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• 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starting a 4 year technical degree that means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.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?

• Becoming addicted to Windows 7

  Posted March 1, 2009 // Tagged as Seven, Windows // 4 Comments

  After finally getting my personal computer back, I’ve finally had the chance to try out Windows Seven properly. I must say, smashing work to the boys in Redmond, you’ve really worked hard on this. Just so we clear things up; I’m running this on a fairly powerful machine – so of course; performance will vary.

  Specs of my system;

  Intel Q6600 @ 3.2GHz OC.

  4GB DDR2 800MHZ

  500GB 7200RPM Sata Drive

  8800GT Alpha Dog (OC)

  22 HP W2207 + Samsung 2443BW

  ________________________________

  First; the boot time has dramatically increased in speed, it’s a fast as my macbook pro now, even slightly faster. The overall feel when booting is alot better. Once logged on, the new desktop experience has changed dramatically. I find the taskbar not similar to the dock at all, I can’t remember who wrote that article but silly them. I might go as far to say, that the new taskbar is even slightly better than the dock. The windows selection viewing is more intuative than Apple’s.

  Drivers; now, you macfans brag about your non-requiring driver machines – I only had to install the drivers for my sound and graphics card, the rest was all automatically support. I even managed to get my apple wireless keyboard working on it. After a bit of bashing with the keyboard itself, it decided to work correctly. If you need some help with it, leave a comment and i’ll try and help.

  Speed? WOAW. Incredible; It’s unbelievable really to think of the transformation from Vista to this. No more lag outs, or general slow down. It’s just purely fast and nippy.. Overall, Windows 7 is the new XP.

• Trying the Blackberry Storm

  Posted February 27, 2009 // Tagged as Mobile Phones // 2 Comments

  In continuation to my recent post, about the tMobile G1.

  After the news about the G1 we discussed about the other phones that were on offer. We talked about what I currently pay, what I get for that etc, etc. He asked if I wanted to have a chat about upgrading my phone, and to see what deals that he could do. He brought me over to a lovely lady who dealt with me. We discussed what I needed the phone for, and I simply said.

  I dislike Touch screens, don’t bother – I’ve already had an iPhone , not again, thanks.

  But I need a phone, that does email, fast web browsing, and has a camera.

  She suggested

  • Blackberry Storm
  • Blackberry Bold
  • Nokia E71

  After talking about them, She went and fetched the demo models for me to play with. On my first impressions the blackberry Storm, was nice in the hand, but felt like a bit of tool, and I was slightly discouraged by it. It was weird using the menu system, as I was expecting just to lightly press it, like an iPhone, but no, you had to physically put it, and it the whole chassis clicked with it.

  Overall, I wasn’t massively impressed – the overall feel of the phone tacky, and not a comfortable fit in your hand. The screen quality was fine, but when playing a movie, the screen showed a lack in vibrance and colours, something the iPhone does well. The menu as I said was odd – it was like the iPhones just with square blocks on them, and the font wasn’t quite right, but that’s me being a perfectionist.

  Really, this phone is a pathetic attempt at a touch-screen-smart-phone. Blackberry won’t be getting my custom for this device this time. Anyone who has the Storm, leave a comment – I’d like to know your opinions on it.

• 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.

• Running with a netbook

  Posted January 28, 2009 // Tagged as Hardware, Laptops, Windows, XP // 6 Comments

  A couple of weeks back, I got a EEE-PC701SD, It’s one of the original netbooks, with a 1Ghz Celeron, 512mb Ram, 8GB SSD, Aethoroes based wifi and that’s about it.

  How has it been?

  Running with a NetBook makes your life allot easier. I chuck mine into my normal college bag, and I normally forget that it’s there, it’s so light! Just to pop it out and start taking notes is the best bit. This model that I have comes with XP home, nothing special – it comes with Microsoft Works but I’ve personally installed OpenOffice which works great on it.

  The only thing that I have a issue about is that they don’t have a british keyboard for it. It’s a american standard one which has a slightly different key layout comparing it to the british keyboard. I wouldn’t recommend it for typing for long periods of times.

  Overall, my little netbook is awesome – I seriously recommend getting one.

  If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to comment!

• 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.

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