I came across the following disclaimer on a Microsoft website and it struck me as peculiar.



If the device is designed to be used by people on the move, how much more mobile can you get than driving a car? I know, I know, it is against the law to use a phone in a car, but considering how much time the target customers for Windows Mobile services spend driving, shouldn't Microsoft have thought of a way for folks to use their niche devices safely out on the road? Garmin did!

Perhaps they should call the genre selectively-mobile devices?

Or MS should educate customers and warn them that mobile is a relative term. This device is only suitable if you are not bed-bound.

Apple bashing

Just to balance the books, I think my Mac Powerbook should have come with a health warning.

"Don't use this laptop computer on your lap, it may burn your skin."

Seriously, the base gets so hot it will make your leg sweat in under 10 minutes, and after that, you are on your own. The markings after 30 minutes of surfing in your shorts are not quite as extreme or permanent as those earned from a cup of MacDonalds scalding coffee in the lap, but way beyond what you would expect from a tool designed for laps.

I see from this article in Endgadget that Apple caught on with the next generation of hot MacBooks and have actually dropped the term "laptop" from their spiel. About time.

Hewlett Packard just announced a 71% increase in laptop sales. Three cheers to the biggest PC manufacturer in the world, but children and parents, beware!

Hand-written onscreen notes may be a huge advance in aesthetics, ridding every monitor of curly yellow Post-Its, but there will be a huge rise in litigation!

Kids pestered by excessively naggy mothers (the moms who insist on leaving notes reminding their children to clean their teeth, put out the trash and tidy their room once a day), will be able to leverage the ability to save digital hand written notes to disk.

Climbing out of a room full of clothes, rubbish and unused toothpaste, Johnny Junior will be able to wave a CD full of every note their mother ever wrote, and threaten her to back off. "With all this evidence of psychological abuse, the judge will grant me a divorce in a heart beat."

The moms who don't care, will drive their geeky kid straight to the judge and sign the divorce papers in a heartbeat.

On-the-ball mothers who give a damn will whip out their new HP digital camera and take a victorious picture of Johnny Junior's room. "Check mate. No judge is going to let someone who lives like this, loose into the world on their own."

Progress is double edged.

A disclaimer: I don't hate Dell; Windows is obviously a joy for many people; and Mac is just what I like and know. Having said that, I don't know how the PC crowd sleep at night, or maybe you don't, and you all suffer from the Stockholm Syndrome - you say everything is fine, just so that Bill Gates and Michael Dell cronies don't come and kill you?

The good side of Dell and Windows

In my limited experience, Dell and Microsoft have some really great ideas and implement them well. (Replacing a hard drive in an Inspiron laptop is so easy it is ridiculous, and Windows has the greatest selection of Solitaire I have ever seen.) On the other hand, these bellwethers, (or is it irresponsible behemoths?) have a knack of making the sublimely easy turn into the sublimely ridiculous.

Dell driver hell

Imagine this. You have a new hard drive with a copy of Windows installed and it is working perfectly, but there is still a maze of installations to go before you can get onto the internet or listen to music, or have a display that doesn't ripple when you drag a window across the screen. This complete novice to the Dell way of doing things was scratching his ass for 3 hours fighting with 2 CDs full of drivers.

If you are a PC user and know nothing about Macs, you probably think that it is reasonable to fart around with drivers before your computer can function properly at a basic level. And maybe it would be reasonable to expect novices to do some heavy lifting, in order to get a feel for the tool they are going to be using day-in, day-out. But the average user surely deserves some easy-to-use software and support? Dell don't help much.

To their credit, there are two CDs full of essential drivers and utilities. You are expected to install the contents on your hard drive. No biggy -Except you cannot copy the content of both disks onto your fricking hard drive at the same time. No, you have to delete one before you can load the other. How retarded (and confusing) is that?

