Real World Computing

A bit of Dell and Microsoft Bashing This morning when I arrived at work, my computer had installed a Microsoft Windows XP update (for Office 2007, which isn't even installed on my PC - it's running 2003) and rebooted. The result was that my screen was now partially blurry. Something had screwed around with the video drivers. I wasn't sure if it was a problem with the video card or the monitor but there's an easy way to find out. I booted from a handy Ubuntu boot CD (my trusty Bart PE didn't seem to work on the DELL). These boot CDs are brilliant. They let you get work done without having to install an operating system. In my case, I was able to connect to the network and open some large documents to assure myself that the monitor blurriness was gone. When I booted back into Windows, the blur came back too. I called DELL and explained my actions and was given the extremely helpful advice (NOT), that since it was obviously not a monitor or video card problem, ...

All companies have internal buzzwords and gobbledygook but most are fairly conscious about providing an intermediary translation before shooting it off to their customers. This little gem? from IBM was so bizarre that I felt it was worth sharing; I received an email today indicating that IBM had decided to make some changes to their licensing. As a customer, I try to be careful about reading such things because sometimes they highlight problems and sometimes they give us extra benefits. The email consisted of a two page "covering letter". The first page of which said very little other than suggesting that a licence change was happening and giving a rough date. It pointed you to the attached document (the second page). The first paragraph just tells you very little other than identifying that it's to do with IBM's Passport Agreement Programme (I'd already figured that part out). It's the second paraphaph that prompted this post. I've reproduced it in ...

The Scenario We have a test server which is used for development test purposes only. It was set up with Domino on the C: drive (which normally I prefer to keep clean for the operating system). Domino was apparently later installed on D: drive but the old installation was not removed and the Lotus Domino Server service remained in startup. As a result of the old service still being installed, the new one did not get installed - I'm not sure if this was a notes problem or if the person doing the installation had "cheated" and simply copied the folders to the new drive. It was only a test server after all. Regardless of the cause, the issues became; There was an old service which was disabled To prevent the wrong domino server from accidentally being started, the folder C:\Lotus was renmed to C:\Old-Lotus. The New Service was not installed This meant that everytime the server was rebooted, the domino service had to be restarted manually - and also, whomever started the D...

It's been noted all over the place that the browser wars are starting again (well, they've been going strong for the last few years). I've been a long-time Firefox user ever since I forced myself to live with the browser for a month just to try it out. I coudn't go back to IE. I've tried Safari, Opera and Chrome without feeling too tempted. I was impressed by the design of Chrome but the lack of familiar features (add-ons and scripting) failed to win me over. I'll admit though that I've found Opera to be the browser of choice on the Blackberry. Recently, I decided to give IE8 a go. Ok, so it was on the morning of the FIRST day of release but that doesn't mean I'll be lining up for any other MS products. I decided to see how well it worked doing the normal things I do every day. It almost made 45 minutes but then it crashed and I haven't used it much since then. I then switched my attention back to the Chrome 2.0 beta browser I had been testi...