Author Archives: daniel

Fastest browser in the west

I’ve been pondering if I should downgrade the web browser on my slower machine. This two-year old page rates the various browsers on an old 800 Mhz XP SP2 machine, and from their results, it looks to me like Opera 9 is the fastest of the current browsers out there.

So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.

Opera is of course now free for desktops, and includes tabbed browsing. And IE7 and Firefox have indirectly helped it, by forcing developers (well, most of them) to consider how their sites work and look in browsers other than IE6, so maybe I’ll give it a go.

More Vista ponderings

The Windows Vista Team blog has explained how the Windows Experience Index works, by evaluating your processor, memory, graphics, game graphics and hard disk, and giving each a ranking.

All well and good.

But this only happens when you install Windows Vista.

While I don’t plan to do it anytime soon, I wouldn’t mind knowing how my current PCs would perform with Windows Vista. I was hoping the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor would provide this kind of information, but it doesn’t — it’s much more vague.

I know my old boxes do meet (and exceed) the minimum standard, but we all know that’s never a true indication of whether it’s going to be pleasant/productive to use.

By the way, would you believe Microsoft’s new Zune player is not Vista compatible? Nor does it play anything using Windows Media DRM. And Engadget says the Zune installation sucks (yes, it really does demand a Windows Live ID and your name, address and phone number before letting you use it). What a balls-up.

Classic videogame ringtones

I’ve switched my ringtone. I wanted something distinctive but not crass and loud. I ended up deciding on the intro theme from Galaga. The text alert tone is the sound from Galaga when you put a coin in.

And it turns out it’s quite easy to do — provided your phone is newer than Josh’s and supports music files (eg MP3, WAV or AAC)… which most from the last couple of years do.

If you run Mame32, it’s got an option to record the sound as you play the game (on the File menu). This saves to a WAV file. Load it up into Sound Recorder and snip away (using Edit / Delete before or after current position). Some other MAME variants may have this feature too.

Some phones will support WAV, but if not (or you want to minimise the file size), convert to MP3 or your preferred format using Bladeenc or any other encoder. Transfer it onto the phone using a cable or IR link, then customise the ringtone and alert sound (on my Nokia it’s via Profile / General / Personalise). Easy!

If you know me in person, please find something else to use, so I know it’s mine going off when I hear it 🙂

Some other classic video game sounds that spring to mind as suitable are the Pacman theme (and dying sound for alerts) and Donkey Kong’s “How high can you jump?” theme (with the jumping barrel sound for the alert).

Office XML compatibility

Office 2007 has also been completed, and the compatibility pack is now available to allow earlier versions (back to 2000) to read the new file formats.

Though as Office Watch points out, while the Word one works well in both directions, it appears that the Excel and Powerpoint don’t have full conversion, just viewers.

What a copout. If they can do it for Word, they can do it for the others. Mind you given the plethora of information about the new formats I wouldn’t be surprised if a third party writes a proper conversion tool to fill the gap.

I’m not getting Vista, yet

Windows Vista has been released to manufacturing, and Ed Bott has a run-down, summarising reaction (mixed, mostly positive), the perils of installing it over old versions (nothing new there then; why would you subject yourself to that?!), noting how good it is on new installations, even on old hardware, and the key question of whether it’s worth upgrading.

I haven’t tried out any of the betas. I’ve read some of the reviews, but I haven’t used Windows Vista. My gut feeling is it’s probably a pretty good upgrade, but I must be getting more cautious in my old age, because I’m not going to touch it until at least SP1, or perhaps even SP2. Not only does that give MS the chance to get all the glitches under control, it also gives a bit of time for the hardware to catch up so that it provides nice performance.

In fact I have half a mind to buy a laptop at some stage to replace one of my desktop machines. Picture it, sitting in a hammock in the sun in the backyard working/surfing, a beer by my side. And if I do, I think I’d be looking to make sure it’s XP, not Vista. I don’t need the hassles of a new OS to learn, not for a couple of years.

This means though, that if I’m going to do this, I’ll have to be quick: “On January 30, you will be hard pressed to find a machine that doesn’t have Windows Vista available,” Mr Allchin said.

But hey, what I really want to know is… what are the built-in games in Vista? Looks like depending on which version you get, there’ll be the oldies: Freecell, Hearts, Solitaire, and Minesweeper, as well as Spider Solitaire, Shanghai, Purble Place (aimed at the kiddies), Mahjong, Inkball and Chess. What, no 3-D Pinball?!? Ripped off! I wonder if you’ll be able to copy the EXE across from an old version, like people did with Cardfile from Win3.1 to 95.

Google and MS Custom Search

Just a few days after Google released its new Custom Search Engine, allowing web site owners to use Google search, Microsoft have done the same, with the Live Search Box. I guess this means byebye to older engines such as Atomz/WebSideStory (though they appear to have bowed out of free hosting anyway, or at least have stopped offering it to any new customers).

I’ve installed the Google offering on one site, and it really is very easy to use. Happily it also includes an option to not display (or make money from) adverts.

Web tipping

Over on the Freakonomics blog, they’re asking: Are you a web tipper?

I hadn’t thought about it before, but apparently some people randomly click on online ads (even if they’re not interested and won’t read the resultant page) just to get a little money going to the content provider, to help keep the content free.

Interesting idea, though I wonder if advertisers would eventually shy away from paying for ads that get seen and clicked-on, but don’t have a return through sales.

AVG IS still free

AVG is moving its free anti-virus from version 7.1 to 7.5. Never fear, it’s still free, despite the announcement implying that it won’t be after January 2007. What it’s actually saying is that version 7.1 won’t be supported after that time, but a lot of people are misreading it.

The optimist in me says it’s just worded badly. The cynic in me notes that some recall the switch from version 6 to 7 was worded in a similar way and it smells a little bit of the Real Player page that featured a big advert for the paid version, and a tiny link to the free one. But hey, the bottom line is AVG is still free, and millions of home users can continue to protect their PCs. Can’t really argue with that.

Free version 7.5 download here.

Other freebie anti-virus packages for Windows include Avast, Trend’s free adhoc (online) scan and the open-source ClamWin.

The context for geek stuff

One of the things that makes blogs such as Scoble’s so readable is that he gives his observations some non-geek context. For example when he highlights the generational change in technology, it’s not just 8-bit vs 32/64-bit, it’s also how it’s affected culture. Things like buying music: the kids aren’t queueing up to buy records anymore, they’re just buying off iTunes.

This kind of observation gives his geek reports some context in the real world, so although it mostly interests techheads, we can see how it’s relevant to non-techheads. The Zune music player from Microsoft might get bought by die-hard Apple-haters, but the mass market is going to want to follow the pack, who are almost all wearing white earphones.

Unless we’re specifically writing some arcane UberGeek technical article, it’s probably a good idea to remember to how it all relates to the real world.

Israeli Brokerage Services spam

I’m glad I’m not the only one getting endless offers of jobs from Israeli Brokerage Services Limited.

Spam from Israeli Brokerage Services

Apart from anything else I find it puzzling that they think their scam will work better if they bombard email address many dozens of times every day. Like getting ten of the same offer isn’t going to make me suspicious?

Update 10-Nov-2006: Information on this scam at the Western Australian government ScamNet.