News and Views

I was fixing a computer a few days ago that was driving me crazy. When I began, it was full of malware; trojans, fake virus scanners and browser hijackers. I ran the usual scanner/cleaners and it seemed to be clean, but as soon as I started browsing it hijacked me to some malicious […]

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Mozilla has released a new version of the Thunderbird email client.
It’s got some nice new features; tabbed emails is the main one that stands out at first.
I’ve just installed it, which was painless, and so far it looks very good.
Unfortunately my calendar plug-in isn’t compatible (yet), but it was synced with Google Calendar […]

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I got a Motorola Droid smartphone last week. I’m pretty happy with it, and am pretty sure I will keep it.
I agree that the iPhone has a few minor advantages over the Droid: I like the way it feels in my hand better, with its rounded corners. Pinch-zoom would be nice. […]

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I’d been running Windows 2000 on a Pentium 4 computer for several years, and I was starting to feel the limitations. On the Pentium 4, newer programs ran slowly and some of the big C++ compiles I did took forever. With Windows 2000, though I still think it’s perhaps the best OS Microsoft […]

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Have you ever thought about the long instructions you get when you reach the voice mail for a mobile phone?
“The number you have dialed, 480 555-1234 is not available. You can leave a message after the tone. After leaving your message, you can hang up, or press pound for other options. […]

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Mozilla has come out with a new version of Firefox: Version 3.5.
There are several improvements in this version. I especially like two of them:
1) They finally seem to have memory management under control. Previous versions of Firefox would seem to slowly take up more and more memory, and never release it […]

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I run Linux on my Netbook, and find that it works perfectly well in that application. On my netbook I primarily need a web browser and email, along with the ability to view media and PDFs, and run Skype and ICQ. I don’t think there’s any reason to pay anything for Windows […]

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I use Firefox to browse the internet, instead of Internet Explorer, of course. Here are a few other things I’ve found that improve my browsing experience.
1) Install Adblock Plus, and activate one of the subscriptions. This will get rid of most ads.
2) Install FlashBlock. This prevents Flash from playing until […]

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In case you missed my last comments on the previous blog, I bought a Kindle. It is my birthday present. It arrived on Friday.
I have mixed feelings about it. Mostly it is very nice. Books are easy to download and there is lots of content available (and quite a bit of […]

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Does anybody who reads my blog have a Kindle eBook reader?
It looks like it might be a great way to read books. The new version 2 that just came out is supposed to improve on most of the problems with the first one.
On the other hand, it’s very expensive. Though you can download […]

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