine, to really put it through its paces.
I also want to create a Windows XP installation image, with exactly the same software on it, so whatever defrag programs I test can be tested on both Vista and WinXP.
I'm using a Mecer Bravo external USB 450GB hard drive for storing the backup images and test files. I bought it on "special" at Game in Cresta, where it was advertised at R799.99 but they rounded it up to R800 and then wondered why I complained. I hope it was a loss leader. They also lost out on the sale of a Mecer desktop computer for R3800, and of course Hewlett-Packard didn't get a look in because of their bad driver for the HP1020 laser printer. Who says customers don't forget?
So thanks to Sahara and ZAPS for their efficient service, and to Game for reducing the price of the external drive. It's not every day that you order a computer on Saturday before Christmas and collect it on Tuesday; many computer companies are closed already. ZAPS is a gamer's paradise, so I guess they know about service.
Now the fun begins: deciding what applications to install, and deciding how to really put all the defrag programs through their paces. The computer should be fast enough: a Pentium Dual CPU E2200 running at 2.20GHz with 1GB RAM and 149GB hard drive. I actually only wanted an 80GB drive, but they weren't available. Its going to be tough filling this drive with fragmented files.
Here is the list of pre-installed software. Click on the image to read the details.

MacBook is Windows Compatible? No seriously.

This was definitely one of those laugh out loud moments; followed by desperate searches for the Advertising Standards Authority phone number. Oh, wait! They're closed for Christmas, so by the time they get to slap Apple over the wrist for a false advertising complaint, it will be too late.
So here is my public service announcement for the week: the iMac and MacBook products listed on the flyers that are doing the rounds in your local newspaper are not only Windows Compatible, they're DOS and Linux compatible as well. And if you believe that you'll believe anything.
You can't install any Windows programs on a mac, since there are no Windows applications that run on OSX. Try installing Microsoft Access and call me if you can get it to work. There may be equivalent programs for the mac, such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org, or even a mac version of Microsoft Office, but you have to buy these separately. It's called the Apple tax.
Alternatively, you partition the drive and install Windows Vista on your mac. In order to do that you have to cough up R3249 for a retail copy of Windows. Then your old Windows apps will install and run, at least on the iMac. If that's what you call compatible then you might as well just install Ubuntu and be patriotic.
I wonder if Apple South Africa will be forced to give refunds to everyone who believes this kind of marketing? Do they really disrespect their customers that much that they want to lie to their customers in order to get them to buy their products? I thought only timeshare companies did that. The full pamphlet is shown below. Click on the image for a full size (scanned) version.

Update 31 Dec 2008: Apple UK sent me the following link, which explains how to set up Windows on a Mac. But you have to buy the book for £24.95, plus you have to buy Windows, so the advertising is still misleading, because the implication of the flyer is that it is all included in the price, which it isn't. It also doesn't mention that Apple provides no technical support for Windows.
Now you no longer have to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. The latest Macs from Apple can run both Mac OS X and Windows, so you’re not limited to just one operating system. Running Windows on your Mac explains how this simple technology works and walks you through every phase of the process of setting up Windows on your Mac. Are you a Windows user who’s buying your first Mac? A Macintosh user who needs to run Windows software? Or just a computer user who wants the best of both worlds? There’s something in this book for everyone. You’ll find detailed instructions for installing Windows on your Mac in three easy ways; a friendly guide to the Mac for Windows users; and a handy reference to Windows for Mac users.
In this book, you’ll learn how to:

• Load and configure the two most popular Mac OS X virtualization programs, Parallels Desktop for Mac and VM ware Fusion.
• Install Windows easily, either in Parallels or Fusion, or with Boot Camp.
• Keep your Windows installation in top shape, free of viruses and spyware.
• Run Windows applications alongside Macintosh programs.
• Add your new Mac to an existing Windows network.
• Explore the intricacies of a new operating system, whether it’s Mac OS X or Windows.

Update 20 January 2009: The ASASA sent me this letter, indicating they haven't a clue about computers, and they didn't listen to my complaint properly either. I wrote:

My complaint is that the goods on offer, as shown and configured, are not “Windows Compatible” as claimed: the user has to purchase a full retail copy of Windows to use on the machine, at a cost of around R3000, which is a significant amount. The average buyer cannot simply buy an Apple computer and install and run his favourite Windows game or application, which is what “compatibility” implies. If the average buyer has a Windows install CD from a previous machine, installing this software on the Apple computer would be illegal software piracy.
Also, it should be pointed out that neither Microsoft nor Apple provide any support for Apple computers with Windows installed, and the buyer should have been warned.
The advert is thus misleading because of the omissions. I feel that some kind of explanation should have been provided, even just an asterisk and the words “additional unsupported software and configuration required”. There is enough space on the advert for such a disclaimer.

In reply they wrote:

You mention that the product does not include windows [sic], and is therefore misleading. ... The advertising does not offer windows [sic] but communicates to a consumer that should they expect windows [sic] access, the Apple computer would support this function.

Precisely, but at what cost? Over R3000, without the labour and computer skills required! Considering I paid R 3800 for a new computer that includes Windows Vista, that is not an insignificant amount. I guess that's chicken feed when compared to the cost of a R24 000 Macbook Pro, but the cost is still an extra 12%.
One wonders what the ASA would say about an advert for a Ferrari being "Caravan Compatable"? Anyone who knows anything about cars would say it would be misleading and outrageous because of the extra cost and damage to the engine.
What would the ASA say about this? A TV may be DVD compatable, but you have to buy a DVD player to play DVDs. And DVD players are a lot cheaper than a retail copy of Windows.
Update 26th January: Greg Hill, the product marketing manager at Core Group, the Apple distributor in SA, called me.

"The intention of the "Windows Compatible" decal on the marketing material that you came across was not to mislead the consumer at all, but rather to highlight the fact that these fantastic machines are also capable of running MS Windows.
In future we will ensure that the consumer is made aware that the price does not include MS Windows.
We will also takes steps to coach the retail staff to communicate clearly that a legitimate version of Windows is required in order to take advantage of this feature on the Mac."