And once you can actually see a list of drivers on one of the CDs, you are confronted with this arcane methodology that demands that you interpret a series of ticks and divine what things do from the most pathetic descriptions ever written. For instance, when you load a video driver, you are not quite sure whether it applies to your machine or not, because, let's face it, who has the necessary paperwork from 4 years ago to double-check the exact spec of your computer, and who has 4 years to find the info on Dell's website? And even if you strike gold and it is the right driver - you then find it is an out of date version. And to take the piss totally, you can only update the driver once you have installed yet another driver to get onto the internet. Give me strength.

Windows registry hell

The laptop was originally set up by Dell and worked great till the hard drive died. Copying the exact set-up of the original hard drive, I made 2 partitions, a small 31MB partition alongside the main partition where I installed Windows. I have no idea why Dell did that, but who am I to argue. Surprise surprise, it had repercussions for me and Windows kept producing a bubble that insists on telling you what you already know, ie the small partition has less than 200MB of free space, do something about it.

Long story short, and after much investigation, you can't just turn off that bubble. The simplest option is to delve into the registry and add a file with a new DWORD. No worries say the geeks, Crap yourself says everyone else, because you risk ruining your whole system in search of peace and quiet.

Why is the Dell and MS mindset so arcane?

I suggest that this inability to keep things simple is because the people in charge are all nerds who have no handle on the technical abilities (and interest) of the majority of their user base. Normal people need normal instructions. What dick head thought that to turn off a PC you should press Start? Why do you need to tell me I have a wireless connection when I am already on the internet surfing without a cable? Why do I need to uninstall one CD to load the complementary contents of another one?

Ed's trip to Mac land

I vowed as a younger man never to get into computers. This was based on the trials and tribulations of working on a 386 PC with some godawful version of Windows. I decided I would go hungry and live my life as a technophobic wastrel, rather than waste my life losing hours of work to inexplicable crashes and never being able to print without re-mapping a network.

One day in France I stumbled upon a display of Macs and saw the light. They looked fun and people insisted they were easy. To be honest, it is hard to take that statement seriously from a Frenchman, because if there is a hard way to do something, they will find it. (Hydraulic suspension, caterpillar buses, trains that go 300mph... all that technology comes with a steep learning curve for anyone involved in their production and maintenance!) But they were right and if you install your Mac equivalent of the Windows CD or DVD, once it is loaded with almost no input from you, you can restart it, listen to music, watch videos, and surf the internet (assuming you have internet!).

The way technology is, you always need to update drivers and software, but at least on a Mac, you have what seems to be a logical path to follow and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to find what you need on Apple's website.

Is Mac really simpler than PC?

Many would say I am biased and Macs are just as complex as PCs. Maybe, but I think what it is, if you come from Windows to Mac, yes, it has a steep learning curve, but I never really got contaminated by the Windows way of thinking.Coming to a Mac with untainted eyes, I reaped the benefits of a Mac's relative simplicity.

Hardened Windows users have it ingrained in their head that it is OK to have silly little desktop icons with arrows coming off them, to prove they are aliases. And worse, it is acceptable that these useful icons are hidden from view for most of the time. When I turned on the Mac, I never blinked an eye or thought, How illogical that the desktop was empty apart from some application icons in this big old dock thing at the bottom of the screen. And it was always on view. And how easy to drag my most used applications from the "Explorer" straight into the Dock, - look, no arrows included on these aliases.



I never did enough work on Windows to realise that an application dumps files all over the hard drive, so to me, it was logical, natural and nice that on a Mac you drag an application icon straight into the trash. Apart from some totally benign preference files, which you can safely leave in place, an app in the trash is dead and buried, and you don't have to worry about any bubble-based messages haunting you forever thereafter.

Alert alert, you trashed an application, shared resources, reg.dll.neverhaerdofitfile may not work now, or

Do you know that was very naughty trashing that app, because the clever Windows people spent a long time writing that program and you just threw it away. There is nothing better than Internet Explorer, traitor.

And I certainly never experienced a full install of Windows on a Dell before, so imagine the shock of all this ridiculous song-and-dance to get a computer working.

On balance, it would be easy to repeat the installation and whizz through the steps to get the Dell working again, (I am a hardened Windows head now, having altered a file in the registry, woohoo) but really, if I ever have to rely on that set up to blog, I can assure you, the Pisstakers will cease to exist.

