Technically Speaking

On the fence

With all the news surrounding the Palm Pre (maybe Palm's last gasp) and the new iPhone, I've been consumed with one question. Should I or shouldn't I? It's Windows 7 that has got me in a whirl. It's been sitting here on my desktop ready to install for a couple of weeks now but I haven't got up enough courage to actually install it. My son has been running it on a laptop for a while and, so far, has had no issues or concerns with his other applications and games. I suppose I should just 'bite the bullet' and go ahead - damn the torpedoes! The trouble is that I so much 'stuff' installed on multiple hard drives that it will take forever to sort out. I even have one drive partitioned so that I could install Vista as a dual boot system when I still had Windows XP as my primary OS - man, that seems like ages ago. Maybe I'll use our new 1.5TB external drive to copy to and then just transfer back when I've reformatted and partitioned my drives. I'm just not looking forward to all the time and nonsense required - I'm just lazy I guess (down at the back there!). I suppose it's like anything that needs change; it's hard to take a step into the unknown. I think, however, that this is the week - I'll just have to make the effort and move into the 21st Century at last. Wish me luck.

New boss, same as the old boss

Now this idea takes me back to the bad old days of DOS and its native inability to multitask. These were the days of Leisure Suit Larry and playing the hottest new games (Wolfenstein or F19 anyone) and hoping that the boss wasn't looking your way. If you were unlucky enough to see 'the man' coming your way, you would just press the 'boss' key and an innocuous Lotus spreadsheet appeared like lightning (well fairly quickly) and your secret was safe. Of course, if you were asked to explain your pretty new spreadsheet you were sunk - happy times. It seems that the idea of the 'boss key' has not gone away and now you can get this wonderful and inconspicuous item for you protection. Really discreet, isn't it? I suppose you could hide it under your desk and hit it with your knee when needed. Of course, it's only a toy - with multitasking you can move or hide anything with a click of the mouse or a quick keyboard command. Certainly, in a business environment, the ability to hide non-work related activities becomes a major part of some workers daily life and, in the home, keeps their significant other unaware of their browsing activities. In my opinion, anyone who gets caught at work doing the wrong thing on their PC deserves to be at least admonished if not punished for being a twit.

Much more of the same

It's been a rather strange time in the electronic world. Nothing much has jumped out and made us go 'wow' or even say 'neat'. We have seen the introduction of newer or ungraded netbooks, 'phones and cameras along with minor releases of new 'toys' for the geekkind to fawn over. Even the wider pre-release of Windows 7 hasn't caused much of a ripple. The regular announcement (or so it seems) of electric cars that will be gracing our streets has become almost commonplace and I guess by now you know my views. The plug-in electric vehicle is useless outside of a small downtown area and the real deal is to go to the fuel-cell. The DSLR's next 'big thing' is high quality video, but the issues with continuous auto-focussing and battery life is still the major hurdle. The netbook world is still one of many brands but almost all following the same tried and tested configurations - you can almost tell the specifications with your eyes closed. Would I like one? Sure, as a gift - I'm not spending my money. Could it be that we are getting jaded with all of the sameness out there. It's always been a world of competition, but no one seems to want to get out in front of the herd and be noticed. Please guys, don't let this turn into a bland, beige world. Death by boredom is a cruel way to go.