Alt-This.com - your technology podcast

I admit it. I have turned into a digital music addict. With the death of DRM finally starting to happen and Amazon MP3 putting together an excellent service offering DRM free content, I find that I am buying a lot more music in digital form. I have finally got over the need to have a jewel case and liner notes. This development has made a good portable music player a critical item for me.

Hey everyone,

I have finally made it back from my tradeshow in Orlando. What a nightmare. I'll share all the details with you in episode #13 but let's just say that I pretty much spent more time in airports getting from SFO to Orlando and back than I did at Orlando. It will without a doubt be one of my better Alt-This rants!

We're going to get to work on putting the show together and getting it recorded but saying it's already 5:30PM pacific time on Saturday and I haven't slept in something like 24+ hours the show should miss the normal Saturday launch. Sorry about that!

Yes, you read that right. Viacom has filed a lawsuit against YouTube seeking 1 billion in damages. Viacom is claiming that YouTube has displayed more that 160,000 unauthorized video clips from it's various cable networks. 1 billion dollars is about 60% of YouTube's total worth.

About a week ago I was reading a couple of different articles discussing the accuracy of various anti-virus products in detecting various kinds of advanced threats. I have been a long time AVG Anti-Virus customer and have been very happy with their product. It’s reasonably light weight, scans are speedy and I’ve never had a virus slip through the cracks. It just works. But it’s also in my nature to always want to experiment with other pieces of software.

Microsoft has finally completely and totally lost its mind. We all kind of knew that it was coming but I didn't expect it to be this bad. With each release of Windows and Office we moved a little closer to it. I am currently in the process of evaluating Windows Vista and Office 2007 for my company and that requires looking at all the various editions of these products that Microsoft has unleashed on the world. There are eight, count them, eight different versions of Office 2007 that all include different combinations of applications from the Office System. This is insane.

This blog entry is coming to you from the Windy City. That's right, the return of Alt-This.com is going to be recorded live from Chi-Town. We've already made one recording but I doubt it will ever see the light of day. It's the end result of what happens when you drink entirely too much whiskey on the rocks and then turn on a microphone. Who knows, maybe someday it'll be out there for those of you who can take the insanity. With that said, it was fun and got us going again so get ready for the return podcast soon.

It's time to get back to work. Peace out people. We will be talkin' to you soon.

If you don't have your machine hooked up to an uninterruptible power supply then stop reading this right now and go get one. For those of you who don't have a UPS and don't know what they are you can think of them as a surge protector on steroids. They provide the same protection against power fluctuations that a surge protector does but they also have outlets which are protected by a battery. If the power goes out then the battery instantly kicks on and keeps the machine running for a short period of time so you can safely save your work and shut down.

If you are familiar with these devices and own one to protect your computer take a few minutes and check to make sure the battery is still good. It's one of those things you stick under your desk and forget about. If you want to really give it a good test pull the plug from the wall with your machine on to simulate a power failure. This will give you a good idea of the condition of your battery and the amount of run time you can expect under a normal load. I shouldn't forget about my UPS. I live in California and it's well known that we have our share of power issues. Because of this the battery on my current UPS obviously was not in as good of shape as it should be. Last night I woke up to the horrid alarm noise that my UPS generates when the power goes out. After cursing everything on earth for being woke up at 2:30 in the morning I took a look at my main computer. The power was only out for at max a minute or two. Unfortunately, the battery on my UPS kept my system running for about half that time. I once again thanked the world for auto save as I helplessly watched my machine power down. I didn't lose anything but it did remind me that it's time to buy a new UPS. My old unit just isn't rated strong enough to run the amount of machine I throw at it now. On top of that the battery is old and tired. If you're running a modern machine with multiple hard drives, a powerful graphics card, a power hungry processor, and a 19 plus inch LCD monitor then you're going to want to look for a unit with a VA rating of at least 1200. Many hardware sites will tell you to go quite a bit larger than that with a unit rated 2000VA or so. It's never a bad thing to have additional juice in that battery to keep the machine running longer but in all honesty unless you're planning on sitting in the dark and working on something for 30 or 40 minutes (you're never going to get that kind of time anyway, don't buy into the company published numbers which are always for a light load) save your cash and get a 1000-1200VA rating. And if you are going to sit in the dark and try to finish a level of F.E.A.R in a "race against the clock" manner then please get some help.

I must say that not much about Windows Vista is making me think it's going to be worth the hassle at least initially. When Vista was first announced it sounded like an ambitious move in a new direction that was going to bring all kinds of new functionality to the Windows experience. The end result seems to be more like XP with prettier icons and higher system requirements. There are without a doubt some very useful tools for the network administrator deploying and managing Vista in large scale corporate environments but that doesn’t help the home user or even the power user who has a couple of machines at home out all that much. The "clarification" of the license agreement which limits your license of Vista to one move to a new machine is also a pain in the ass for the power user. Microsoft has completely lost touch with it's more advanced user base and that's a shame because that is the group of people who are out there every day pushing Microsoft products to the masses.