Tips for purchasing a new desktop or laptop

When looking to buy a new computer I highly recommend paying attention to a number of things when shopping for a new laptop or desktop. The first and one of the most important things is to look for deals. Make sure you are buying everything you are looking for. If you are looking for a big hard drive wait until you see one in the price range you are looking for. If you are looking for a laptop with a screen size above 15.4 inches wait until you find one.

When buying a laptop, you should usually pay a great deal of attention to whether or not you can easily add extra RAM. What I mean by easily adding RAM is that with many laptops these days is they may say 1GB of RAM so you will think there is one stick of RAM in the laptop. What most companies choose to do is have two slots and fill them both with 2x 512MB so in the end you will have to ditch both of the 512MB’s to upgrade the RAM, although it might not be the worst thing. Some people like certain companies for the RAM.

Hard drive space can also be something to pay attention to. You can add a bigger hard drive but it isn’t as easy as adding a bigger hard drive to a desktop system. I would recommend above 200GB’s of hard drive space, but that all depends on what you plan on using the laptop for. You might not need all of that space. If you have a big music collection, if you have a lot of video or picture files. Even if you don’t maybe once you see all of the extra hard drive space you might start thinking about what I can do with all of this extra space.

Battery life will be one big thing that will drag you down. If you are a person that travels you don’t want to always have the cable plugged into the side of the laptop recharging it every hour of the day. You don’t want to not be able to sit where you want to because the power cable can’t reach there. Keep in mind this can all be fixed with getting a bigger and better battery. This can be on the pricey side.

Be aware of what you are buying. A laptop will not last as long as a desktop will.

Another thing you might want to look into is the operating system. Since Vista has been released that might be one thing to look into. I am not going to complain about Vista but it has been said Vista has driver issues. So if you plan to travel to different places, and such you might want to dive into Windows XP at least until the problems with Windows Vista get resolved to the point of being able to easily offer the ability to find driver and be able to use the hardware you hook up to it. I imagine there is nothing worse than buying a piece of hardware only to find out you can’t use it with the computer you just purchased and the operating system that is installed.

You want to get the most you can get out of the laptop or desktop. Make sure it has at least more than two USB plugs, hopefully USB 2.0. The reason being you want to have at least more than two USB plugs is so you have the ability to attach a USB mouse or keyboard, to extract files off a jump drive or anything else you can plug into the USB plug.

The most important thing you should ask yourself is “Is this computer for me, and am I going to be truly happy with what I see in front of me?” This is the most important thing with buying anything.

In the end you might not find what you want in a laptop or desktop. If the stores don’t have what you are looking for maybe having one built for you is the answer. If you know what you are doing maybe building your own is the answer. Whichever direction you decide to go in make sure you get what you want. Remember to shop around until you find what you are looking for.

HP Horror. Oh The Horror: (

I recently sold my HP Pavilion DV4000. I purchased it in March 07′. The reason I sold it was because I was looking to upgrade, I ended up looking for a few weeks. My price range was below $1,000 which left a lot open while looking for laptops. The first HP I bought (yes, I did say the first one) was the HP Pavilion DV6000. I brought it home and attempted to get it onto my wireless, but it wouldn’t go on. The next thing I did was hardwire it to my router, I then clicked on Windows Updates didn’t find anything it needed to download for the HP laptop then next I went onto HP’s website and proceeded to download any driver’s I could get for the wireless. Sadly, I had to return that HP Pavilion DV6000. The 14 day return policy came in handy. I returned it without a problem; they were very understanding about it. No interrogation was applied.

