Monthly Archive for February, 2007

Suggestions Part II - Finder

Published
by
Tom
on February 10, 2007
in Generic
. 1 Comment

Threads for any IO please (finder hangs when accessing network shares or ftp servers).
Please let me do things while dragging - open windows etc.
If I drag a file onto a folder in the dock it should pop open.
Please don’t .DS_Store polute.
Brushed steel is so 2003. (not a problem for me due to UNO)
It crashes :(.

I’d like to see a unified way of representing ‘tasks’ like copying and such. If any application can publish progress on tasks to a service the viewer would be a great way to see what’s happening with your computer… multiple levels of detail so you don’t need to see system tasks all the time. It would be great.

All in all I think that Finder is the one place in OS X that needs the most TLC. A bit of spit and polish.

I was tempted to make this post a one worder - threads. It’s seriously my biggest annoyance in finder, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard either… maybe.

Gamedev.net is down

Published
by
Tom
on February 10, 2007
in Generic
. 1 Comment

GDNet Downtime Counter

Quoting SMC quoting Dave Astle (hope that’s cool)

We actually need to post an update to the site so there are no misconceptions. The hack was taken care of fairly easily, but as a precaution, we decided to wipe and restore our servers, and in the process ran into some unrelated hardware issues that we’re still working on.

750gb

Published
by
Tom
on February 1, 2007
in Generic
. 8 Comments

I have a new harddrive. It’s 750gb.

A while ago Alex metioned that he was planning on getting a raid box so he has more storage. He still had a 120gb from the group of 120s that we purchased around 2003 so was feeling the pinch. Anyway I noted that I had two 320gb and one 250gb harddrives in my computer and I was thinking about getting a 750gb and that it would be the last harddrive I could fit.

Last week Alex came around and revealed that he had purchased a raid box and that could he please buy my two 320s. That night I bought the 750 and that was that.

My computer now runs slower. This is probably due the way I copied across all my files. I used Carbon Copy Cloner under Rosetta. I might see what I can do to make it faster. It took around 4 hours to copy 600gb of porn data.

Anyway I now have room for another 2 750gb harddrives. Yay.

I’m not buying any more harddrives before I get more Ram. I have 1gb and it’s holding my computer back. Should I get an extra gig, two gig or four gig? Polls start now.

1gb (US $217.99)
2gb (US $399.99)
4gb (US $775.99)

The 4gb comes to around $1500 NZD after tax, shipping and exchange rates. My guess is the 2gb will be around $800 and the 1gb around $450.

It needs at least an extra gig, it doesn’t really need an extra 4 gig but it would be nice.

Satire involving Vista

Published
by
Tom
on February 1, 2007
in Generic
. 7 Comments

In my rss feed inbox thing (what are you supposed to call it?) I received a link (via kiwiblog) to Peter Griffin’s “Ten good reasons why it’s worth switching to Vista”.

Heh heh, lets get started shall we?

1. Revamped Search

We’ve done a bad job of search up until now (the dog? the weird indexing thing in 98?) so we think we’ve fixed it now. It’s better. It’s no WinFS because we scrapped that, but its a good fix.

2. Better Security

The top two reasons start with a verb? These aren’t new features, they are the proper implementation of the original feature.

3. Dynamic Thumbnails

To quote Peter Griffin:

A nice little feature that displays a thumbnail of the application you are running or the webpage you are visiting when you run your cursor over the task bar.

The key words here are “little feature”.

4. Media Center

Reason to get Vista: Media Center. (XP Media Edition?)

5. Networking

Wha? I thought XP had networking?
It’s been made ‘nicer’.

6. Great Looks And Aero 3D

We made it look nice. Sweeeeet.

7. Built For Gamers

Direct X 10 and you can make your games Xbox Live probably by paying Microsoft.

8. Readyboost

You can plug in a USB flash drive and have your commonly used programs run off it for a speed boost. Interesting.

9. Gadgets

This has been done before but it’s a useful feature. Yahoo Widgets

10. Parental Controls

Yaaaaarrrr. Pretty cool but nothing to write home about.

Out of the 10 reasons to get vista:

3 are fixes
5 are small features
none are good reasons to get Vista.

It’s worth noting at this point that some people like to put fish into the recepie at this stage. Sometimes canned salmon, sometimes tuna. Don’t do it.

Hopefully everyone knows this.

I, however, plan to get Vista as soon as Halo 2 comes out. :(.