The forever Mac and PC debate

image taken from http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~jshersh/

My poll on "Mac vs. Pc" has been interesting during the past days. The competition started out neck to neck in the first few days, occasionally one took a 1 vote lead, but the other always quickly caught up. Yesterday, Mac was leading by a solid 3 votes and seemed to be eying for the triumphant finish. But guess what, it's back to 50:50 again!

I am actually very interested in your opinion on this. Is a MacBook or a PC laptop better for b-school students? Let me give you a little bit of background. I am long overdue for a laptop. My current HP pavilion is 7 years old. The hard-drive had been swapped out and so was the powerjac. It runs as slow as surfing online on a dail-up. And some of the side buttons haven't been working for long time. As a long time PC user, I am ready for something new, refreshing, reliable and fast. The main problem I have with PC is the windows system. It runs super fast when it's new, but the speed usually drops pretty significantly once you start using it for awhile and run more programs. Recently my two year old windows mobile system on my cell phone started acting up strangely, and I don't even surf the web or use any programs other than sending text messages on my cell phone!

Of course I see the upside of buying a PC for b-school. With all the excel and statistics programs that we are supposed to use in b-school, PC is probably a better choice for compatibility reason. Plus I do have a tiny bit of knowledge about how to troubleshoot a PC gone haywire~ (although sometimes that becomes the problem...).

But MacBook is so tempting! From what I heard, it's just a superior operating system, in addition to all the "cool" features that come with it. I can see myself picking up making video projects in school if I have a MacBook. After all, having a "fun" machine might just take away a little bit of the boringness navigating through spreadsheets :)

And then there is the price difference. I have been used to using large screens and am a little hesitant about a 13" MacBook. The 15" MacBook though, drives the price gap bigger between my two options.

So what's your opinion? I would love to hear from a converted Mac user about their first-hand experiences comparing the two operating systems. I am more concerned about mid to long-term performance. Given that I will be broke after bschool, I am not looking to buy another laptop anytime soon after this purchase! Thanks in advance guys! :)

Google pulling out of China?

Just read this news, to be honest, it was a shocker. Will post more thoughts later.

As the world learned about Google's decision to pull out of China (if they don't come to agreement with Chinese government on un-censoring Google search engines) and reacted in all sorts of different ways (most of them expressing a notion of surprise), I finally got my thoughts together and came back to write it down here.

What do I think? Well, let me start with what do I feel. I discovered Google while I was still in high school in China and have been using it since. It was love at first sight. The simplistic design, the speed and the superior performance at searching relevant information have made me a royal user since day one. Although I haven't got many chances to use google.cn (as it was just google.com before Google entered China), I have no doubt that despite the fact that google does not hold the majority of the search market in China, it has given Chinese users tons of information and awesome free services over the past four years. So hearing that Google is leaving, is saddening, especially for Chinese Internet users.

On the other hand, I admire what Google did, although I still don't understand the real reasons behind their decision. Google has done something no other major US corporation has done before, which is to challenge the Chinese government, on an extremely sensitive issue, and in such a public way. For those who are not familiar with China and the way things are done there, the government-business relationship can make or break a company, any company wishing to do business in China. And the second key point is, while Chinese government is very open on the economic front, it certainly doesn't tolerate anything that interfere with how they rule the country. So even though Google didn't say for sure they are leaving, to make a statement like that in a blog~ without talking with the Chinese government before, is an indication that they are ready to pack up and leave. I would be very surprised if Chinese government works something out with Google regarding censorship.

What I don't understand, is the business rationale behind this decision. It is true that doing business in China was frustrating for Google and dealing with Chinese government doesn't help with Google's global (or mostly Western) image. But just as one blogger asked "Will Google make the decision to leave if its market share in China is 70% rather than 30%?". What about the potentially huge smartphone market that just started to gain momentum in China? With Nexus coming out, is Google really willing to give up all that potential? Does it really come down to their adherence to their motto "do no evil"? or is it an act of well thought-out strategic plan?

The bottom line is, I hate to see Google leave. If I am in one of the ethics class in b-school, I will make an argument that Google has made before, that the benefits of doing business in China outweighs the compromises. This is not just from a business point of view, but also from the heart of a Chinese person who really hope the best for her home country. Yes it's not ideal that Chinese can't search about the Tiananmen Square incident or investigate for themselves if Dalai Lama is good or evil, but the presence of Google still brings the wealth of the world's information and knowledge to Chinese citizens. And that presence can help China advance, both economically and socially, slowly but surely. And now with Google leaving, we are left with Baidu, a great local search engine for gossips and social news, but by no way comparable to Google at finding information for English searches (the intellectuals and business people will really hate this....). Plus Baidu has tight relationship with the government, so there goes the hope of changing the freedom of speech in China.

In conclusion, I want to share a few articles on this story (thanks Hari for one of the article). Take a look yourself, and tell me what you think of this whole story. I think this is the kind of discussion that I will find particularly invigorating in bschool.

The official Google blog announcement

Reuter's article, more on the political implication, very interesting perspective
U.S., Google and China square off over Internet

TechCrunch Artile, very good insights

A Tsinghua Professor (American)'s blog post, offered some new development on the story and his perspective (thanks Hari)

Technology is cool!

Inspired by fellow blogger madbubbles's new contact feature, I looked into Kontactr, a free service for blogger to add contact forms on their blogs...and it works great!

So now you can send me an email by clicking on that small contact me icon without needing to leave your email address as a comment! Isn't that great! For someone who doesn't enjoy sharing email address in public and is too lazy to manage multiple email accounts, this is the perfect solution!

Kudos to Kontactr! and madbubbles!

In the spirit of sharing the excitement about technologies, check out a Haas student's post on the Tech Crunchies Award and the actual award list. Have to say it's great to see Dropbox win! (it really helped me through these multi computer essay writing days)