Category: English

Windows Update and Automatic Reboots

Glad to see I’m not the only one pissed off by this. I found a useful article on this topic on the Microsoft Update Product Team’s blog. The article was written back in the Vista days, but the procedure is the same in Windows 7, except that it’s much quicker to type “Edit Group Policy” in the Start menu search box than to try to find it in the Control Panel.

This has gone too far

You know the little bits of transparent (and sometimes but usually not colored) cling film they put on glossy surfaces on electronic gadgets so they don’t get scratched during packaging or shipping, so your technologically challenged parental units complain that the display on their new CD player is blurry because they didn’t realize they were supposed to remove it?

I just unpacked a brand new HP 22″ monitor. The stand has a tiny HP logo embossed on the head—the swiveling bit where you actually attach the panel. A normal user will see that logo for about 30 seconds between unpacking the monitor and assembling it. She might not even notice it… if it weren’t for the fact that it has a tiny square of cling film stuck to it.

By the way, HP is the company that markets its products with the slogan “The Computer is Personal Again” in a Nightmare-Before-Christmas-ish font, yet the power supply for an HP laptop weighs more than my wife’s MacBook Air. And I’m only exaggerating a little.

Brave new world that has such software in it

First impressions of my new Dell Studio XPS 16 with Windows 7:

The Good
  • It’s fast.
  • The screen is really, really nice.
  • Aero is pretty.
  • Face recognition is neat.
The Bad
  • The screen is a veritable dust & lint magnet
  • No clit, so I’ll have to get used to the trackpad (although 99% of the time I have an external mouse hooked up)
  • I have a strange feeling that the keys are larger than on a regular keyboard, although it only takes five seconds with a ruler to verify that they aren’t.
  • F’ed up keyboard layout. Not MacBook-f’ed up, and not so f’ed up I won’t get used to it, but sufficiently f’ed up that when I do get used to it, I’ll have trouble adjusting when I use other machines / keyboards.
  • Had to resort to Google to figure out where the disk activity indicator is (on the front edge, hidden where you can’t see it without picking up the machine)
The Ugly
  • The camera activity indicator is also hidden where you can’t see it without picking up the machine. Actually, it’s about 1 cm to the left of the lens, right where it’s supposed to be.
  • The exhaust port is located on the rear edge of the machine so the bottom of the screen covers it when the lid is open.
  • Bluetooth didn’t work out of the box. I’m pretty sure I didn’t order the machine without Bluetooth. In fact, I’m pretty sure you can’t even get the machine without Bluetooth even if you wanted to. In fact, I checked.
  • When I rebooted to check that there actually is a Bluetooth radio in the machine (there is) and that it is enabled in BIOS (it is), 7 blue-screened.
  • After rebooting, the Bluetooth radio still doesn’t show up in the device manager, and the driver fails to install.
  • When I rebooted a second time to check the BIOS again, I got a BSoD again. Two for two. Wheee!

Update: three for three; I suspect it may have something to do with my phone, which I have to connect using USB since Bluetooth doesn’t work.

Unimpressed: Drake’s Fortune

Finally got myself a PlayStation 3 (I’d link to the official site, but it’s totally retarded), and bought a bunch of “pre-played” (i.e. what you and I would call “used”) games along with it. One of the games I picked up was Resistance: Fall of Man, but the guy at the store claimed that it wasn’t really all that good, and that if I really wanted to “experience the PS3” I should get Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune instead, and I vaguely recalled reading about it after seeing a Penny Arcade strip about the sequel, so I did.

As you can tell from the title, I was not impressed. Continue reading “Unimpressed: Drake’s Fortune”