Archive for February, 2008
Microsoft executives admit to Windows Vista problems
When customers start complaining about Windows Vista it is one thing, but when Microsoft’s own executives and board members start complaining about the failure of Vista it is something entirely different. Microsoft board member Jon Shirley upgraded his “Vista Capable” machine to Vista only to find out that two of Microsoft’s own software applications were incompatible with it. I’m honestly not shocked to hear this and in reality I’m a little proud. After trying Vista for a few months and reverting back to XP Pro I am not inclined to recommend Vista to anyone.
New MacBook Pro line-up
As usual for 2008, Apple’s online store went down today. Every single Tuesday this year Apple has rolled out updates to their product line-up and today was no exception. New MacBooks and MacBook Pros have been anticipated by the masses for several weeks now but today those anticipations became reality.
Unfortunately I’m a little underwhelmed by the new offerings. The price stays the same. I would have liked to see a slight price decrease as it is easy to spend over $3000 on the 17″ MacBook Pro model. I think at this point it should be required that all hard drives come in at least 7200r RPM flavors. The 5400 RPM drives are just too slow for a great deal of today’s demanding applications such as video and photo processing IMO. The screen resolution has always been a downer for me on Apple’s notebooks. The 1900×1200 resolution is only available on the 17″ MacBook Pro model with the other models offering 1440×900. The new Spaces feature in Leopard makes it a bit easier to use this lower resolution, but I would still like to see something a little higher as the standard, like 1680×1050.
I have no doubt that my next laptop will be a 15.4″ MacBook Pro model, but hopefully by that point Apple will realize that a higher resolution is a necessity. I miss my 1900×1200 resolution on my old Dell laptop (15″ model) and wonder why we can’t have a similar resolution offering on the 15″ MacBook Pro model.
Air-Powered Car Coming to United States in 2009/2010?
When I was younger I always thought that this was a no-brainer, have a car with dual engines, one converting the wasted air you’re driving against into power to supplement the engine driven by constant fuel/energy. It looks like it may become a reality for those of us living in the United States.
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a third world country considering all of the ‘duh’ advances in other parts of the world, but this is one time where I can say kudos for America for bringing obvious engineering to the masses.
Comcast telemarketer calls Chris Pirillo
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The Real Simpsons
This has got to be the coolest video of a cartoon gone real!
Flickr Front-end Engineer
Looks like Flickr is hiring a Front-end Engineer. What I find most interesting is why couldn’t Yahoo have just kept one of the 1,000 individuals they just paid off? Amazing.
Passive Aggressive Notes
This is the coolest site I’ve seen this week! Ever have an itch to leave a note publicizing someone else’s bad habit? I’ve done it several times and in all honesty it is a great way for me to deal with a situation as I’m not a person to person confrontational type of person. On this particular post someone leaves a note on a microwave for someone who didn’t reset the timer when they finished using it. I know I’ve left notes exactly like this before so I’m happy to see that I’m in good company. 
Flash DRM
I’ve never been a huge fan of Flash. At times it is extremely slow, especially for sites that seem to think designing the complete website using Flash is a good choice. Beyond using it for games, video or photo slideshows I think it is a poor choice for getting content out there. Apparently Adobe wants to add DRM to flash now, oh joy! That’s a great decision…just as everyone is getting sick and tired of DRM being shoved in their face from all directions Adobe decides that it is wise to embed DRM in their Flash player.
Sharper Image
It looks like Sharper Image has finally gone belly up by filing for bankruptcy. As a result, the company will be closing 90 (roughly half) of its 184 stores. I have to admit, I have purchased a few things from The Sharper Image, a meat temperature reader for the grill, radio/CD player and a facial hair trimmer that I use quite frequently. It isn’t a huge surprise that the company is going belly up though as I’ve always viewed their products as weird and overpriced for the most part, sometimes even cheap (especially for what you pay).
Goodbye Telemarketers!
On February 15th the President signed into law the permanent do-not-call act. This means those of us who hate telemarketer calls won’t have to renew our do-not-call listing, ever! Score #1 for the President, probably the most sensible thing he’s done while in office.
