Tech Review

Google had a graphic based on that new fossil discovery. I think that being on Google's front page is somewhat of an honor or at least a statement of significance. In this case, it's probably Google's attempt to put the spotlight on individual scientific disciplines. I wonder which one's next. Anyways, it's an interesting discovery for scientists and people who like this sort of stuff, which I do, a little.

I'd have to say that Vista's gotten a lot better from the first time I tried it. And, when I say "a lot" I mean from frustrating and borderline unusable to pretty darn good and problem free. Service pack 1 (SP1) helped a lot. SP2 promises to do a lot more. Full reports are here and here. The benefits that I care about (or understand) are the bluetooth support, overall reliability, more efficient Windows Search, and the supposedly better battery performance.

I installed it without a hitch and everything seems to be working fine. Since I'm almost certainly not upgrading to Windows 7, this may be the OS configuration I live with for a couple of years.

I was too chicken to use the compcln.exe tool to clean out the old files, but I'll get to it later. Microsoft will probably release SP2 in a month or so. You can get it now from here.

Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 Upgrade

Full list of benefits and improvements below:

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Ohhh, circle-y menus.

Could I have said "no" to a free OS upgrade? Can Michael Moore decline a ham sandwich? Of course I was going to install Windows 7. My experience:

I decided on the 32 bit version as the only advantage I gleaned from this article, to having a 64 bit operating system was that 64 bit operating systems can utilize more system RAM. I don't think having to reinstall everything now and potentially be frustrated by incompatibilities later is worth 500MB of RAM for 64 bit apps that I don't own. Driver signing? I only buy name brand.

The download went smoothly- you can interrupt and restart it later, which I did once.

Installation. Uneventful. I had to burn two discs as the computer couldn't read the first. It took a couple of hours from disc insertion to boot.

Windows 7 looks different, but I don't really care about transparency, interface tweaks, or "gadgets" anymore. I open a program and use it. I didn't like the new Taskbar. I prefer the old Windows 98 Start Menu.

I could have dealt with all of those distractions and kept Windows 7 if it had worked. Unfortunately, it didn't. I wasn't able to open the Control Panel or right click and "personalize" the desktop (get rid of the effects). The internet worked. After a few searches, I read that the problem had to do with not activating Windows. Like a dummy, I didn't write down the key Microsoft sent me in the email and thus couldn't type it in when Windows 7 asked for it.

"OK, I'll just activate it. Hmmm, where is that 'activate' button? Maybe it's in the control panel. Doh!"

I type "activation key" in "help." One of shortcuts to the activation place was sure to show up.

Nothing.

So, I wrote down the key, went though the whole install process again, making sure, this time, to entered the serial number. The next time, the control panel opened...once. Then nothing.

Not like a dummy, I had backed up my C drive with the effective and free program Paragon Drive Backup Express.

I restored my Vista Business installation. Thus ended my dalliance with Windows 7.

I started thinking that perhaps OSs have become like spread sheets, computer processors, digital cameras, printers, and cell phones: Mature products that, in their current form, do everything that most people will ever use them for. "Maybe this is why people are buying netbooks."

Windows XP played games and rarely crashed. If no other operating system were ever released, 90% of the people on earth would never notice. That's why Microsoft currently focuses almost exclusively on windows turning on its axises and cool animations.

The one exception is stability. I'd buy an OS that's much more simpler visually if were also much more stable. I'm not sure that Windows 7 is that operating system.

In January of 2007, I went to three or four stores in my area to buy the Vista upgrade for my Dell 6400. It wasn't that my computer didn't work or that Vista was going to improve my computing experience one bit, it's just that few things are as exciting to a certain kind of personality than an OS upgrade.

It was a very poor decision. Vista turned out to be to XP what Windows ME was to Windows 98, a useless failure that the cynical would call nothing more than the software equivalent of planned obsolescence: Hardware wouldn't work, games wouldn't play, endless hours spent finding drivers. I didn't notice one single improvement, and worst of all, I paid for this frustration.

Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition Upgrade w/ Encryption Coded Software

I've bought a couple of computers since then. They've had Vista and it's been a better experience than that first one, although it still seems that XP was better.

Today, Microsoft allowed people to download the latest version of Windows, 7. Tempting. Hmmm:

Arguments against:

1. My new Dell E6400 is running fine as is the family Gateway and my wife's Dell 1420.

2. Windows 7 has no compelling features: I don't care that I can move programs around on the taskbar or that the hardware icons are bigger.

3. Internet Explorer 8 is about as exciting to me as Solitaire version 8.

4. Even though downloaders will be able to use the program for one year, they still won't "own" them. It seems from the Microsoft instructions that RC testers won't be able to simply buy a license when the program expires. They're going to have to reinstall Windows and all of their programs, a task which can turn into an all-day affair.

5. The OS on my computer won't match the restore OS on my computer or the backup disks.

6. Possible incompatibilities and issues.

Arguments in favor:

1. I'm a squid and this is what we do.

2. I'll be able to use it for a year.

3. I'll be able to upgrade my OS to 64 bit and you can never have too many bits. Most of my programs come in 64 bit (Directory Opus and some Army security apps) versions, but I don't know what advantage there is to 64 bit except that Windows will be able to use 500MB more of my system RAM. The move to 64 bit computing will bring its own headaches, I'm sure.

4. People report a good experience with Windows 7, giving me hope that it will be more like 98 version 2 or XP than ME. People have had very few driver or program issues and seem to like it fine. Plus, I can always test it on somebody else's unsuspecting computer first.

If I decide to get it, I'll get it from here.

