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March 27, 2009

Questioning the keyboard

Bleeding Edge is prepared to admit that we possibly over-reacted to the sudden loss of our question mark. The thing had been happily occupying its familiar position on the keyboard of the Asus Eee PC 1000H Windows netbook, perched above the “/” key when we’d lent it to the spouse while we were at the Port Fairy Folk Festival. We’d never suspected it might not be there when we came back.
It wasn’t. When we held down the left shift button and pressed the key that was still clearly marked “?” what we got was “/”. The ? had disappeared.
If, like Bleeding Edge, you’re a touch hysterical, the sudden unexplained disappearance of a valuable punctuation mark can tip you into a state of complete panic.
The Bleeding Edge spouse has been quoting our heart-rending exclamation of horror ever since, with what we believe is undue merriment. “I couldn’t help laughing,” she explains to her friends. “He looked at me beseechingly, and said ‘I’m a writer. How can a writer survive without a question mark?’”
It seems a perfectly reasonable response to us. And it wasn’t just the question mark that had suddenly decamped. We didn’t have a “j”. Or a“k”. Or an “l”. The “m” was missing as well, and while we could live without a “+”, the fact that it had joined the Diaspora added to our sense of devastation.
Given our lifelong faith in the intrinsic stability of the QWERTY keyboard, it was surely only reasonable for us to assume the worst. Lacking any other rational exclamation, who wouldn’t have decided that the spouse had remapped the keyboard?
Not intentionally, of course. The Bleeding Edge spouse doesn’t even understand the concept of instructing the operating system to replace one character with another. She’d obviously done it inadvertently, while she was fiddling with the Function key and the Control key and the Insert key in an attempt to stop the characters she was entering over-writing the existing text.
She’s one of those people who seem to be engaged in a war of attrition with technology. Frankly, we wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d been able to make the hard disk evaporate, just by thinking exasperated thoughts at it.

Our assumption of unintended remapping led us into swampy territory. We spent about five hours that weekend, re-mapping her re-mapping.
First we downloaded KeyTweak, which is a great free tool for anyone actively intending to replace one keyboard character or function with another.
In its “half teach” mode, you can type in the key you want to replace, enter the desired key, choose “Apply”, restart your computer, and have your keyboard dance to your tune ... up to a point.
We quickly had the “j”, “k”, “l”, “m”and “n” keys behaving as the Great Keyboard God intended. But the Windows Registry Scancode Map key which KeyTweak uses, doesn’t seem to apply to what you might call the first floor of certain keys ... including, unfortunately, the question mark on the Eee PC. Instead of “?” it continued to type “/”.
At that point we brought in AutoHotKey. We’ve mentioned this free program briefly in the past after we used it to reposition the Eee PC’s poorly positioned right shift key.
But AutoHotKey has more interesting capabilities. It allows you to automate almost anything you do on a Windows PC by assigning and sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can even program your joystick.
It can automatically expand abbreviations as you type them. Enter “WTHIMQM” for instance, and your PC might type “Where The Hell Is My Question Mark?” In its latest version, released last month, it’s roughly three times as fast. With just a little tinkering, we got it to replace “/” with “?”.
We weren’t completely happy with our solution. We were finally reunited with our ? but we were troubled by the fact that this was a kludge, and our Eee PC was essentially broken.
The Bleeding Edge spouse struggled to suppress a smile when we moaned about this, but we were not going to be deflected. We wanted our computer back the way it was intended to be, with the exception of the right shift key.
We fired off an email to Asus, inquiring as to what might have happened to our question mark. That was when we learned about the peculiar workings of the Eee PC’s NumLock key. Engage it unintentionally, as the spouse had undoubtedly done, and a grid of keys on the right side of the keyboard shift become numbers and operators.
Disengaging it proved to be as simple as holding down the function key and pressing the NumLock key.
We did that, then removed all the remaps and the AutoHotKey script, and we suddenly had our ? back.
We’d like to ask Asus why there’s no more than a momentary warning that the NumLock function has been engaged, but we don’t want to put our little question mark under too much strain just yet. We’re sure that having spent most of the weekend lost in space, it’s feeling quite hysterical too.

Posted by cw at 01:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 24, 2009

Telstra meets hacker, employs hacker

We'd be interested in your reaction to the news that Telstra has put a 19-year-old former hacker on its part-time payroll. As a 16-year-old, Owen Thor Walker came up with his own botnet.