The next day I went and bought another HP Pavilion, this time from a different location and also a different HP Pavilion model. This time I purchased an HP Pavilion DV6701. I walk out of the store with a positive smile on my face. Take it home and un-box it and hook it up and I would never have thought it would happen again to me two days in a row. I didn’t understand how this happened twice with two different HP’s and them both being a different model. I started to think it might be a router issue. I confirmed that it was NOT a router issue. So I finally say to myself “If I can’t fix this issue I am sure HP can fix it or at least point me in the right direction” Well, let’s just say one of those two happened only it was the direction I thought it would be nor was it the direction I wanted to go in. I finally got in contact with the HP Tech Support I spend a few hours chatting with them while running me through things I already checked. I understand they have a check list of tasks you must go through to make sure everything is right. I understand that. I spoke with four different people at HP. They tell me to go to the Command Prompt and type in ipconfig. They tell me to read to them what it says, I do. Nothing is filled in on ipconfig except for my router model. They tell me the bad news. I have a bad laptop. They aware me something is wrong with the Wireless Adapter in the laptop. I told them this is the second model HP laptop I bought in the past two days. They tell me “There is a known problem with HP models Pavilion DV models DV6000 to DV9000. I asked HP if they it fixed yet, they said “No, we are still working on it”. How can HP allow this to happen? DV6000 to DV9000 are three models made. It blows my mind how the problem is still not fixed and HP is allowing companies to sell these broken laptops. It just amazes me these computers are still being allowed to be sold. They never stopped making the laptops and tried to fix the issue.The only thing the computer at this point could be used for is a 5lb paper weight. When returning the second laptop to Circuit City I spoke with one of the guys at Firedog. I mentioned what HP told me about the wireless adapter issue and how the problem has yet to be resolved. He was also aware of the problem and found it terrible how it wasn’t fixed. This blog post is not made to keep people away from buying HP. Until this point, I thought HP laptops were awesome. I loved the DV4000 I owned before all of this happened. I don’t know where I stand with ever buying another HP laptop, although I will continue to buy HP printers.

Delayed, Delayed, Delayed…Doesn’t suprize me at this point…

This was written before the release of Vista SP1.

The savior of Vista (Service Pack 1) is not among us yet. At least its been said it will be the Vista savior. Not sure how I feel on that subject. I feel that Microsoft must be running out of reason for SP1 (Service Pack 1) to be delayed once again. With Vista Ultimates language packs it will be sometime before Vista Ultimate Edition sees Service Pack 1. Which in Microsoft’s terms is never. Are you kidding me! It is going to be delayed now because of Language packs in Vista Ultimate. I know that might be a big deal for Microsoft to work with, but come on! It’s been over a year since Vista was released. I’m sorry if you are sitting looking at your monitors saying “Man, what a pessimist”. It must be said Microsoft took a long time to even to release Vista and it is taking a very long maybe expecting time releasing Vista SP1. On a brighter side those of you who have other Vista version’s other then Vista Ultimate you’re in luck, you will have your service pack in the next coming weeks. I just don’t understand how this is still happening. Month after month Microsoft is giving us all those of you who still use Vista a operating system full of broken promises. I am awaiting the release of Windows Seven in 2009 as Microsoft says it will be in the open. I am also curious how many people since Vista have turned there heads a Microsoft and looked in the direction of switching to Mac OS X or even Linux. There are a big number of people giving into Apple everyday a purchasing a Mac. I honestly can’t blame them one bit. Me personally I am still on a PC. That might not last for much longer… It amazes me how another company (Apple) can promise something oh like a new laptop or a new version of the iPod and it is out in the open when they say it will be.

Maxthon 2.0 Problems..ALREADY!?

Maxthon 2.0 is out of beta, and I still feel that it has a long row to hoe before it’s anywhere near as stable or configurable as Maxthon 1.x was for me. There are a few frustrations that keep me from recommending it over earlier versions. I’m confident these issues can be addressed quickly, but it really shows how Maxthon needs a VERY strong English developer working inside the code (cleaning up grammar, wording, features, etc.).

