Yahoo's commercial e-mail service is one of the most hobbled hosting services I've ever encountered.
First thing, the "business mail" account gets you 10 e-mail addresses for $10 / month. An additional 20 e-mail addresses costs another $10 / month. However, the $12 / month "Web hosting starter" comes with *200* e-mail addresses which are identical to those that come with the "business mail package".
However, to use either service, you *have* to use Yahoo Domains to host your DNS. If you've got a web hosting package, you can't point www.yourdomain.com anywhere else... it is locked in the DNS control panel.
So if you bend over and pay for the less functional, more expensive mail-only service, you soon discover that you can't create normal aliases / forwards. The only e-mail addresses you can add to a forward are yahoo e-mail addresses *in your domain*. Now, you can forward e-mail for an individual account to an external address, which means you have to burn an extra "mailbox" for each external address you need to forward e-mail to.
It's a pity, because it almost is a great service... they actually had to go out of their way to screw it up like this. I'm sure they have some reason for it, but competitively it doesn't make a lot of sense, given that other folks are infinititely more flexible.
Nitix is close, but the business model is wrong. Pricing was as much or more than MS SBS 2003 OEM at the number of clients I typically deal with. They also only sell through VARs which compete with me. I have no interest in being a VAR myself, but they have no low-margin resellers I can recommend to my clients.
It's pretty clear they aren't going after the "traditional" UNIX server market... that would be suicide.
I'm a bilingual (Windows and *nix) small business consultant, and I would love to see a really easy Linux server for very small companies. I'm really big on long-term maintainability, and while I've got no problem editing config files, my customers do, and frankly there aren't alot of Linux fluent consultants serving very small companies either. So I've been very hesitant to roll our Linux-based servers because I don't want to leave them totally high and dry should we stop working together.
I've looked at what's out there today with webmin and such, and it just is not something you could turn your average windows-educated sysadmin loose on and know that they'd be able to add users and new desktops, create shares, etc... If Xandros can put something together that has a consistent, logical config UI for non-linux users and package it with great maintenance and support, it would be very welcome. I just hope the price is right... it's got to be cheaper than windows SBS 2003 OEM to compete.
If I'm reading this article right, CSAs are a critical part of the body's immune response. If we start slathering this stuff all over the place (presumably dramatically increasing it's presence in the environment), aren't we risking the evolution of resistance to it in viruses and bacteria? Might that not result in diseases to which our immune system has very little ability to fight?
Look how quickly resistence to Tamiflu emerged... I know a causal link hasn't been proven yet, but I'm betting it has something to do with the way it was available OTC in a lot of countries. There's no way we can ensure appropriate use of a drug like this sufficiently to prevent resistence from eventually emerging. What will we do then?
I just get really nervous when we start copying core weapons of our own immune systems...
Have to disagree with you on this one based on an experience I had with ZipZoomFly last week. I had something I *had* to have in two days, so I placed the order with overnight shipping, about 1pm eastern, which would give them more than 24 hours to process it. Here are the ways in which they screwed up.
1. They held my order for confirmation of the shipping address, but didn't tell me until 1pm the next day. I did nothing wrong- the address was the billing address on the credit card. I confirmed this by calling my credit card company, who told me that they didn't reject anything- the approval went through as far as they were concerned.
2. I immediately called the extension they provided in the e-mail requesting confirmation. It went straight to voicemail every time. I left a message, but heard absolutely nothing for almost two hours.
3. I attempted to reach customer service. That extsntion goes straight to voicemail as well. Out of desperation, I punched '0' for an operator. The "please visit our website" message played over and over, but at least it didn't hang up / dump me into voicemail. 15 minutes later someone finally picked up. She was unable to provide me any assurance that my order would ship that day. I canceled the order, but she was unable to provide me any sort of confirmation number or other reference proving that the order had been canceled- only "managers" could execute cancellations, and one wasn't available at the time.
Sorry, but this does NOT cut it. Even the smallest, least organized online retailers handle routine orders well when everything goes right. But if you have something time-critical, you can't depend on companies with poorly organized internal systems and insufficient staff. Clearly, ZipZoomFly falls into this category.
To provide a contrast, let me tell you what happened next. It was 3:10pm EST at this point. I went to Newegg and placed an overnight order with rush processing. This was 10 minutes after the deadline for same-day shipping. I was notified by e-mail 10 minutes later that my credit card was approved. I contacted their customer service via online chat and was talking with someone in 60 seconds, who not only confirmed that my order would ship that day, but gave me the Fedex tracking number.
THAT's the way it should work. The only reason I didn't order from Newegg the first time is the fact that they didn't have exactly the right part. Because of ZipZoomFly's incompetance, I ended up settling for a less-ideal part so I could get it on-time, which NewEgg came through on.
I hope you're not ordering from some discount Internet mail order retailer and then being surprised when they don't jump to attention when you need help. Trimming costs the way even the best companies like Newegg and J&R and Techonweb do requires that they treat customers anonymously... even if you have purchased from them 100 times, you are still "just another customer" and can have an order held up due to minor credit card inconsistencies and such.
