RTFM
Thunderbird 1.5 was released on Thursday, January 12. It's got some great new features that include automatic updates, anti-phishing protection, inline spellchecking, saved search folders, podcasting, RSS improvements, and the ability to delete attachments from messages. Now those new features would be great if I could get it to load.
After quickly downloading the 6.0 MB file and double clicking it; it extracted and the installer started to work and I was soon greeted with the message, "Installation successful." Now it's time to take a look at all those new features. Wrong! It just would not load. I tried every known trick to get it to load to no avail. I reinstalled my old version and it loaded like a champ. OK, it's got to be a bad download, corrupt file you know. No such luck, after a new download and install, same thing won't load.
OK it's now 2:00 a.m. It's now time to RTFM. I went to the Thunderbird site and scanned the page for clues as to what might be the problem. Buried in the Release Notes page and under known issues there was the one sentence I need to read. "Prior to installing Thunderbird 1.5, please ensure that the directory you've chosen to install into is clean and doesn't contain any previous Thunderbird installations." How dumb can I be? After a complete un-install and install of Thunderbird 1.5 in a clean directory, that entire new list of features loaded instantly!
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display anyone!
Will your next flat-panel HDTV have surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED)? This type of display is currently under development by Canon and Toshiba. It works similar to a CRT but consumes about 50% less power and has a thin flat-panel like a LCD, which is only an inch or two thick. It looks like Toshiba intends to move their 40-inch plus displays to SED technology. The announcement came at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. Recent articles have said the SED units will be priced around Plasma and LCD if not higher. I think I’ll stick with the good ole CRT for now.
Will your next flat-panel HDTV have surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED)? This type of display is currently under development by Canon and Toshiba. It works similar to a CRT but consumes about 50% less power and has a thin flat-panel like a LCD, which is only an inch or two thick. It looks like Toshiba intends to move their 40-inch plus displays to SED technology. The announcement came at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. Recent articles have said the SED units will be priced around Plasma and LCD if not higher. I think I’ll stick with the good ole CRT for now.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Take this shovelware and shove it!
All the major PC manufactures are loading their systems with limited-time or limited-feature versions of standard commercial applications. Microsoft Office 2003 is one of their favorite applications to include, but will require a $400 to $500 registration fee to continue working past the 60 day trial period. Let's face it folks, this is no more than shovelware dumped on the hard drive to make it look like a great value. Many consumers purchase these systems thinking they are getting a fully licensed copy of Microsoft Office, when in fact they are only getting a bloated system.
How do you protect yourself? Read the fine print and don't take the word of a sales clerk. If this is the software you want, simply register, and pay the fee and your set. However don't feel you have to buy this pre-installed software. If you choose not to purchase the software use the Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs applet to un-install and remove the bloat.
Now is the perfect time to give Open Source software a try. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is a free, full-featured office suite that can open and save in Microsoft formats or AbiWord 2.4.1, an award winning, small, fast, full-featured and cross platform word processor similar to Microsoft Word.
All the major PC manufactures are loading their systems with limited-time or limited-feature versions of standard commercial applications. Microsoft Office 2003 is one of their favorite applications to include, but will require a $400 to $500 registration fee to continue working past the 60 day trial period. Let's face it folks, this is no more than shovelware dumped on the hard drive to make it look like a great value. Many consumers purchase these systems thinking they are getting a fully licensed copy of Microsoft Office, when in fact they are only getting a bloated system.
How do you protect yourself? Read the fine print and don't take the word of a sales clerk. If this is the software you want, simply register, and pay the fee and your set. However don't feel you have to buy this pre-installed software. If you choose not to purchase the software use the Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs applet to un-install and remove the bloat.
Now is the perfect time to give Open Source software a try. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is a free, full-featured office suite that can open and save in Microsoft formats or AbiWord 2.4.1, an award winning, small, fast, full-featured and cross platform word processor similar to Microsoft Word.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
