Net-It Central is the magical tool you were looking for. With that you can just point it at the file share with the Word Documents (and Excel and Power Point...) on it and see them indexed and cross linked on web pages. It'll update the content as the source docs change.
I needed a replacmeent PDA for my Treo (90), another orphan. I looked at what I could get get in a Palm and at the end the Tapwave Zodiac met the mission.
I wanted WiFi capability while stil having a slot for extra storage. The Zod has two SD slots. You can put a WiFi card in one and flash disk in the other. Ironically PalmOne couldn't do that in the top PDAs. The Tungsten3 can have flash OR WiFi, not both.
Better, Tapwave wrote drivers for a combo SD card from SanDisk that has both WiFi and 256MB of RAM on a signle card.
CompUSA put them on sale for $199 for Zodiac q and $299 for the Zodiac 2 with your choice of 4 $29 games. I picked up a Zodiac 1 and 4 games of which I've opened one.
The best part was the clerk at CompUSA covered my Zodiac with a 2 year extended warranty for $29. I'm safe to get $200 credit even with Tapwave gone.
Not only does the Zodiac have stereo sound, it has pulse feedback on the games.
I'm enjoying using mine to listen to podcasts. I got the SanDisk Wifi + 256 card and it works fairly well. It'll serve in a pinch.
Look for even better bargain closeouts on Zodiacs. It might make sense for you too to adopt an orphan.
Symantec also says thanks.
I have a buddy, a doctor, who I help out who has done exactly this. When he decides he's wasted enough time trying to fix it, he has litterally put a hammer to the hard drive on his XP PC and ordered another from Dell.
That drove me nuts. I finally set him up with a way to image the PCs to an external hard drive so he won't be doing that any more.
The worst part is not only was Dell and Microsoft getting a nice revenue stream from repeatedly shipping crappy products, Symantec was, too. He found that the "wunnerful" offshored tech support could never seem to understand he already owned a Norton AV subscription that he needed to transfer. After wasting enough time on that he would turn over another $39 for a year.
Whatta system. The mob should be jealous.
BTW, I did finally convince him to buy a Mac. he got a Dual G5 PowerMac. He doesn't like it a lot, ironically because of some pain he's had making it network with his Windows PCs and work with Windows software. He has issues with using Virtual PC to run some Windows software he needs. I have decided to back off some with my help.
I just listened to Engadget's podcast interview with Bill Gates. When asked about HD DVD and tech like IPTV he says that devices with digital HD technology have to have "the same level of Digital Rights Management as DVD has now."
I thought a HDMI input would accept unencrypted DVI as well.
As I understand it, it does. It's working that way for me. In my case I think the cable is not passing the DRM stuff from the source to the TV, because the source is, indeed, DVI. The TV is usually happy with the signal.
The other lines missing in the cable are the audio lines, which as far as I'm concerned are a silly idea. You'll send audio to the audio surround system, not the tinny speakers on the monitor, if it even has those.
We have a Motorola HD cable DVR connected to a Sony HD TV using a DVI (DVR) to HDMI (TV) cable that doesn't pass the DRM signal. The only digital input the TV has is the HDMI input. The digital signal is visibly cleaner and sharper at 1080i than using Component video cables, but there are rare glitches. Occasionally the picture will get out of sync and you see two torn noisy SD images on the screen. You can fix that by simply changing channels and coming back. That gets the 1s and 0s in sync again.
Outside of that the DVR/TV connect is wont to have other head glitches once in while. During one of those the TV displayed a blue box over 2/3 of the screen with the message along the lines of "DEVICE NOT AUTHORIZED for digital connection. Please switch to analog inputs." Power cycles all around cleared that nonsense.
This what we have to look forward to - TVs that will decide if your other devices are authorized to be seen.
Support the EFF to stop this madness...or vote with your wallet. Are you ready to pass on watching movies or other HQ content when the day comes soon that all devices work like this?
Mac OS X users can get the new version of iTunes quick an' easy though Software Update on the system Preferences Panel, along with a corresponding update for the iPod, if needed.
1984 didn't happen, at least not in 1984, because Orwell's book was so frightening. Too bad the fear lasted less than 21 years. Should be required reading in high school. (I thought it frequently was.)