Now he'll be talking to Telstra's NZ subsidiary, Telstra Clear about ... who knows what? Telstra says Walker won't be accessing any computers on the company's network, but he was "very keen to help businesses in their understanding of computer systems and protocols".

Three years ago he helped the owners of 1.3 million computers in the United States, Europe and New Zealand to give him power over their PCs, before the FBI cyber crime investigation unit caught up with him. His botnet was particularly resistant to anti-virus software. He pleaded guilty to six charges, but the NZ High Court did not record a conviction.

The model for this, we suppose, is Kevin Mitnick, who is now on the celebrity lecture circuit and giving advice to big business on how to keep their computers secure. We've heard him speak, and written about him, and he's very good value.

It's a fascinating issue, in our opinion. On the one hand, it surely isn't a great example for would-be copycats. On the other hand, 16-year-olds can do some crazy things, and we don't agree they necessarily should be burdened through life with the consequences. He's got Asperger's Syndrome, so his reality isn't quite the same as it is for most of us. On the other hand, he was at work for two years before being tracked down, and in that time he was busily engaged in controlling his army and fighting botwars.

One year after a court slapped him on the wrist, will he have learned his lesson? In our particular case, we're not sure we started growing up until we were about 60, but we admit to being slow learners.

Posted by cw at 07:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 20, 2009

Internet Explorer 8 is now available

I thought about saying that it was RTM but that’s a typical Microsoft abbreviation. I thought about saying “has been released” but then there is “is released”. Anyway, aside from the English phrasing, after a gestation period, Internet Explorer is now with us. Or not.

An 11am 20th March 2009 (Melbourne Time) visit to the official website followed by a re-direction to the Australian portal shows that the download is reluctant to come down. It’s early days yet. IE8 will descend in volume soon enough. For those who are officially not ready and want to refuse it’s automatic deployment, there is the Internet Explorer 8 Blocker Toolkit. For those who want to work on administering it, there is the Group Policy Settings Reference and the Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8. For those who want to test their webpages with older IE versions side by side with IE8, try Xenocode’s virtualised browsers.

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March 18, 2009

iPhone 3.0: heaven in your hand

It's taken too long, but at last the iPhone will have cut and paste and MMS messaging! But they're just a couple of more than 100 new features that Apple's iPhone 3.0 operating system brings to the device. Set your Twitter search to iPhone and you'll be swamped by news and reactions to the [Northern] summer release that will bring other goodies like stereo A2DP Bluetooth, system-wide Spotlight searches, the ability to use it as a wireless modem, turn-by-turn GPS directions et alia.

The new software not only addresses pretty well all our reservations, with more than 1000 new APIs for developers, it's going to provide a heap of new application features and, with the ability for apps to interface with hardware accessories, other gadgets. Top of our wish list: a foldup external keypad like the much-missed Stowaway range. The downside is that new features like Voice Memo are probably going to create headaches for app providers like ReQall.

We can feel a new benevolence towards Apple. Yes, they should have had push notifications ages ago, but by taking the time to re-architect the server application, battery life will be diminished by only 23 per cent, rather than up to 80 per cent for Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices that use background processes.

Of course, some of the cute features like shake to undo aren't exactly original - Etch a Sketch for one had that way back in '06 - but it's good, isn't it, to know that Apple isn't going to be tethered by the "Not Invented Here" syndrome.

Unfortunately the other big item on our wish list - full compatibility with Telstra's NextG network- will require new hardware. We don't know if the next version will have Nokia's multi-band capabilities, but doubtless we won't have to wait too long to find out.

Posted by cw at 07:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 16, 2009

ABC goes iPhone

Looks like we'll be taking another hit on our iPhone data plan. The ABC Mobile Service has launched with news and weather updates, but will later provide video and audio. We particularly like the movie screening times, which allowed us to nominate our cinemas and see what's on and when, with David and Margaret's ratings. So sad that the first movie review it showed us was for The Secret Life of Bees. We liked the novel (despite the fact that the New York Times called it "maudlin") but the movie version is "unconvincing" and "takes the sugary options" according to D&M, and the New York Times calls it "a familiar and tired fable of black selflessness, in which African-Americans take time out from their struggle against oppression to lift the battered self-esteem of white people who have the good sense not to be snarling bigots".

