skippy.org.uk

My old ‘laptop’ is a Advent 4211 NetBook, and is getting a wee bit long in the touth for day to day use, coupled with its small 10 inch screen, and lack of graphics power (built in graphics card). also my desktop, is due a hardware refresh, allowing me to use my old mac mini as a development box for testing things on.

So the question is Mac or PC, and to be honist its not a hard question to answer, I am looking to replace my MacMini (mid 2007, Intel core duo 2GHz 1~Ggi Ram), With Loupie having a uni-body aluminum Macbook (not pro . October 2008 – June 2009), so that gives me an idea of how powerful the Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 with 2gig of ram is; and the answer is much more powerful than the Mid 2007 Mac Mini.

Looking at apples current line up, and knowing I was after a laptop, I set out to chart the two most important parts of this desision, Cost V Power. Cost I could get from Apple, meaning power was going to be slightly harder. thankfully OSX Daily had been there for me [1] allowing me to plot Price, against benchmark. According to the benchmark for Loupie’s mac her benchmark  is 2706 and my Mac Mini’s is 2593, both well below the lowest benchmark of the current pros of 3390.

While I still have a number of people I know at university, mostly through TermiSoc, it may be worth using the Apple Education store, as there should be no reson why I may accidently be able to order the machine at education store costs…

I am looking at going for the 15″ Macbook Pro as that offers the Largest benchmark jump, for least jump in pennys requiring removal from my pocket.

Against my 4211, and Mac Mini it stacks up as such:

So the next challange is finding some pennys.

While at the University of Plymouth studing, I came accross a peice of software that was used to keep all the machines clean and free of student installed crap. The University installs a application on every one of there terminals called Deep Freeze by a company called Faronics; It is about £22.50 for an install licence (you get 30 days of trial).

I have had a play with this software before, and based on that trial I have had a go at installing it on my parents computer; in the hope that it reduces the time I have to spend keeping the computer clean.

Deep Freeze works by freezing all the data on a patition and removes all changes made everytime the computer is re-started, to avoid wiping out all userdata I have the Documents and Profile folders on a diffrent patition.

I hope that at the end of my trial that it will have worked as well as I hope it will.

Although for those times support is required I have installed Cross Loop, fundimently Cross Loop is VNC wrapped in an easy to use userinterface that allows you to connect to another computer without needing to open up firewall ports and such; making it easy for parents to allow me to connect to their computer remotly.

For some unknown reson, since my dad bought the full copy of My Heritage’s Family tree maker the computer has been running slowly. and taking an age to do anything (well that could be because its a 1GHz dell box, with 512 meg of ram. but that should be more than enouth to run Windows XP Pro.

As part of the re-installing software I had to choose a PDF application, and as we all know Adobe Acrobat reader is never the sensable choice. Previously I have used Foxit’s Reader which has been light and always done what it says on the tin, being that it claims to be:

• Foxit’s NO BLOAT PDF Reader
• Small download, fast, accurate rendering

However what it doesnt tell you is that every stage of install it will try and install crap you dont need, and that you have to make sure you de-select from the install. I am not sure how this behavure sits with other people,. but I consider it very anoying.

I have included the Screenshots from the install process below so you can see what it looks like:

[View with PicLens]

Also on this note:

• SUN -  I do not want the Yahoo bar with my Java
• Microsoft – No I dont want any extra crap when I am forced to use MS software
• Apple – Why on earth would I want Safari with my iTunes?

I am sure this list of Grrr will grow.

A fair while ago I bought a Three.co.uk Huawei E160G data card. on Pay as you  go. this would have been over a year ago, and since I am o2 customer and have the simplicity £20 contract, with unlimited internet.So why do I need a second number for Internet. When I used to have my HTC Touch I used WMWifiRouter to make my phone into a mobile hotspot. it is an awesome bit of software and does everything it says on the tin.

Jethro Has previously told me that there is no point to unlocking Mobile Modems as data only sim cards always come with them, however I just want to use mine when I really need internet and not as well as a mobile phone.

To unlock the Modem (I try to avoid calling them Dongles) your first port of call is getting a copy of Mobile Partner, this can be downloaded from here.

If You like pain you can try talking to the wonderfully unhelpful droids at Three [3] – (Hutchison 3G UK Ltd) but am not a huge fan of Phoning expensive phone numbers I use the 0800 358 6796 (or 01442 456050) that they try not to list.

This is where talking to the Droids gets interesting; as Three are not willing to have call centres in the United Kingdom they have all of theirs in India. and the script that they has tells them that the modem can not be unlocked. After getting through to the UK call centre (really the sales department) They tell me that they are willing to ‘unlock’ the device for £14.00 but this requires me to book it in for repair and will take 7 days (Phone 0843 730 500 (or the numbers above) and try and get through to the Pay as you Go Retentions Team.

So with that path not really viable, onto option Two: Option two seems to be much easer, as I found this on Ebay, follow the instructions as laid out by Grumpy Grayhound, and wait for the email back with the code in it.

Less than 24 hours (in my case 2 hours) you receive an Email with all the information you need in it, including links to the software to de-brand your modem.

Once the Modem is unlocked you need to change a few settings, however they are as follows for all UK mobile networks: (Found on this site).

So We now have a Mobile Skippy just in time for running away to the frozen north,

The reason Vista sucks is that it doesn’t need to be any good, because people will get it anyway. – Ben A’Lee

And i agree, Vista is so sucky that it did not last 10 days on my desktop, yes it was shiney, but it told me i didnt know how to use my computer, and locked me from doing things i wanted to do (all those files on a NTFS drive belong to Skippy, (XP install Skippy) not you Skippy, you need to log in as an Administrator, Mr Skippy of the Administrator group to change ownership to Skippy, from Skippy. that is not the only time that the rediculus security muck things up thing bugged me.