Yeahbut, most in the Senate are of the short-attention-span kind.
They read the Cliff Notes version of "1984" because the paperback has 336 pages!
... (Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac OS X) has problems on Tiger, which won't be fixed anytime soon (we're hearing).
But the problems Virtual PC has Tiger has do not include NOT WORKING.
I just helped a buddy install a new copy of Virtual PC with Windows XP Pro on a new Dual G5 Powermac.
It took a few tries, mainly because we didn't do "Search online for updates" first, but it works well. You get some error messages about network bridging not working you are free to ignore - because all network functionality does work - and those messages eventually stop.
I'd consider it less annoying than incredibly loud ring tone (as often as not crappy music) followed by...
Oh the IRONY! I just remembered the time on my train commute late last year when I kept hearing beeps, and I realized what I hearing was "S-M-S" in MORSE CODE! (I studied Morse many, many moons ago when I got my Novice Ham ticket, which I don't use)
I looked around and eventually ID'ed the sweet young thing keying away on her phone. The beeps continued to annoy us all through the entire train ride. It would hav been less anonnying if she just made a #$%@!! PHONE CALL to the person on the other side.
The Nokia SMS message alert is indeed "S-M-S" (dit-dit-dit dah-dah dit-dit-dit) in Morse Code.
You just KNOW that the kids would think that Morse guy just copied Nokia.
Re:How about Bluetooth?
on
Top Mice Compared
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· Score: 2, Informative
I think the Logitech MX900 Bluetooth Optical Mouse is the best, but it's also the most expensive at $150 Canadian.
Agreed. I found out the hard way when shopping for a Bluetooth mouse to replace/augment the the no button Apple mouse on a new all-wireless 20" iMac G5.
I found the Logitech MX900 Bluetooth mouse and keyboard combo on sale for around $100 US at buy.com
It moves relatively smoothly, but I soemtimes have to fight the need to lift it to cover the entire screen. I have set the Tracking Speed to maximum and need still more to be happy. I'm not using a mousepad. I'm going to try one to see if that helps.
The Logitech MX900 has worked well without ever connecting the USB cable from the charging/Bluetooth base. I just hated the idea that a) I had no way to turnoff the Bluetooth receiver I'm not using. I have no idea if it can or is causing interference with the receiver in the iMac. b) The mouse has to be recharged on that base so I can't just chuck it.
In hopes that a mouse that used simple AA batteries would be more appropriate, I bought a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth for ~$50US. It was pretty much wasted money. It's nowhere near as good as the Logitech. The mouse movement is much, much worse than the Logitech. It constantly disconnects - I assume it has an auto-shutoff to save the batteries. In spite of that, it's already eaten a set of the original Lithium batteries after only 3 months of occasional use.
Ironically I've had little trouble with the Logitech batteries being discharged as I feared. We just park it in the base when we're done working.
Bluetooth on the Mac has been a constant source of annoyance. I've had to power down to get the mouse and keyboard to work more times than I can count. Bluetooth will not wake up after the Mac goes to sleep. I reported that online to the "fine" off-shored Apple support who disconnected on me. That is apparently a known bug to Apple.
Tiger hasn't fixed the problem. Now we often get "No mouse found" and/or "No keyboard found" at power up after which we use the non-existent mouse and keyboard to log in. What an absolute pain.
They were other examples where they left in the setup for the jokes but cut out the punchlines.
There's a reason why Ford is loading up on beer and peanuts at the pub in the last few minutes for earth. He tells Arthur to dig in but never says why. (AIRC, you need to be hydrated to for beaming up to the ship.)
At the end they have Slartibartfast repeatedly saying, "Do you need anything else?" to seemingly, no one. The mice are supposed to answer each time, "That will be ALL, Slartibartfast!" telling us who placed the order. Never happens in the movie.
I had the strong feeling we could see the hand of the Disney suits telling them to keep up the pace and make sure the movie doesn't run more than the exhibitor-friendly 1:50.
I agree with Ebert and Roeper that they could have used more of the perspective of those who hadn't immersed themselves in Adams' world so it would be a bit clearer to mere civilians.