Posted by cw at 07:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 15, 2009

Technology in the sticks

Bleeding Edge has just arrived at StixCamp, which is being held at the Welshman's Reef Vineyard at Newstead. Fascinating to see such a gathering of nerds with their PCs and Linux boxes and Macs all linked via a Telstra NextG hotspot in such a rural setting. More after lunch, when Dave Hall talks about Broadband in the Bush.

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March 14, 2009

Where the heck have you’ll been?

Or welcome back to the blog and forum.

It seems we have had a sleepy time at the forum. Now, our regulars are coming back experimenting with their equipment. The blog was going reasonably and now with renewed zest from Charles, we’re seeing more of this inimitable style.

I’ve been enamoured with some fun photography the past few months, various times out with two other shooting companions – hobby photography in the family situation has never worked for me. Melbourne is so full of outdoor festivals and fun in summer – I used to envy Sydney but over the years, Melbourne has shed it’s dowdy image and come up with just sheer liveability.

There was Australia Day

From People in Melbourne

and Chinese New Year

From People in Melbourne

Not to mention the recent Moomba

From Moomba 2009

March isn’t over yet. You could look at what’s coming or simply amble up the Yarra.

From Moomba 2009

I’m missing Avalon today, but the rain’s a welcome wash from the mugginess of this week.

Tell us what you’re up to. Or will be up to….

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March 13, 2009

Give me a latte and a download please

Here at the J. Alfred Prufrock School of Coffee Spoon Economics, we have been trying to devise a way to calculate an exchange rate between Wi-Fi access and cafe lattes.

We believe this will become an important instrument over the next few years, as the growing popularity of the Apple iPhone and competitors like the Blackberry Pearl and the Palm Centro place more pressure on the nation’s diminished financial resources, and force the less fortunate members of society (basically, in this environment, all of us) to extract more value from our purchases.

Other financial research institutions seem to have missed the link between the usage patterns of these devices and the cafe latte, and for that matter the cappuccino, the macchiato, the flat white and the ristretto or short black.

The connection becomes obvious only if you own an iPhone, or examine the statistics that reveal the average user of this device is 94 times more likely to download an application than other mobile phone users; accesses Google Maps more than 10 times more frequently; and routinely browses the Web, sends and receives emails and Twitters; You Tubes and uploads images from the iPhone camera.

By last September, despite significant limitations on the AT&T 3G network, iPhones were generating 7.8 per cent of all smart phone traffic in the US, having almost doubled over the previous month.

As iPhone-like devices penetrate to about 50 per cent of the market in two to three years, a significant number of users will be confronted by alarming phone bills, due to the parsimonious voice and data plans offered by Australian carriers. In those circumstances, we believe the Prufrock data could be a vital factor in the preservation of their financial well-being.

Our research for this project has taken us to several cafes in St Kilda and South Melbourne over the past few weeks, and we are confident that it reflects the experience of many iPhone owners in cities around the country.

Take, for example, our experiment on March 3, over lunch at Gas in South Melbourne a couple of weeks ago for instance, Bleeding Edge consumed 11,107kB (10.84MB) of our 150MB data allowance in a remarkably short time, checking our email, reading The Age’s bushfire coverage and checking the 774 ABC Melbourne’s Twitter updates. Perhaps by then the heavy caffeine intake resulting from our research had gone to our head, because we also downloaded two application updates.

Unfortunately Gas, like most of the establishments at which we regularly buy coffee or take meals, does not offer free Wi-Fi to its regular patrons.

We spent the equivalent of seven cafe lattes on this particularly extravagant lunch, and while the meal (Middle Eastern influence) was, as usual, delicious, it imposed a significant cost on our data allowance.

Had we chosen to dine, instead, at another of our regular haunts, the Grocery Bar in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, the downloads would have been free.

Even before the introduction of the iPhone, the proprietors of the Grocery Bar introduced free Wi-Fi as a service to regular customers. It does not advertise the service, and customers generally take care not to abuse it, but judging from the number of iPhones and notebooks on the tables during the average afternoon there’s no doubt that it is a considerable attraction for road warriors.

The Grocery Bar pays about $60 for a 25GB monthly ADSL2 service from Internode. Last month was the first time the Grocery Bar used its full allowance, although a good deal of that is used by the business.

On an average weekday it serves about 150 coffees at its tables at $3 each. Our economists are trying to establish the exchange value of that trade, which in many cases also includes meals, against the free data. It is by no means a simple task, but we are optimistic that we will come up with a reliable index.

