by Veit on January 3, 2010
As more and more electronics enter our lives, so do subscription services. Some come with mandatory subscriptions, such as the iPhone. Others require none or you can pay as you consume. Add to that the “incumbents”, such as subscriptions to Cable TV or landlines, and it adds up. Thus, I decided to reduce my subscription expenditures by 25% this year. Why 25%? It is an arbitrary number, but it is big enough so I need to think about my lifestyle and what adjustments I need to make in order to reach this goal.
I’m not sure where to start yet. Obviously, Cable TV is one big expenditure that will undergo a stringent review. So is the iPhone (my contract will be up this year) – do I really need to be connected everywhere or is it just convenient to be so? If I were to replace my iPhone, how could I reduce the subscription amount for a new mobile service? Maybe the combination of a Verizon MiFi and a prepaid mobile phone would be the trick, since it would allow me to connect multiple electronic devices under one subscription.
This also means that any new acquisitions will be evaluated how they help me to reach my goal. As stated before, I will most likely get the Apple tablet, if it comes without a subscription, but will definitely not get it if a subscription is required. There might be other gadgets that will have to go through a similar evaluation. This should also serve as a warning to gadget makers: The days when you can simply slap a subscription to a gadget are over. Not with me.
Oh, and my New Year’s Resolution for 2011? It’s already decided: Any subscription service must improve its value by 10% year-over-year (if they raise prices, the percentage of the raise will be added to the 10% value improvement) or it is on the chopping block. Yes, it can be this simple…
by Veit on November 26, 2009
by Veit on November 11, 2009
After I rebuilt my Mac using the Migration Assistant, everything worked – with the exception of Adobe’s Creative Suite, CS3. Getting CS3 (and also CS4!) to work turned out to be a much bigger issue than thought, with many hours spent digging through Adobe’s knowledgebase, their forums and on the phone.
In general, the problem is as follows: If you use the MacOSX Migration Assistant to migrate to a new Mac or to rebuild an existing Mac, chances are very high that you will run into the dreaded Adobe Creative Suite “Licensing for this product has stopped” issue. Even if you do not migrate your applications (as I did), the Migration Assistant migrates some of its settings, which renders the Creative Suite product unable to start. To analyze my CS3 problems, I went as far as installing a trial copy of Photoshop CS4, which would not work either. That alerted me to the fact that this was not a licensing issue for a particular CS component, but for all of Adobe’s creative suite products.
There are only two ways how to fix this issue:
- Reinstall your Mac without the use of the Migration Assistant (only to be used as a last resort, if everything else fails)
- Do some open-heart surgery (don’t worry – if it fails, your only alternative would have been a complete reinstall anyway)
Following are step-by-step instructions of how to get Adoce Creative Suite CS3 and CS4 to work again:
- Make sure you have copies of your Adobe products handy, since you will need to reinstall them. Don’t start this without having the disks or files you need for reinstallation.
- You will also need your admin/super-user password.
- Download a copy of the Adobe Flash player, since you will lose Flash in the process. Don’t install it yet.
- Download a copy of the Adobe CS3 clean script (there’s also one for CS4). Run it to uninstall CS3. It will delete the entire CS3 installation plus Flash.
- Uninstall any other Adobe software – better safe than sorry.
- Go to the following folders one at a time and delete anything that starts with “Adobe”, “Macromedia” and “FlexNet” or has it somewhere in its name:
- /Library/Application Support
- /Library/Preferences
- /Applications
- /Applications/Utilities
- ~/Library/Application Support
- Use the finder to search for Adobe, Macromedia or FlexNet. Examine every file or folder – if in doubt throw it away
- Empty your recycling bin, so all the files are gone for sure!
- Reboot.
- Reinstall the Flash Player that you downloaded in Step 3.
- Install CS3 from your install disks. Bingo, it works!
- Install any other Adobe product that you removed.
Done! Now my Mac is fully restored!
by Veit on September 20, 2009
I have written (and will continue to write) about the Good Enough Revolution, including Steve Jobs being its (intentional?) master.
But the good enough revolution does not stop with consumer products – in fact, you can see it right when examining professional camera gear. Case in point: Canon.
With the advent of the Canon 7D, Canon now has two complete lines of professional gear: Top-of-the-line professional gear (1D for Action Shooters, 1Ds for Landscape/Full-Frame/Wedding shooters, f2.8 zoom lenses covering the entire range from 16 to 200 mm) and the good-enough line (7D for Action, 5D for Landscape/FF/weddings, f4.0 zooms covering 17 to 200mm). In fact, the good enough pro gear provides them with extra revenue, since not only pro’s and discerning amateurs use that gear, but also pro’s often use good-enough gear as backups to their top-of-the-line equipment. Canon clearly gets it that they need to offer two complete sets of cameras and lenses to the customers that are most profitable to them.
Contrast this with Nikon – they are sitting pretty in the camera department, mainly with the D700 and the D300s as good-enough cameras. But their glaring hole is in their lens line-up (see also bythom’s lens overview). No dedicated f4 pro glass, only variable aperture lenses. As much as I applaud Nikon for their strong camera line-up, they seem to have neglected upgrading their lens line-up and fail to offer two lines of pro zooms.
And that’s the reason why I would not buy Nikon today, if I had a chance to start all over again.
Do you think that the Drobo S, which adds a 5th drive bay plus 2 drive fail-over for twice the bucks is overpriced? So do I. Over at Technorati.com, I outlined the arguments what 
