The thing is I want to move all e-mails from one of my domains to Google Apps. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer free edition (or standard edition), which is allowing up to 50 users only, anymore. After finding for the link for Google Apps standard edition for a while, I just found out that Google started moving Apps, GMail, docs, etc. to be paid service only.
Not like Google at all huh? I started wonder whether Google will force everyone paying for used-to-be-free service or not although Google said that it was free before.
However, in this transient state, you still are able to signup for Google Apps: standard edition by this link. It works now. I don’t know how long this link is going to last though and more importantly, how long this free Google Apps lasts. If you are using it, just backing up all your mail data more often. That should do it! =) I just hope that Google would honor free edition as they claimed when we signed up. No new features? that’s not a problem. For me, GMail engine solely is the factor here. I bet most users are the same.
Popularity: 1% [?]
I don’t know if you guys know about this or not, but what I first thought is ThinkVantage System Update was temporarily dropped service due to update or whatever. It’ was turned out to be Lenovo decided to cut TVSU out of ThinkVantage Suite due to the maintenance cost.
However, System Update made its way back by tons of requests. I’m really happy to see it back and it works just fine with Win7 (which I don’t have complete set of ThinkVantage software such as Fingerprint and Active Protection System) but CSS still doesn’t get along with clean install Win7. Oddly upgrading Win7 from Vista, CSS works flawlessly!
This can be either the way to waste Lenovo’s bandwidth or it’s the way to keep the crowd with Thinkpad. But the bottom line is happy customers. You are on the right track, Lenovo!
Download TVSU 3.14.0024
Popularity: 2% [?]
I still work on this question after get my dirty hand on tireless Palm Pre at local Sprint Store. Yeah! Although most of Palm powered devices don’t have any much more attention than any other device on the shelf, Palm Pre is an exception. It, honestly, doesn’t seem like a product from the company with 4 characters like PALM that used to know. Almost all people would like to have hand on such a new flashy device like Palm Pre.
I won’t deny that it feels great in my hand. The rubberized texture on the back does help a lot, but I hate to say the qwerty keyboard is too small & too thin—like Centro which I couldn’t even type comfortably and correctly. When sliding the screen up, I almost lost how to control the device between keyboard and the screen. It’s like keyboard couldn’t do anything to control stuffs and screen is way too far. I wish Pre was taller, had larger screen and used only on-screen keyboard or make the keyboard like what we have on Treo! That would be much better, but with only $199, that’s tough decision! haha
On software side, webOS does give such a nice feeling. Although I hadn’t tried to get to know it much, I feel it has potential to be real successor for Palm OS day, but what I couldn’t figure out is where the zen of Palm. Ease of use? Well, let me tell you one thing, Calendar, and all PIM are only the reason why I still wait for Palm. However, when I made new event for calendar, I had no clue how to get out of that page to the day/week/month view. I have to get to main page, throw the card away and call calendar again. At least, one thing I can say is it’s not that intuitive like what I’m waiting for. Learning curve is definitely helping here, but it’s sad somehow losing all that feeling from this company. Other than not quite intuitive UI like what we have on iPhone, I don’t feel Palm Pre has the edge over iPhone much. Honestly, I don’t like iPhone much, but it still rule mobile’s world.
Time… is the factor here. This is only first time—10 mins perhaps. I might not know the OS and the phone enough to say that it’s worse than iPhone, but the smaller screen, below-par keyboard, not any notification besides screen doesn’t help Palm Pre cuts the edge over iPhone. We’ll see how 3rd generation of iPhone looks like. Then I definitely make a decision whether I will be Palm fanboy like old days or turn myself to be cool carrying iPhone.
I still wish webOS found the way to have PDA-style device on its own. I would buy it in matter of second for sure =)
Popularity: 2% [?]
This is definitely not the breaking news. Microsoft just decided to change the word, Live, to “Bing” I don’t know if Bing is so much better word or anything. Will Live suite which is great change its name to Bing suite as well? They claimed that Bing uses new algorithm or whatever to achieve better performance; we probably don’t care either. What we care is whether “our keyword” can generate the result we want or not.
After trying for a while, I don’t see anything much interesting or persuasive enough to convince me that it’s much more than a re-brand & putting useless features like category, search history. I honestly don’t know if you feel the same way, to me, search is built to destroy any classified, categorized data since if you do arrange stuffs neatly, you don’t need search, but if you do need “search, “ then you have no need of organizing them [that includes others’ stuffs which is categorized in the different ways of your brain]
In short, if Bing couldn’t change attitude about putting more and more bots for much larger coverage, like Google, and try to get most out of those huge database, they are not going to be even close to the first choice. Don’t think Google is the only competitor here. Yahoo, which gives the results much different than Google, might be much better alternative to Google rather than old archive search like Bing.
ps. I really feel sorry for Microsoft that they have soo much potential in every ways, but they couldn’t come up with the ace solution to the market. They might need to re-organize or something to aim their goals much more efficient. For instance, if they happen to amalgamate all E-mail clients’ teams such as Windows Live Mail, Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Outlook 2007, into only 1 e-mail client—might be 2 sub-divisions: web-based & desktop-based. I believe they can have GMail-equivalent easily. But, they are dividing into small groups to achieve in everything as far as the products go. Consequently they just divide themselves… and think of it as a good plan. Hurr what a waste..
