Tag: Windows 7

But there, for the grace of Steve Jobs, go I

As someone who works, at least part time, as a design professional, I come into Mac fans on an almost daily basis. Sadly, whilst Apple products are generally rather good, they are intrinsically spoiled by their legion of unquestioning followers. You’ve probably met them. A conversation with a member of the Apple harem will go roughly like this:

Me, working on my laptop. Mac fan: Why are you using a PC? You need to use a mac. SOOO much faster. Me: Really? Isn’t that a Macbook Air – aren’t they pretty underpowered… Mac fan: Nope, fast as lightning. Mac OSX literally makes the electrons in processors and RAM function at a higher velocity. Me: Ok. Mac fan: Seriously, why are you still using that steaming pile of failure? I’ve had Macs ten years, and I’ve never had one crash on me. I bet your Windoze heap is crashing right now! Me: Actually, I’ve found Win7 pretty good. And OSX has crashed on me frequently. Mac fan: No. It hasn’t. Me: Sorry? Are you overuling my ability to discern truth? Mac fan: WHY HAVEN’T YOU BOUGHT A MAC YET?! Me: Well, I feel they are somewhat overpriced; I don’t really like how they look, nor do I find them ergonomic; I don’t like the operating system, I feel it doesn’t provide as good a workflow as Windows; the warranties are overpriced and underfeatured, and in my experience, overutilitised; I’m happy with my current machine… Mac fan, screams

Error reporting not reporting error

Yes, the title of this post is a palindrome, as a metaphor for the backwards and forwards nature of the problem I’m experiencing. You see, my computer has BSODed about once a fortnight for the last few months. That’s a Blue Screen of Death, for those of you not geek enough – its where your computer displays an error message, then turns itself off.

Now, I’m used to this – since almost every single computer I have ever owned has crashed on occasion: Windows, Linux, Mac (Yes, Macs crash too!), Android, Palm OS, EPOC, SIBO…

Fixing file previews

If, like me, you have Windows 7 (or Vista) 64 bit installed, you may have noticed an annoying glitch – whilst the file previews are much better than they ever were in XP, they can’t quite manage PDFs. You get a funky message in fact:

This file cannot be previewed because of an error with the following previewer: PDF Preview Handler for Vista To open this file in its own program, double-click it.

One taskbar to rule them all…

I have just finished the resits for my finals (after failing them so impressively last time). I don’t know whether I pass until Monday, so for now I get to be geeky normal me again.

So, I would like to introduce my latest purchase, the excellent, non crashy and productivity increasing Display Fusion Pro. It‘s a multi monitor taskbar. To the vast majority of you, this will mean very little, but to those of you who use more than one screen with Windows, its a godsend.

Many many plans

So, I have finished my exams. And that leaves me a few short weeks to tackle a variety of projects. Taking inspiration from Lifehacker, I am making a list on here of stuff I am aiming to achieve. Get healthy: The next 7 weeks, my first hour of each day is exercise. Keep me accountable on this one please! A new YesIts.Us website: The Lowry Family homepage, in full technicolor. Need to update this, and create a blog for my darling wife. Install Windows 7 on my PC: I only bought it 5 months ago, and already I feel I should probably install it! Make VictorandRachel.co.uk: A wedding site for my housemate. Do some more work on Cutting Edge: my large corporate project has been put on hold, but that’s no excuse not to do anything on it. Finish CrookesOnline.co.uk: Let’s get the Crookes homepage up and running for everyone! A new NamesNotNumbers.info: Everyone’s favourite charity, soon getting a new website. Design by committee – the best way! Get my server set up: It’s working fine, but its time to get that software running properly, with regular backups, and every PC in the house being served! Redesign ChristianPunks.co.uk: This site is no longer an active portal, so let’s make it a little more fresh and helpful! Start a peer reviewed journal: Coming soon – The Online Journal of Medicine (also known as OnJoM). Get tagging: Put post tags on every post on my