The debate is getting ready to start.  I hope Mac wins but whoever wins will be the man who can overcome the “Senators Disease” – that compulsive need of legislators to explain every facet of a subject.  Short, direct answers will carry the day!!

UPDATE: Very few short, direct answers.  Lots of explanations.  Nothing visceral from either candidate.  Mac came the closest to connecting with average Joe’s but not by much.  If I were scoring it like a fight, I’d say 6 rounds to 4 for Mac.

My family, after having been DirecTV customers for about 13 years, has switched to FIOS.  This was driven by the lousy HD-DVR that DirecTV had – the software was buggy and changing channels was slow.  It also required rebooting with some regularity.  I’m a computer guy so rebooting is good with me but cable boxes should have better software.  The old standard definition DirecTV boxes worked much better.  The channel changing bit might have been due to the increased bandwidth requirements for HD but it’s hard to tell.

In any event, the installation took an entire day.  The fibre has replaced our DSL and the copper voice lines.  The TV comes in over the same fibre line.  The amount of bandwidth is just incredible – the internet smokes.  The quality of the TV signal is really good and the City channels look quite good.  The Verizon staff were very friendly and left no mess behind.

 Overall, I’m very happy so far.  My only nit would be that the FIOS equipment is an example of how not to do design – the remote has so many ridiculous lights on it that my 6 year old nephew probably designed it but it all seems to work well enough…