Microsoft released its official version of their latest browser, IE 8, on March 19th.  Web developers around the world know from experience that this may or may not be a good thing.  It’s tough to design web pages and applications that are suppose to render the same, no matter what browser you use, when one of those browsers for multiple reasons wants to do their own thing.  Web developers have been fighting browser incompatibilities for as long as we can remember.

One of the worse browsers for non-compliance has been…you guessed it Internet Explorer.  Almost every web page out there has to have it’s work around for those viewers that use Internet Explorer.  The browser compatibility issue became such a pain, and not just Microsoft as the culprit, that an independent advocacy group was formed, the Web Standards Project, to try to point out the differences that existed between browsers in hopes of getting some conformity in everyone’s web experience.

The Web Standards Project developed a test suite, called Acid,  to see if a browser was compliant with what they considered to be the major standards from various sources for web development.  For a web developer and web user, this is important for an enjoyable web experience.  The current default test that every browser should be able to run is Acid2.  You can check your browser out, and take the Acid 2 test yourself.  If your browser runs correctly, you should get the below image displayed correctly.   Seems like a simple test, but every previous version of Internet Explorer has failed this test miserably, until now that is.   Internet Explorer 8 has decided to join the rest of the world’s browser experience and now passes Acid 2.   Now all we have to do is wait until all previous versions of Internet Explorer die of old age, and we can forget about all those special IE workarounds in our web pages.

By the way, there is a much more strenuous Acid 3 test.  This one counts to 100 and depending on how far you get in the count determines how standard compliant your browser is.   So far Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browser are the only ones to reach 100.

In the meantime, we applaud Microsoft on its latest effort, and bid all you Internet Explorer browser users to hurry up and upgrade.

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Acid2

I feel compelled to write about all-in-one printers.  I have been using these multifunctions printers for some 20 years now, and always an HP.  After all, HP invented the market.  The multifunction printer does it all, fax, scan, copy, and of course, print your computer documents.  If you get a network ready model, you can print through your wireless network, and run one all-in-one printer for all the computers in your home or small business.

These printers last four or five years before they go out of alignment, a belt slips, or the paper feed messes up.  When your printer died, it use to be a no-brainer.  You go out and buy the latest HP.

But after my six year old HP died, I wanted to rethink that logic.  Since I end up doing the maintenance on the printer, I knew the HP printer well.  I only ever owned an HP, so I was use to their quirks, but I was dissatisfied.  What didn’t I like about the HP.  The HP seems to be built with ill fitted plastic parts.  It feels and looks like plastic, and what I wanted was something that looked like a high-quality printer, think Lexus versus Chevy.  The HP ink cartridges are the highest priced on the market.  Everyone knows HP makes money on the ink cartridges, not the printer.  I never liked having to pay for cartridges that seem to run out of ink just when you had an important job to print.

And finally, the final straw was the software.  HP software ranks low in my eyes, right alongside Symantec software.  (Don’t get me started.)  It’s not the drivers themselves, it’s the way the software application works: how it installs, how the network installs, how sometimes the driver just disappears and needs to be reinstalled, the scanner never worked properly, and still doesn’t to this day.  These quirks were exasperated with the change to Vista.  Generally, HP software is a pain to install and use.  It makes you work to get your printer up and running, and in the end, I got tired of it.  It has trouble installing on a wireless network.  My thought was maybe there is a better printer than HP on the market.

I looked, and started reading the reviews.  I almost bought a Kodak.  The plus was the low price of its ink cartridges.  Yep, $12 versus the HP’s $35.  The reviews said you needed special photo paper to print high-quality color, a minus, which brought me to Canon.
The Canon MX850 had the highest Amazon ranking of all network all-in-one printers on the market, 4.5 stars from 145 reviews, wow.  The HPJ4580 only made 4 stars with 14 reviews.  I took a chance, gave up my HP problems, blew all my HP software off my computers, and went with the Canon, and I’m glad I did.

I finished installing and setting up the Canon MX850, and I am gushing over the Canon.  It’s print quality is superb, it’s color quality is superb, it handles 17-28 lb paper.  The HP sometimes struggled with lighter copy paper.  It’s parts go together precisely, like Lexus, not loosely like the HP.  It looks and feels well engineered.  I get smooth noise on print, not clunky noise with the HP.  The ink cartridges go in smoothly with a click and a light to signify proper install, not a plastic catch that forces the cartridge, like the HP.  The ink cartridges cost about $20, not bad, compared to $35.  The printer is easy to use.  The menus make sense and are logical laid out.  And finally, which prompted this article, the software is a joy.  It installs easily.  it takes care of a lot of things behind the scenes.  it installs quickly.  The HP seemed like it took forever to find the printer on the network.  The Canon found the printer quickly and just said finished with the install.

