Windows 7 RTM by year's end? Win7 was our first MSFT OS beta having weenied out of the Vista release. We have been impressed with the stability of this beta but realize that Vista was largely a practice run for this operating system.

We've installed Win7 on a second machine and will have an update on our progress in a day or two.  ¶ 1/31/2009 07:05:00 PM 0 comments

  Palin: The sadness of the end of a beauty queen's reign She hasn't fallen off the stage but what a barren beauty contest it is that she is still on stage.  ¶ 1/27/2009 11:26:00 PM 0 comments

  Comodo antivirus; one slow update With the exceptions of Trend and Kaspersky, we've tried about every major antivirus program and Comodo has the slowest update process we've seen.  ¶ 1/27/2009 10:11:00 PM 0 comments

  NSA snooping targeted journalists Russell Tice, who originally revealed the wider illegal digital surveillance, is stepping forward again with what may seem to be fresh allegations. It is pretty well accepted that Christiane Amanpour, of CNN, was one of those targeted.  ¶ 1/22/2009 07:05:00 PM 0 comments

  Brother Jesse honors the young preacher from Georgia Often not included in listening to the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. but the man could preach. Today's show was an inspiration.  ¶ 1/18/2009 10:44:00 AM 0 comments

  Windows 7 and Firefox We tend to skirt the many (and often legitimate) offerings of toolbars while still selecting to use McAfee's SiteAdvisor in the background for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

So far, so good for Firefox: We didn't anticipate there being any problems. It should be noted that now Windows Defender is integrated into the IE 8 of Windows 7.  ¶ 1/18/2009 10:00:00 AM 0 comments

  Windows 7 installation instructions Just for the record, we're not really fans of Microsoft but they do occupy a big part of our lives. They kinda deserve some credit for getting some things right... finally.  ¶ 1/18/2009 12:17:00 AM 0 comments

  Windows 7: Moving ahead Continued with setting up email and came across something. Windows Live mail downloaded all the folders from our Hotmail account. With Vista's and XP's email these folders had resided solely on the Hotmail servers. This seems counter intuitive to the whole cloud computing thing.

Installed two USB wireless G adapters; a Belkin and a Netgear. Both required Win7 to extract the drivers since it seemed their executables choked. Bluetooth adapters gave mixed results: An IO Gear Vista compatible dangle installed off the Win7 driver but the Belkin choked.

The range of the Windows Experience has been expanded. With Vista the highest ranking was 5.9 but with Windows 7 it has been extended to 7.9. As we've always done with Vista and XP, we opted for performance in our settings and not eye-candy.  ¶ 1/17/2009 11:49:00 PM 0 comments

  Getting to know Windows 7 (And Yahoo still sucks) Within the limits of good taste, we are installing as many features and programs as we deem appropriate.

The Luddite in us has never allowed for a Gmail account but we do maintain a free (Boo) Yahoo account for guerrilla action. When we tried to add that account to the email function of Windows 7 it told us we had to upgrade to Yahoo Plus for $20/year. In case we haven't said it enough, Yahoo sucks. Otherwise, setting up email was a breeze; address and password are all that are required.

Overall, we find Win7 to be a bunch of what Vista could have and should have been. As we've stated earlier, we're running the beta on a 3 GHz P4 and find the performance to be equal or better than the dual-core machine with Vista.

The beta machine is an older HP business machine with integrated video, sound and network adapter. We did not have to install a single driver, Windows 7 handled it all.  ¶ 1/17/2009 12:40:00 PM 0 comments

  Installing Windows 7 We had no trouble at all downloading and installing the beta.

We are currently setting up the new installation and immediately come across Accelerators. Selecting text on any web page brings up an Accelerator button. The button will bring up a list of web functions. Nice touch for IE 8. Also like the addition of InPrivate browsing.

We are running on a 3 GHz (800 Mhz FSB/1024 L2 cache) P4 with 3 GB of RAM in dual channel.

Update: We've added a 2 GB flash drive for ReadyBoost.  ¶ 1/16/2009 11:45:00 PM 0 comments

  EFF suit to proceed Judge Walker was less than receptive to the state secrets protections.  ¶ 1/06/2009 09:20:00 PM 0 comments

  Driving down memory lane with the Teamsters We enjoyed watching Hoffa again and found it struck a resonant chord this time. This fairytale sent us back to our (in all modesty, also somewhat heroic) involvement with the Teamsters during our college years: Common elements of violence on and off a picket line, less than honest dealings and an overwhelming impression that the working stiff usually pays dearly in these struggles.

Regretfully, unions have fallen out of favor these days (not that they didn't do much to deserve that) and our embrace of capitalism now means tax dollars for bonuses to executives of failed businesses. But unions played a significant role in the election of Obama and now would be a good time to remember the great many other good things they've done.

Nicholson's Hoffa has a line in the movie about how they put the working man in the middle class and that he is going to stay there: Would that the unions could make it so. Let's reconsider "card check"


  ¶ 1/04/2009 09:30:00 PM 0 comments