When using the computer, and you want to change your networking settings, do you want to wait for the screen to go gray, and then have to click a box which should have been marked "get out of my face, i know what i am doing!"

As for "easer and simpler file sharing" well the danm thing didn’t remember that the wire that connects it to the network is a trusted network (its a Desktop….) and my network has only trusted devices on it. so turing of the share //hlin/skippy$ every boot annoys the hell out of me.

I installed Vista (Business Edition) about 48 hours ago, spent 2 hours configuring it to use my document stores, and install Outlook 2003 (Legal Copy). the full list of installed software is as follows:

• Vista Business
• WinAmp (because it would be silly to use EMP WMP)
• Outlook 2003 (as 2007 is found through other sources)
• Mozila Firefox.

So not a heavy workload by any stretch of the imagination? so why is it that my 2.0GHz PC with 1GB of ram runs slower (boots faster) than my XP laptop (still the hi-grade pile of poop 1.4GHz 512MB ram),  that runs more stuff? (running as we speak)

• Windows Live Writer (to write this)
• Pidgin
• Mozila Firefox
• Mozila Thunderbird
• RSS Bandit – RSS reader.

True my desktop loads images faster than my laptop, but i think that is down to my ‘My Documents’ being located on a SATA hard drive away from the OS, as well as dedicated GPU.

A strange set of observations:

• It connects to Outlook for searching, yet it has its own calendar, and contacts folders? surly it would be more helpful if it data-bound to the Outlook PST and displayed them? at the log on screen on XP it tells you how meany unread emails you have in Thunderbird.
• It has its own Contact Folder, (all contacts are flat file .contact files) but you cant Tag these things, or group them. I can tag all my photos (using the Windows Imaging Component Meta Data space, doesn’t seem to be EXIF. See Comment one) so why not tag Contacts? or Documents?
• The Vista Search does not seem as fast as the Add in for XP, despite the XP one being an Add in. True the XP one does spend half its time writing an index for itself. but doesn’t the Vista one?

I am going to go back to XP on my desktop and by adding the following tools, most of the usefull parts of Vista can be replicated.

tools from MS:

• Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta – not a bad lite photo manager, with tagging capabilitys
• Windows Live Writer – Anyone know if there a Linux Equiv that will work with Ubuntu?
• Windows Desktop Search – It works, it reads Image Tags, it connects to my Outlook stores.
• Alt-Tab Replacement – A windows XP power toy that makes Alt Tab nicer

And tools not from MS

• iTag – works with the Tags to give you a Tag Cloud. (Vista doesn’t do Tag Clouds)
• TeraCopy – Makes the Copy/move progress bar more friendly, as well as speeding up the process.

Now to find my instructions for setting up Notepad2 as a Notepad replacement.

I have installed Windows Live Writer since coming to the US, I have to say that as a application it is not bad, one of my two complaints with it is, that it is slow… and the other complaint is that it installed MSN Messenger (or what ever they called it today).

Well today I am sat on a train between NYC and Rochester, as such now is a good time to try out off line blogging, and see how well it works.

Windows Live Writer claims to work with a number of blogging packages, not just WordPress, and Windows Spaces, (I cant check the list at the second, due to being off line).

Things it claims it can do:

1. Manage more than one weblog, across a number of services.
2. Basic Formatting, numbered lists, tables, the etc.. if the company who write word could not do this.
3. As well as the the ability to post normal URI’s in posts, it seems to have the ability to remember the recent posts, as well as having a list of blogs you post about often [set up your self].
4. Inline picture (and pictures from a web site), will test this latter. but it seems to suggest it can upload the image at the same time as posting the post (or upload it via ftp)
5. Inserting maps and videos inline, not sure how video will be dealt with, but I will test out maps on my post warm and tall land.
6. tagging, but since I have not used them before I am not sure how much use that will be.
7. Previewing the post in a number of views, including using your sites style scripts, and a snap shot of the code, useful if you have strange rules relating to the layout I guess.
8. oh and offline writing mode. (what I am using at the moment).
9. More plugins are available via Download from the web… (can’t test at the second)

I would suggest that if you have a blog, you should have a look at it, and see if you like it.

Microsoft are giving office away to students, well selling at a low price (Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for £12.95 (1 year) or £38.95 (perpetual license – i.e.: forever) – usually the software costs £599.99), and who can blaim them.

Rich and Ben (who’s permilinks never seem to work) have been descusing this on Planet TermiSoc. Some of you may remember i was a Office 2007 Beta Tester, and I still use parts of Office 2007 today[1]. so i though i would join in on this one and comment on some of the points. Continue reading »

I have been playing with this bit of software on my Desktop PC,

It works by monitoring my web cam, looking for my face, and when it finds it, i can use my PC, when it cant it waits 10 seconds, locks the PC, and waits till it can see my face again.

Have to find out what its limitations are, and if it thinks me and my brother are the same person. but it looks good so far, as better than the security on my desktop was.
I think using blue tooth on a MAC would be cool though (here) via [LifeHacker]

Some of you may remember me playing with my password strenth a while back. so i think it may also be wise to check my password strenth has not decreased.

The Origional Bolt is dead, After 10 years of online-ness, they closed it today, that is 10 years of my online life closed, all the REG’s i have met and know from there have moved around, some i can keep in contact with through Facebook, Tedious Path, and helldot[seems to be down]. but it wont be the same without the Wiccan Board.

Bolt(folio) is no replacement, if your an old Bolter and want to keep in touch please check here.