Right now, I’m a happy camper.  I wish I had gone with Canon six years ago.  Of course, I don’t think they were available back then.  It looks to me like Canon built a better mousetrap in the interim.

Micorsoft Security Updates?   Lets take a completely different perspective.

What if Microsoft didn’t make my operating system like a *&%$* vault, and some baddies somehow laid some malware into my machine.  That’s right, somehow penetrated all my non-Microsoft firewall, anitvirus software, spyware program, registry cleaner, and file change detection programs.  Yep, just suppose this malware got through all of those third-party apps, and really messed up my system.  It messed it up so bad, I couldn’t recover, and I had to buy a new computer.

Wouldn’t Microsoft make more money from the sale of a new operating system and office tools on that new computer I’d be forced to buy.  Get a clue Microsoft, stop these idiotic security updates, and ultra pain in the butt security measures that clog our systems, slow them down, and let us pay you more money.

Along those lines, since we never know what is inside, the now infamous, Microsoft security updates,  I have a sneaky suspicion, that has nagged at me many a time, as my system reboots from yet another securtiy update.   What if Microsoft security updates for XP, and its other older operating systems have a little extra functionality built-in.  Maybe, they have a couple extra loops in the code of each new update.  This would gradually slow your older operating system down.  We, of course, would call these updates, “security updates.”  Of course, the extra loops wouldn’t be in the updates for their latest operating system.

Why? Well, to sell new computers, and with each computer, new Microsoft software.  Can you say money?  Get rid of that super slow clunker you’ve had for a couple of years, and buy a new “speedy” computer with Vista on it.  See how quick your new computer runs.  “Wow, Vista looks really good!”   Nah, Microsoft wouldn’t do that, would they?

I’m running Windows Vista SP1, and it’s now infamous UAC for User Account Control, barf.  Well, I just downloaded a program I’m trying to install with a .msi extension.  A .msi extension is a file type that is meant to be installed by the Microsoft Windows Installer program.  The Windows Installer program manages the installation, and removal of programs on the Microsoft Operating System.

Well it just so happens this program sometimes will not run, gets corrupted, or a setting in windows, like not having the UAC turned on, may not run.  In which case, you can’t install your program.

So here I am trying to get some work done, and I find on my Vista system I cannot run files with an .msi extension.  Why?  Who knows.  I have now spent four hours trying to figure it out.  I’ve been up on the Microsoft site, and they have a replacement program that is supposed to fix the problems with, our you ready for this joke, a new .msu extension which also doesn’t load.  What happen to good old .exe extensions?   A lament, why does Microsoft have to make everything so difficult?

News Flash!  IBM to buy Sun.  It appears IBM is trying to consolidate the market for servers by purchasing Sun Microsystems for a whooping $6.5B in cash.  This is probably a knee-jerk reaction to Cisco systems announcement just this week that it will start selling servers.  The Internet giant, Cisco, entering the market is a serous threat to the existing market competitors.

That market before this week was mainly Dell and HP on the low side, Sun in the middle and IBM at the high end.  Both Dell and HP had been in pricing wars, and have been gradually reducing server pricing to gain market share, thus reducting margins.  We believe IBM is trying to consolidate the market, surround Cisco with both the high end and middle end systems, and at the same time increase IBM dominance in the market, before Cisco can gain a toehold.

IBM in the past had dominated the large mainframe market, but we think this market is gradually subsiding, just like it did when Digital started coming out with minicomputers to replace IBM mainframes.  In this case, IBM probably sees Cisco as a threat to their high end market share, and are afraid history may repeat itself.

We see Dell and HP continuing to occupy the low end with IBM and Cisco, with instant credibility, taking over the high end.  Although obviously not without a fight from IBM.  It should be an interesting battle, for those in the middle are doomed to eventually die.

After running a web forum for two years, and having just shut it down in favor of this blog, I probably have a unique perspective on forums on the Internet. Forums have their place on the web. They seem to be best when attached to a technical companies website as a way to support the companies products, especially with products like software or hardware that needs to be installed and configured. Inevitably, users want to know what each option does, or why they should pick one option over another, or what to do when their complex forum software won’t run.

Having said that as a preface, now after two years, I’m opposed to forums on a web site. Why? They’re not worth the trouble, especially for small businesses. The main problem is forum spammers. Forum spammers are constantly trying to put trash on your forum. Trash is ads for drugs, medicine, porn, or links to some other place on the web that doesn’t belong in your forum. Surprisingly, there are few inappropriate comments to other’s posts, mostly just spam with no reference to a subject or category in the forum.