Addendum. In response to an ungracious criticism from a Digger, I slightly re-ordered the original post to make sure my nit-picking, as he called it, is in a more logical sequence.

Back in November I mentioned a few prolific forum contributors. Time marches on and the stats still prove that there are some really committed and knowledgeable folks out there, like below, on the Apple forum.

The prolific forum contributors rarely fail to help the real desperadoes whose bombproof Mac is dying, or more likely, crippled by hundreds of useless programs. ( The Windows switchers tend to download willy nilly once they realise they cant get a virus!)

The forum generates competition between helpers, and the good ones clock up lots of bonus points for Solved questions - as you can see above, the more they help, the more points they get... this is great for their kudos, and great when us saddoes are on our knees praying for assistance.

I know enough to be dangerous

At the time of writing the last article, the Apple forum was a playground for me, and I was happy to help the poor saps struggling with silly little niggles. 90% of computer issues are solved with tiny adjustments and as I am from the school where you learn by making every small mistake in the book, I had my uses dishing out glorified placebos.

After one episode, though, I accepted I am more artist than technician and would never progress much beyond enthusiast. Basically I had pointed someone in the right direction and to solve the issue he had to launch a utility and go through a few easy-to-follow stages, all prompted by the utility. It seemed obvious to me that if he had never used it before, he would read the warning text. Oops.

I was blown away when he wrote back calling me all sorts and for some reason, he must have called his friends and little old Ed was dragged over the coals for failing to point out in big bold letters that if the person I was helping did this one particular move, it would solve the issue but wipe the hard drive!

Thereafter I leave it to the big boys to cope with the cringing noobies.

To help or not to help

I don't know if it is healthy to spend 4 hours a day as a volunteer on a help forum, especially when it helps out the customers of a company that makes hundreds of millions selling reliable hardware and software, but each to their own. I rate the internet on what it has done for me and overall, it has been a great platform for the helpful out there.

So, to end on a helpful note, if you are like me and have copied files from one hard drive to another and need to change all permissions in a folder, I recommend BatCHmod! Yawn.

Breaking news today, Ed's indestructible laptop has been repaired and no longer fails to ignore any and every hard drive attached to it. Am I impressed with the help out there? Reactions were varied on my travels to a solution.

Apple Can't say too much as I didn't dare call them, being out of warranty and all!

Geniuses on the Apple forum say it is just one of those things. "Dude, like what do you expect with a 4 and a half year old computer that never broke down before?" They had no answer to the dilemma of having a back-up that I couldn't access it. They blamed my back-up copies. My bad for making a cheap clone.

Geniuses at Carbon Copy Cloner proved beyond all doubt that their clone was perfect and my computer was inexplicably shafted in every respect. Kudos CCC.

Apple geniuses with no affiliation to the company say that a hard drive failure is certainly one of those things to expect when your favorite company uses a $30 Made in Hong Kong hard drive in a $2000 machine.

A Microsoft spokesman magnanimously says, "If all you namby pamby Apple fanbois adopted the approach of the finest brains at Redmond, you would photocopy everything and keep your data in a neat pile securely taped together with hope and chewing gum."

Data Rescue proved beyond all doubt that they are the guys to call, if you ever need to retrieve all your files from a hard drive that appears to be as dead as a dodo. $100 for a sexy data recovery bootable disk. Thank you, thank you.

Mrs Ed, Dell floozy and technophobe says, "If things come in threes, we are in deep do-do, because your hard drive failed 10 days ago, my hard drive failed 2 days ago, what's next?"

Ed says, as optimistically cynical as ever. "Steve Jobs is god and will look over me in my moment of need and give me the strength to bail myself out.

In view of the outcome of her girlie, please help me Mr Nice tech man phone call, what I should have said was, "Your god, Mr Dell, will look over his shoulder at you and glibly send you a new hard drive, motherboard or screen, or whatever it is you need. And he is such a loser you will get it for free, overnight, even though your laptop is 2 years out of warranty."

