Eco Friendly Software???

I'm never in the same location for too long. Over the last 5 years I have gone through 3 laptops. One of the main things I have noticed is that battery life is getting better. However it's still far from being at the point of saying a laptop is the ultimate in portability. The vast majority of the time my laptop is plugged in. In my mind, the whole purpose of a laptop is to be wire free and to be portable. Not searching for a table within 3.5 meters of a power socket.

Depending of course on what I'm doing, I'd be lucky if my Vaio laptop running Windows Vista lasts over an hour. Credit is due to the hardware engineers over the last decade. We now have special mobile processors, RAM, 2.5' HDD, Graphics cards for mobile devices; all major successes for increasing battery life. In my opinion the software engineers out there needs to increase their efforts.

The majority of students have laptops now. Very few own their own desktop. Business men love showing off their latest flashy laptops. Laptops must be now the main form of computing in the 21st Century. So why do massive software companies like Microsoft create energy sapping products and operating systems? It's no secret that Vista will eat your battery life quicker than I can devour my €4.60 lunch from the canteen. Does Vista really need "Aero"....which is just for a "wow" factor and provides little for productivity or wow. I remember going into Harvey Normans in Limerick and being shown the new and amazing Windows Vista. The salesman showed me the see-through windows and media player. I asked if there was anything else, and he said ...'no'. Needless to say even then I wasn't impressed.

The whole world wants "green" cars, energy saving light bulbs, race against waste etc. etc., (try not to laugh) but maybe there is such a thing as eco friendly software!! So to get onto the point, I'm sure all software companies realise that their software is now more than likely going to be run on laptop's. And when they all read this rant, they will soon change their ways, but until then, here are are a few ways to increase your battery life.

• Disable Aero feature in Vista
• Disable any desktop toolbars/sidebars
• Dim the brightness of your screen as low as you can tolerate
• Exit any applications you not using (Eg winamp launcher, anything in task tray)
• Try NOT to use USB devices (Flash drive, mouse etc)
• Download Vista Battery Saver
• Run MSConfig and disable programs you don't need in Startup section.
• And for Gods sake don't use a laptop on your lap!

Quick Way of Doing Lines

Brilliant!

Clearing Up Duplicate Files

Severe lack of posts this week. Working on an ASP.NET project at the moment. So just for another short entry here’s my download of the week. A nice handy one for helping you clear up some clutter from you’re hard disk. If you download/share files, there is a immense likelihood that you have some duplicate files.

Duplicate Cleaner saves disk space by finding identical files and allowing you to delete them. Find duplicate mp3s, photos, or perhaps old versions of documents.

You can download it here

Weekly Download: Vista + AVG = Slow Start-Up

It has recently come to my attention that AVG anti virus (which is very good) hinders Vista when booting it up. I am unsure why, but if you want to speed it up I recommend Avast to use as an alternative. It looks pleasant and its easy to use and update. The application reminds me of a car stereo. I haven’t decided if that’s a good or a bad thing. And as always the price is right. Free.

So try it out. If you have Vista and currently using AVG, try using Avast and see if you notice the start-up speed. If you’re not using Vista, I would still highly recommend AVG, and hopefully they will sort out the problems with vista.

Download Avast Here

Screw This!

I was having a problem with a laptop. It kept restarting randomly after giving the dreaded blue screen for a split second. No software problems to report. So I decided to take it apart to check if the fan still works, thinking maybe the problem was over-heating. 22 Screws later I finally managed to remove the casing. That amount of screws seems excessive. Suppose 4 of them were holding the hard drive in place. I always did prefer working on desktops! But the good news is its back working now. I put the 2.5' Hard-drive into an external enclosure to back up all the data and then proceeded to format the disk. Using the BIOS recovery diagnostics I managed (with some help) to re-install XP and so far (3 days) no random restarts. So YEAH!! Just goes to show you formatting is the ultimate way to fix computers problems.

You know what really grinds my gears?

As you can see from some previous blog entries there's are few things that annoy me in the IT world. Here’s just a snippet of what bugs me...