Forum spammers make money by charging less than reputable companies fees for attempting to register for a spam account in forums. They use automated software to discover forums, and automatically register for an account on a forum. You prevent a registration one day, and the next day, their back with another name, or email address, or even url all done automatically.

What does that mean to the forum owner? Time wasted managing a forum. A forum owner who wants a clean well managed forum, now can not let anyone register for the forum. They need to require the person who wants to join a forum pass some sort of test to weed out forum spammers. Legitimate people who want to comment on your forum, just don’t want to bother with an extended registration. It takes time to look at each registration and make a judgment as to what is a legitimate registrar and who is a forum spammer. You either make it difficult to register, or delete the new joiner who posts spam. Either way it takes time.

How bad a problem is this? I estimate that there is 1 legitimate registration to every 40 spammer registrations. Of course, this all depends on your site. That number may be high, but it’s not far off. There are ways to block the 40, but as mentioned earlier, it takes time, and in the long run, the small business owner comes to the conclusion, its not worth it. Put a simple email contact form on your website, if the email is spam, you hit delete, and if legitimate, you have a one-on-one communication with your customer. Much less time consuming, and in the end, you help put these spammers out of business, after all, there’s now one less forum for their registrations.

What prompted this note is I recently had the opportunity to see a demo of the new Fedora 10.0 and am mightily impressed with the “eye candy.” Ubuntu’s new version “Jaunty Jackalope is just about ready for release.” Then there’s OpenSuSE, Slackware, Mandriva, Debian, CentOS, Gentoo, and Turbo. We apologized if we left anyone out. My goodness, what are all these Linux operating systems and which one do you use?

First, an explanation, what all these distros have in common is they all use the Linux kernel as the heart of the operating system. Then each vendor or organization adds functionality and services to the kernel that serves the needs of that particular organization and what they want in their operating system. The kernel with the added functionality is called a distro. And all of them are free.

So how do you evaluate all these distros? I don’t. There are too many versions to look at them all. If we are going to load an operating system to run our applications, ideally, you want one that has a lot of users, hopefully, in a forum or a company that can help you with questions when you need help. Accordingly, I would limit myself to a few that have the largest communities. I suggest you focus on the those that have the largest market share and our focused on the home desktop: OpenSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu. All three have been around awhile with many releases to get the bugs out.

Currently, Ubuntu has the highest marks for being the most desktop friendly and has the largest installed base followed by OpenSUSE. They are both a good mix of usability and performance. As I said, I was blown away with some of the “eye candy” and speed demonstrated in the newly release Fedora 10.0.

I suggest you take a look at all three by looking at the screenshots on their websites, downloading a copy to a cd, and booting from the cd to see how the desktop functions, and making sure all your hardware on your computer has the software drivers to run properly. All three come with a full set of drivers, so this should not be an issue. Looking at the three might be something you would enjoy on a rainy day.

How many of you Vista users out there miss the XP start menu. I know we did when we first were exploring Vista. The one thing we missed in the Start menu on Vista was “Run.” We liked Run to start and install programs when autorun didn’t work on the CD, and to get to the command line especially when messing with networks. The “ipconfig” command comes to mind.

Well, if you also missed the Run command, along with the command window in Vista, we’ve been poking around, and we think we can help you out. It turns out Microsoft didn’t take away all our toys, they just hid them.

If you would like to have your Run command back permanently in Vista, put your mouse on the Start button, and click the right mouse button, click on Properties. Oh! well, well, well, you can have your old XP start menu back by clicking “Classic Start Menu,” but before you go there, stay with me, because the Vista menu has some advantages, like the search at the bottom of the menu.

Next to the Start Menu button, click on Customize. This is an alphabetical list of menu items. If you scroll down the list to the R’s, you’ll find our old standby “Run.” Check it off, click “ok” twice, and you have your Run button back permanently on your Vista Start Menu. More on the Start menu in another post. Enjoy.

Microsoft marketed Vista like it was the coming of a new generation. 3D desktop was supposed to be a revolution. What we got was 3D window switching that no one uses, and a pain-in-the-butt UAC, User Authorization Control, that if “On” makes you constantly tell Vista it’s ok to run an application you have been running every time you sit down at the computer. If its off, Windows nags you that it’s off, and your system can be in danger. On top of that, Vista is a memory hog. You need more memory to run those pretty graphics. XP was, and still is, faster than Vista. And Vista, like Office, was packaged in different version, confusing its customers. In the end, you ran with whatever came with that new computer you bought with Microsoft nags to have you upgrade.