New hard drive: excellent upgrade for a laptop.

Whatever the injustices or faults with a dead hard drive, let's just say that a brand spanky new replacement is a great (and cheap) and easy DIY way to breathe life into a laptop.

In the technically wondrous scheme of things, I think hard drives are more impressive than any giga hertzoid processor or RAM. Up to 160GB of storage crammed into a tiny 2.5inch case that can withstand 900 g's. Just wow and not even a fat pisstaker could crush that sucker. In line with my prowess in the bedroom, I went for smaller but faster with a new Seagate 80GB hard drive spinning at an insane 7200RPM.

Installation was simple, (and believe me I am king klutz with the fiddly things in life) and now my Powerbook runs both quieter, cooler and did I say INSANELY much faster than the $30 excuse for a hard drive originally installed. And it carries a 5 year warranty, which isn't too shabby compared to the sad support offered by Apple, a $60bn fruit company renowned for quality and attention to detail.

What is next?

On with the show, I guess. And when I can think of a way to explain how to back-up all files in triplicate both on land and on the internet, I will do so with gusto and aplomb and plenty of speeeeeeed.

I was reading a fabulous book by John Wood, a guy who left Microsoft to save the world at the end of the 90's. He recounts the time he was organising a TV interview between Bill Gates and the top TV journo in China at the time.

Determined to swing public opinion back towards Microsoft, and to dispel the idea of MS being a tyrannical capitalist company that gladly sued any violators of licensing agreements, Wood prepared and angled all Gates' answers towards the positives of MS China. For instance, there were only 3 out-and-out research labs in the world, and one was in Beijing. And many of the products they were launching in China were China specific and / or would dissipate throughout the world from China. All music to the Chinese people's ears, about 100 million of them tuned in!

Apparently Gates must have had one dose of jetlag too many, because when he was on TV he did exactly what he had been advised to avoid, and he genericised all his answers, making out China to be just another market. As the advisor died a thousand deaths in the background, Gates even missed a PR trick so obvious even I could see it.

Apparently Gates was idolised by the Chinese and people paid fortunes to be seen with him or have a photo taken with him. Some little girl had been seen crying because she wouldn't get to see her capitalist idol. Gates simply ignored the whole spiel from the interviewer, instead of offering to give her a special audience. Hello, Mr Gates, who missed PR101?

Despite the howlers of protocol and basic business sense, MS have gone from strength to strength there and, sure enough, China, along with India and the US are MS' biggest market. Fortunately, Wood the adviser saw the light and made his move to escape the rat race of global software domination and launched Room to Read a really worthwhile program, building and equipping Third World schools with bi-lingual libraries.

Of course Midas touch Gates has seen the light mega style and now gives away more than any human who ever lived. Perhaps if he had listened to his adviser in China, he could have given even more away far sooner.

Many apps have the saving Ctrl-Z function, allowing you to jump back a step to rectify that loopy idea to Delete when you meant Save; to un-resize an image you should never have resized; to Open a document you never should have Closed. Some apps like Photoshop have what is called an Undo stack, so you can do multiple Undoes. But Undo is not universal and especially when you are working on-line, where is a damn Undo button when you need one?

Copy and paste to oblivion

I just edited a poor article written by my good self many months ago, and I was very pleased with the new draft. After a couple of hours of digging deep for a new angle, I had revitalised a lame post about not being able to tell the difference between some mp3 players and a blood pressure monitor. The banal paragraph was turned into a witty tale involving a couple of geriatric pickpockets who lifted iPods from the arms of joggers after accidentally knocking them over in their wheelchair.

It was a relief to see the last edit made, and all was hunky dory. But just prior to publishing, I changed some link code, nothing to do with the article per se. Without thinking, I copied the code and for some reason, the old article too, and pasted the whole lot over the spanky new document. In a second of lunacy I had overwritten my revised award-winning article and preserved a piece of crap.

