About six months ago I attended a Boy Scout Court of Honor for one of my sons. At the end of the meeting they attempted to play a slideshow of a recent campout projected to a screen. The show was being run from a relatively new Dell laptop.

We almost didn't get to see it. First, the operator struggled to get the show started. We observed as he attempted various things to get the program to open and begin cycling through the photos. The operator was well educated and hardly a computer novice. I couldn’t figure out what the holdup was.

Then, once the show started, the computer locked up after showing every sixth or seventh slide, necessitating a system backup. An uncomfortable nervousness fell over the group as parents and scouts patiently waited for the man, along with a gaggle of technical Good Samaritans, struggled to keep the ball rolling.

Finally, I exclaimed under my breath, “Good heavens, he should have gotten a Mac.” Hearing this, the man seated next to me (who I barely knew) cracked a knowing smile and reached into his backpack and revealed that he was packing a PowerBook.

Enable Windows sharing, transfer and voilá

Every time i go into Eldon Square or the Metro Centre (shopping malls in the north east of england) I always see at least one of the advertising boards with an error like that on it. You would think they would of learnt by now and used either mac or linux to power the boards.