Motorola ZN4 Krave Phone, Black (Verizon Wireless)

Because we're continually burdening cell phones with more and more tasks--PIM, Internet, Music, TV, movies--while insisting that they remain portable and stylish, they have inevitably become a compromise product. The craze for texting, one of the only teen things to which I've succumbed, for example, has necessitated a one-button-per-letter QWERTY keyboard for quick text entry which has also meant that the average phone size has gotten bigger for the first time (remember that scene in Zoolander with the microscopic phones?). The two ways to include a QWERTY keyboard in phones have been to include real buttons or go with a touch screen. Touch screens are less bulky and sometimes allow more screen real estate for videos and internet, but aren't ideal because they lack tactile feedback and thus lead to more errors.

Zoolander (Special Collector's Edition)

Designers have come up with various ways to reduce these errors. The Apple iPhone lets you know that you've pressed a certain letter by making it bigger or having it "fly out" as you touch the screen. Other companies use some kind of "haptic" feedback, usually a vibration that greets your touch. My phone, the Storm, has "Surepress" which makes the screen into a big button like some Apple touchpads.

It's odd that this compromise solution has changed from a non-ideal way to deal with a vexing problem to a selling point, as one may infer from the "Touch screen!" ads in the paper. I think touch screens are to be avoided if at all possible since typing on a real keyboard like the ones on the Blackberry Bold or, the best one that I've tried, the LG EnV2, is always a superior experience.

BlackBerry Bold 9000 Phone, Black (AT&T)

LG enV2 VX9100 Phone, Black (Verizon Wireless)

Where does that leave the Krave?

The Motorola Krave is the world's first, and I predict last, flip phone touch screen.

The Krave has has all of the drawbacks of a touch screen without its main benefit, a larger screen size on a smaller overall phone. Usually, a flip phone has a keypad with physical buttons with a LCD screen above, when it's open. The Krave has virtual buttons under a blank, clear, and bothersome lid. The touch screen is too sensitive and the icons too small make typing accurate, two issues that neither the annoying haptic feedback nor the flyout letters overcome.

The accelerometer turns the keypad into a QWERTY keyboard whose almost complete unusablility should earn it the more more descriptive name, "CRAPPY." Why? Because the flip door prevents one from gripping the phone in any comfortable manner. One needs to hold the phone completely from the bottom, as if your hands were a gun rack. For the time my wife had the phone, she'd have to hold the phone with one hand and peck at it with the other.

That the cover protects the screen and gives you a few buttons you'll never use doesn't make up for the fact that it makes the phone thicker.

Better that the cover were left off the device altogether.

Other annoyances: It's impossible for the music player to play a whole genre or artist-- you have to drill down to an album. Excellent freeware program Bitpim doesn't recognize the Krave and Motorola requires proprietary cables and chargers.

Call quality? Who cares, at this point?

The one positive, and the reason I purchased it in the first place, is that the phone has a regular 3.5mm mini audio plug instead of the 2.5mm you usually see. Yay!

I'm just a picky squid? My non-aligned wife hated it. She enjoys her LG Chocolate 3 about 300 times better.

LG Chocolate 3 Phone, Black (Verizon Wireless)

Whoopi! A keyboard review! It's not all about buying sexy cell phones, laptops, and mp3 players. Sometimes, we have to buy unexciting stuff, and keyboards have qualified for that title, for me at least, since I started using a laptop as my main computer in 2005. The fact that there haven't been any advances in keyboard technology since wireless also puts them just above analog modems in tech excitement.

Still, if you do use a desktop, a good keyboard is the device with the most expense to computer experience impact than any other computer related equipment.

Now, we all know that the best keyboard of all time is still the IBM model M. If it came in a wireless model, I'd buy one in an instant.

I feel like buying one just to remind me of my most blissful typing experiences.

Alas, my desktop computer is in the living room. I have it hooked up to my Westinghouse LCD and use it as my television receiver and DVD player. The kids use it as a computer, of course, and the fact that it's in the living room where everybody can what they're looking at ("you better not be going on Daily Kos") is better.

We use the mouse on the carpet and sofa arm most of the time. That means that we needed a laser mouse which is much better on difficult surfaces. Range is important and need a strong signal from at least ten feet. Bluetooth is not good as the only keyboard on a computer as the signal is flaky and you sometimes need to press keys before the operating system boots. I usually go for the middle, the "sweet spot," in computing when it comes to pricing.

As of today, there are really only two companies worth mentioning for mainstream mice and keyboards, Microsoft and Logitech. Remember when Microsoft came out with the first wheel mouse, the Intellimouse in 1997? I never really liked their wavy keyboard--it seemed more gimmick, but I still bought one, as I was so into computers that even these things provoked intense interest in me, as well as CDroms (especially encyclopedias), games, and utilities like RAM Doubler. After those initial successes, however, Microsoft has come a distant second to Logitech in quality and innovation.

Sale on LX710; I took it home.

Logitech Cordless Desktop LX 710 Laser

I like it. It has a traditional form factor and the keys are...don't know any adjectives for describing keys...errr...good to type on. They don't "click" so it's kind of quiet. I've never used one single shortcut key that manufacturers litter their keyboards with besides the Windows one and the volume control, so I don't care that the LX710 has a bunch. If you swing that way, however, you'll be happy for the bunch. The only complaint that I have about the LX710 is the buttons on the side. They get in the way if you pick up the keyboard a lot. On many occasions, we've accidentally pressed the zoom buttons.

The mouse is great. Substantial feeling and comfortable. So, there you have it, my most exciting product review since I expounded at length one day in the teacher lounge on the advantages of rubber paper clips over the ridged metal variety.