• Bebo - It's getting a bit ridiculous and has stupid adds on everyone's page. Maybe Bebo users should be receiving a cut of profits.
• Caps Lock - See my previous article
• Paying for Anti-Virus - The best programs seem to be the free ones. No annoying pop-ups, warning about subscriptions etc.
• Windows Vista - It sucks! Really wished I went the MAC route now. Thank god for VMWare
• One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Project - Maybe we could spend that money on more needy things for these people.
• Amazon.com - Won't ship electronics to Ireland and have to visit XE.com every time to convert prices to €.
• Internet Explorer - 6.0 was useless so they just copied Firefox and released 7.0. Still better browsers out there.
• Youtube is 90% rubbish taking up valuable bandwidth
• People texting whilst in the middle of conversation - You know who you are!!
• iTunes ( and iPods) - One word RUBBISH.

Diarmuid's Download of the Week - OpenOffice

This is the real deal people. OpenOffice is a FREE alternative to the vastly over priced Microsoft Office 2007 package. It includes a Word Processor (Word), Spreadsheet (Excel), Database manager (Access), a maths writer (handy for school work), a presentation suite (PowerPoint) and a Draw package for diagrams (Visio). Unlike Microsoft Office, OpenOffice was designed as one program and not designed separately. So once you’re up and running the programs work together really nicely.

Another great thing is if you own an illegal version of Office (and 72% of people do*) you can use this instead and not have to worry about updating other Microsoft products or installing their Genuine Checker. I have been using OpenOffice for over a year now and it is well worth a look at if you need an Office type package. There are some downsides to open office. It is frequently updated (could be a good thing) which actually annoys me. Also the initial loading of the suite is longer than MS Office. Did I mention the price? Another alternative to MS Office is of course Google Docs, which I also use quite a lot.

Download OpenOffice Here

*Might be a statistic I made up.

Capslockitous - tHE wAR oN tERRIBLE tYPING

Along with the "F12" key, one of the fewest pressed buttons on my rather worn keyboard would have to be "Caps Lock". I do recognise the need to have this button (headings, posters etc.), but for normal everyday use it's not really needed. It has recently come to my attention that there are people out there, and these people are computer literate and very intelligent. They use Caps Lock to get a single capital letter. That means up to this point I would have pressed that button 20 times. WHY. WHY would you do that? Even there I didn't use it. There's a shift key for once off capitals you know. Very sorry for this ramble. Just needed to get it off my chest. And if you suffer from Capslockitous.... shame on you. If you cant get help try here.

After a bit of looking around t'Internet it seems I'm not alone...

Bank Job - Special Agent 00(7)00

So yesterday I trudged through the snow infested city that was Limerick. I had to visit the bank to make a rather urgent lodgement. I entered the premises which will remain nameless. There was a small queue of elderly people at the counter, so I made my way toward the ATM/Lodgement machine. This, as the name suggests will take lodgements as well as withdrawals. Delighted at beating the queue, I jammed in my crumpled cheque into the machine. It was rejected the first time, but the machine managed to scan the cheque on the second attempt. After the message "Transaction Completed", a "ATM Out of Service" message popped up, and no receipt was printed. I immediately ventured over to Customer Service. She approached the ATM, used her bunch keys to open it, and right in front of me continued, by....... entering the password - "0000" What the hell?! The administrator password to the ATM inside a main city bank is zero four times. The manager should be sacked, no shot. The ATM was then opened up, and I got to see its guts. A fairly complex set of circuitry attached to a scanner, and some more nerdy stuff. It's built on top of a safe. That looked secure but I wonder is the password to the safe "0000" as well? I'd put some money on that :)

Gift Grub Downloads

I rather enjoy Today FM in the mornings. The Ian Dempsey show is great company for my otherwise lonely early morning commute from Limerick to Galway (Thank God for the Ennis bypass!). Like most people the skit named Gift Grub is the highlight of the show for me. Hilarious stuff altogether. I always wanted to download the gift grub clips, but in my esteemed opinion Todayfm.com is one of the worst websites to navigate ever! I really hope they fix it up sooner rather than later. Anyway getting to the point of this ramble I came across a brilliant site for downloading the gift grub skits.

Download Gift Grub Here

If you're a fan I recommend bookmarking it. While I'm at it I must also recommend Ray Foley's blog. The best show on Today FM. Remember its only a bit of fun for your lunch time.