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Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

• I think it’s time you upgraded to IE8+

  Posted June 25, 2009 // Tagged as Rant // 1 Comment

  I’ll say now, I’m not a web designer. I have no creativity skills when it comes to creating websites. But when you’re working on something, it’s always good to support older versions of programs, you know, someone might want to read it. Lots of large businesses and corporate firms won’t upgrade from IE6 due to the scare of security and the fact they know that IE6 is safe. Continuing to support IE6 is a pain; the fact I know that public libraries still use it makes me want to still support the use of it.

  But is not time that we moved onto IE7/8 yet? Even better if companies would allow the use of Firefox, but that’s not going to happen in companies, because general security policies say that installing 3rd party software is a breach of policy. – ( it’s a piece of 3rd party software and should not be used). Many companies deny the ability to install 3rd party software also, denying users to able to install Firefox. So what are users to do?

  It’s good to here that’s Microsoft are not providing Windows 7 with IE, but how are you going to download a browser without a browser? – I hope they give the option for several different browsers including Firefox & Opera (which is one of my favourite – excellent IRC client and mail client too).

  But have people never heard of updating? It would be fine if the back end was upgraded to web kit. But if your reading this on IE6, please go and down a copy of IE8 or Firefox,  for you’re own wealthfare and wellbeing.

• Feedreaders, I guess it’s a requirement.

  Posted April 4, 2009 // Tagged as RSS, Thoughts // 2 Comments

  I’ve always been a user who is really oblivious to following RSS feeds – I find it difficult to keep on track with my RSS reader, I personally use Google Reader. But every time I try to use it, I forget about it for a week or two, and then next thing I know is that I’ve 1000/2000 unread Items. I’ve tried so many different ways to attack the issue, but failed so many times.

  I’ve found that my issue is that I follow many large blogs that post 40+ items everyday – and I think that following these kind of blogs for me, is wrong. I cannot keep up with it. It’s a struggle. To help me solve this issue, I downloaded a copy of NewsFire (free) for OS X and started importing links from various blogger’s, that are small, but their content is great and their posts are well constructed. I have NewsFire open when I turn on my macbook and so I read it when I start my computer.

  How do you handle with RSS and your reader? Do you have a set schedule or a specific routine? Do you feel it’s necessary to have a feed reader. I’d like to know.

• 640K Songs downloaded illegally every 4 minutes

  Posted March 29, 2009 // Tagged as Thoughts // No Comments

  Makes you think doesn’t it? I don’t know where they got their information, but this is back in 2008; 640 000 songs! Think of the amount of bandwidth and storage space that’s taking up in all different places of the world.. Crazy. How do you feel about it?
  
  Another one;

  We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet – quite shocking.. to think that I pay bucketloads of dosh and not come out with a job that exists.
  
  Another one;

  The amount of technial information is doubling everything two years. For students starting a 4 year technical degree that means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
  
  The world is evolving to quickly, and we can’t keep up.

  Source – here.

• Is it important to have a Home Server?

  Posted March 15, 2009 // Tagged as Backup, Servers, Thoughts // 4 Comments

  I was myself this questions recently.. it’s slowly becoming apparent that we do. More and more of us have most likely more than one computer in the household. In our household we have 7 computers – yeah – 80% of them are Laptops. It’s a struggle to manage data on all 6 and maintain that the data is backed and accessible from all. This is where the home server steps in to help.

  But does the average user really need this? Well, if you look at it, yes. Many people forget the importance of backup – my mother doesn’t back up her laptop, it’s a good job I do. Especially when the hard drive in her Laptop stopped working, hell broke loose.. Having a home server solves the need for the remembrance of backup. I have the drive entire documents / user area backed up so I can easily restore the folder when I need to.

  How do you backup? I’ve been looking into different options, both hardware and software. Having a centralised backup and being able to access your data remotely seems to be a popular option, and using services like dropbox and jungledisk are very useful for this. But, how do you feel about having your personal documents in the cloud? In a data center the other side of the world?

