* Posts by Dave McEneaney

13 publicly visible posts • joined 3 May 2007

BBC Watchdog crew sink teeth into dodgy PC repair shops

Dave McEneaney

Agreement

I agree with the first couple of posters. The actor who was playing the customer told the engineer that it had been working, then getting slower and slower then just stopped. The ONLY way the jumper would have moved would have been for someone to deliberately mess with it. I've lost what little faith I had in Watchdog because they conned the repairman.

I'd probably have taken the box away, put a new hard drive in it ANYWAY and then attempted to get the guy's data across - which would have worked if the drive wasn't faulty. I'd have probably charged around £60 + a brand new quality HDD at £40.

The £200 was a joke, and re-using a hard drive is unacceptable. The rest of the interview with the crooked managers was fine, but the young engineer shouldn't really be blamed - I know plenty of people who can put PCs together that are that age and probably have never seen a master/slave jumper, and if they have, it'd've always been set to auto select.

Fuming fanbois flood 'flimsy iPhone 5 Wi-Fi' forum

Dave McEneaney
Go

Same issue

Had major issues with 2 x iPhone 5's connecting to my home network. Would connect, but dropped out at random every few minutes. Solved by changing from WPA2-PSK(AES) to WPA-PSK (WITHOUT AES) - obviously this knocks a load of wireless N features on the head, but works until a fix comes out.

First Windows Phone 7 handsets sell out

Dave McEneaney

They're good

Quite liked playing with the Mozart I got from Orange. Very nice display, fast, responsive, good camera. It's just not my iPhone, though, which is why I got £400 on eBay for it.

iPhone developers gifted lovely free extension

Dave McEneaney
Pirate

Corporate Apps

Here's a question. What's the deal with writing an app for the iPhone for exclusive use within a corporation? e.g., is there a way to push it out to hundereds of handsets WITHOUT using the iTunes App Store?

I'm fully aware of the jailbreak road, but imagine supporting hundereds of users who upgrade their firmware every couple of months then wonder why nothing works any more...

Fasthosts to offshore support staff

Dave McEneaney

My word

It shocks me that they had 38 support staff to begin with!

EU says Microsoft violated law with IE on Windows

Dave McEneaney

AntiWHAT?

I never really understood this. What USE would a modern operating system be without a web browser, media player etc. running out of the box?

I mean, I can imagine it now - you build a new PC, install Windows, then come to do anything, the first thing you have to do is download a web browser. Hmn, I'll choose firefox. Where shall I get it from - ah yes, getfirefox.com - how do I get there? err... um...

Ok, maybe I can FTP it from somewhere. Oh no, because then the EU may get pissy about the microsoft FTP client being built into Windows.

I genuinely hate IE as much as anyone (I make standards-compliant websites for a living), but making MS release a version of windows with IE and WMP disabled is just nuts.

Microsoft dashes hopes for 'major' Windows server upgrade

Dave McEneaney

Not really an issue for me

I think Server 2008 is a damned fine product as it is.

Vodafone jacks up UK prices

Dave McEneaney
IT Angle

Early Contract Cancellation

What IS the legal / contractual position of cancelling a contract on Vodafone early? I've just got a HTC Touch Diamond out of them, for free, on a £20 a month tarrif - which IS a good deal, but I'd still like to be able to say to them "yeah, I'm cancelling my contract, what are you doing to do about it?"

Thanks...

Windows Server 2008 is better than Vista, but why?

Dave McEneaney

Microsoft's own desktops

I went to the Microsoft campus in Reading last year, to attend what was meant to be a technical discussion but was actually a sales pitch on Exchange 2007 and SharePoint. What I found was that, all the MS employees that brought their laptops up and did demos were running various Server 2008 betas / RCs rather than Vista, and were saying how well it performed.

I like Vista, I do. But from experience, 2008 Server does run a hell of a lot better.

Dreaded Blue Screen of Death mars some Leopard installs

Dave McEneaney
Heart

Orlowski

Is there a reason why this story isn't being covered by the above reporter who was espousing how wonderful Leopard would be only yesterday?

Microsoft finds good facts to sell Windows Vista

Dave McEneaney

Sick of Microsoft bashing

We have an MSDN subscription, so in the first week of December last year, a shiny pack of Vista disks plopped onto my desk. I took a quick backup of my system drive, bunged in the disk, formatted and installed. Driver support was nonexistent, however, I was able to happily use the old XP drivers, freely downloadable from my motherboard manufacturers site.

Used it quite happily for a month, got a new machine, installed Vista. This time, it fired up for the first time, and told me that a bunch of 'updates' (5 or so) were available from windows update. These were security patches and so forth. Installed the drivers for my motherboard directly from the manufacturers website, no problem.

Come May, new hardware, new machine, new reinstall. This time, upon getting to the desktop for the first time, Vista had gone off to windows update and got 20 new drivers, for ALL my hardware (including specific ones for my mouse + keyboard, printer, scanner, every tiny bit of my motherboard, wireless, phone). All installed flawlessly, no problem.

So Microsoft ARE doing their bit - windows update under vista is a total joy. Even a brain-dead 'home' user is capable of clicking 'yeah, I'd like to install all these latest drivers please'. I wonder how many people complaining about a lack of driver support are people sticking in the CD that came in the box of the hardware and battling with some god-awful, custom autorun application, rather than going to the manufacturers website and getting a proper, clean .inf driver install pack - which is what any half-clued up person, or IT bod in a business would do anyways.

Vista runs like a dream on both my home and work PCs - admittedly, they're fairly high spec (scoring 4.2 and 5.2 on the windows experience thing respectively), and I've not found ANY program that won't run on it - but maybe that's because I stick to decent applications and keep my kit free of desktop toolbars, search helpers, background virus scanners, anti-spyware programs, yahoo messenger clients, 3 or 4 different firewall products, adaware, popup blockers and all the other crap that I constantly find on the computers of people and businesses that we don’t support.

But the renaming of Add / Remove Programs makes me gnash my teeth and have a hissy fit every time I go looking for it.

Don't let Windows Indexing Service know too much

Dave McEneaney

Not exactly helpful...

Without detracting from what is, in my opinion, a very well written article...

This is just the kindof thing that an IT 'manager' (e.g. not techy) would read and start whining to system administrators to implement across a whole network. I can see the conversation now "Could you delete everyone's index.dat files in the logoff script? Can we re-ghost a machine at the start of each week for 'privacy' reasons?"

On another note, the most wonderous feature I've found of Vista, is been able to hit the 'start' button on my keyboard, and type in the name of a document, email, customer, MP3, picture or whatever, and have my PC instantly return a list of matching files from my 'profile' folders (e.g. documents, music, pictures) - which, incidentally, can now be pointed at any location on my computer that I see fit (e.g. my encrypted 'data' drive).

Granny waxes lyrical in 'txt laureate' challenge

Dave McEneaney

txt msg slng

"O heart that soars, my love adores, he makes me live, he makes me give myself to him, as my love pours." is less than 160 characters. Morons.