That said, I took the GF to the movie after giving her a quick briefing and showing her Marvin on the movie site. She laughed out loud at Marvin. She loved the movie and said she wasn't lost.
They were obviously setting up for the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" sequel. Let's hope the movie makes enough so the sequel happens.
Windows seems to have no problems with detecting a printer...
The printer's name will come from the printer as a reply to an inquiry over USB or even a parallel cable.
But with Windows you still have to download or locate and insert a CD to install the printer's software.
I was amazed that it's even better in OS X on a Mac. I plugged a cable from Canon BubbleJet printer into the USB port on the back of the GF's iMac G5.
It just plain worked. No muss, no fuss. No windows about installing drivers. No OK/Cancel. The way I knew it was even there was by printing the first time.
More than "just plan worked" the System Perferences panel had the complete Canon maintenance utilities for the printer for things like ink level, power savings, and and head adjustment.
I have since learned that OS X ships with the manufacturer's software for most current printers.
This is how it should be.
Color me a future switcher.
Vaporware will always be better than a shipping product. Just go back through history looking at every vaporware announcement just in the 20th century alone. "My vaporware product will do everything Joe's shipping software does, plus X and Y and Z! So don't buy the currently shipping product. Wait for my vaporware."
It's gets even better than that.
I remember an actual quote from a Microsoft executive (Ballmer?) many years ago along the lines of, "They just copied what we're going to have to the next version of..." something.
That's a statement you have to go to Bizarro World to parse.
My install got into a endless loop at the "Add users" part of the install. It kept coming back to the "Full Name," username, password dialogs no matter how I entered the info.
After rebooting, it complained that I didn't set up a non privileged user and prompted me to enter a root password.
When I tried running the adduser from the admin menus it did the same. Running adduser from the command line I saw it was giving an error when trying to chown and chgrp the user's new home directory.
I had made/home a vfat (fat32) file system because I wanted it to be a common area to share files with Windows. Permissions and ownership don't exist on fat. I unmounted/home and remounted the fat partition on a different mount point under a different name and all was well....after I spent another significant amount of time figuring put visudo and sudousers.
Yes, I will report the bug once I get a round tuit....I just went to report it and see it has already been reported as Bug 5374 for debian-installer, which is good, because I was convinced these kinds of problems only happen to me.
No mention of the SkyTag(tm)?
on
USB Fundue Set
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· Score: 1
You might look at Unison, which runs under Linux and Windows.
Thanks for that suggestion. I'll use that.
Is there a utility that will sync Firefox bookmarks?
I suspect this one will make you choose one Mozilla profile over another. I'd like something that will say:
"Laptop bookmarks has one additional entry...copying to desktop."
"Desktop: URL for slashdot.org updated to Laptop"
A similar thing for the Thunderbird email store would be nice, too.
For that price the guy could just throw his pc away in the trash and buy several every year.
I can see where a professional might want $200 an hour but the value of pc's are falling. Why pay someone half the value of what a computer is worth?
LOL! That's EXACTLY what he does after he wastes hours trying to get the PC in front of him to work. If he can't reach me, and sometimes even after I've tried to help over the phone for an another hour or two, he smashes it, throws it into to trash, and heads to Best Buy or calls Dell to get a new one.
It kills me when he does that. I pointed out to him that it only gives more money to the ones that are causing him the trouble.
He has tried getting local support. It's hopeless. Just like in this article, the "professionals" in his town aren't professional.
Last night he called me from Best Buy as he was about to buy a new DSL router. We decided that wouldn't fix things and for once he went home empty handed. I'll guide him to ordering decent stuff online.
I've talked him into getting a Mac to see how well it works for him. He'll likely get the new iMac or a Mac Mini in the meantime. We might try using the new (Microsoft!) Virtual PC for the Mac to run the Windows specific stuff.
My father is a veteran systems administrator with 35 years of experience in the industry. His and his girlfriends' home PCs keep getting virii, spyware, and adware.
It's not that dad's an old coot, he actually keeps his skills up to date. It's that Windows is so unbelievably insecure he just can't keep up with it. He uses antivirus software, he tries to keep it up to date, he has multiple spyware scanners/removers which he updates regularly, and he just can't keep the systems clean. Every year or two it gets too unbearable and he just has to wipe the machine and reinstall from scratch, or replace it.