If you really want good service, you need to have an established, personal relationship with someone you buy from regularly. This costs more money because there's more overhead- the salary and sales commission of the person who's helping you, just for starters. If you find the right person / company and treat them well (being courteous and always going to them when you need to buy something), they will go the extra mile for you when you need it- I've had VARs lend me equipment, give me free demo units to try, and much more.
Of course, this is not a case where "one size fits all". I buy a LOT of stuff from Newegg and others because in my current job, low purchase price is usually more important than service, and I've found Newegg to be nearly flawless when it comes to shipping things when promised. What's important is to understand your real needs on the cost / service spectrum and use the right source for you.
Symantec seems to have the best virus lab- numerous independent reviews I've seen show that they've got the best record in terms of pushing out more comprehensive virus detection files faster than anyone else. So there is *some* technical justification for google's decision. It's a real shame their client software has started sucking so hard.
But more than that, keep in mind that a big part of the existence of Google Pack is a competitive reaction to Microsoft's upcoming Windows Defender, which will bundle together A/V, Antispyware, and other "system maintenance" utilites. Google needs the Google Pack to be a credible alternative, and Norton has a hell of a lot of positive brand recognition and credibility *among consumers* that will benefit the Google Pack. Norton is trying to avoid having their consumer business wiped out by Windows Defender, which is why they're offering 6 months free rather than the usual OEM 3 months, and probably fought hard to get into Google Pack.
I haven't found Norton A/V by itself to be nearly as evil as Norton Internet Security- the main problem seems to be Outlook SMTP e-mails getting stuck outbound for no reason. However in my consulting practice I would guess 9 out of 10 naive users who try to renew their AV subscription on their own end up getting duped into purchasing and installing the entire NIS suite... it's the default choice if you just click "next" through the renewal wizard. This is when things really go to hell. I hope Google makes them stop this deceptive practice...
I think the point they are making is that no manufacturer's hard drives are substantially more reliable than another's. They focus on shipping because the differences coming from the factory are small enough to be "lost in the wash", given the other factors (like shipping damage) that are more likely to influence drive lifespan.
The reason they are so close is the competitiveness of the market for hard drives- all of the weak players have been eliminated, so the few that remain are those that do it well, and strike a well-honed balance between cost, performance and reliability. This makes drives within the same general class very, very similar between manufacturers.
This doesn't mean that *all* hard drives are the same. Single-platter models generally should be slightly more reliable than multi-platter units. Enterprise drives are designed (at additional cost) to be more reliable, and typically have a MTBF rating double that of "desktop" drives. Notebook drives are designed specifically to be more shock-tolerant. So choosing the right type of drive to fit your application is more important than choosing a manufacturer.
I'm a consultant, and let me tell you that hard drive failures know no brand loyalties with modern drives. We see more dead laptop drives than desktop drives, but that's because of the rougher treatment.
But even the (relatively) large numbers of drives we see is anecdotal. Let's hear from the *real* experts:
Don't base your perceptions of A/V software resource impact solely on Symantec- the recent iterations of their products produce a LOT more system drag than most. AVG, Grisoft, even other commercial packages like Trend Micro's excellent PC Cillin and CA's AV product are a lot more nimble.
This will be buried in this old article, but for your own sake if you clean machines regularly...
There are a ton of ways malware can get loaded in safe mode. Some add an argument to the windows shell registry entry and get started the first time you launch anything. Others hook into the winlogin process as a dll (it was designed to be extensible- they're just using published interfaces), ensuring they are not only started in safe mode, but are effectively unkillable (since winlogin is the root process for the user session). The only way to deal with some of this stuff is to use a boot disk (like BartPE) and/or attach the drive to another machine and make the necessary registry and file modifications manually.
Note that these techniques are not the same as the file- and registry-hiding techiques that rootkitrevealer detects. Hijackthis and autoruns will both find them, but you have to know what to look for.
...but a number of the drawbacks relative to commercial projectors put me off after I really researched it in-depth. Assuming that you already know that size, noise and heat are inherently worse with an overhead projector, there are some other issues:
Throw distance / placement restrictions: most overhead projectors are designed to be used a presenter *at the front of the room*, while most people would prefer their front projection system to be located at the back. The el-cheapo overhead projectors have a single element lens with no ability to zoom- for a given screen size, the projector can only be put a specific, short distance from the screen. This is evident if you look at pictures of DIY projectors in action.
There are overheads with two- and three- element lenses, but they are less common (harder to find used) and significantly more expensive new. Even then, the adjustability is limited- you still will need the projector close to the screen. Which makes the noise / heat / size issue much more significant.
