Australian Personal Computer: Will Intel-based Apple Macs be able to run Windows? Apple says they’re not doing anything to prevent it. Their Macs will use an Extensible Firmware Interface, which replaces the BIOS, and Windows Vista will support EFI.
Would be pretty cool to have the lovely Apple design for your hardware, plus the lovely Apple OS, but be able to boot into Windows when compatibility was needed.
As part of my revamp of the house (and in particular the home office) I’m looking around at LCD monitors. They’ll be good for saving space on the new desks, making the computers less obtrusive.
LCDs used to be incredibly expensive. The reviews on sites like Dan’s Data show that just a couple of years ago, you could pay well over A$1000 for a 17 inch LCD. Thankfully they’ve fallen below the $400 mark now, which seems much more reasonable. They’ve also got much faster, with 4 or 8ms response times being very common. This is the good thing about being several steps behind the early adopters.
I could go more expensive for bigger, but I’ve been living with 15 and 17 inch CRTs so long that I don’t see the need to go bigger, since that would make the computers more obtrusive, I’ll gain in viewable area anyway, and I’d prefer two monitors an identical size to avoid the kids squabbling over who gets to use which.
Asking around, it would seem two good brands to look at are Samsung and BenQ, in part for their value for money, but also things like clearly defined dead pixel policies.
Samsung’s policy: any dead pixels in the first 7 days, they’ll swap for a new monitor at place of purchase. After that, any dead pixels in the 8cm x 8cm square in the middle warrants replacement, or 3 or more dead elsewhere. (The policies are different for bigger screens).
BenQ’s policy: any dead pixels in the first 7 days warrants replacement. Beyond that, anything in the middle 9th of the screen, and more than 2 bright dots and 3 dark dots elsewhere will trigger replacement.
Digital input, which neither of my computers are currently equipped for, appears to cost about $20 extra. Might as well get it for future use.
And of course there’s the vital question: silver, or black? (Not as obvious as for something like TV gear, where as far as I’m concerned, it’s black all the way.)
Next pay day, it’ll be time to go shopping.
I’ve finally got rid of the Insert key once and for all (and not just in MS-Word). Here’s how:
1. Download the Windows Resource kit. It’s the Windows Server 2003 edition, but will also work on XP. (Not supported on others, but hopefully Win2K and maybe some earlier versions?).
2. Run C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\remapkey.exe
3. On the top keyboard image, drag another key onto Insert. I made it another Shift key.
4. Save, reboot. Voila!
The catch? There had to be one, right? Shift-Insert no longer works for pasting things. You’ll have to Ctrl-V instead.
(Thanks to, of all things, The Washington Monthly).
Turns out Sony has a Mac version of DRM, too.
Meanwhile, Texas is suing, possibly for $100K per violation… times 2.1 million CDs sold??? (Thanks Lana)
Jeff “Llamasoft” Minter contributed some of the visualisations in the XBox 360 media player.
Research at the University of British Columbia has come up with stitching software that many say out-performs that provided with digital camera software.
More rumours that the iTunes Australia store is about to open. How many times has this been rumoured to be the case?
How to snatch an expiring (.com) domain — basically, the action happens 75 days after the expiry date.
Ah, the joys of the pr0n industry, always so quick to grab hold of the latest throbbing new technology. They’re already making use of the video iPods.
Some Swedes name their kid after Google. Thankfully only the middle name.
Dimitri Kokken of Belgium is selling his humungous collection of old computers. Gawd knows how he’s collected them all, but they appear to include just about every 8-bit computer every built, including such obscurities as the Oric Atmos, Spectravideo 318, Commodore CD-TV, and a bunch of MSX machines. No Microbees though.
Video iPod and iTunes 6 announced by Apple. (via Tony)
In case you’d forgotten what 5¼ inch diskettes look like, here’s a reminder.
My kids noted: “So they really were floppy!”
I wonder what ever happened to the Xidex company? There seems to be little information on them on the web, but a few ebay sellers are selling unused disks. Verbatim are still around.
Why were the disks out? Today I set up my old BBC micro to see if it still worked, and to ponder putting it on ebay. It did work, but some of the disks reported errors. On closer inspection, some appeared to have mould or some other kind of growth on the magnetic part.
Possibly if I really had to retrieve the data, I could find someone to recover it, but there’s nothing important on them. It does serve as a reminder that every so often you should refresh your vital data from whatever media it’s stored on, onto something new.
Rumours spread far and wide last month that iTunes Australia would start on October 3rd. Well, October 3rd has come and gone, and nothing happened. So we keep waiting.
I can’t tell you how much I hate Windows’ overtype mode. Accidentally tap the Insert key, and you suddenly find your typing overwriting old text. Who would use such a pointless thing?
And it’s doubly worse in products such as Word, where the only clue that you’re in this stupid mode is the almost-invisible ungreying of the letters “OVR” on the status bar.
Even worse in other apps: Excel has it, invisibly, only when you’re editing cells. Powerpoint doesn’t have it. Thankfully Ultraedit noticably changes the cursor when it’s invoked.
It’s there, but invisible, in Outlook. If you set Outlook to use Word for editing messages, it does it invisibly because the Word email window has no status bar, but if you have a Word window sitting in the background, you can see the OVR status light up on that!
At least it can be disabled in Word:
Wouldn’t you know it, this setting isn’t global throughout Office. So the Insert key will still do stupid things in Excel and Outlook. (Using Word for writing Outlook messages will get around it, but that might be too big a price to pay.)
See also: MS KB 198148
One more reason Lego rocks: they don’t mind if people hack their stuff.
Need to wipe, kersplat, zap, nuke, delete, a hard disk, but don’t want to have to physically pull it out of the machine and jump on it, drown it, then take a hammer to it? Like, if you want someone else to be able to use it? Try Darik’s Boot and Nuke. (via Colin)
With hot rumours of the Australian iTunes shop being about to launch, this guide to DRM covers how various online stores restrict what you can do with the music you buy.