Posts by Damian Turner-Steele

Moving to Windows 7: Is it worth it?

Fail for most commentards

I heard all this bollocks with the change from Win 98 to XP. I guess that most of the haters are just not old enough to remember all the driver problems and DOS reliant programs that wouldn't run back then. Win2k's support was even worse for a long while. Get the F@#$ over it. Even bollocks from the browser w*&^%ks. Try and run Safari on an old Mac or FF4 on a 12 year old Linux distro, it just ain't going to happen. Once upon a time there were IT professionals here, perhaps they are too buy working to read this nonsense any more.

iPad media apps: Stealthed hobbits thwart Google's flaming Eye

iMac anyone?

Despite all the noise and hype the i-diots still have only a fraction of the market. Regular phones, Android phones, pc's and laptops of all flavours still hugely out number the Apple. The only problem here is peoples perception of the problem. I am pretty confident that the iphone and ipad will go the same way as the imac. Expensive toys for people with more money than sense while the rest of the world goes on with PC's, tablets and phones running something else.

New 'iPhoD' can 'adjust the speed of light by turning a knob'

Best name ever

beaten-track-averse battleboffinry bureau

Laughed harder at this then at the more recent BOFH

Linux desktop freaks out Ubuntu man

One cloud to rule them all

The argument is going to be moot in just a few more years. Google (or something similar) will be the future. Chrome is just the opening salvo.

Anatomy of a malware scam

@pierre

I'm with you mate. This is too invasive to rely on cleaning alone. Having spent between two and three hours removing a variant once, I now simply back up data off line and reinstall. Using XP with SP3 slipstreamed in and then restoring the data is much quicker and guaranteed to work.

The experience of reinstalling all their apps is usually a salutary lesson as it takes the user some time of their own

Which is the best Linux for laptops?

PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS is the only one I have used that works with everything, I tried gOS (pre rocket) and it didn't recognise my wireless but it was quite quick, and I don't spend ages trying to get stuff to work, its quicker to throw another distro at the problem. I am also using Vector a lot at the moment, the lite version is excellent on old hardware and 5.9 is good anyway.

gOS - a Google good OS for your Mum

Vector Linux anyone?

No distro based upon Ubuntu can really be called lightweight. I have tried Xubuntu, FluxBuntu amongst others and they really don't run all that well on the specs that Simpson mentions. No particular reason that gOS will run any better.

I suggest that for the PC he is building for his child that Vector Linux may be a much better bet.

Of course, I could be wrong.

OpenSUSE 11 a redemptive OS with a Mactastic shine

OS! who gives a stuff

OS! who cares. Turns it on, works, turns off.

Asus' Atom-powered Eee PC spied on web

Just a bigger screen

That is all I wanted from my 701.

Cameron blames Labour naivety for NHS IT woes

15 billion

I think i would prefer that such a huge sum of money be spent on Doctors, Nurses, Cleaners, in hospital catering etc.

I have plenty of faith in the skills of the hospital staff to correctly diagnose and treat me regardless of where I present. If the sum of money was spent on improving numbers of staff available so that they were not over worked and under appreciated; that hospitals were cleaned by staff directly employed by the hospital and felt they had some appreciation and ownership of there job; if food was cooked and prepared on site rather than delivered and microwaved then people may actually get better instead of dying from MRSA and other post op complications. If we were seen by the same doctors for repeat appointments so that they actually knew who we were and what our problems were rather than an endless procession of locums, trainees, fill ins, and people whose qualifications may be fine but are barely intelligible because they have such a poor grasp of spoken or colloquial or regional (scouse, geordie, etc) English because it is not their first language.

No amount of money thrown at IT systems can help any of these problems and to have spent 15 Billion and still no end in sight is not just incompetent, its obscene.

I really couldn't give a stuff whether my information is held on a central database, in a brown manila envelope or on sticky notes as long as it works. Most of the money spent so far is on a system that doesn't.

Opera and Mozilla step up mobile browser pressure

Opera Mini and IE7

On my desktop running Vista Home Premium IE7 has never worked correctly. Two tabs will freeze the whole machine. I use Firefox 2 by default and never really had a problem. On my mobile, a fairly low end Nokia 6165, I occasionally use the web to check emails and addresses. The built in browser is sufficient to check gmail but will not let me view my google calender. I get a message saying that the page cannot be rendered on my mobile device. using Opera Mini I have no such limitation. Mini may be beta but I have never had any problem with it at all.

Mandriva Linux 2008 is out and about

@ Anonymous Coward

The difference between the Mandriva DVD and the Vista DVD is that after you install Mandriva you have all the tools you need to work including office suites, networking tools, graphics programs etc.

With Vista you get very little and you begin the follow up install of anti-virus software, third party antispyware (do you trust Windows Defender), office software and so on and so on. Also you will then struggle to find the remaining drivers if you are installing on older or self built machinery. You will notice also that the review mentions that it included proprietary Nvidia and ATI drivers for graphics. This is not the case with Vista yet and a visit to these web-sites is also required by Vista users.

Also on the Mandriva DVD will be thousands of extra programs which you can choose to install or not. Very little extra on the Vista disc.

I have no position on either OS. I just thought the comparison in disc size needed some clarification.

Windows XP repair disk kills automatic updates

update time wasting

Had this exact problem yesterday. repaired PC, updates broken. Rang MS spent 10 min on first line help, transfered to 2nd line. 2nd line called me back, sent file by email. called me back 2nd time to confirm receipt of email, 10 min spent unpacking batch file, restarting, visiting update site, installing single update, restarting, visiting update site, installing 2nd random patch, restarting and confirming all worked. They then finished support call. Total time spent about 30 min.

I,m based in NZ and MS support is in Aus so their call backs are all overseas toll calls. I am sure that many other countries also deal with MS overseas call centres so I suggest the following.

If one or two people from each organisation make one or two calls a day to MS to resolve this issue based on my own experience It will cost MS millions of dollars to resolve. Perhaps if the cost is great enough to them they will think twice in future before releasing patches of this sort. Our inconvenience is not their concern. Perhaps their own will be.

I should also say that Alex from MS Aus was really helpful, patient and well trained. While the organisation may be a little flaky at times, some of the individuals working for them are stars.

You want to learn about Ubuntu?

Graphics and widescreen

Why does everyone assume that its only Linux that struggles with widescreens. I have a fairly ordinary 19" widescreen with default settings of 1440 x 900. XP couldn,t detect it using either Nvidia or ATI cards. Both times I had to add the configuration manually using the advanced tools in their respective control panels. Vista was no better with ATI cards, trying and failing to use refresh rates far higher than the screen could cope with. Again manual tweaking was required to get things working correctly.

Just because we are all largely familar with the Windows way of doing this does not mean that it is easy or that your average home user could do it. That they can't is how I ended up with my widescreen in the first place.

Ubuntu et al require no more tweaking than anything else. It is usually the users knowledge that requires the tweaking.

Braindead obituarists hoaxed by Wikipedia

GIGO

Why oh why does anyone use Wikipedia. Basic rule of computing and by extension the web. Garbage In, Garbage out.

Microsoft punts web-based apps to the masses

Grammar

Loose and lose won't ever show up in a spell check.

Greek cops to paintball rioting fans

Better paintballs than plastic bullets

I been shot with paintballs and beaten by thugs. Better the paint balls. If there are any innocent bystanders then the first sign of riot police should have them vacating the area ASAP. The ones left are fair game. Perhaps the Greek police could sell tickets and maybe hire out paintballs and guns to enthusiastic volunteers.