Uneven brightness: many overhead projectors have a significant "hot spot" in the center of the screen, and substantially dimmer edges. A three element lens will deal with this, but then again you're spending more than this kind of project justifies. Commercial projectors are much more consistent
Contrast: Black isn't very black- LCD panels designed for monitors don't block the extremely bright projector light source very effectively, so the best you will get is a dark gray, substantially degrading image quality compared with a commercial projector (resolution and contrast are the twin holy grails of projection and display quality).
Limited color gamut: I think one of the reasons overhead projector bulbs are so much cheaper is that they don't make pure white light. You can use color correction tools found in most video drivers to fix this to have more accurate color, but the side effect of such correction is to limit the range of color that can be displayed.
Don't get me wrong- I'm not some videophile snob, but if I'm going to put time and effort into something, I want it to be done right, and there's a limit to how good the results will be with a DIY projector that has nothing to do with your craftsmanship or skills. Rather than building one myself, I'm holding off until I can justify buying a commercial unit (which may be never).
But then again, I'm a professional with a family and a house. I would have been *all over* this in college- it's an awesome dorm room project.
Perhaps you were mislead by the "valve" terminology. According to the article the "valves" in question are each the size of a passenger window, and there are four of them on the jet. I would think depressurization would happen pretty darn fast with four valves that size opening simultaneously. There certainly wouldn't be "several minutes".
It's a Garmin unit + the nRoute software, and it works quite well. One of my favorite gadgets, in fact... cost $115 and blows away all the in-dash units I've seen feature-wise. Locks very quickly, and works in areas I've had trouble with when I used to rent Hertz cards with the Magellan system.
One of the features is an infinite "track" memory, and out of curiosity I just turned on the mode where I can see all of the tracks I've ever made. Near the Pentagon, it does jump from road to road, since I do have the road-lock mode on (very helpful in areas with poor reception, like downtown).
What's fascinating is that all of the tracks I have near the pentagon driving on that one particular road show almost the exact same pattern of deflections...I think there are four tracks, but it's hard to tell because they are on almost top of each other, even when they seemingly show my car teleporting back and forth 300 feet between roads. So it's not an entirely random displacement, which makes more convinced that it's purposeful.
And BTW- it doesn't happen on I-395, which is what you're likely driving on if you're in DC from out of town... it's a local road 110 that runs between the Pentagon and the Potomac. Not sure why that would be... 395 actually passes closer to the building. But... there is more equipment / mysterious installations on the 110 side.
I use a laptop-integrated GPS in my car, and I drive by the Pentagon regularly for work. The GPS goes nuts on certain roads that pass near the building... the "position" of the vehicle jumps all over the place. Same thing happens near the capitol building. No suprise of course...
Airgo is a participant in one of two consortiums of companies promoting competing technologies to use in the 802.11n standard. Here's an article that covers the situation:
Airgo is obviously trying to gain leverage with their technology by getting it out on the market early. I don't think this is a good thing in the long run, since we all have benefitted by the degree of standardization in 802.11b/g and Airgo seems to be trying to get their own proprietary technology out there in front of the legitimate standards process.
Well, I spoke about this with my father, a suburban marriage and family therapist. This article mirrors pretty closely what he has seen in his practice... that addiction to online pornography is becoming a real issue and damaging people's lives. These aren't "weirdos". One thing that is different about online porn addiction is that there might be few external signs... it's not like alcoholism where you're drunk regularly, or gambling where you're broke. It's easy to keep what you do online a secret from family and acquaintences, but the psychological effects can be still be quite damaging.
I'm not saying that porn does this to everyone, and I don't think the author of the book is either. Not everyone who drinks alcohol becomes alcoholic, and not everyone who tries drugs becomes an addict. The reviewer even points out that the point of the book seems to be to reframe the discussion about online porn include discussions about some of the negative personal consequences. I think this is entirely justified, and I hope that an outcome is that some scientifically-conducted surveys can be done which reveal *how much* of a problem this is... is it like nicotine (very, very addictive) or something milder.
"Co-opetition" is a pretty common business buzzword, often uttered in the same sentence as "synergy" and "solution". Heck, I think someone even wrote a book by that title.
I've been a Callvantage user for about 4 months, and absolutely love the service. I see a lot of people on this thread commenting about how bad 99.4% is, treating that number like server uptime... that the service is unavailable.6% of the time, which adds up to hours per month.
I believe that this study measures something different... the number of calls that were completed successfully out of all of the test calls. This is not the same as a time-based availability measurement. 99.4% means that out of 100 calls, less than one of them failed. This doesn't necessarily mean the service was down... just that the call attempt failed.
Think about it this way... 7 failed calls in a week of testing will result in the same "availability" measurement, no matter whether they were 7 failed calls in a row, or 1 failed call a day. The former indicates a real outage, where users would likely be unable to use the service if they wanted. The latter might indicate a temporary glitch (perhaps with the TA even) that could be resolved by immediately re-attmpting the call. The former is a much bigger deal than the latter, but the numbers they've given us don't distinguish them.