What can we expect in Windows7? Microsoft says better performance, and better memory management. That’s a pet peeve of mine. Every time we want to push a new product, better memory management is one of the features. We’ve been hearing about better memory management now for 20 years. You’d think they’d get it right by now. Instead of UAC with two choices, we will now have four choices which Microsoft calls a customizable UAC. A new feature to get us close to what we had in XP, but allow you to keep the current wonderful Vista UAC, if you want. More control over system tray icons, so what. Snap different windows to screen edges, so what. I’m starting to get a little bored with this…

In the end, we see Window7 as a patch of Vista, and a way to try to goad people to give up their beloved XP to get their revenue stream moving again.

In a rare convergence of technology it seems that for the first time since the 1980’s the two x86 microprocessor manufacturers, Intel and AMD, are coming out with surprisingly similar technology and architecture for their next generation 45nm quad core chips. This will allow true one-to-one competition between the two chip makers. We will all benefit as computers will show a real leap in computer performance compared to past architectures. We’re talking server speeds moving to your desktop, and Vista loading in less than 45 seconds.

The two chip builders took different architectural routes to get to today’s convergence in chip architecture. When Intel eliminated its Front Side Bus, put the memory controller in the chip, and independently powered each core they took on the same architecture that AMD has been using for years. At the same time, AMD went to 45nm technology which Intel has pioneered. Thus the convergence.

Intel’s offering internally called “Nehalem,” and commercially dubbed “Corei7,” will replace the popular “Core2″ architecture. Memory performance will triple as three separate DDR3 memory DIMMs with be run simultaneously. Intel requires a new socket, supporting hardware, and DDR3 memory.

AMD offering internally called “Shanghai,” and commercially dubbed “Opteron,” will use the same socket on the motherboard as their older “Barcelona” architecture, and AMD is waiting until 2010 to move to DDR3 memory. So they will be compatible with existing hardware right from the start.

Intel is first out the door, but will have to wait for the hardware to catch up. Memory availability appears to be there. AMD will have to prove it can deliver consistently, which it has had trouble with in the past. Thus the 2009 battleground.

The victor will be the chip with the best performance and the lowest power consumption. We are all eagerly awaiting the competition.

Microsoft is starting to take a run at Google Docs.  They have started by offering, at least, while it is in Beta release, a free Microsoft Office Live Workspace.  This is simply 500Mb of web space on a server that you can use to upload your documents, and access them from anywhere with a browser.  You also share these documents with others.  Microsoft has a plug in that integrates with Office on your desktop, and supposedly makes for a smoother integration of Office with Workspace. There is a small catch in that it only works with browsers that support ActiveX, that is Internet Explorer and Firefox currently.

The really interesting news is that Microsoft has announced web applications that will be “lightweight” versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote accessed from a browser.   No word yet whether they will be free, or whether you’ll have to have the desktop version of Office running to use it.

Rest assured, Microsoft will figure out some angle to make this a revenue producer.  Microsoft is pulling out its old tried and true strategy of coming out with a “me too” so-so  product that mimics Google Docs, and will constantly update the product until it gets 5 star reviews.  This will be followed by raising the price dramatically.  Office is not cheap, and people, for some reason, are still paying for it, even though OpenOffice.org for the desktop, and Google Docs for the Internet are available for free.

Ubuntu keeping up with its six month release cycle is getting ready to release its next version 9.04 dubbed, “Jaunty Jackalope.”  The Alpha1 prerelease version has been out since November, the official release is due in April, 2009.

Founder of Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, wants to make this version more competitive with Windows and MacOS.  This release is focusing on: improving performance, an integration with Mono2.0, Novell’s new .Net implementation, integrating web services tightly with the desktop, and, tah dah, improving boot time.  They are also getting Ubuntu ready to run on all those portable devices we know and love.  Mark believes Ubuntu could be loaded on several million computers and devices this time around.  That’s millions folks.

For those of you who followed our earlier trouble loading Ubuntu, the very fact that they are taking a serious look at the GParted boot loader is music to our ears.  We are mildly optimistic, that maybe this time they got it right.

From looking at the screenshots, we think Ubuntu could be getting ready for prime time.  Imagine never having to buy Microsoft software ever again.  Well, we think that reality is very close at hand.  The Ubuntu version of Linux is stable and looks like a desktop that will play well with users.

Hello World!

Welcome to our blog.  This blog, as our name implies, is a potpourri of information, tutorials, news, and generally anything we want to write about concerning the world of geeks, that is, computers, computer software, applications, reviews, and  tutorials.

Our authors all have spent at least 10 years in the world of computer hardware, computer networking, and computer software development.   We hope to be informative, brief, and solve some problems that we have encountered in our day-to-day use of computers.

Enjoy!