But I was cool. I would just undo my stupidity. Fat chance. Ctrl-Z was nowhere to be found on my 21st century blogging software. No sign of the 20kb article in 768MB of memory either? Come on. (Plus a few expletives and, if you know Fargo, a few beatings of a non-compliant appliance!)

Incomplete functionality

Why is it that without resorting to a mouse once, you can do useless things like copy, paste, italicize, embolden, and underline any text, anywhere, anytime in any application on or off-line using keystrokes. Why is it that with the memory of an elephant you can abuse keystrokes and take stupid screenshots, launch useless macros, open specific documents, open one app and close another and so on and so forth without ever breaking your stride while typing - but you can't Ctrl-Z to undo all work at all times? What is that all about?

It is about developers not writing a script, that's what it is all about. End of that debate!

Is this my Undoing?

I am not a pirate, but I wish I could have pirated OS X Leopard when I had the chance and kicked Time Machine, the instant back-up feature, into gear, That would have done the work neglected by the bloody app developer who left me high and dry. Listen to me, I am being corrupted all because of the lack of an Undo script that could have been written by a knowledgeable chappy in 5 measly minutes.

Now I have to decide. Do I let it go and move on, or do I lose another hour of my life redoing the article? An hour may not sound like much, but it is like an aeon when writing under that cloud that engulfs you when you are repeating work that was to all intents and purposes completely fine! Maybe today isn't a good day. I will let it go - for now. Relax....



I didn't know about the foam hammer, so all I need now is a Ctrl-Z function to Undo the crack in my screen!

What is the most work you ever lost to a computer-based flake out?

btw, not one single pixel was actually damaged in the creation of this article.

Update. I managed to somewhat salvage the iPod armband saga

Jeremy Fain's blog, Tech It Easy is a good example of guest blogging put to good use. One of his international co-writers, Vincent, a Dutchman writing in his native language of better English than me, penned a quick round-up of interviews featuring the top IT CEO's and their thoughts on leadership. I couldn't resist.

Andy Grove

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Looking at the Intel guru he seeemed to have a great face for audio podcasting, and no wonder the slogan was Intel inside. He hasn't worn well and should stay deep inside a building, locked away from the cameras, only to come out for radio interviews and in absentia award ceremonies.

Jeff Bezos

This guy is wasted at Amazon, he should be on the stage with his 2 to 4 hour comedy routine. He had me laughing with his hyena-like enthusiasm about bizarrely named Mechanical Turk and Elastic Compute Cloud services. Sounds like a Belgian punk rock band? The Arrington analogy to the Matrix was hysterical too. Good one - mwahahahhahaaha.

Eric Schmidt

He blew the lid on running Google. It blew me away too to see that not only are 3 heads better than one, but the triumvirate of leaders at Google (is that tautological?) has actually morphed into one most important person. That is a stellar way to create a good leader and proof that at Google, anything is possible.

Reid Hoffman

He is clearly a great leader. Is his motto, Follow me, or I will eat you for my second lunch? Just a thought after seeing his bio pic.

The original Tech It easy article is full of more useful links. Merci beaucoup, have a bon jour, and blog on.

Newshutch Nathan spends hundreds if not thousands of bucks on the slickest laptop on the market, and then is too much of a tight wad to buy a $30 case to protect it.

Even worse, he publicises how he spent money on fricking duct-tape to produce a solution that could at best be described as hideous, and at worst... well, you don't need me to fill in the spoofy gaps, Nate!

I was following a discussion over at MacNN where they were discussing the future of the humble CD and DVD drive. Before all PC users glaze over and scrabble for the Next button, it seemed as if some fanatics were actually breaking out of the closed Apple world for just one moment, and were talking in general terms.

CD, DVD or USB pen drive

Basically, the question was, do any of us need a CD or DVD burner, in view of the increasingly popular USB "pen" drive? And before you think, pen size, tiny, they are morphing into boxes now approaching the size of a small filing cabinet.

As usual, the Mac faithful, the first to dump floppies, were so far ahead of the rest of the human race, it was almost funny. Not that many were in favor of dumping CDs and DVDs, after all, most important software comes on discs these days. And when we burn music, a CD or DVD is usually the best way to give someone a present of pirated tunes. So, basically, the concensus on the forum was, optical media, dude, is here to stay.