If my father can't do it, then no normal mortal computer owner should be expected to do it.
I'm a veteran system administrator with 33 years experience. None of my 5 personally run Windows systems are infected with anything.
Staying clean is a matter of reading up on what's going on on the crapware front, not OK-ing crapware installs and #1 not using Internet Explorer. I also run and update and anti-virus, Spybot S&D and AdAware to make sure I don't miss anything. The only hits I get are for cookies.
If you know you DON'T NEED any more browser plug ins....guess what else you don't need?
I agree that mere civilians don't have chance. I talked by phone late into the night last night helping one of the smartest guys I know, a doctor 200 miles away who has had to spend way too much time trying to get PCs in his office working. Now his has something making it crawl we couldn't figure out over the phone. I got him working running Firefox on a another PC he brought in from home when IE on that one still refuses to work.
I'm telling him to get an iMac on the LAN just so he and I have something that WILL connect and runs VNC so that I can get in and help the next time.
We agreed that the guy's time is worth over $200 an hour. Last night Windows on Intel stole another $1200 from him. He figures it has cost him $5000 to $7000 each year.
Slashdot Mirror
Net-It Central is the magical tool you were looking for. With that you can just point it at the file share with the Word Documents (and Excel and Power Point...) on it and see them indexed and cross linked on web pages. It'll update the content as the source docs change.
Oh, you mean non-commercial magical tools?
I needed a replacmeent PDA for my Treo (90), another orphan. I looked at what I could get get in a Palm and at the end the Tapwave Zodiac met the mission.
I wanted WiFi capability while stil having a slot for extra storage. The Zod has two SD slots. You can put a WiFi card in one and flash disk in the other. Ironically PalmOne couldn't do that in the top PDAs. The Tungsten3 can have flash OR WiFi, not both.
Better, Tapwave wrote drivers for a combo SD card from SanDisk that has both WiFi and 256MB of RAM on a signle card.
CompUSA put them on sale for $199 for Zodiac q and $299 for the Zodiac 2 with your choice of 4 $29 games. I picked up a Zodiac 1 and 4 games of which I've opened one.
The best part was the clerk at CompUSA covered my Zodiac with a 2 year extended warranty for $29. I'm safe to get $200 credit even with Tapwave gone.
Not only does the Zodiac have stereo sound, it has pulse feedback on the games.
I'm enjoying using mine to listen to podcasts. I got the SanDisk Wifi + 256 card and it works fairly well. It'll serve in a pinch.
Look for even better bargain closeouts on Zodiacs. It might make sense for you too to adopt an orphan.
It's not enough that the TiVo lets me skip the ad, I want a button to cause the "Do YOU need to learn more about computers?" guy physical pain.
I bought a IntelliMouse Explorer for Bluetooth, ironically to use with a Mac.
It does work on Mac OS X.
When I tried to use it at work I found out the Bluetooth USB dongle doesn't work on Win2K Professional.
Symantec also says thanks. I have a buddy, a doctor, who I help out who has done exactly this. When he decides he's wasted enough time trying to fix it, he has litterally put a hammer to the hard drive on his XP PC and ordered another from Dell.
That drove me nuts. I finally set him up with a way to image the PCs to an external hard drive so he won't be doing that any more.
The worst part is not only was Dell and Microsoft getting a nice revenue stream from repeatedly shipping crappy products, Symantec was, too. He found that the "wunnerful" offshored tech support could never seem to understand he already owned a Norton AV subscription that he needed to transfer. After wasting enough time on that he would turn over another $39 for a year.
Whatta system. The mob should be jealous.
BTW, I did finally convince him to buy a Mac. he got a Dual G5 PowerMac. He doesn't like it a lot, ironically because of some pain he's had making it network with his Windows PCs and work with Windows software. He has issues with using Virtual PC to run some Windows software he needs. I have decided to back off some with my help.
I just listened to Engadget's podcast interview with Bill Gates. When asked about HD DVD and tech like IPTV he says that devices with digital HD technology have to have "the same level of Digital Rights Management as DVD has now."
Let's hope. We know how rock solid DVD DRM is.
