All posts in Technology

Up until today, I have been able to avoid the scourge that is Internet Explorer 7. But, since it has officially been released, and I am actively developing a few sites I was forced to destroy one of my machines by installing it.

Based on the usages I have experience thus far I cannot say that I like anything about it. So, I am just going to give you a list of things that annoy me about it:

1. Requires windows authenticity authentication
2. Activated language bar…for no reason
3. The entire header looks like it was stuffed in a blender.
4. It is visually inconsistent with everything else in the entire operating system
5. It breaks “cool” features, like the Ajax archive on mine and vanlandw’s site
6. The button the is used to generate new tabs looks funky and is confusing before you know what it is
7. It does not like to save my settings. I don’t want to use Live Search, let me use Google!
8. What is the deal with only putting text by some icons? It looks funky and annoys me
9. Microsoft made it, that is pretty obvious
10. Rending is so SLOW, the fact that the interface is fast just makes it feel even worse
11. The rendering engine is quirky, I don’t like page elements shifting around as the page loads
12. It is labeled at IE7, when it is more of an IE6 as far as the user experience

Ok, so that is all that I can handle at this time. I hope not to return to that awful interface one second sooner than absolutely necessary. Ultimately, I am not sure how soon this browser will become mainstream, if ever. Since this browser requires authenticity authentication I believe that, that will preclude a massive portion of browser users. I suppose there will be no way to tell until Microsoft pushes the browser update through Windows update. Still, most people never actually do windows updates, so even so it may not even make a significant difference.

Apparently, AT&T would like me to switch from Charter broadband to their DSL service. Their current offer is 6 Mbps service with a guarantee of at least 3 Mbps service. This receiving pricing scheme resulted in the following dialog:

Sales: The service is for 6 Mbps with a guarantee of at least 3 Mbps service.

Me: So…if you are only going to guarantee 3 Mbps download speeds, why don’t I just pay for the 3 Mbps?

Sales: …because, then we would only guarantee 1.5 Mbps.

Me: This sounds like a scam.

Sales: I assure you sir, this is not a scam.

Me: So, it is legal to charge for service that “might” be rendered, but only guarantee a lower level quality of service?

Sales: Well, yes.

After being disgusted for period of time, he finally said that it would cost $29.99, which is basically what I am presently paying for Cable service that is capped at 3 Mbps. So, I agreed to a 30-day trail period to determine if it was worth it.

Immediately after finishing this conversation, I called up Charter promotion’s department to see if I could get a similar deal out of them (their current highest cap is 5 Mbps). Upon finally getting an operator I informed them of my imminent switch to DSL. But, instead of counter offering better service for the same price, they decided that they needed to try to sign me up for their crappy VOIP phone service. I was not impressed.

Anyhow, what I need from my loyal readership is a good Quality of Service (QoS) and latency bandwidth tester that I can use to compare the two services to determine which is actually better than the other. So, if anyone has any suggestions feel free to jot them down for me.

Hack the hell out of your phone (if you have a RAZR)

razrmods.com

It seems like all laptops have pretty woefully inadequate battery life these days. One of my brothers still uses my original “good” laptop that still gets 5 hours of battery life pretty reliably. Now, that is using two batteries, since you can stick a second one in the CD drive bay. Unfortunately, you just cannot get this kind of configuration anymore.

My powerbook only has the single battery bay, and the battery only lasts a pretty weak two hours or so. But, my inspiron 5160 gets a PATHETIC 60-90 minutes on a single battery charge. It literally takes longer to charge the thing than it does to discharge it. In a way, I suppose it is kind of like those crappy remote control cars that have batteries that take four hours to charge but only last fifteen minutes in the car.

So, when are we going to get laptop batteries that last 10+ hours, so that you can actually use them for a day without having to look for a outlet wherever you go?

Oh yeah, in case you are wondering, the image does not have anything to do with the post. But, there is an ipod featured in it. So, I guess it is related to technology is some way.

Apparently, I am qualified to be “hardware” at GVSU.

The heat sink / fan unit in my Inspiron 5160 went bad a few months back. It was no longer under warranty so I just shelved the thing. I called up Dell tech support, and they quoted me something like $160 to fix it. That is $160 I would rather spend on something more interesting. So, I just waited for nothing in particular.

A couple days ago I was browsing ebay and did a search for the part that went bad, apparently I could “buy it now” for $6.22. So, I figured I would give it a try.

I briefly consulted el hardware to determine how much work it was going to be to replace the part. Apparently it was possible, so I figured I would give it a shot.

So, I ripped that damn thing apart, since you apparently need to remove 50 screws and every component just to replace the CPU fan.

The above photo is a shot of my “stripped” 5160. This was taken after I removed the previous cooling unit. The following two shots are of all the crap I had to remove.

Let’s see, this photo shows the LCD, the HDD, the EMP shield, the new thermal cooling unit, and an upside down keyboard. The button panel should be hidden in there somewhere too.

This photo just has the so called “palm rest” which basically is the palm rest, and touch pad.

Now, as I reassembled the thing, I did put some thermal compound on the die despite .hw’s recommendation not to. Almost all the previous thermal grease was lost on the previous thermal unit, so I figured I had better do it.

After the whole mess that took the better part of an hour, I booted the machine up and it worked (which surprised me). Then, I prompted turned if off for fear of over heating it since I did have time to test it then.

At the moment I am in the process of setting up a dual boot of Windows and Ubuntu. I figure if that does not kill it, nothing will.