The funny bit, to me, though, was what they think we, the plebs, do with CDs and DVDs.

What do we do with CDs and DVd?

What is really laughable is the assumption that everyone burns CDs and DVDs for the same reasons computer power users do. Firstly, the enthusiastic power users think that discs are part of our daily, best computer practice ritual. You know, to back up, to back up and to back up your important data. And then to exchange and preserve multimedia, and finally, to install software. Hmmmm.

Back up your hard drive

Maccers are of course a wee bit out of touch there, as hardly anyone makes a copy of hard drives these days, especially onto a set of 50 poxy discs. And no, guys, hardly anyone has a 30GB/disc blu ray DVD burner yet.

Most folks live in hope that a hard drive crash and burn won''t happen to them. Most glaze over at creating disk images of hard drives. Like, er what? Admittedly, a few people have external hard drives, and a few of those even have the latest version of their computer's hard drive on it. But in general, the majority of computer users aren't using CDs for constructive life-saving purposes.

So, on the point of discs still being essential for back-up, I would disagree with the concensus on that forum. I would dump my CD drive in a heart beat for a laptop with an extra big hard drive. Now you are talking.

Who needs music CDs/ DVDs these days?

CDs are for music, right! and DVDs are for videos - that you downloaded, usually free, off the internet. Not exactly critical stuff, but even if you are attached to your pirated media, or honestly acquired entertainment, there are so many options now that make a piece of scratchable disc obsolete.

First, I heard the latest Linken Park crap from a kid who stuck a USB pen drive in my laptop. It didn't drain my laptop battery on contact, didn't scratch or wear out any moving parts. I would take that pen drive over a CD any day, and so would the lad - it didn't stretch his designer pockets into the shape of a square, and it was easy to carry around as extra bling.

Second, I would accept a music track over the internet in a New York rap minute.

Third, I would copy any music or software over to a big ole external USB, or firewire hard drive in a second too. Back-up or play with a CD/DVD drive, no thanks.

CD drives are vital for installing software from discs

Really? I can't remember the last time I installed software off a disc. Updates and extra software come off of Versiontracker in my world. And there is no reason why Apple or MS shouldn't provide the full original Operating System over the internet. Lose the CDs, lose the packaging. It's all good and sooo 21st century green.

You are just saying CD drives are useless

Wrong, I am living the fact! And to make a point of how unnecessary a CD drive is, I have a nifty Mac laptop, but I haven't burned a CD in months. Not since the battery started dying and any sniff of a CD killed the juice in seconds. And I haven't neglected to back up my stuff, not since I put all my music and photos and really vital files on an external drive for safe keeping.

My god, who wants to sift through CDs for back-up stuff, when you just plug in a mega fast USB hard drive/pen drive and everything appears on your screen to drag and drop into place.

And when I give people music, it is over the internet. And when I send work files, it is over the internet. It may be slow to upload 700MB, but it's a darned sight faster than Fed Ex and at 3am when you are asleep, who cares how long it takes your computer to upload anything.

And if I wanted to, I could back up my whole hard drive onto a remote server that is 20 times more secure than a hard drive on my desk, and far more aesthetically pleasing than a stack of CDs floating around in a cupboard.

CD, DVD burner or USB pen drive?

In answer to some of those Maccers who say CDs are indispensable because we need to have our data in a handy format and usable when out and about - and be able to share music with friends or colleagues, to them, I say bolleaux!! There are several workable alternatives to a disc that scratches.

Death to the CD or DVD burner in my laptop, let me have a bigger battery or hard drive, or both - with one of these Deal of the Day USB thumb drives thrown in!

Wot, you think I am too far ahead of the game, just because you haven't got a 100MB/sec internet connection? hehe!!

We've linked to several web search engines offering random payments & prizes! Click the icon & search our keyphrase funny stuff or web search. It is a win-win, perhaps!

Jeff Kee really had a field day with his post on Mac users v iFag mac users. It made my juices flow for sure!