The other lines missing in the cable are the audio lines, which as far as I'm concerned are a silly idea. You'll send audio to the audio surround system, not the tinny speakers on the monitor, if it even has those.
We have a Motorola HD cable DVR connected to a Sony HD TV using a DVI (DVR) to HDMI (TV) cable that doesn't pass the DRM signal. The only digital input the TV has is the HDMI input. The digital signal is visibly cleaner and sharper at 1080i than using Component video cables, but there are rare glitches. Occasionally the picture will get out of sync and you see two torn noisy SD images on the screen. You can fix that by simply changing channels and coming back. That gets the 1s and 0s in sync again.
Outside of that the DVR/TV connect is wont to have other head glitches once in while. During one of those the TV displayed a blue box over 2/3 of the screen with the message along the lines of "DEVICE NOT AUTHORIZED for digital connection. Please switch to analog inputs." Power cycles all around cleared that nonsense.
This what we have to look forward to - TVs that will decide if your other devices are authorized to be seen. Support the EFF to stop this madness...or vote with your wallet. Are you ready to pass on watching movies or other HQ content when the day comes soon that all devices work like this?
nor did using a $25 hardware firewall/router between the PC and the net.
Mac OS X users can get the new version of iTunes quick an' easy though Software Update on the system Preferences Panel, along with a corresponding update for the iPod, if needed.
They read the Cliff Notes version of "1984" because the paperback has 336 pages!
The version they read was called "18."
I just helped a buddy install a new copy of Virtual PC with Windows XP Pro on a new Dual G5 Powermac.
It took a few tries, mainly because we didn't do "Search online for updates" first, but it works well. You get some error messages about network bridging not working you are free to ignore - because all network functionality does work - and those messages eventually stop.
I looked around and eventually ID'ed the sweet young thing keying away on her phone. The beeps continued to annoy us all through the entire train ride. It would hav been less anonnying if she just made a #$%@!! PHONE CALL to the person on the other side.
The Nokia SMS message alert is indeed "S-M-S" (dit-dit-dit dah-dah dit-dit-dit) in Morse Code.
You just KNOW that the kids would think that Morse guy just copied Nokia.
I found the Logitech MX900 Bluetooth mouse and keyboard combo on sale for around $100 US at buy.com
It moves relatively smoothly, but I soemtimes have to fight the need to lift it to cover the entire screen. I have set the Tracking Speed to maximum and need still more to be happy. I'm not using a mousepad. I'm going to try one to see if that helps.
The Logitech MX900 has worked well without ever connecting the USB cable from the charging/Bluetooth base. I just hated the idea that a) I had no way to turnoff the Bluetooth receiver I'm not using. I have no idea if it can or is causing interference with the receiver in the iMac. b) The mouse has to be recharged on that base so I can't just chuck it.
In hopes that a mouse that used simple AA batteries would be more appropriate, I bought a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth for ~$50US. It was pretty much wasted money. It's nowhere near as good as the Logitech. The mouse movement is much, much worse than the Logitech. It constantly disconnects - I assume it has an auto-shutoff to save the batteries. In spite of that, it's already eaten a set of the original Lithium batteries after only 3 months of occasional use.
Ironically I've had little trouble with the Logitech batteries being discharged as I feared. We just park it in the base when we're done working.
Bluetooth on the Mac has been a constant source of annoyance. I've had to power down to get the mouse and keyboard to work more times than I can count. Bluetooth will not wake up after the Mac goes to sleep. I reported that online to the "fine" off-shored Apple support who disconnected on me. That is apparently a known bug to Apple.
Tiger hasn't fixed the problem. Now we often get "No mouse found" and/or "No keyboard found" at power up after which we use the non-existent mouse and keyboard to log in. What an absolute pain.
They were other examples where they left in the setup for the jokes but cut out the punchlines.
There's a reason why Ford is loading up on beer and peanuts at the pub in the last few minutes for earth. He tells Arthur to dig in but never says why. (AIRC, you need to be hydrated to for beaming up to the ship.)
At the end they have Slartibartfast repeatedly saying, "Do you need anything else?" to seemingly, no one. The mice are supposed to answer each time, "That will be ALL, Slartibartfast!" telling us who placed the order. Never happens in the movie.