This matches my experience with Callvantage. I've never noticed that AT&T's service is "down". Sometimes when I attempt a call, it doesn't go through on the first try, but on the second try immediately after the failure, it completes. I've always chaulked this up to Internet flakiness. To repeat: I've *never* noticed an outage where I couldn't make a call, or where calls didn't ring to my cell phone (and I know... this is my business line).
Anyway, the point is, 99.4% can mean a lot of things... and we don't really know how these call-completion numbers really match to service availability.
I've heard this again and again... the computer's broken, it's not worth the money to fix it because new computers only cost $400. This is correct if you view a computer like a car... just a piece of hardware that provides a service that can easily be swapped out for another car with little effort.
The fact is that most people's computers are like houses... they contain a lot of stuff, and they're highly personalized. It's not just data in "my documents" or e-mail... there are countless hours invested in most people's computers installing software, customizing settings, and so forth. Transferring data and software, and getting it back to where it functions as *your computer* is a time-consuming, error-prone task, especially for non-technical users. I'm *good* at it (I do it for a living) and it takes me 2-4 hours per computer just for the basics (install A/V, install printers, install digital camera software, get the iPod syncing again, migrate e-mail, documents, bookmarks, etc..).
It really boils down to what your time is worth. I tell people... I can clean off your computer in under two hours, or I you can spend $400 (really $500-600 if you account for everything most people want) plus two hours of my time moving your data to a new one. You can guess which most people choose...
Well, they weren't issues until GWA was installed, and went away when I removed it. Perhaps it's a Firefox / extension / upgrade bug, but GWA played a part.
I just deleted the accelerator from my system after trying it for the last day, and I must say that it is much less mature than most of the "Beta" products google releases. It caused several significant issues with Firefox on my system, including:
1. Links that open another window stopped working entirely (although they worked if I right-clicked and selected "open in new tab")
2. Even after closing all Firefox windows, a firefox.exe process would remain running, and prevent any new firefox windows from being opened until it was manually killed
3. "Proxy not available" errors when opening several pages at once, such as when using the Firefox "open in tabs" on a folder of bookmarks.
And I haven't even checked into some of these cookie / privacy issues. Perhaps these issues are unique to my system, but my environment is pretty vanilla... I just run a few of the more popular Firefox plugins. Removing the GWA cleared up all of the problems cited above.
Up to this point, I've always been very impressed with the level of testing that has gone into Google software products before they enter Beta. In this case, I'm not. Hope this isn't a sign of things to come.
On the other hand, if you're calling with a "real" problem (not something that can be answered in a manual or in the Knowledge Base), your support incident fee will almost certainly be refunded. I'm an independent consultant for small businesses and have had to call Microsoft a grand total of 3 times in the past year. Each time, because I knew my stuff and had pursued all reasonable alternative avenues before calling, the support fees were refunded.
The other good thing is that there *is* an escalation path to folks that really know their stuff. I got escalated to a level 3 tech once for a production-down problem, and he was able to confirm the bug in source code and get us a workaround that got us back up and running. This was at 11pm. No charge.
Now, it was a nightmare to reach him... long hold times at each escalation, dropped calls, etc... but unlike some other companies (Intuit) a poorly-trained resident of Bangalore with only a script and the publically-searchable KB isn't your first, last and only hope for help.
You'll have a pretty hard time making money in this business at $20 / hr. Let's do the math.
First, think about the total number of hours you're able to bill in a week. Trust me when I say that you will have a hard time billing more than 50% of the time you spend "working", based on the amount of time you spend travelling getting to and from customers, the time you spend dealing with the financial side of being self-employed, the time you spend getting new business (even taking phone calls or e-mails from prospective customers) and such.
Assuming a 40 hour work week, that's 20 billable hours a week, or (assuming a 2 week vacation), 1000 billable hours a year. At $20 / hr, you're billing down a whopping $20k.
But wait... you don't get to take all that home. First of all, you need liability insurance and professional errors & ommissions insurance. That is, unless you feel like going bankrupt when someone trips over the bag you left in the middle of the floor and gets brain-damage from hitting their head on a table.
There's also health insurance, which you have the honor of paying for yourself. And self-employment taxes to uncle sam. And an extra phone line. And that new laptop, external hard drive, copies of Quickbooks, Acronis True Image, etc.. etc.. etc..
In fact, it's quite common for independent consultants to "take home" only 50% of what they "make".
And anyway, if you're any good, you're worth more than $20 / hr. Take a hint from the plumbers and electricians... $80/hr+ is really what you need to be thinking.
And if someone complains about $80, tell them to call up "Geeks on Call" or "Geek Squad". Geek Squad doesn't show up for less than $160 guaranteed.
Who said it was a problem?:-) Most customers that find my company this way seem very pleased to have done so... so I do think it serves them well. But it still somehow *feels* a little misleading to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo's commercial e-mail service is one of the most hobbled hosting services I've ever encountered.