• SHIFT+CTRL+Tab dosen’t work.
• Seems to be a massive visual delay in tab switching when you use F2 or F3 to switch between them quickly.
• Tab bar view doesn’t work nearly as well as it did in Maxthon 2.x, despite the various settings I’ve tried. I can’t get the widths to remain constant – and even when I have Multiline Tabs enabled, it stretches the actual tab width and keeps the title of the Tab at a fixed length as defined by the settings.
• The bright yellow color for secure URLs in the address bar is headache-inducing, and not configurable in any manner.
• I have launched Maxthon 2.0 several times, only to have it randomly ask me to enter my login credentials – not having remembered them from earlier sessions, or having cleared them and forcing me to re-enter them before I can start browsing again. This is a great concept if it works – but it seems not to be working.
• I’ve had my toolbar icons and settings randomly reset order on several occasions. This is more than mildly frustrating.
• I went to customize my toolbar again today, only to have the application lock up and flash between the settings window and the browser window almost indefinitely before letting me control the settings dialog again (a minute later). Couldn’t decide which one it wanted me to focus on somehow.
• The new form fill manager is an improvement, fundamentally – but there’s virtually no management tool to port over and pare down my exhaustive list of forms and logins. This causes the entire browser to freeze for seconds whenever I store new login information. This is more than mildly annoying.
• Settings dialogs for most of my plugins don’t seem to work?
• Some advanced settings are still not working, as they’re greyed out in the options panel.
• Super MSA is an amazing feature – but you can’t enable it automatically, but only on a site-by-site basis. This is a half-baked feature, and one they should be pushing to finish.
• There needs to be a universal style sheet for sidebar plugins – because most of these plugin developers can’t design to save their lives. Contrast this with the elegance of the Maxthon Setup Center (a beautiful experience).
• The Float Button setting seems not to work as advertised. Which is to say, it doesn’t work. The old Floating plugin (community plugin) was far better behaved.
• The inline “Find” applet is woefully inadequate compared to its established predecessors (community plugins) from Maxthon 1.x.
• I really shouldn’t see Chinese content on the Maxthon plugins site… it’s a HUGE turnoff, and is going to lose you more people to Firefox. I can’t read Chinese, and the plugins are far less useful to me if there’s no English equivalent (or they’re language neutral).
• The skinning engine may have improved, but much like the Firefox community, there are few usable designs. I’m less perturbed about this, as the new default Maxthon UI is pretty slick (overall, as a shell).
• Tab shortcut doesn’t work between the address bar and the search bar. You have to rely on another keyboard shortcut (takes relearning rather than intuition).
• Right-click and scroll wheel do not show open tabs like they did in 1.x.
• CTRL+Q is a nice feature, but too slow to load thumbnails if you have a lot of tabs open.
• You can’t close tabs from the same site.
• I was merely restarting Maxthon from its icon and before the window showed up: “An error has occurred. Please send the bug report to us after browser restart. Fault address: 005075B3 01:001065B3 C:\Program Files\Maxthon2\Maxthon.exe.” I have no idea what this means, or why this happened. This has happened 3x in the past hour.
• Launching an empty browser (no start page, not even about:blank) seems to have window (UI) artifacts in the lower left and upper right corners of the window.
• Launching an empty browser (no start page, not even about:blank) shows “fav: Query Version OK.RemoteVersion 3,LocalVersion 3″ in the status bar. I have no idea what this means or why it’s showing up.
• Sidebar management is really wonky, as new sidebars don’t stack inline with existing sidebars if the sidebar is not already open. Instead, the user has to drag the new sidebar around until it docks and merges with the existing sidebar plugins list. Moreover, there’s no easy way of cleaning up the icons in some of these plugins (another major downfall when allowing developers to create anything without adhering to some set of standards or design elements).
• You can’t change tab switching behavior – CTRL+Tab should toggle between the two most recently viewed tabs.
• There’s (that I can find).
• The “Plugins Optinos” tab is not dynamic, so you must refresh the window after new plugins are loaded. Moreover, there are no sort options (Date, Author, Type, Alphabetical, etc.).
• You can’t uninstall or disable a plugin by clicking on its icon.
• When opening a new tab, either blank or a URL, it seems as though the current tab’s contents slide slightly downward and to the right before the new tab fully loads. It’s a visual side effect that seems to be a flaw.
• Favicon loading is problematic again – which was a bug filed for 1.x, but has returned with a vengeance in 2.0. Instead of adhering to the favicon defined by the current page, Maxthon 2.0 trumps it and pulls the root icon (if one is even defined there). This is a gross oversight.
• Open all links in selection while performing Super Drag & Drop is still not functioning.
• I keep coming back to the bugs in the Tab bar, but it’s really starting to annoy me. Instead of a solid positioning of tabs (1st tab is always in one position), it flips lines of tabs (in Multiline mode), much like you would expect it to do if you were using a Settings dialog. However, I’m not expecting this here – and I’m certainly not wanting this.
• In writing this list, my toolbar formatting has decided to reset itself once again (and I have to go in and re-add the tab management buttons that I had previously placed and right-aligned).
• Auto-Fit Tabs setting does not adhere to my Minimum width setting, and (again) causes usability problems when many tabs are open at one time. Seems they’re trying to make tab management easier, but have bungled the process.
• Despite setting Maxthon 2 as my default browser, some links (clicked from utilities like mIRC) are opening in Maxthon 1.
• In a browser that has an empty start page (and no other tabs open), new pages open on a new tab rather than the first (blank, empty) tab.