  How do you look after your data making sure it’s backed up and safe? do you backup in more than one place? can access it online from any location?

• Unlucky, tMobile.

  Posted February 18, 2009 // Tagged as Rant // 4 Comments

  So today, I was interested in a new mobile phone, as mine is due to expire pretty soon. I was looking at the G1, simply because I prefer a touch screen phone, but with a tactile keyboard/pad.  I entered the wonderful shop of phones4u – it’s a small little phone shop (nationwide though), it’s quiet and the staff are nice. I entered the shop, and was browsing the “internet phones” section, containing, you average blackberry’s and other smart-related phones (including the G1).

  I was then approached by a kind gentleman asking if I was ok, and I said I was looking to upgrade my phone, and that I was looking at the G1. He quickly said, no – we don’t stock them because unfortunately, Hereford (city) has terrible 3G reception and that we’ll never stock them. He gave me some alternatives including the Prada, and some Sony Erricson running WM (not overly keen). 

  So, tMobile.. you should probably consider where your 3G is, and then advertise around the town to your customers.

  Anyone else had problems with 3G and the lack of it in your area?

• Rant: Why the economy affects not only adults, but students too.

  Posted January 28, 2009 // Tagged as Rant // 5 Comments

  Most you know,  I’m british – So I’m complaining – It’s what we do best (most of the time).

  The economy is not only affecting older adults from finding jobs, but adults are taking jobs that students would be normally be taking. Why am I complaining? I’m that person. I’m 17, student and have a 3 day week college course and no job to fill that time. I have passed my driving test, I have a car, I need to pay for insurance and petrol = screwed.

  I’ve been trying to get a job for nearly 3 months now. I’ve sent 24 CV’s to companies asking for jobs, work experience, anything I can’t my hands on, I’m not picky. All have been either not returned or the position has been filled. I’m stuck in a rut.

  I cannot make any money from this blog, I simply don’t have the audience – sorry people, breaks my heart to say that. It’s not a sustainable income. If you want to know the real truth. In my bank account, I have exactly £17.53 with no overdraft facility. I cannot get any kind of blogging jobs, no one’s replied to my emails, and if they have they don’t offer good news. The other bad thing is that my server is up for renewal soon – £70, £70 I simply do not have. So, I’ll probably be hosting on Tumblr for a while – and If I do, you’ll understand why.

  The economy sucks, life sucks, what’s the point.

• Thanks Toshiba?

  Posted January 10, 2009 // Tagged as Complaints, Windows, XP // 1 Comment

  Recently, I was handed down a Toshiba laptop, it had a bit of junk on it, just need a quick whip and clean XP install – nothing special.

  I went to Toshiba’s site, and selected the section for downloading drivers, only to discover that they didn’t exist on the site anymore. I have no idea of the hardware inside of this laptop, even if I did use a system tool to analyze the different hardware, I would have to go and hunt for the drivers.

  I figured out that If I used the restore disc that came with the machine and then backed up the drivers, it would be a more efficient way of working. Now, your saying – why wouldn’t I just use the restore disc alone. Well, it’s got some serious Junkware  (software installed on the computer at the start) – so, I personally like a fresh install of Windows.

  Once the laptop had restored, I download a copy of Double Driver – a useful, free tool for backing drives from your system. Start by powering up the app, and clicking the backup icon. It will then list all of your drivers located on your system. I selected all of mine, and backed them up to a folder on my desktop. Once backed up, I moved them to a memory stick.

  I then reformatted it my laptop, reinstalling windows. Once Windows had finished installing  - I got my copy of double driver, and restored the drivers – then restarted. WHAM! Everything was installed and sorted. Now I have a nice little home-server-laptop.

• First Impressions; Samsung SM2443 24″ Monitor

  Posted January 9, 2009 // Tagged as Thoughts // 3 Comments

  I just received delivery of my new Samsung SM2443 24″ Monitor! So far so good, running at 1900×1200 off my MacBook Pro in clamshell mode. Nice and bright display with a 20000:1 contrast ratio; I had to orient the colours, as they were a little off; apart form that, it’s working straight out of the box. I’ll be doing a review mid next week!