Popularity: 2% [?]
Anyone that knows me knows that I don’t care having antivirus on my PC since most of the time you know how virus get into your computer. Network?, flash drive? or whatsoever. If it’s severe one, there is always a separate tool to check and kill it. That’s the way I choose.
However, with some of my wrack nerving clients, they just prefer to have something make them feel more secure although that’s slow them down. Most of the time, I recommend free one such as AVG, Comodo, etc. These anti-viruses works pretty well according to many people, but after a while, I still have to do cleaning up all infected PC with all free or paid tool installed. What the heck? What do they do really? Don’t they have recent virus signature? I don’t know. Signature/definition update issue might be one of them.
Recently I found our that Panda Could Antivirus, it’s still BETA last time I check, and it will likely to be free. What distinguish this antivirus from others is they loading definition on-the-fly while scanning. I am not sure if they send some info to the server for scanning or just downloading new signature, but it works to me. This can kill the hidden virus that Comodo Antivirus (installed) can’t in only 1st times of full scan. I don’t think they do on-access stuff which is good, no waste resource. You can just go do full scan once in a while. That should do the trick.
It, nonetheless, has a cons as well. It does take forever at 99%, but it is known issue and should be fixed in next release. Go check it out! at Panda Cloud Antivirus
ps. I still stop it all the time on my system unless I really want to scan anything =) This way works for me. It left only 1MB or so while turning off and about the same while on, but will consume like regular apps (20MB+) while scanning =)
added 2009-05-15: my worst fear happened. Panda deleted almost any of my tools, e.g. Cain and Abel and all kind of that stuff -_- darn it. That’s why I never like having Antivirus on my machine :’(
Popularity: 3% [?]
I don’t know if anyone feel like I do, but I prefer UPS to FedEx any day! Well, there is nothing wrong with FedEx though. It’s just funny to know that they define the service differently practically—I have no clue what they mean literally anyway.
From my experience, UPS 3-day service means the box needs full 3-day time to propagate from west coast to east coast and vice versa. If the destination is shorter than that, it will take less time. simple idea, isn’t it? For example, from shipping from NJ to NY takes only 1 day.
If shipping from NJ to NH, take 2 days.
However, FedEx defines 2-day 3-day service differently. What they really mean is no matter how far the package goes it will take time as you choose. For 2-day shipping, it takes 2-day for either shipping from west coast to east coast or vice versa or even NJ to NY. Unfortunately, but true. In case of NJ to NY, they probably decide that it will be wrong if they ship sooner than customer wants, then they just leave stuff in warehouse, let it relax a bit.
I can’t say that FedEx is worse than UPS though. They both achieve the goal, with a bit different approach =) Nonetheless, what I would love to know is what either UPS or FedEx will compensate if they can’t make it deliver on time? things went to wrong route, for example. I had that once in a while, but for such a small claim like this. Would they compensate anything for what they promise? If anyone has any experience about this, please share since they (and I too) never seems to care in my cases.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Although all ThinkVantage softwares are likely to be just redundancy from Windows stock, System Update is one of the best ThinkVantage software provided for Thinkpad. It basically automatically finds all necessary drivers and apps (of course within ThinkVantage suite) that need to be updated or installed and set all we want up by single-click. It works on and off sometimes but, 70%-80% chance, this helps save quite a lot of time spending on IBM support site. I don’t blame their unorganized site by any mean since there are tons of update every week. It’s just hard to be that organize and up-to-date at the same time.
By the way, I COULD NOT UPDATE ANYTHING with System UPDATE recently. What they tell us is only this pop-up?!? Well, May is coming—tomorrow!!. I hope it would turn out to be something very good for us, Lenovo!!! Don’t just refresh new UI like all new ThinkVantage but only a few improvement then. I don’t care if that looks cool; I want it to work well.
I’m PC Ad: I’m not cool enough to be Mac. That’s why I’m using Thinkpad, perhaps LOL
Popularity: 3% [?]
While most video streaming web sites have moved to flash based, some stuck with WMP. Then the problem is likely to be more complicated than just installing newer version. If you have the problem like no video & audio, but it says buffering then “ready”, then the way that might help is forcing WMP to use HTTP protocol only and all multicast by following procedures.
1. open WMP
2. Menu: tools > options (if you can find it, click "alt" on the keyboard)
3. Tab: Network
uncheck RTSP/*, but leave HTTP checked under protocol section
check "allow to receive multicast stream" below.
4. Done!
happy watching whatever you want =)
Note: if you are one of Thaitv.tv followers and have this issue, this definitely helps.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Category:
June 28, 2009