They have quite a few things to work on here, and I don’t know where their priorities happen to lie – or how many developers they have actively working on these issues. Not sure if they’re short-staffed, or seemingly don’t understand that these problems take away from the overall experience in what they’ve assembled in a browser.

I will make myself available to any and every Maxthon core or plugin developer to help make this a better experience for everyone.

Diet, sugary sodas alike linked to heart disease factors

WARNING THIS IS NOT TECH NEWS… Just wanted to let you know.

(CNN) — – People who drink one or more soft drinks a day have a more than 50 percent higher risk of developing the heart disease precursor metabolic syndrome than people who drink less than one soda a day, a new study has found. And it didn’t matter if it was a regular soda or a diet soda.

Metabolic syndrome is a constellation of health problems — high waist circumference, high blood pressure, low levels of “good” cholesterol,” and other health problems — that have been strongly linked to developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

The study, in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, looked at more than 6,000 healthy people, who showed no signs of metabolic syndrome, and then followed up. After four years, 53 percent of people who drank an average of one or more soft drinks per day developed metabolic syndrome. Those who drank one or more diet soft drinks a day were at a 44 percent higher risk.

“The point is that the risk is high no matter how many soft drinks one consumes and no matter what type of soft drink one consumes,” said Dr. Ramachandran S. Vasan, associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and one of the study authors. “This adds to what we already know about how soft drinks may be associated with weight gain and metabolic risk.”

The American Beverage Association took issue with the study, saying that the study proves no link between soft drinks and increased risk of heart disease.

The ABA added, “The assertions made could apply to any caloric product — if you over consume any food or beverage with calories, there are health consequences.” ABA also said that it is “scientifically implausible” that diet soft drinks, which have no calories, cause weight gain or elevated blood pressure.

Study authors caution that they are not suggesting a direct link between soft drinks and heart disease. They stress that the association they found is between soft drinks and metabolic disease, and hesitate to speculate beyond that. They say more study is needed into why sodas are implicated in metabolic syndrome.

The American Heart Association responded to criticism of the study with a statement. “It is important to note that the study does not show that soft drinks cause risk factors for heart disease. It does show that the people studied who drank soft drinks were more likely to develop risk factors for heart disease.”

Create a custom logon message in Vista

Windows Vista users: Make a custom message display prior to logging into your PC. While IT departments often use this technique to show legal warnings and network policies, you can customize it to say whatever you want. Windows Fanatics explains the simple process.

1. Click Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools and Local Security Policy.
2. Expand Local Policies then Security options.
3. In the details pane double click Interactive logon: Message text for users attempting to log on.
4. Type in the message you want to appear.

What The Viewers Want…

The topic of this post will be fairly simple. The topic of this post is HELP! No I’m just kidding. Although I would like to know what the viewers would like to read. What should my next topic be on? Is there some program you want me to review, anything like that? No I am not out of ideas of what to write about. I’m just wanting to know what you all want to hear. Remember what the viewers want you get!

ZoneAlarm is a Killer…

For those of you whom have a cracked Vista OS you may be in for a treat if you use ZoneAlarm. Several users have reported that while running ZoneAlarm it disabled there Vista crack. As of right now it is only a rumor at this point. It has been said that the Paradox and the Vistaloader crack did not work anymore after installing ZoneAlarm. While installing ZoneAlarm it installs and unofficial update.

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Show Desktop Icon Back to Life!

A number of times I misplaced (Deleted) my show desktop icon in the toolbar. So

now what? How do I get it back there? It’s Easy!

Here is how you do it:

Click Start and open Notepad
Click Enter
In Notepad, type the following text

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=Explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

On the file menu, click Save As, and then save the file to your desktop as Show Desktop.scf

Use the mouse to drag the Show Desktop.scf icon to the Quick Launch toolbar or another location where you want the shortcut to appear.
Make sure the toolbar is NOT locked.