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.

Tags: CCC, hard drive, Apple, Data Rescue

The iPhone from Apple has a few days left in hiding before its 29th of June release. If you watch the promo video, you will see the phone / iPod / GPS coffee maker has a screen that should make video-watching half way bearable. In response to a great new gadget, HungryFlix have launched a service to provide all you iPhoners-in-waiting with a plethora of fab films to download.

Feature length movies

From Wages of Sin to Mulva: Zombie Ass kicker available for quick and easy download, it is shaping up to be an entertaining commute to the office. And you don't need to work in the city to afford films - the two examples are $4.95 and $2.99 respectively.

Top rate music videos

If gore isn't your thing, and for many it isn't, how about some easy listening muzak videos? Top of the billing is My Virgin Widows, a Gothic Blue-Grass murder-ballad by the NYC band, Mors Syphilitica, just 99 cents. Having had your blood curdled by that one, you need a little soother of a tune.

Further down the available music vid for download list, I couldn't agree more with Erica Diaz, singing a song about a young girl imagining a better world she wishes to live in.

Conclusion about HungryFlix

The website is clean and easy to navigate and there are good summaries and clear pricing and the prices seem right. Should be a winner - eventually, hopefully.

With an iPhone, the world is supposed to be better place for us klutzes who can't make the buttons on a normal cell phone work. But if the iPhone is just a vehicle for B-rate movies and never-was songs, maybe I am better off not bugging my wife to buy me an iPhone for her birthday.

HungryFlix better live up to their name and be ravenous for quality content. Check out the HungryFlix site, it can only get better.

Tags: iPhone, hungryFlix, Apple, download, movies

OMG, according to Techboggle, the release date of the iPhone has been delayed by quality control issues. This is crushing news to me, because the mighty Apple have had their fingers on a tiny corner of the Pisstakers credit card ever since the announcement of the wonder phone months ago.

Fingers are getting itchy, but the most vexing aspect, however, is not the prospect of even more months without a cell phone, but Apple's about-turn so late in the game.

Does a leopard ever change its spots?

What has induced this dramatic change of attitude from Apple? Normally they don't give a toss about dodgy batteries. and just recall them when poo hits the fan.They even used batteries that would catch fire if you run more than 2 applications at once. And build quality has never troubled them before.

Oh, sorry, I misread the name of the manufacturer in all those examples As you were, Apple, carry on, the money will be there when you decide to let us have a perfect sample of what only a few hallowed humans have so far seen from inside a goldfish bowl.

Tags: iPhone, Apple, battery

I recently studied the rescued contents of my Applications folder, and I was reminded of the importance of naming software with care. Some titles are self evident, most require some inside info before you knoiw what the hell they do.

Say what you do, do what you say... This cliché contains sound advice when it comes to naming a product, especially at purchase time. For some reason, geeky developers often forget that the people they want to encourage to buy the software have not been living and breathing the product for months. Therefore the customer needs help differentiating one amongst thousands of other titles vying for their attention.

If you hear that Microsoft have a new version of Word, only a dummy would ask, What does Word do?

Has it always been so clear cut? If I had had my way, the original release, Word would have been called Worried - the result of a great word processor running on an OS called Windows, a combination which is either very good or very bad depending on the weather. Now, after so much money spent on marketing, it is safe to assure people are not worried by anything other than the price of Word. How bloody much?

Even if you know nothing about Macs, iCal must be a calendar? Yay! Address book is an address book. Entourage? Ah, that is Microsoft, and yes, it isn't too obvious what Entourage does just from the name - but throw in a few more million in marketing and branding and it becomes crystal clear!

For several reasons, it makes sense to have descriptive software titles from the offset, but why do most software titles seem to fall through the hole of naming logic?

Dodgy Mac software titles

Pando - Now let me think, that is a?... file-sending application! Psychics may have guessed that Pando shoots files all over the internet, but the rest of us non-cosmic folk would surely never associate the name with its function in a million years of guessing.

Chirp - now that could be a name for a chat app, right? Wrong. Bird song analyser? Not even close. Try, software to handle Group task & project management & communications Claro!

Floola - iPod manager Of course, how silly of me not to know that Floola is indispensable for organising your music and videos on your iPod. (I bet it doesn't stop you getting zapped by lightening or run over on a crossing.) Floola isn't the first word I expected to see in the web search result, but it is up there! Another bit of proof that marketing can sell anything.

Dress assistant - At last, a term that is close to what I expect. This one actually says what it does on the tin. But on reflection, why would I need a personal dress assistant?

Thanks to Versiontracker for the inspiration on intuitive applications with obtuse names. Got any good examples of puzzling names?

Tags: Apple, microsoft, Floola, Pando, Chirp

The official line:

Click its hot key, and it appears directly under the mouse. The things you use most, those core tools, appear all around your cursor, each one just a few pixels away.

A great tool for hard core Mac users

The Pisstakers take on trampoline

To really nail home the idea that time is money, Trampoline software makes sure that air head Mac users can launch their Office work applications, and music, photo and countless other lightweight distractions in double quick time.



Keep on reading, dude

Tags: Apple

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.

Tags: Apple

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!

Tags: Apple