First thing, the "business mail" account gets you 10 e-mail addresses for $10 / month. An additional 20 e-mail addresses costs another $10 / month. However, the $12 / month "Web hosting starter" comes with *200* e-mail addresses which are identical to those that come with the "business mail package".
However, to use either service, you *have* to use Yahoo Domains to host your DNS. If you've got a web hosting package, you can't point www.yourdomain.com anywhere else... it is locked in the DNS control panel.
So if you bend over and pay for the less functional, more expensive mail-only service, you soon discover that you can't create normal aliases / forwards. The only e-mail addresses you can add to a forward are yahoo e-mail addresses *in your domain*. Now, you can forward e-mail for an individual account to an external address, which means you have to burn an extra "mailbox" for each external address you need to forward e-mail to.
It's a pity, because it almost is a great service... they actually had to go out of their way to screw it up like this. I'm sure they have some reason for it, but competitively it doesn't make a lot of sense, given that other folks are infinititely more flexible.
-R
Nitix is close, but the business model is wrong. Pricing was as much or more than MS SBS 2003 OEM at the number of clients I typically deal with. They also only sell through VARs which compete with me. I have no interest in being a VAR myself, but they have no low-margin resellers I can recommend to my clients.
I'll take a look at the other one you mention.
-R
It's pretty clear they aren't going after the "traditional" UNIX server market... that would be suicide.
I'm a bilingual (Windows and *nix) small business consultant, and I would love to see a really easy Linux server for very small companies. I'm really big on long-term maintainability, and while I've got no problem editing config files, my customers do, and frankly there aren't alot of Linux fluent consultants serving very small companies either. So I've been very hesitant to roll our Linux-based servers because I don't want to leave them totally high and dry should we stop working together.
I've looked at what's out there today with webmin and such, and it just is not something you could turn your average windows-educated sysadmin loose on and know that they'd be able to add users and new desktops, create shares, etc... If Xandros can put something together that has a consistent, logical config UI for non-linux users and package it with great maintenance and support, it would be very welcome. I just hope the price is right... it's got to be cheaper than windows SBS 2003 OEM to compete.
-R
If I'm reading this article right, CSAs are a critical part of the body's immune response. If we start slathering this stuff all over the place (presumably dramatically increasing it's presence in the environment), aren't we risking the evolution of resistance to it in viruses and bacteria? Might that not result in diseases to which our immune system has very little ability to fight?
Look how quickly resistence to Tamiflu emerged... I know a causal link hasn't been proven yet, but I'm betting it has something to do with the way it was available OTC in a lot of countries. There's no way we can ensure appropriate use of a drug like this sufficiently to prevent resistence from eventually emerging. What will we do then?
I just get really nervous when we start copying core weapons of our own immune systems...
-R
Have to disagree with you on this one based on an experience I had with ZipZoomFly last week. I had something I *had* to have in two days, so I placed the order with overnight shipping, about 1pm eastern, which would give them more than 24 hours to process it. Here are the ways in which they screwed up.
1. They held my order for confirmation of the shipping address, but didn't tell me until 1pm the next day. I did nothing wrong- the address was the billing address on the credit card. I confirmed this by calling my credit card company, who told me that they didn't reject anything- the approval went through as far as they were concerned.
2. I immediately called the extension they provided in the e-mail requesting confirmation. It went straight to voicemail every time. I left a message, but heard absolutely nothing for almost two hours.
3. I attempted to reach customer service. That extsntion goes straight to voicemail as well. Out of desperation, I punched '0' for an operator. The "please visit our website" message played over and over, but at least it didn't hang up / dump me into voicemail. 15 minutes later someone finally picked up. She was unable to provide me any assurance that my order would ship that day. I canceled the order, but she was unable to provide me any sort of confirmation number or other reference proving that the order had been canceled- only "managers" could execute cancellations, and one wasn't available at the time.
Sorry, but this does NOT cut it. Even the smallest, least organized online retailers handle routine orders well when everything goes right. But if you have something time-critical, you can't depend on companies with poorly organized internal systems and insufficient staff. Clearly, ZipZoomFly falls into this category.
To provide a contrast, let me tell you what happened next. It was 3:10pm EST at this point. I went to Newegg and placed an overnight order with rush processing. This was 10 minutes after the deadline for same-day shipping. I was notified by e-mail 10 minutes later that my credit card was approved. I contacted their customer service via online chat and was talking with someone in 60 seconds, who not only confirmed that my order would ship that day, but gave me the Fedex tracking number.
THAT's the way it should work. The only reason I didn't order from Newegg the first time is the fact that they didn't have exactly the right part. Because of ZipZoomFly's incompetance, I ended up settling for a less-ideal part so I could get it on-time, which NewEgg came through on.
-R
I hope you're not ordering from some discount Internet mail order retailer and then being surprised when they don't jump to attention when you need help. Trimming costs the way even the best companies like Newegg and J&R and Techonweb do requires that they treat customers anonymously... even if you have purchased from them 100 times, you are still "just another customer" and can have an order held up due to minor credit card inconsistencies and such.