When I switched to a Mac powerbook in 2003, I became an iFag. It was an awesomely easy and productive time for me, after having as much luck with Windows as Mac addicts in basements have with girls. I had to tell the world about the joy of Mac. Noone listened till I got to Spain, and then everyone bought one! I had been right all along. iFagdom was the way.

I still wouldn't have a PC if you paid me, and after a bad time with a G5, neither would I have a Mac tower. But now I think, after experiencing all the quirks and spinning wheels on a little 867MHz Titanium painted Powerbook, I have achieved proper mac user status. It feels good to be in balance, ommmmmm.

In my 5th year of daily Powerbook beatings, I can't make it crash, but I acknowledge the limitations of a Mac, - one button, eye candy, no paper clip, and dialog boxes that glide not pop. Rather than be an ifag and ignore them, or worse, laud them as "made by design" I try to help others by explaining how I get over the niggles.

A single button mouse or trackpad is a non-issue with a piece of software, sidetracker, installed. Eye candy is a non-issue too, with my new found and healthy hatred of style. I spit on drop shadows and high definition widgets. I admit, I miss the Windows paper clip, so I have a surrogate titanium-coated one blu-tacked rather stylishly to my screen for old times sake. As for smoothly opening dialog boxes, maybe I lied, I will never get over those elegantly unfurling boxes. So I disconnected the freeware to open a box super snappy, Windows style.

Jeff Kee was right to highlight the Mac cult kids, but deep down, he knows he missed out and should have invested at least 2 more years of his life learning an intuitive Mac OS X.

Happy daze.

Update I think I was being too subtle, because 2 years to learn something intuitive was meant as a joke/contradiction in terms.

Tech It Easy blogger, Jeremy Fain, is in Paris. Trés bien. 3 months ago, under the influence of too much red wine and croissants at breakfast time, he bought into the Apple popularity paradigm. In other words, instead of buying two decent PCs, he converted all his worthless dollars into Euros and splurged on a gorgeous 17" MacBook Pro. Pourquoi?

MacBook Pros are perfect for winter

Jeremy really enjoyed the chance to pose, I mean, surf the internet on the sidewalk outside various rudely staffed street cafes. Whilst writing an email, he realised he had a definite advantage over the sad Dell Un-Inspiron user base surfing wirelessly on adjoining tables. While they were wrapped up in duffel coats and scarves, he was in shirt sleeves, soaking up the heat from his laptop.

Mac Book Pros suck (your battery) the big one

With one eye on his dwindling battery life, and a perpetually twirling widget on his Mail app, he realised time was short. Even if he finished his email in time, sending it could be an issue. His antenna was not quite as poky as the Dell boys', but after much wandering about, casually pointing his computer at anything resembling a base station, he was able to access the internet. Being sat on the far left table, he was in a direct line with the router, but the direct view of the trash was a bit of a bummer.

A heart warming experience

After ordering yet another kir from grumpy Pierre, life became good again for the sweating surfer. The wireless signal kicked in, the email whooshed away via a CIA monitoring station in the Eiffel tower and Jeremy managed to delete the original email to make space on his overflowing 120GB Hard Drive.

Apple certainly now how to make things different for la pomme lovers.

Original inspirational article is on Tech IT easy.

According to Digital Journal, a Canadian firm is claiming to have taken a quantum leap in technology by producing a computer that can perform 64,000 calculations at once! Yeah, so what! Isn't that a real dummy compared to the human brain that invented the computer? Admittedly, the supercomputer could probably kick the ass off Babbage's machine, but beat Babbage or any drunk, I don't think so.

The Pisstakers conclusion - not impressed.

If you had a spanky brand new laptop, or a company notebook, and you took it on a long journey by plane, wouldn't you be holding onto it for grim death? Incredibly, 120 computer-hauling passengers passing through Heathrow every month just plain forget they ever brought one with them. Not as bad as leaving the baby on the bus, but not far off.


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The video on exploding laptop batteries has moved to the Web videos section.

An age-old photo that can tell a few stories!