Category: Compgeeky

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Very Nice!

I’ve been (and still am) more busy than usual for the past coupla months, so I skipped the official debut of Ubuntu 10.4. Just did a 10-minute install of the OS (from an iso image, using Virtualbox–no burning of yet another CD). That’s about 10 minutes less install time than my most recent virtual XP machine install. And that’s including the installation routine’s check for and download of updated files.

Looks slick. Very, very clean and sharp. I’ll have a little time later to play with it, but now that the rain’s stopped, I need to get “out there” for some of my rain-delayed “outside work”.

Squirrels apparently line-dancing in the rain, today, as my internet connection’s slowed to a measly 3mbs crawl. Almost unusable. *heh* Drives me out to get working, anyway… 😉

Note: the VirtualBox/Ubuntu install happened mostly in the background while 42 other apps and services, including an Opera session with ~40 tabs open, Thunderbird (checking for new mail every five minutes) and Lightscribe (burning a label on a OneNote 2010 DVD) were running on the host machine. Not bad.

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The Positive Side of the iPhad

The fact that the iPhad is so very limited–no multi-tasking as one example–and locked into the Apple straitjacket could be an advantage for naive and/or stupid users who would otherwise be more prone to fall prey to sophisticated phishing/malware attacks. After all, since it won’t multi-task, stupid users can’t infest it with keyloggers that run in the background.

So there you have it: a “computer” for folks who belong in Assisted Computing Sanatoriums…

I just knew I could find something to like about it!

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Flash-less “Smart” Phones…

…are dumb.

With web content as it is currently, anything Flash-less is almost like time-warping back to 1993. Almost. Anyone really want the Cello Browser on anything? *heh* Sure, there is a lot of crap Flash (ads, especially), but a mature mobile browser can block things like that granularly when one wants to (Opera Mobile could do so up until version 10, but reports have that feature AWOL in recent Mobile builds for some strange reason), and since some of my essential sites use Flash well, anything Flash-less is simply not on my horizon.

Just one more reason why–for me–the pickin’s are slim on the “smart” phone menu. Still waiting on a compelling reason to buy a so-called “smart” phone and data plan (some might rightly say I’m just too cheap *heh*). Somehow right now, being unplugged (except for the inevitable calls-only throwaway cell phone–so when the number gets around too much and I become too accessible, I can simply toss the thing and start over) for large chunks of my day seems a Good Thing.

This post brought to you as a result of

  1. Someone griping in my hearing about slow-loading Flash on his Android phone (little wonder, since the software’s still in beta) and
  2. Someone else discovering, as I watched in amusement, that his iPhone couldn’t access work-related web content because it’s Flash-less.
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Waffling…

OK, so I’ve been in moderate salivation mode over this for a while.

And I’d actually planned on buying one around the first of June, but… The only real selling point is the multi-touch tablet conversion feature, and while that’s certainly a “Gee-whiz” that puts this out of the range of being seriously touchable by such as the iPhad piece of crap, I know it’d just be a toy for sitting in the entertainment room goofing off while my Wonder Woman worked on her lastest class for her (latest) masters program or watched one of her fav TV shows. Not enough. Heck, I didn’t really get my money’s worth out of the CrosspadXP I bought for taking notes (although the pen is super nice :-)), and that’s the biggie feature on the touchpad for me: handwriting recognition.

So, since I’d add an external DVDRW drive and up the memory from the 1GB it comes with to 2GB, that drives the price all the way up to $585… $85 more than this, another ASUS computer that really fits my style better, though it lacks the “gee-whiz” factor of converting to a tablet. But. At $85 less, it has a 15.6″ screen, a DVDRW drive and 4GB RAM. OK, so it lacks the SSD drive of the T91, as well, having just a regular old 250GB–Oops! 320GB–notebook drive–slower and more energy-hungry. So? It’s not as though I’d use the thing for anything really demanding. It’d just be a “second” (well, a larger number, but use and feature-wise “second”) computer for use maybe away from twc central, but certainly for light use in other rooms of twc central where I might not want to boot a desktop (though there might well be one present :-)). And it does have that one feature I really appreciate in a notebook: a numerical keypad.

