I was in Las Vegas last weekend and it’s a great thing I won $1500 playing craps. My 7 month old Alienware M15x died. The hard drive crashed. I was able to put the drive in the freezer (yeah, that actually works) and salvage the data, but that was the end of the road for me.

I’m not a gamer. I don’t need the gamer frills of the M15X. I don’t need the tricked-out lighting and the ultra loud, battery draining graphics card. The chipset was already outdated and the case….the fucking case, which is a complaint by many, was such a bullshit, cheap-feeling plastic garbage. That computer was wack. And heavy. And didn’t fucking turn on unless it was plugged into the massive brick charger.

So I spent most of my winnings, all in one place. And for once it wasn’t at Spearmint Rhino. I bought a Dell Studio 1558 with the brand new ultra-fast Intel i5 chipset. 4GB of RAM and a 720p HD screen. I opted to forgo the 1GB video card as they generally run very hot and fuck up the motherboard.

Well, I got this machine on tuesday and I’m pretty damn happy with it. It’s perfect for just chillin on the couch. I don’t miss the video card one bit. So that’s it. Dell Studio 15 for the win. Fuck Alienware. And Fuck Seagate.

BTW…Alienware’s customer service people are the biggest bunch of douche bag, fuck tards on the planet. I hope they all get aids and die slowly.

I’ve really refrained from saying much over the past month. A lot of my friends and coworkers are in love. I can say whatever I want to them, just don’t say anything bad about the Mac. So I’ve bitten my lip and held back.

Out of respect for those of you that are in love, I won’t say much. Here’s the thing, even with 10 years away, I’ve been a Mac user a lot longer than most. I know Mac. I know Mac all too well. To borrow a phrase from Judge Judy “don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining!” The whole Macs don’t crash or freeze?! Really? Try editing a field in a MyISAM table in MySQL Query Browser. Let me know how that works out for you.

This isn’t about Windows either. That’s a whole ‘nother topic. CentOS 5.3 64bit is my favorite OS in the world. It’s stable, open-source and has an unbelievable repository. It’s also a command line server and isn’t what I am going to run for day to day tasks.

The Mac (Mac Book Pro 15) has some cool features. I was willing to overlook a lot to make it work. I have been using the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard for the past 11 years. I will not use a different keyboard. Unfortunately the Mac uses the middle (Windows key) as the command key. That has completely thrown off my key commands (copy, paste, application tab, etc) but I’ve sorta gotten used to it. I’ve let that go. It’s especially a pain when I switch to a PC, cause now I be all messed up and shit…but fine, I’ll deal.

Here is what I can’t deal with anymore:

• Mac doesn’t format a CSV with proper line breaks.
  Mac OS Line Endings: Carriage returns, ASCII : 13
  Unix Line Endings: Line Feeds, ASCII: 10
  Windows Line Endings: Carriage Return + Line Feed (CRLF)
• No IE Support past 5.0. While this isn’t really the fault of the Mac OS, it’s still a problem that I face. I work with software built by Indians and Serbians that still favors an IE interface. Yes they are outdated…but that doesn’t matter. I need to use it, daily.
• Entourage is not Outlook. Yes, Outlook is a memory hog. It’s also the best email + calendar + contact manager + task list I have ever used. I have hosted Exchange so my Blackberry and Outlook are always in sync. I miss Outlook. Entourage can barely check my IMAP email. It takes 9 minutes (yes, I am clicking send receive) from when my Blackberry receives an email.
• Last but definitely not least. The most important of all…blurry fonts! For the past 2 years it’s been well documented that Mac fonts are blurry. The irony is that ClearType, which is used by Windows for anti aliasing, was invented by Steve Wozniak while at Apple. But due to licensing and beef between Jobs and Woz,  Apple no longer uses it and their font rendering and smoothing are just terrible. At first I thought it was me. But then I looked at other screens. I even looked at my Blackberry Bold and it’s perfect.  Don’t believe me? Google “mac fonts not sharp.” It’s documented. Even the experts like Zeldman weighed in. It’s making my eyes hurt. I am literally getting eye strain from the blurriness. I can’t work like this.

So that’s it. Regardless of Excel’s inability to open a large file, MySQL Query Browser constantly crashing and CSV file fail, if my eyes hurt from looking at the computer, I can’t use it. It’s not something I can think about. It’s not debatable. There is nothing anyone can say and a clever commercial with the guy from Dodgeball can’t convince that me that my eyes should hurt after using the computer for 20 minutes. I wish I could convince you that whole “just install parallels and also run Windows” after you spent $2500 on less hardware is something *you* should think about… but I won’t try. You love your Mac. I get it. I don’t love blurry vision…at least when I’m not drinking.

Last week, I lost my Dell Inspiron 531. I bought that Dual Core AMD64 in Sept 07. I definitely worked that thing. All of my data is fine as my 1TB (2 500GB drives) are working. That’s all I really care about. The motherboard appears to have overheated and burnt out. It won’t boot past the dell bios splash screen.

I have a similar machine at work except it’s a Quad Core. I also have a piece of shit Vaio I also purchased in 2007. I guess they weren’t making solid machines that year cause I am ready to ditch this thing. It wasn’t even a reliable backup last week. I am rocking a loaner Vostro. And you know what? It’s a lot faster than my 531 had been performing the past few months.

I‘ve been really thinking about getting a Macbook Pro later this year. It will be 10 years since I left Mac and it looks like they made a couple of *minor* improvements. But the time has come for me to get a real desktop. A real machine that can handle all of the home-made  porn work I do. I want a serious graphics card, a serious set of processors and a motherboard that can handle it. I want at least 6GB of RAM, if not 12. Most importantly, I want this kept quiet and cool.

The Alienware Area 51 x58 with Liquid Cooling is the perfect machine and just under $2000. That’s pretty much the same price as the Mac — unless I decide to go with the 17.

My choices aren’t cheap, in fact they are pretty high-end, but well worth it. I think it’s about time I take care of my personal hardware. This is what I do. What it do? San Dimas High School Football Rules! (Sorry @davidgagne, consider it quotable-gangsta tourettes)

Editors note: just in case it’s not perfectly clear, I am purchasing both of these computers in the upcoming months. That is my ultimate decision. I need both.