If you really want good service, you need to have an established, personal relationship with someone you buy from regularly. This costs more money because there's more overhead- the salary and sales commission of the person who's helping you, just for starters. If you find the right person / company and treat them well (being courteous and always going to them when you need to buy something), they will go the extra mile for you when you need it- I've had VARs lend me equipment, give me free demo units to try, and much more.
Of course, this is not a case where "one size fits all". I buy a LOT of stuff from Newegg and others because in my current job, low purchase price is usually more important than service, and I've found Newegg to be nearly flawless when it comes to shipping things when promised. What's important is to understand your real needs on the cost / service spectrum and use the right source for you.
-R
Symantec seems to have the best virus lab- numerous independent reviews I've seen show that they've got the best record in terms of pushing out more comprehensive virus detection files faster than anyone else. So there is *some* technical justification for google's decision. It's a real shame their client software has started sucking so hard.
But more than that, keep in mind that a big part of the existence of Google Pack is a competitive reaction to Microsoft's upcoming Windows Defender, which will bundle together A/V, Antispyware, and other "system maintenance" utilites. Google needs the Google Pack to be a credible alternative, and Norton has a hell of a lot of positive brand recognition and credibility *among consumers* that will benefit the Google Pack. Norton is trying to avoid having their consumer business wiped out by Windows Defender, which is why they're offering 6 months free rather than the usual OEM 3 months, and probably fought hard to get into Google Pack.
I haven't found Norton A/V by itself to be nearly as evil as Norton Internet Security- the main problem seems to be Outlook SMTP e-mails getting stuck outbound for no reason. However in my consulting practice I would guess 9 out of 10 naive users who try to renew their AV subscription on their own end up getting duped into purchasing and installing the entire NIS suite... it's the default choice if you just click "next" through the renewal wizard. This is when things really go to hell. I hope Google makes them stop this deceptive practice...
-R
I think the point they are making is that no manufacturer's hard drives are substantially more reliable than another's. They focus on shipping because the differences coming from the factory are small enough to be "lost in the wash", given the other factors (like shipping damage) that are more likely to influence drive lifespan.
The reason they are so close is the competitiveness of the market for hard drives- all of the weak players have been eliminated, so the few that remain are those that do it well, and strike a well-honed balance between cost, performance and reliability. This makes drives within the same general class very, very similar between manufacturers.
This doesn't mean that *all* hard drives are the same. Single-platter models generally should be slightly more reliable than multi-platter units. Enterprise drives are designed (at additional cost) to be more reliable, and typically have a MTBF rating double that of "desktop" drives. Notebook drives are designed specifically to be more shock-tolerant. So choosing the right type of drive to fit your application is more important than choosing a manufacturer.
-R
I'm a consultant, and let me tell you that hard drive failures know no brand loyalties with modern drives. We see more dead laptop drives than desktop drives, but that's because of the rougher treatment.
B randMostReliable
But even the (relatively) large numbers of drives we see is anecdotal. Let's hear from the *real* experts:
http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=
-R
Don't base your perceptions of A/V software resource impact solely on Symantec- the recent iterations of their products produce a LOT more system drag than most. AVG, Grisoft, even other commercial packages like Trend Micro's excellent PC Cillin and CA's AV product are a lot more nimble.
-R
This will be buried in this old article, but for your own sake if you clean machines regularly...
There are a ton of ways malware can get loaded in safe mode. Some add an argument to the windows shell registry entry and get started the first time you launch anything. Others hook into the winlogin process as a dll (it was designed to be extensible- they're just using published interfaces), ensuring they are not only started in safe mode, but are effectively unkillable (since winlogin is the root process for the user session). The only way to deal with some of this stuff is to use a boot disk (like BartPE) and/or attach the drive to another machine and make the necessary registry and file modifications manually.
Note that these techniques are not the same as the file- and registry-hiding techiques that rootkitrevealer detects. Hijackthis and autoruns will both find them, but you have to know what to look for.
-R
...but a number of the drawbacks relative to commercial projectors put me off after I really researched it in-depth. Assuming that you already know that size, noise and heat are inherently worse with an overhead projector, there are some other issues:
Throw distance / placement restrictions: most overhead projectors are designed to be used a presenter *at the front of the room*, while most people would prefer their front projection system to be located at the back. The el-cheapo overhead projectors have a single element lens with no ability to zoom- for a given screen size, the projector can only be put a specific, short distance from the screen. This is evident if you look at pictures of DIY projectors in action.
There are overheads with two- and three- element lenses, but they are less common (harder to find used) and significantly more expensive new. Even then, the adjustability is limited- you still will need the projector close to the screen. Which makes the noise / heat / size issue much more significant.