Sure, like just about any notebook I’d buy (notebook=NOT main box for me; for one thing, a notebook with a 23″ or larger screen would be silly :-)), it’s rather under-powered by desktop standards, but it’s got more horses under the hood than a netbook (or the ridiculous iPhad) and… would be fine for watching the occasional movie or tv show, surfing and handling email and, numerical keypad (am I repeating my single fav feature? *heh*)… and I’m well used to reading eBooks on a horizontally-displayed screen, although I’m not all that fond of the Kindle for PC app.

Sooo… still debating, but this lil plow horse looks pretty good for my use. Not “needs” of course, because I can do without it, but it’d certainly be handy.

In other, unrelated, compgeeky news, Opera Win is now at Version 10.54, Build 3390–out since Wednesday (and a nice, though slight, improvement over Tuesday’s buiild, IMO). Sadly, I cannot yet recommend the ‘nix 10.54 betas, as they have all seemed a bit more buggy than the Windows betas. (Almost any bugginess would be “more” than I’ve experienced in the Windows 10.54 betas, though.) Stay tuned for moves to 10.54 in the ‘nix builds…

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WePad

Apart from the chuckles (if not outright guffaws–puppy-training pad?) the name inspires, this looks like what the iPad ought to have been in order to appeal to anyone who wanted something other than a large format, less capable iPod Touch:

Yeh, my German’s way, way out of date, but I caught enough to spur my interest.

More…

And

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdz_TX2qDZQ&feature=player_embedded

OK, so all the loan phrases imparted a lot of info on top of what little German I caught, but it does look intriguing. Price point’s apparently a slight tad over the iPad, but it answers nearly all the objections I had to the iPad, so that’s a Very Good Thing. Can it gain traction in the US? Well, it’s not even for sale here, so there’s no way to tell yet. And, of course, there’s the Apple “mystique” that appeals to those with more taste for sizzle than for steak, and there are more lobotomized Americans that fit that characterization than I find comfortable to contemplate, so that’s another barrier. Still, I’d kind of like to get my hands on one…

And

The WePad is a Google Android tablet with 11.6 inch touch screen display, 1.66GHz Intel Atom processor, 16GB of flash storage, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1, and 1.3 megapixel camera starting at $611 and will have another model with a 3G-32GB version that will be available for $774 USD. The We-Pad launch date according to the company is August 2010.

Other notable features include memory card reader, two USB sockets, audio output, accelerometer, ambient light sensor, stereo speakers and Flash and Adobe AIR support. Additionally, the WePad will also come touting HDMI out as well as a Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator for 1080p video playback.

Add the fact that multitasking is a part of the mix, and that’s LOTS more usability than the iPad!

*heh* I’d probably use it as a entertainment room “surf tablet” and media controller, for the most part, or as a notebook replacement (which would call for an easily added–via USB–wireless keyboard and mouse), and most of the add-on mobile capabilities would be something I’d probably not need. But that’s just me. Yeh, a convertable multi-touch tablet/netbook would probably suit me better, anyway, but still… nice to know that–if these videos are any indication at all–somebody has built a more sensible and more capable iPad-like device at a competitive price point.

Oh, and back on the videos now, I liked the presenter’s shirt cuffs and the nice, cool 54 degrees Fahrenheit day in Hamburg. *heh*

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Lazy Man’s Restore Points for Win7

Those of y’all using Win7 (or Vista, if there be any such critters reading here :-)) who’re lazy as all get out might find this Quick Restore Point Maker mini-app useful. Note: the link’s been fixed and now points to a download page insted of attempting to point directly to the download itself.

And here’s another download page touting a pdf file with a (nearly) exhaustive list of Keyboard Shortcuts for Win7–that also mostly work in earlier versions.

And for those who’re tired of Win7 talk, here’s a download page for Puppy Linux and one for PC-BSD (the latter for folks who want to try an OSX-like OS without the Apple straitjacket *heh*).

This has been a “value added” compgeeky post. Don’t tell the feds or they’ll try to tax it to death.

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Right In Their Faces

OK, so it was a notebook in a bright, outdoor setting, but really: people just don’t pay attention.

OTOH, KDED 4.X is a really slick GUI. I think I’ll ad a Mac-like Dock to a KDE skin and see if people like “the new Mac OSXI” better than OSX. *heh* (Or, just to be really mean, add a “MacDock” app to an old XP computer–yeh, it’s an easy thing to do–and see what they think.) Sure, I’d have to cripple whatever mouse was connected (or use a crippled-from-the-factory Mac Mouse ;-)) to make it seem more realistic, but that’s do-able. *heh*

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Pasty-Blasty

(No, not “pasty” as in pallid; “pass-ty” as in past. *sigh* I really need to work on the way my mind “hears” things… 🙂 )

Well, notsomuch a blast from the past, really. I never really made XP an environment I used much at all, skipping from Win2K to Linux/other ‘nix, bypassing XP and Vista for my own use. But here I am using a Windows XP Home compy to post.

Why would I do that to myself?!? Yeh, yeh, I use Windows 7 now on a daily basis, and I run some ‘nix environments on it in VMs (“My blankie!” *heh*) and even a WinXp Vm for a reference machine for when folks using it have difficulties and for some reason I can’t remotely log onto their computer to help ’em out.

But. Doing stuff on a native WinXp machine is just… weird. First of all the clunkiness factor. Then the fact that this is my dad’s old machine and really crufted up. He left it here after Lovely Daughter’s wedding weekend since he took his new computer home with him. Yeh, getting this one uncrufted enough to serve him would have taken far too long, and besides, he deserved a new one, and I had just the thing for him, since it was just one generation off current and was running a fresh install of WinXP Pro–no real learning curve for him.

So, while my Wonder Woman has left me for her annual MASL conference, I figured why not decruft this puppy and see if it can be made even marginally useful. I can’t really scrub the hard drives clean, yet, as I’d like to make sure we got all of his data transferred to the new computer before I do that. when I do, though, this thing’s gonna be the next PCBSD computer here at twc central. Sure, it’s just an old 1.3 Ghz processor and only has 512 MB of RAM and a mere 120GB of storage, but that’s pretty good specs for a PCBSD machine.

I can hardly wait. Seriously. Son& Heir will probably have a blast with it, and I KNOW I’d like another PCBSD box here at twc central. Just a really slick OS with lots of apps for everyday use. It’ll make a good all-around machine for when I get my office moved into the room Lovely Daughter has moved out of. 🙂

Oh, look at the time. No wonder my eyes are getting heavy. I need to get to bed soon, so I can wake up in a couple of hours and be an insomniac the rest of the night. *heh*

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Almost Prime Time

Microsoft offers some decent free services through its Windows Live stuff. And some crap. Among the crap is Windows Live Mail, truly an abomination. Among the decent services, Skydrive’s 25GB of free storage, accessible from anywhere you can fire up any web browser, in any OS I’ve tried, is pretty handy.

In the middle, stuck on “pretty good idea, lousy implementation” is Windows Live Mesh (in beta), a service that allows you to share devices’ resources on the web. Nice, but implementation sucks. Only 5GB direct storage, but that’s OK. “Likes” only Internet Exploder. Must use Active X controls. Nu-uh. Not going there. Bad juju. Requires adding the Windows Live Mesh application to enable access. Access from a ‘nix box? Notsomuch.

Opera Unite allows sharing files, media, etc., via a simple browser interface. Much easier, simple access and access control. All inside the browser. Opera, that is. Since I already use Opera for almost all my browsing anyway, that’s just fine by me.

Uninstalling the Mesh app. I have no use for it, since it really only “likes” Internet Exploder and requires using Active X, and I’m just not going to do that. Nice try, M$, but that one is definitely in need of some serious changes.

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Once Again, Opera Browser

Although the reviewer in the video below gets things mostly right *heh* he has a blind spot about add-ons. Sure, there are fewer add-ons available for Opera, but that’s primarily because so much that other browsers require one to add on to get what I consider basic functionality are already built into the Opera browser. But since the reviewer has apparently not used Opera all that much, yet, I’m willing to cut him some slack on that. Note that this review is of an early alpha of Opera 10.50, and that Opera is now in a solid release of 10.50 with beta builds available beyond that.

Crashes the reviewer refers to in the alpha are a thing of the past, for me at least, now that Opera 10.5x is out of alpha/beta status, and I remain sold, as my earlier posts affirm. No clunky, kludgy browser for me, TYVM.

Here’s a promo video from Opera Software. Lots of claims that are pretty well verified by recent testing by third parties. A few snippets about unique features.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_mU7lkE-sA