Category: General
Stinkin’ Dirt
My laptop was getting more obnoxious by the week. Progressively getting slower, taking longer to boot up, taking longer for pretty much everything except aggravating my temper. All the symptoms of having picked up a virus, trojan or other malware from a website. But my battery of free security programs found nothing. I caved in and bought Spysweeper. It found nothing, either, and just made things even slower. :banghead:
I started noticing it felt hotter than it used to under my right wrist. Well, okay, I thought, it is over five years old, after all. More’n likely getting ready to blow the power supply or something. Before it could do that, though, it started just shutting itself off. I gather they’re made that way, to automatically shut down when the internal temperature gets too high. :bomb:
Of course, by now I was primed to use the imminent demise of the machine as an excuse to get a new one. Even started checking the BestBuy ads. But, the damn thing wouldn’t die; just kept after my goat. Last weekend the combination of aggravations got so exasperating I asked Becky if it would upset her if I got out the .38 and shot it. She said it would. So, I tabled the notion of hastening its demise. :shootem:
Today it shut itself off before I could print a letter I needed to get out. So I turned it over to have a look at the fans. A busted fan could certainly cause overheating. Couldn’t tell antyhing from looking, except they looked kind of dusty. I grabbed a can of Dust-Off and shot a blast at each fan. The first thing was a major cloud of dust flying out the vent. The second thing was one of the fans didn’t spin. It occurs to me laptops maybe consume and store dust as well as desktops, despite what seems to be a more enclosed structure and less room. And it occurs to me I may need to replace a fan. Fans are what I’ve had to replace the most on all my computers. :propeller:
Okay, okay, I’ll get to the end. At home after supper and between Olympic events I removed as many panels as I was comfortable removing and used about half a can of Dust-Off blowing through strategic locations. In the process, I dislodged a major dust-kitty that I had to slowly work out with tweezers, from behind one of the fans. Yup, it was actually keeping the fan from running. Got it all back together and the difference is incredible. :bouncy:
Sounds way better, runs way cooler, runs way faster, hasn’t shut off. Keeping fingers crossed, of course, but it’s looking (and sounding) like I’ll have to spill a cup of coffee into the keyboard if I’m gonna get me a new laptop in the near future. :mischievous:
Stinkin’ dirt, anyway. :yuck:
Safari for PC
Thought I’d mention that Apple’s Safari web browser is now available for PC’s. I’ve been trying it out it for a few days now, and rather like it. It seems faster than IE, Firefox, and Opera as well as other gecko and IE based browsers such as Flock and Avant Browser. Well, maybe not faster than Avant Browser, but I like Safari better, regardless. However, I’ve gotten somewhat attached to Flock, due its “networking” and media oriented features. You can’t beat Flock for “social” stuff like Facebook and media stuff like YouTube and blogs and RSS. But, for web sessions when all I need is speed, Safari is becoming my browser of choice. The main drawback is that almost all Safari plug-ins work only on Mac installations and, of course, none of the Firefox plug-ins I’ve gotten accustomed to will work on Safari. I particularly miss the Google Toolbar and Web Developer Toolbar.
Google, WinMobile, Etc.
September 3, 2008
General
Comments Off on Google, WinMobile, Etc.
John
Last weekend I upgraded my cell phone OS from WinMobile 6.0 to 6.1. Well, that ended up taking half a day or so. Who knew how many apps I had installed on that darn thing? Anyway, I’m sure glad I upgraded, cuz I can sure tell the difference! Yeah, uh-huh.
Where was all the fanfare about the release of Google’s web browser? In fact, where were all the whispers, rumors and leaks? Somehow, I missed it all. I only happened onto it on account of reading email on my cell phone. My email includes subscriptions to a few newsletters, and one of them mentioned the Google browser. Of course, I had to immediately install it and try it out – using it now, in fact. I assume as time goes by there will be add-ons ala Firefox. I like it already, though. Seems to hold to the Google theme of clean, uncluttered simple layout. Sort of reminds me of Safari, which I recently wrote about. Since then, by the way, my usage of Safari has dwindled, I think due to lack of certain plug-ins I’ve grown to love, like “web developer”.
Becky and I went to her 40-year high school reunion Saturday. At first I thought we must’ve gone to the wrong one, on account of all the OLD people there. The dee-jay obviously was playing to OLD people. He had the volume cranked up so loud I had to make ear plugs out of napkins. That wasn’t enough, though, so I went to another room (the bar, actually) and watched football on the TV. That didn’t last too long, as the bar was filled with smoke and pretty soon I could barely breathe. When Becky came to find me, she was ready to leave on account of the volume and the smoke. So, we left. But she still had a good time visiting with classmates, especially since they were all so much older than her.
It’s freakin’ September already!