Uneven brightness: many overhead projectors have a significant "hot spot" in the center of the screen, and substantially dimmer edges. A three element lens will deal with this, but then again you're spending more than this kind of project justifies. Commercial projectors are much more consistent
Contrast: Black isn't very black- LCD panels designed for monitors don't block the extremely bright projector light source very effectively, so the best you will get is a dark gray, substantially degrading image quality compared with a commercial projector (resolution and contrast are the twin holy grails of projection and display quality).
Limited color gamut: I think one of the reasons overhead projector bulbs are so much cheaper is that they don't make pure white light. You can use color correction tools found in most video drivers to fix this to have more accurate color, but the side effect of such correction is to limit the range of color that can be displayed.
Don't get me wrong- I'm not some videophile snob, but if I'm going to put time and effort into something, I want it to be done right, and there's a limit to how good the results will be with a DIY projector that has nothing to do with your craftsmanship or skills. Rather than building one myself, I'm holding off until I can justify buying a commercial unit (which may be never).
But then again, I'm a professional with a family and a house. I would have been *all over* this in college- it's an awesome dorm room project.
-R
Perhaps you were mislead by the "valve" terminology. According to the article the "valves" in question are each the size of a passenger window, and there are four of them on the jet. I would think depressurization would happen pretty darn fast with four valves that size opening simultaneously. There certainly wouldn't be "several minutes".
-R
It's a Garmin unit + the nRoute software, and it works quite well. One of my favorite gadgets, in fact... cost $115 and blows away all the in-dash units I've seen feature-wise. Locks very quickly, and works in areas I've had trouble with when I used to rent Hertz cards with the Magellan system.
One of the features is an infinite "track" memory, and out of curiosity I just turned on the mode where I can see all of the tracks I've ever made. Near the Pentagon, it does jump from road to road, since I do have the road-lock mode on (very helpful in areas with poor reception, like downtown).
What's fascinating is that all of the tracks I have near the pentagon driving on that one particular road show almost the exact same pattern of deflections...I think there are four tracks, but it's hard to tell because they are on almost top of each other, even when they seemingly show my car teleporting back and forth 300 feet between roads. So it's not an entirely random displacement, which makes more convinced that it's purposeful.
And BTW- it doesn't happen on I-395, which is what you're likely driving on if you're in DC from out of town... it's a local road 110 that runs between the Pentagon and the Potomac. Not sure why that would be... 395 actually passes closer to the building. But... there is more equipment / mysterious installations on the 110 side.
-R
I use a laptop-integrated GPS in my car, and I drive by the Pentagon regularly for work. The GPS goes nuts on certain roads that pass near the building... the "position" of the vehicle jumps all over the place. Same thing happens near the capitol building. No suprise of course...
-R
Airgo is a participant in one of two consortiums of companies promoting competing technologies to use in the 802.11n standard. Here's an article that covers the situation:
t icle/CA445702
http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/ar
Airgo is obviously trying to gain leverage with their technology by getting it out on the market early. I don't think this is a good thing in the long run, since we all have benefitted by the degree of standardization in 802.11b/g and Airgo seems to be trying to get their own proprietary technology out there in front of the legitimate standards process.
-R
Well, I spoke about this with my father, a suburban marriage and family therapist. This article mirrors pretty closely what he has seen in his practice... that addiction to online pornography is becoming a real issue and damaging people's lives. These aren't "weirdos". One thing that is different about online porn addiction is that there might be few external signs... it's not like alcoholism where you're drunk regularly, or gambling where you're broke. It's easy to keep what you do online a secret from family and acquaintences, but the psychological effects can be still be quite damaging.
I'm not saying that porn does this to everyone, and I don't think the author of the book is either. Not everyone who drinks alcohol becomes alcoholic, and not everyone who tries drugs becomes an addict. The reviewer even points out that the point of the book seems to be to reframe the discussion about online porn include discussions about some of the negative personal consequences. I think this is entirely justified, and I hope that an outcome is that some scientifically-conducted surveys can be done which reveal *how much* of a problem this is... is it like nicotine (very, very addictive) or something milder.
-R
"Co-opetition" is a pretty common business buzzword, often uttered in the same sentence as "synergy" and "solution". Heck, I think someone even wrote a book by that title.
-R
I've been a Callvantage user for about 4 months, and absolutely love the service. I see a lot of people on this thread commenting about how bad 99.4% is, treating that number like server uptime... that the service is unavailable .6% of the time, which adds up to hours per month.
I believe that this study measures something different... the number of calls that were completed successfully out of all of the test calls. This is not the same as a time-based availability measurement. 99.4% means that out of 100 calls, less than one of them failed. This doesn't necessarily mean the service was down... just that the call attempt failed.
Think about it this way... 7 failed calls in a week of testing will result in the same "availability" measurement, no matter whether they were 7 failed calls in a row, or 1 failed call a day. The former indicates a real outage, where users would likely be unable to use the service if they wanted. The latter might indicate a temporary glitch (perhaps with the TA even) that could be resolved by immediately re-attmpting the call. The former is a much bigger deal than the latter, but the numbers they've given us don't distinguish them.
