It had to happen. The IE dev team (newly re-created again after thinking they had sewn up the browser market) have a blog. Looking at the list of popular requests, it looks like most folk want Firefix bundled with XP as the default browser if the feature list is anything to go by.
People want people to download Mozilla Firefox
It also looks like the dev team have a sense of humour.
It’s superb.
The PC arrived on Thursday, although not without a wee mix-up. I got a Glasgow Uni machine and they got mine. But Dell and TNT got the mix-up sorted by mid-afternoon – bravo. I unpacked it and faced another little problem – it wouldn’t start. Boo. All was not lost – the Dell has four lights on the back – the first two were amber. Checked the manual – memory problem. Probably unseated slightly during transit so I opened the case. Wow. The case swings open on a hinge which is really smart – what got me was the size of the heatsink and chimney that the Intel uses. Massive. I removed and replaced the memory – pressed the power button and all was well – I took some photo’s while the case was open which can be found here. While the case was opened I fitted the firewire card from the old machine as the Dell comes with 8 USB2 ports but no firewire which the iPod needs. Clicked the case shut (no screws here thank you very much) and I was away. Got the Windows formalities out the way. Impressions – very fast.
Got the XP security downloads started and I thought I would need to dig out the Nortons disk before I did anything else but the Dell comes with a 90 day trial of McAfee which is a really good idea. No need for a firewall as I’ve got a hardware one on the router. Next was Firefox – don’t trust IE. Loading times were superb. The last test was gaming. Battlefield Vietnam looked amazing and didn’t stutter once. Joy!
Since then I’ve been installing all the hardware I’ve got and also some software – not too much. Trying to avoid the clutter that I had on the old machine but thats really delaying the inevitable. I’m also glad that I stayed away from a Creative Audigy card. The onboard sound is pucker 5.1 and all I need. There’s also a strong chance that it’s less buggy than the Creative drivers.
Overall, I’m very impressed with the Dell. Easy to maintain, fast and a tad less noisy than my old machine – it fair churns out some heat though. Last positive note – no blue screens….yet.
I’ve been after a new pc for the last few months. Picking up Battlefield Vietnam and watching it jerk (oo-er) while on it’s lowest settings was just too painful. I didn’t even pick up Far Cry as I knew it would be a pointless experience. I had resigned to getting a base unit only, probably from Evesham and probably costing around £1100 give or take a few pounds and features.
Then I got a tip off from King Arthur. He used the Dell Outlet Site to pick up a bargain pc. I stalked the site for the last week or so and on Friday finally bit the bullet and picked my new pc. 3.0Ghz Pentium, 160Gig Hard disk, I Gig of Ram and a 256 Meg Radeon 9800XT. £800. Class. Oh – Windows XP Professional as well. Hopefully should be here within the next fortnight. Now…what to do with the old one. I’ll probably use it as some sort of media storage/server. It’s a bit noisy so may have to try and quieten it a bit.
Since moving to WordPress the site has always had a problem displaying in IE. Well, it looks like I was a victim of the Peek-a-boo IE6 Bug. Now that I’ve applied a fix hopefully it displays a bit better – well it looks better from my pc anyway. All thats left to figure out is why the Now Playing code doesn’t display fully. Pity everyone hasn’t moved to Firefox.
Mental note no 43 – setting up a pc with Windows 98 is now officially difficult and will induce a migraine that keeps you in bed for a few hours more than normal. Fact. After fixing a machine a few weeks ago the only thing left after the virus had done it’s stuff was a sick soundcard. I reckoned it would be best to start from scratch and re-install everything.
Everything went well until the last bit of hardware, the webcam. What a bugger. It works in one bit of the creative software but not in an other. Then Autocad wouldn’t install, Office 97 was screwed, Photoshop Album wouldn’t run etc etc etc. Nightmare.
I now officially have ‘The FEAR’ when re-installing old operating systems. The driver support for new hardware is shockingly bad, although it should be noted that it’s a Creative card and their support is not the best.
The good news is that I’ve finally met someone with almost the same sense of humour/banter that I have – it got very surreal when we could predict each others responses. Class!
For a while now I’ve been using Messenger Plus which is a nice addon to messenger for Windows. However today via a helpful automatic update it installed some nasty spyware and an obtrusive IE toolbar for some websearching firm which no matter how many times you switched it off, it would reappear. After a half hour of trying to gain control an uninstall of Messenger Plus had sorted it out.
I then ran an ad-aware scan which removed a further 130 (bloody hell) nasty spyware entries on my machine. You just can’t surf safely nowadays. Thats what I get for not using Firefox more, now my default browser.
Nope, not some dodgy Clint Eastwood movie. If you’ve got Windows, do yourself a favour and download Firefox – a fast, free and non M$ browsing alternative to IE6. Did I mention it was better than IE6 to?
Well, Apple have sold 1 million tracks in the 3 days since the windows version of iTunes was released. Very impressive, but hopefully they will fix a couple of issues with the software. The biggie for me is that iTunes dumps every file mp3 file into one folder on the iPod meaning it skips tracks when trying to seek a file. Other software spreads the tracks through 20 folders to avoid this problem. Apart from this is all works pretty well.
However the increasing amount of mp3’s means I need a new hard disk. 45 gig just isn’t enough anymore, and thats without backup! So I’ve ordered a 120 gig Seagate which will hopefully get here for the weekend. Then its just a case of starting from scratch with Windows. Lovely. An hour to install, probably 2 hours downloading from Windows update. Then I can start to install some software. All legal off course 😉
Well, it works and it hasn’t crashed….yet. As with QuickTime on Windows, window refresh seems slower but it’s acceptable. Imported music library fine, works with MP3’s as well as AAC and allows ripping and burning of tracks. Make sure you have plenty ram though as iTunes uses a fair bit – Windows users should be used to this though.
iTunes for Windows comes with support for the Apple Music Store, but not for any country other than USA – Europe should hopefully be able to buy from the store in the New Year. You can still get previews of the tracks though – very nice.
A new update for the iPod is also out. This allows iTunes to work with the pod and also puts a couple of enhancements on the pod – a new game, Music Quiz selects a random track and 5 options for the title – you need to select the title – simple but nice as its based on your own library. Backlight improved (altered), battery graphics changed and also support for picture storage and also audio note taking (as long as you buy the new hardware add-ons to go with it).
The iPod synching with iTunes works really well – much better than Musicmatch (start, control panel, add remove software, uninstall) and I’m looking forward to using the smart playlists and music rating.
All in all a good start and finally for Windows users a chance to use the software that best matches the iPod. Try this site for some tips on setting up some smart playlists.