The value to the customer is likely to increase, with the imminent release by Melbourne-based VoIP provider Freshtel (freshtel.net) of an iPhone VoIP application that allows users to make mobile calls via Wi-Fi at a fraction of the cost of mobile capped plans.

The application, which is already available on some Nokia handsets, cuts the cost of a landline call to 5c per minute, and 30c per minute, without flagfall, to mobile numbers.

We’ve been trialling the service on a Nokia N85 and an iPhone, and the quality of the calls is indistinguishable from calls placed on the mobile network. It could be a financial lifesaver for Telstra iPhone users who have been denied access to a reasonable capped plan, and will be reflected in coffee consumption patterns.

We are confident that it will be a significant factor in supporting the legitimacy of the Prufrock Index.

WINDOWS 7: Windows users interested in the development of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system will be given a preview at the next monthly meeting of Melbourne PC User Group monthly on April 1 at Melbourne University.

Posted by cw at 06:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Same mind, different mouth

We may be callous, but as the debacles accrue in the communications policies of the Rudd Government - the ludicrous Internet filter, continuing delays and doubts about the National Broadband Network etc. - we can't help but think that Rudd's first act as Prime Minister should have been to institute a night of the long knives in the public service.

It's clear that the same attitudes that made Richard Alston and his successors celebrated idiots in the eyes of the world are continuing to haunt Senator Conroy. Today Conroy announced, with an air of jollity that seemed at best inappropriate and at worst mildly demented, that we'd all have to wait a bit longer while our leaders made up their minds about when they'd even sign a contract for something they'd promised to begin building by the end of last year.

We admit to a certain amount of cynicism about whatever our Communications Ministers say, but when a politician promises to meet a [delayed] deadline "contingent on the complexity of the considerations" we can't help but wonder if they ever had any idea at all of what they were playing with.

The issue is no more complex than it ever was, and far from being amused at the speculation that's arisen from the lack of action, Conroy should realise that he's the one who's wearing the clown's hat and rubber nose. It says little for his judgment that he's the fall guy for the jokes that are being scripted by a department that has a long, unbroken record of serving custard pies.

Heads, surely, should roll, just as the bureaucrats who have led Rudd into the serial humiliations of the Emissions Trading Scheme should have been rendered surplus to requirements ages ago.

Nothing like that will happen, of course. Rather than providing genuine leadership, the Rudd Government seems to point a finger in the vague direction of a target, fire whatever bullets have been loaded for them and, having discovered that they have a gaping entry wound in their foot, they'll continue limping bravely ahead, in the wrong direction.

Posted by cw at 05:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A grateful plug

When Bleeding Edge decided to move the spouse's business from a hosted PBX system to an on-site Asterisk box, Nathan Pinskier and his son Samuel not only designed and deployed the server and phones, they directed us to the best VoIP providers and tipped us off to some hardware bargains that saved us a considerable sum of money. The system has been rock solid, and while we're beginning to do more of the maintenance, they've always been there to provide us with advice and assistance.

They're a unique operation, because they've set up networks and VoIP systems for their own medical practices and continue to operate them, which means you're getting hardened, real-world experience.

We're therefore delighted to be able to recommend their new operation, ITAdmin.

Posted by cw at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 11, 2009

Telstra cops it and dishes it out

We can't help but wonder how independent telecommunications adviser Kevin Morgan is feeling now, just a few days after opining that the National Broadband Network tender process was about to explode in the Government's face, and it would have to start the process all over again.

This was inevitable, he explained, because "unless the Government can win a referendum changing section 51 of the Constitution so it can confiscate Telstra's network without compensation, none of the bids are realistic." Kevin has been pooh-poohing the idea that anyone but Telstra could build the network for a couple of years now.

His assertions are starkly at odds with the latest speculation that one of these unrealistic bids is going to be accepted as early as this week, and that, according to BBY analyst Mark McDonnell, there could be "quite a nasty regulatory outcome" for Telstra in whatever NBN bid the Government chooses.

Those suggestions offer an interesting context for Sol Trujillo's sudden announcement that Telstra will spend $300 million for a dramatic speed boost for its Melbourne cable network to 100Mbps, by Christmas. What with Internode earlier announcing retail fibre to the home on greenfields sites, Telstra must be starting to feel that it's slowly being surrounded.

Bleeding Edge can only speculate on whether anyone but the filthy rich could afford to use that network, what with a growing perception that Telstra screws its customers.

They're doing it again, in changing the way they charge landline customers for overseas calls. By charging in 30-second increments rather than one-second increments, they'll extract tens of million of dollars from the unwary.

