Bring your computer night

Wow. What a long day. Work was pretty slow as usual today. Tonight was the May XMUG meeting. It was "bring in your home computer night", so most everybody brought in their home computer to show off and ask for help (from other members) with problems they may be having. Overall, it was pretty fun, but not a smash hit or anything. Most people just stood around talking; it seemed like nobody wanted to play network games or trade MP3s. Perhaps it IS time to schedule a LAN party and invite a bunch of friends over to play games and trade files, etc.

A major revision to the iBook was announced today, as I expected. So far, it looks awesome. 500mhz processor, 128MB RAM, 10gig drive, DVD and/or CD-RW support, AirPort ready, etc. etc. etc. All in an enclosure smaller (and lighter) than the Titanium Powerbook G4. Amazing. From the responses I've seen so far, these things are gonna sell like hot cakes. Henrico county schools has already signed up to buy 23,000 of them for their high school students. Apple may not have the market share that the Win-tel world does, but when was the last time that you saw so many people get this excited about a new portable computer from Dell. Or Gateway. Or Compaq. On a similar note, I read an interesting article about Apple's marketshare, etc. It's in Fortune magazine this month. In the interview, the interviewer asks Steve if he's worried about Apple's relatively small marketshare in the computer industry. His answer? Both BMW and Mercedes have a smaller marketshare in the auto industry, and you never hear about people wondering when those companies are going to go out of business. Actually, you hear the opposite. People swear by their cars, and even refuse to buy anything else. Apple is much like that. Ok, soapbox hour is over.

Tomorrow, I have been asked to sit in on a new business meeting for a potential client that makes digital cameras. I'm not going to name any names, but if I remember from my history classes, this place was pretty important back in the days of Zeus, Aphrodite, and Thor. Anywho, they'd like for me to sit in on this day-long meeting and give the perspective of an IT person, and someone with experience using, well..the product that they sell. Hopefully, it should be pretty interesting. I'm pretty excited to see what all of those hard-working folks upstairs do. Normally, I fix their computers and I'm off on the run again, but tomorrow will give me a chance to see our company in action. I'm excited.