• Review: WD PassPort Hard Drive

  Posted January 4, 2009 // Tagged as Review // 4 Comments

  Another present I received from my parents this holiday, was a new portable hard drive, the WD PassPort. I got the 500GB version, plenty of storage for all my music, movies and work. One of the main reasons I asked for this was that I have run out of space on my 500GB Seagate hard drive which is full of time machine backups, and so on.

  After opening the PassPort which was in a stupid heat sealed packaging container, and I cut my self opening – I was impressed at the quality of the product. The design is nice and clean – with rounded corners, it really does make it complete. I received the USB 2.0 version without firewire – I wasn’t unhappy besides If I got a new MacBook, I wouldn’t be able to use it!

  First powering it on, I was impressed with the noise. It’s more or less silent! It’s even quieter than my MacBook pro’s hard drive! The transfer speed isn’t bad either copied across a 100mb file in under 30 seconds. It’s USB 2.0, so it’s capable of roughly 480Mbps.

  Overall, I’m impressed – apart from one thing. One day, I was sitting at my desk it was just sitting idle – All of a sudden it made a large beep and clicked. Graham Gilbert has said it’s the curse of the WD drives, but mine is still working fine… the data on the drive is backed up in another location just in case..

  UPDATE: I’ve posted the Xbench results here;

  Overall 7/10.

• Review: Apple TimeCapsule

  Posted December 30, 2008 // Tagged as Apple, Review, Thoughts // 4 Comments

  This Christmas I received a Apple TimeCapsule for Christmas. The perfect device for me, as I’m terrible at backing up! It’s shocking to know that I never ever normally back up, and to sit at my desk and wait for my laptop to backup via TimeMachine, is a process that I find tedious. My Seagate 500GB external drive is also full of backups and data, so I had no-where to backup too.

  After opening the TimeCapsule, I was impressed at the simplicity of the product. Just the TimeCapsule, power cable and the information pack with cd, which contains the airport software. To me, they should of included at least a patch cable to connect your TimeCapsule to your existing modem/router/switch.

  I’m connecting my TC to my existing modem/router/wifi/ – as Linksys WAG160N. The WAG160N is a terrible router, don’t buy it. It’s great over LAN but horrible with WiFi. So, yes, I’m connection via Ethernet my WAG160N to my TC’s WAN port.

  I then created my own Wireless Network, for which my personal devices will connect to it. These include, my 360, PS3, MacBook Pro & iPhone. – I created a Wireless N network but backwards compatible with g/b for my 360, PS3 & iPhone as they do not have N adapters inside of them.

  Once I’d finished setting up, I started the first backup which was 90GB. I started it over WiFi – bad idea. I left it going over night, 25GB completed. I decided to connect my MacBook Pro via LAN (1gb) and do the first backup. MUCH quicker, I cannot tell you, it was done in about 2 hours. Now, my MacBook connects quickly, and does little updates of about 45MB every hour or two.

  Is it noisy? You can certainly here the harddrive reading/writing/accessing. It’s about as noisy as a external hardrive, just a bit noiser. It sounds very similar to my Seagate 2007 external hardrive.

  Is it reliable? I haven’t restarted it since Chrismtas day. Once you’ve worked out the kinks and the got settings correct (which I have) – everything is ready, and you just leave it.

  What about the expandability? Of course the TimeCapsule has a USB port to connect a external drive, I can see no reason why you cannot connect an extra drive, and set timemachine to backup to that drive.

  What would I like to see? I would like to see Apple creating a system where I can store my iTunes library on it, where it would be able to download my music, and podcasts automatically. Like iTunes running on your PC, although it’s running in the background on your timecapsule.

  Overall 8/10.

  If you have any question, don’t be afaid to ask them.

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A Minor Incident (c) Copyright 2008 // RSS