This just in: There's some support for Kevin Morgan's view in this report on comments by Phil Varney, Australian GM of Gen-i.

Posted by cw at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 06, 2009

Synchronicity: Ubiquitous contacts and calendars

If there's any better contact/calendar system than Google's free service, we've yet to find it. The contacts work well with the iPhone, and since Google adopted SyncML, you can now keep your calendar up to date on Windows Mobile, Sony Ericsson and many Nokia phones.

We prefer, however, to use the free beta service from NuevaSync, which works with the iPhone, iPod Touch, Windows Mobile and Nokia N and E series devices. They keep a gruelling update schedule, and their future plans include support for psh email and a backup and restore service for contacts, calendars and tasks.

You don't have to install any software on your iPhone or desktop, and it capitalises beautifully on the iPhone's ability to sync with a Microsoft Exchange Server.

You set up a free acount, give NuevaSync your Google access details, authorise calendar sharing, then go into the iPhones Settings and configure it to use the NuevaSync server as if it were an enterprise Microsoft Exchange server.

Like magic, you have bidirectional sync between the iPhone Calendar and Google Calendar which quickly mirror changes either from Google or on the iPhone Calendar app. As this FAQ indicates, you can sync up to 11 calendars, choose which of your calendars to share, and NuevaSync supports shared calendars.

Posted by cw at 10:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 05, 2009

Getting Things Done II

What with having failed conspicuously to Get Things Done for much of the three years since we first read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done – The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and decided to try his then revolutionary attitudes to time management, Bleeding Edge was beginning to suspect by the beginning of 2009 that possibly we didn’t want to Get Things Done at all.
In early 2006 we had accepted Allen’s theory that traditional time-management tools like the Filofax and the DayTimer and the To Do list, and even computer programs like Outlook or PDAs were buckling under the sheer weight of the modern workload. The consequences were widespread feelings of guilt, anxiety and a powerful sense of being overwhelmed.
It took us a couple of days to read the book and understand the concepts of GTD. Initially we struggled to capture every element of our workload in an Inbox and categorise actions, define categories and outcomes and envisage each logical action required to achieve them. We organised reminders and reviews of the six horizons of our commitments: “purpose, vision, goals, areas of focus, projects and actions”.

We used a Perth-developed tool called Note Studio on the Palm and Windows and we thought we were making progress. Unfortunately, the developers found that for all their commitment to Getting Things Done, the one thing they couldn’t keep the program going. They now sell a couple of computer games, which we assume helps them assuage their guilt at not getting things done.

We then switched to the Mac, taking advantage of the work of a Hong Kong GTD recruit, Ethan Schoonover, who developed a free set of Apple Scripts which simplified setting up projects, actions and contexts etc and synching them with a PDA. Then Ethan got distracted getting other things done.

For a while after that we used another Mac program called OmniOutliner, adapted to the GTD principles, but by then we were finding that rather than constantly learning new procedures to monitor getting things done, we wanted to spend more time getting other things done.

It wasn’t until we got our new iPhone that we found ourselves back in the world of Getting Things Done, largely by chance. One of our colleagues suggested we should download an app called OmniFocus. We were obviously particularly susceptible to suggestions at the time, because we paid $US19.99 for it without even checking it out.

We thought we were downloading a program which would allow us to keep track of projects at the various places we worked. In fact we discovered OmniFocus is the continuation of the work of Ethan Schoonover, who has since been employed by OmniGroup.

It allows you to keep track of actions by project, place, person or date, and to recall and add to tasks, shopping lists and agenda items, all of which would be familiar to GTD enthusiasts.

With the iPhone’s location capabilities, however, it can also create a custom list of actions to complete nearby, showing you the closest grocery store for instance, and creating an instant shopping list. You can take pictures or make voice recordings, and synchronise them with the Mac version, which at $US79.95 is somewhat more expensive.

We’re quite interested in the power of integrating the iPhone with the desktop version, but we’re not sure if we’re going to have the time, having also begun to play with a Web-based application called DeskAway.

DeskAway is an Indian-developed collaborative work tool from Synage Software Pty Ltd. It is similar to, but less expensive than BaseCamp (37signals.com). Depending on your professional situation, or your personal preferences, it could be a valuable support or even a replacement for time management tools like GTD clients.