I had the strong feeling we could see the hand of the Disney suits telling them to keep up the pace and make sure the movie doesn't run more than the exhibitor-friendly 1:50.
I agree with Ebert and Roeper that they could have used more of the perspective of those who hadn't immersed themselves in Adams' world so it would be a bit clearer to mere civilians. That said, I took the GF to the movie after giving her a quick briefing and showing her Marvin on the movie site. She laughed out loud at Marvin. She loved the movie and said she wasn't lost.
They were obviously setting up for the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" sequel. Let's hope the movie makes enough so the sequel happens.
But with Windows you still have to download or locate and insert a CD to install the printer's software.
I was amazed that it's even better in OS X on a Mac. I plugged a cable from Canon BubbleJet printer into the USB port on the back of the GF's iMac G5.
It just plain worked. No muss, no fuss. No windows about installing drivers. No OK/Cancel. The way I knew it was even there was by printing the first time.
More than "just plan worked" the System Perferences panel had the complete Canon maintenance utilities for the printer for things like ink level, power savings, and and head adjustment.
I have since learned that OS X ships with the manufacturer's software for most current printers.
This is how it should be. Color me a future switcher.
I remember an actual quote from a Microsoft executive (Ballmer?) many years ago along the lines of, "They just copied what we're going to have to the next version of..." something.
That's a statement you have to go to Bizarro World to parse.
My install got into a endless loop at the "Add users" part of the install. It kept coming back to the "Full Name," username, password dialogs no matter how I entered the info.
/home a vfat (fat32) file system because I wanted it to be a common area to share files with Windows. Permissions and ownership don't exist on fat. I unmounted /home and remounted the fat partition on a different mount point under a different name and all was well....after I spent another significant amount of time figuring put visudo and sudousers.
After rebooting, it complained that I didn't set up a non privileged user and prompted me to enter a root password.
When I tried running the adduser from the admin menus it did the same. Running adduser from the command line I saw it was giving an error when trying to chown and chgrp the user's new home directory.
I had made
Yes, I will report the bug once I get a round tuit....I just went to report it and see it has already been reported as Bug 5374 for debian-installer, which is good, because I was convinced these kinds of problems only happen to me.
Is there a utility that will sync Firefox bookmarks?
I suspect this one will make you choose one Mozilla profile over another. I'd like something that will say:
"Laptop bookmarks has one additional entry...copying to desktop." "Desktop: URL for slashdot.org updated to Laptop"
A similar thing for the Thunderbird email store would be nice, too.
It kills me when he does that. I pointed out to him that it only gives more money to the ones that are causing him the trouble.
He has tried getting local support. It's hopeless. Just like in this article, the "professionals" in his town aren't professional.
Last night he called me from Best Buy as he was about to buy a new DSL router. We decided that wouldn't fix things and for once he went home empty handed. I'll guide him to ordering decent stuff online.
I've talked him into getting a Mac to see how well it works for him. He'll likely get the new iMac or a Mac Mini in the meantime. We might try using the new (Microsoft!) Virtual PC for the Mac to run the Windows specific stuff.
Staying clean is a matter of reading up on what's going on on the crapware front, not OK-ing crapware installs and #1 not using Internet Explorer. I also run and update and anti-virus, Spybot S&D and AdAware to make sure I don't miss anything. The only hits I get are for cookies.
If you know you DON'T NEED any more browser plug ins....guess what else you don't need?
I agree that mere civilians don't have chance. I talked by phone late into the night last night helping one of the smartest guys I know, a doctor 200 miles away who has had to spend way too much time trying to get PCs in his office working. Now his has something making it crawl we couldn't figure out over the phone. I got him working running Firefox on a another PC he brought in from home when IE on that one still refuses to work.
I'm telling him to get an iMac on the LAN just so he and I have something that WILL connect and runs VNC so that I can get in and help the next time.
We agreed that the guy's time is worth over $200 an hour. Last night Windows on Intel stole another $1200 from him. He figures it has cost him $5000 to $7000 each year.
I just showed "clocky" to the GF, who I allowed to buy a alarm clock that sounds with the very-electronic chirping of birds. We hate dose boids.
She had only one question: "How much is it?"
She wanted to get one to torture me.