This matches my experience with Callvantage. I've never noticed that AT&T's service is "down". Sometimes when I attempt a call, it doesn't go through on the first try, but on the second try immediately after the failure, it completes. I've always chaulked this up to Internet flakiness. To repeat: I've *never* noticed an outage where I couldn't make a call, or where calls didn't ring to my cell phone (and I know... this is my business line).
Anyway, the point is, 99.4% can mean a lot of things... and we don't really know how these call-completion numbers really match to service availability.
-R
I've heard this again and again... the computer's broken, it's not worth the money to fix it because new computers only cost $400. This is correct if you view a computer like a car... just a piece of hardware that provides a service that can easily be swapped out for another car with little effort.
The fact is that most people's computers are like houses... they contain a lot of stuff, and they're highly personalized. It's not just data in "my documents" or e-mail... there are countless hours invested in most people's computers installing software, customizing settings, and so forth. Transferring data and software, and getting it back to where it functions as *your computer* is a time-consuming, error-prone task, especially for non-technical users. I'm *good* at it (I do it for a living) and it takes me 2-4 hours per computer just for the basics (install A/V, install printers, install digital camera software, get the iPod syncing again, migrate e-mail, documents, bookmarks, etc..).
It really boils down to what your time is worth. I tell people... I can clean off your computer in under two hours, or I you can spend $400 (really $500-600 if you account for everything most people want) plus two hours of my time moving your data to a new one. You can guess which most people choose...
-R
Well, they weren't issues until GWA was installed, and went away when I removed it. Perhaps it's a Firefox / extension / upgrade bug, but GWA played a part.
-R
I just deleted the accelerator from my system after trying it for the last day, and I must say that it is much less mature than most of the "Beta" products google releases. It caused several significant issues with Firefox on my system, including:
1. Links that open another window stopped working entirely (although they worked if I right-clicked and selected "open in new tab")
2. Even after closing all Firefox windows, a firefox.exe process would remain running, and prevent any new firefox windows from being opened until it was manually killed
3. "Proxy not available" errors when opening several pages at once, such as when using the Firefox "open in tabs" on a folder of bookmarks.
And I haven't even checked into some of these cookie / privacy issues. Perhaps these issues are unique to my system, but my environment is pretty vanilla... I just run a few of the more popular Firefox plugins. Removing the GWA cleared up all of the problems cited above.
Up to this point, I've always been very impressed with the level of testing that has gone into Google software products before they enter Beta. In this case, I'm not. Hope this isn't a sign of things to come.
-R
On the other hand, if you're calling with a "real" problem (not something that can be answered in a manual or in the Knowledge Base), your support incident fee will almost certainly be refunded. I'm an independent consultant for small businesses and have had to call Microsoft a grand total of 3 times in the past year. Each time, because I knew my stuff and had pursued all reasonable alternative avenues before calling, the support fees were refunded.
The other good thing is that there *is* an escalation path to folks that really know their stuff. I got escalated to a level 3 tech once for a production-down problem, and he was able to confirm the bug in source code and get us a workaround that got us back up and running. This was at 11pm. No charge.
Now, it was a nightmare to reach him... long hold times at each escalation, dropped calls, etc... but unlike some other companies (Intuit) a poorly-trained resident of Bangalore with only a script and the publically-searchable KB isn't your first, last and only hope for help.
-Robert
You'll have a pretty hard time making money in this business at $20 / hr. Let's do the math.
First, think about the total number of hours you're able to bill in a week. Trust me when I say that you will have a hard time billing more than 50% of the time you spend "working", based on the amount of time you spend travelling getting to and from customers, the time you spend dealing with the financial side of being self-employed, the time you spend getting new business (even taking phone calls or e-mails from prospective customers) and such.
Assuming a 40 hour work week, that's 20 billable hours a week, or (assuming a 2 week vacation), 1000 billable hours a year. At $20 / hr, you're billing down a whopping $20k.
But wait... you don't get to take all that home. First of all, you need liability insurance and professional errors & ommissions insurance. That is, unless you feel like going bankrupt when someone trips over the bag you left in the middle of the floor and gets brain-damage from hitting their head on a table.
There's also health insurance, which you have the honor of paying for yourself. And self-employment taxes to uncle sam. And an extra phone line. And that new laptop, external hard drive, copies of Quickbooks, Acronis True Image, etc.. etc.. etc..
In fact, it's quite common for independent consultants to "take home" only 50% of what they "make".
And anyway, if you're any good, you're worth more than $20 / hr. Take a hint from the plumbers and electricians... $80/hr+ is really what you need to be thinking.
And if someone complains about $80, tell them to call up "Geeks on Call" or "Geek Squad". Geek Squad doesn't show up for less than $160 guaranteed.
-R
Who said it was a problem? :-) Most customers that find my company this way seem very pleased to have done so... so I do think it serves them well. But it still somehow *feels* a little misleading to me.
-R