The free, basic package allows you to work on three projects with up to five members and 25MB of storage space, and there are several plans ranging from $10 per month (10 projects, unlimited users, 25MB of files) to $99 per month (unlimited projects and users, 25GB storage).

You create the project, nominate the project leader and team members, create tasks, enter milestones and share files and documents. It keeps everyone updated with emails, and there’s even a blog that we found useful as a brainstorming and planning tool.

It’s a well-designed and reliable package, although we think the storage limits on the cheaper packages could be more generous.

Another alternative could be ActiveCollab which started life as a free clone of BaseCamp, which you can install on your own Web server.

Developed by a Serbian student, Ilija Studen, it’s since turned into a commercial, but relatively cheap product that’s available in a fully-featured corporate ($US399) or small business ($US199) version which lacks elements like calendars. The annual support and upgrade fee ($199/$99) make it much cheaper than its competitors, and there’s an active support community.

We’re toying with the idea of installing it on our Web server. If we can get through the other projects on our list of Things To Get Done.

Posted by cw at 10:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Daily Show - Twitter Frenzy

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March 04, 2009

New Mac prices: not so mini

"The greenest Mac mini ever" can draw up to 45 per cent less power than its predecessor at idle. Even the shipping box is 60 per cent smaller than the packaging for its diminutive ancestor.

Too bad the price didn't shrink. Well, it did in the US ... to $US599. But down here, where Apple doesn't care whether its customers are suffering from the recession, you'll pay $1049 for the base model, compared to $849 for its predecessor.

The Age says it will test customer loyalty.

What do you think?

Posted by cw at 03:54 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Things that keep us busy

Why do blog writers find it hard sometimes to post? Here's a summary of this week's hurdles:

Thursday: Reception PC breaks down at VicAvePsych. Fortunately, two weeks ago we installed a stand-alone server and a second PC on the reception desk, or the entire practice would have been brought to its knees, but it was still a major disruption. We'll do a column soon on one of the most disruptive error messages in the Windows portfolio of horror messages:

lsass.exe - Application Error
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000006).
Click on OK to terminate the application.

It will touch on what happens when you can't boot to Safe Mode with Networking, you can't use the Windows Recovery Console, and the Last Known Good Configuration isn't Good Enough to reboot, and why doing a Windows XP repair installation can turn into a nightmare that consumes hours of time. By the way, here's a useful resource if you want to familiarise yourself with Windows XP Repair Installations.

Friday: Installed a new extension and a Snom 320 IP phone on the Asterisk box so the receptionist can sit at the reserve computer without having to get up to answer the phone. One of the joys of having an Asterisk box is that you can add extensions to ring groups and handy things like that, rather than having to wait for an expensive technician to come and talk to your PBX.

Saturday: Buy two new hard drives, one for the failed PC, and another spare. Get some good SATA cables - the ones with the angle plug. Updated the firmware on four Snom 320 handsets. We love Snom because they make great business phones with lots of features, and their software makes it easy to update firmware, add features etc. A lot of people recommend Polycom, but if you've ever had to install and maintain Polycom phones, you'll know just how clever Snom is. Polycoms take ages to reboot, and the company has completely lost the plot when it comes to supporting the end user. Maybe resellers can find firmware etc, but there are an awful lot of end users who buy Polycom handsets and probably end up tearing their hair out. Can't replace the hard drive on the other PC until Sunday, because it's too disruptive.

Sunday: Swap old hard drive to slave position, install new drive and do clean Windows XP install. Download drivers. Although DriverMax helps, it still takes ages. Fortunately we had the Windows XP label stuck on the side of the case so we didn't have to search high and low for a licence number, but we still had to go through the Microsoft accreditation process twice. Why does Microsoft seem to specialise in infuriating their customers? Install Windows updates. Start reinstalling software.

Monday: Install Microsoft Office 2003 on recovered PC. Reinstall Dymo LabelWriter Turbo 400 software for bulk mail-out. Install Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack so reception can open files saved in Office 2007 DocX format. Why, again, does Microsoft seem to specialise in infuriating their customers?

Tuesday: 8.30am. At the office to re-position cables, discover network is inaccessible. Reboot router and hub, find one PC cannot see the network. IPconfig shows "media disconnected", which indicates possibility of loose cable. Check out hub, router and patch panel connections while spouse checks her PC and the wall socket. Spend 10 minutes without results until noticing that the cable spouse had checked is detached from the socket. [Groan!!] Do all spouses ship with Microsoft software?

Posted by cw at 12:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack