Digital Dad®

Dell 948 on the attack

Well, a passive attack. Very frustrating. My Product (RED) Dell 948 seems to be “skipping” some lines – it’s as if the roller is advancing the paper a bit too far a few times on the page. I tried alignment, cleaning the cartridges, even buying $ome new cartridges$, same deal.

Looked inside and found a few paper scraps but nothing hindering the paper path. Stumped!

Should I be concerned it now sells new for only $35 at ConsumerDepot? Is this thing built out of cardboard?

Fingerprints

I’ve had the Dell m1330 now for almost two years and one of the things that I found handy about it was the built-in fingerprint reader. It’s an easy way to log on and kind of cool.

Our kitchen PC, the Dell XPS One with Windows 7 RC, has a multi-logon, one for each family member. I looked around and found a unit on Amazon from Eikon (about $40)that has a nice slim silver profile, rubber backing and a decent length USB cord.

It comes with the Upek software suite (Upek? Eikon?). The install is very easy and then it’s time to enroll your fingers. The creepy part is when it asks you to enroll two fingers in case “one gets damaged.” Five swipes and you’re done.

You can still type in your password, but the cool thing is that whenever you swipe your finger, the PC logs out of whoever’s account is up and logs you in automatically. Very convenient and pretty cool.

This item enables you to keep your password private, away from your kids prying eyes, and makes it super-easy for kids to log into their own space.

Tidying up the widescreen

I have been using a widescreen display on my notebook for a couple years now. I paired that with a 24” widescreen Dell LCD and  Samsung 4:3 I use as a secondary display. The Dell display is connected via HDMI and the Samsung display via plain ol’ VGA. The Kitchen PC, as well all know, is a Dell XPS One with a 20” widescreen display.

I switched to Windows 7 and started to adjust some thing to take advantage of the new layout. One big change was moving my taskbar to the far right side. It makes little sense to have a taskbar at the bottom when you have a wide display and moving it to the side clear out your y-axis nicely. I also auto-hide it as well, personal preference, and it’s on the right because my second display, the Samsung, is to the left. Otherwise your taskbar is in the “middle” of your viewing window.

I peg my gadgets to the left with an opacity of 40%. It’s great that in 7 you can have them anywhere but I tend to like a clean organized desktop with virtually no icons except Recycle and these see-through gadgets.

Speaking of, I just upgraded my Facebook gadget to one made by BuildAGadget.com. It’s miles ahead of this one and light years ahead of this.

What’s your desktop preference?

Laptop boost

There was a mention over at GigaOm  about getting more life out of your notebook, especially in these economic times. My Dad recently asked me a similar question, as he has a 17” large Toshiba “schleptop” that was feeling sluggish.

Net net, adding memory is your best investment for a performance boost. Hard drives are a bit trickier. For him, I also suggested getting a big, like 24”, monitor.

It was pretty easy for him to bring it into a Best Buy Geek Squad, have them do the upgrade and various “tunings” for about $100. Much cheaper than buying a new notebook.

I’ll definitely get Windows 7 on there this summer as well.

Quicken Troubles

I noticed last week that my Quicken account for my bank had not reconciled a transaction in about a month. Ugh. This means a call to the bank, wading through voice-menu trees, then talking to someone how knows pretty much nothing for a half hour.

I dove in, on speakerphone, and got comfortable with a cup of coffee. This was going to take a while. i called my bank first, as it made sense that they were not sending the transactions. I had already had a few password and account problems with them.

After a few voice menus I connected with a human. She asked how long I had been using Quicken. How long? Since 1992 - I have been using this software for 17 years! Hard to believe but it is neat to scroll all the way back and look at those old paychecks (and old rents).

Back in 1992 I was living in Palo Alto, having just moved out from Boston, by myself. It was a tiny place that cost me $700 a month.. It was so small that i my entry room was my living room and was also my bed room thanks to a pull out futon. There were two rooms in the back – one too small for an actual bed, where I kept my computer and music gear, and another galley kitchen that was strictly for one person.

I had a hand-built PC rig with an EGA monitor – yes, EGA. I thought it would make sense to try Quicken as my Uncle had been using it for quite some time. I loaded up on Windows 3.1 and off I went, all the way to 2009 with the same file. I must have had some dial-up back then, but I think I had graduated from Prodigy. Maybe i just used the old checkbook.

Now the tech was telling me that my file was probably corrupted, as that what happens with “old” files. I would have to start a new file. I restored a backup and tried an update – no good. i really don’t want to lose this file, as much as for the time investment to set it up but also sentimental reasons,

Next step is to restore a backup from something even older. Hopefully I can recover it!

Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy

Very funny video clip from Conan featuring Louis CK. We do live in an amazing time, and it’s truly funny/sad how we take so much for granted, how impatient we are. As he says, maybe we do need to get back to a simpler time to appreciate what we have.

“It’s going to SPACE, will you give it a SECOND!?”

I Remember When . . .

I don’t think you can write about new hard drives without mentioning your own anecdote that goes something like this “I remember when I bought a 10MB hard drive for my IBM PC back in 1982 . .” blah blah blah.

Well, in fact, I did buy a 10MB hard drive for my IBM and remember hurriedly trying to install it into the chassis. Back then it wasn’t about going from 1TB to 2TB – it was about going from Cassette to Hard Drive!

Ars Technica has a good write up on some new 2TB drives (with obligatory reminiscing).

Mo' Storage

I was surprised to see that I filled up my photo archive drive recently. I was using a Shared folder of My Pictures on my server downstairs, so I was effectively filling up the root hard drive with pix (mostly from my new Nikon D60). Not good!

I was already using two external USB drives - a 70Gb and a 200 Gb. These kinds of purchases fall under my $99 rule - get the best you can for $99. I went out to Costco and saw a WD 500Gb "My Book" for $109. A tad over my $99 rule but a heck of a bargain. I plugged it in  with the USB and power cable and it was quiet and fast. I moved everything over to the 500Gb drive and I will now use the 200Gb as my backup drive, although I need to connect it to my OneCare "hub" PC to do that.

uh oh - the Dell m1330

I opened up the fire red m1330 in the UK, ready for my killer presentation. I hit the button and . . nothin'. I had one dead, expensive notebook on my hands.

I've had it less than a year - great performance and looks, but frankly a bit flaky for stability. Issues included:

• Some BSOD when plugging in USB devices
• Strange screen distortions unless i pressed on the flat panel
• Some "System Repair" issues

Eek. Hard to say it's still my top choice, but frankly what notebook out there really holds up?

I called Dell on Saturday and they showed up at my workplace on Tuesday with a new motherboard and flat panel. He worked in the lobby for about thirty minutes and voila! Good as new?

The Microsoft Business Security System

. . . or something like that. I was chatting with a colleague at work about our kids and online safety. Our rule is no PCs in the bedrooms - all PCs are in plain site in the kitchen area. He had the same rule but now his oldest is 16 and wanted to connect his Ipod Touch to the home WiFi - at that age there's not too much you can do.

He said that he did install some filters once but as his kids began to do research for school they kept getting blocked, so he would have to unblock it after he got home from work, etc. and eventually it became unwieldy.

He did have a clever idea, though. He told his sons when they were pre-teens that he had installed some special Microsoft software, only sold to businesses, that would monitor incoming and outgoing web browsing, email and IM traffic and send him a report every week. Since it was "business software" he figured his kids couldn't ask around to find a way to hack it.

As long as they believe that is the case, you're in good shape.