Adventures & experiences in contemporary technology
Under this heading, I have collected my listings of places on the web where you can purchase computing, mobile telephony and photographic equipment. As per the title, these apply to the U.K. because I have yet to import anything from beyond the shores of the island where I am writing these words. While I cannot claim to have patronised all of the emporia that are listed, the hope is that there’s enough there to enable some price checking and sourcing of goods that otherwise may not have wide availability. You never know but they even might come in useful.
As you might have guessed from the names, we are not just limiting ourselves to computers, phones and cameras but include the accessories too. In fact, since the explosion of mobile telephony and digital photography, a major crossover has development between formerly very separate business areas. The fact that many mobile phones carry the same processing power as desktop PC’s did not so many years over a decade ago rather forces the issue.
When film held sway, photography was a very analogue affair with most of the magic being made in the camera and in printing labs, including personal darkrooms. A scanner was an essential item for digitising any images. Film still lives on but the convenience of digital capture has won me over, particularly with its thrusting the processing back on my shoulders instead of paying someone else to do it. That costs time instead of money but the latter quantity is less plentiful this times. Just as my interest in desktop computing continues to persist into an age when everything is getting more and more mobile, the art of photography hasn’t been automated out of existence because it always has been the photographer that was the most important actor in the discipline.
Then, there’s the upsurge in mobile computing. While I may have been late to the game with my purchase of a BlackBerry and an Asus Eee PC in the last few months, it’s not unclear where things are going with the gadgets becoming more and more appealing. Now, it’s hard to believe that it was just under a decade ago when most mobile phones were for making and taking voice calls along with sending text messages. Yes, PDA’s were about but they didn’t seem to be as commonplace as smartphones are today. Still, it seems that mobile phone technology is going to continue evolving so it’ll be interesting to see where things go, especially with the advent of cloud computing.
With all of the changes that are in train, desktop computing is likely to continue in one form or another. We may be in the heart of a technological revolution brought on by mobile and cloud computing but there’s still something more productive about sitting at a desktop and working a machine with a mouse and keyboard. My hunch is that desktop computing is going to itself alter over the next few years with touchscreen monitors already becoming available. That development could get interesting if combined on a full specification laptop that rarely spends any time away from being plugged into a power socket.
All in all, it feels as if we are moving through a period of massive change in the world around us after a period of what felt like prolonged stability. Even in an economic downturn, it feels as if all hell has broken loose in the world of technology with old certainties being overthrown and it looks as if it is going to stay that way for a while. There may be a time of consolidation yet but the trick at the moment is control any temptations until we find any use for new shiny things that attract massive attention. Then, the listings that I have collected here might have a use.
There are times when I just need to share some links outside the fleeting environment of Twitter, and this is where they might appear. The practice is very much in the spirit of the original weblog idea when it was about link sharing and not about writing down one’s thoughts as it subsequently became before sharing of photos, videos and other multimedia content became a mainstay of (legal) sharing for some people.
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How to stop websites from sending Bitdefender Safepay notifications
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So you want to build your own open source ChatGPT-style chatbotâŚ
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Set Up SSH Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) on Debian 11 Server
13:51 March 9, 2023
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WordPress 4.6 Admin Font Change Fix â How To Restore Open Sans Font?
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Why is the Filter Gallery Greyed Out in Photoshop and How to Fix it
10:18 February 7, 2023
11:00 January 27, 2023
How to take a full-page screenshot with a hidden Chrome shortcut
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Proton Mail Bridge Microsoft Outlook for Windows 2019 setup guide
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How to Upload or Download Files/Directories Using sFTP in Linux
19:50 October 29, 2022
19:49 October 29, 2022
17:00 October 27, 2022
[FIX] Memory integrity due to Incompatible drivers cannot be enabled in Windows 11
19:20 October 25, 2022
How can I redirect and rewrite my URLs with a .htaccess file?
13:49 October 25, 2022
How to change the maximum number of IMAP connections in Mozilla Thunderbird
20:49 October 23, 2022
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Secure Tutanota desktop clients for Linux, Windows and Mac OS
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How to Access the Hidden Symbols on Your Android Phoneâs Keyboard
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Enable or Disable Automatic Sign-in at Startup in Windows 11
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4 Ways to Embed User Privacy & Data Security in Your Business
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How to automatically decline meeting invites from specific people in Outlook
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What is a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)?
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How to Reduce Eric Jones Spam (and all the other Contact Form Spam)
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Handling False Positives with the OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set
11:10 June 14, 2022
How To Use a Multimeter to Measure Voltage, Current and More
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Show Amount Of Posts, Pages, Categories, Tags, Comments For WordPress Themes
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How to Develop a WordPress Theme from Scratch â Beginners Guide
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Count the number of posts in the custom post type in WordPress
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How To Configure Apache HTTP with MPM Event and PHP-FPM on Ubuntu 18.04
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Protecting WordPress with Open Source Web Application Firewall ModSecurity
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How To Configure Nginx to Use Custom Error Pages on Ubuntu 14.04
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How To Install Linux, Nginx, MySQL, PHP (LEMP Stack) on Ubuntu 18.04
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Comments on a static website? That’s possible with utteranc.es!
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Tutorial: How to Add Self-hosted Comments to Your Static Site
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Build a Search Bar for Your Hugo Blog With a JSON Index and Some Vanilla JS
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How the Bootstrap 4 Grid Works
This also helps with understanding Bootstrap 5 as well. That was something that I discovered while porting a website from WordPress to Hugo.
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Overview of the best commenting systems for your static website
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How to Enable clipboard and folder sharing in Qemu/KVM on Windows Guest
08:59 November 5, 2021
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Error: No CurrentVersion entry in Software/JavaSoft registry
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How to Change the Default Browser in Windows 11, Even for Widgets and Search
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How to Replace the Start Menu in Windows 11
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How To Convert VirtualBox Disk Image (VDI) and img to Qcow2 format
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How to Enable HTTP/2 in Apache Web Server on Ubuntu and Debian
10:29 October 21, 2021
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15:46 October 19, 2021
How to Run Windows 11 on a USB Drive (and Take it With You)
How to Bypass Windows 11’s TPM Requirement and Upgrade from Windows 10
13:12 October 12, 2021
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Enable Virtualization-based Protection of Code Integrity in Microsoft Windows
15:28 October 8, 2021
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Whitelist an IP using WAF -- ModSecurity Whitelisting IP addresses
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How to Resolve âTemporary failure in name resolutionâ Issue
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Integrating AbuseIPDB with Fail2Ban -- Automatically Report Bad IPs
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16:58 August 31, 2021
How to backup and load Cron Jobs from a File in Linux and UNIX? Crontab Command Example
16:58 August 31, 2021
A Beginnerâs Guide on How to Use Nano Text Editor in Linux
14:19 August 27, 2021
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Webmin: One big drawback to using this data centre management tool
10:32 August 13, 2021
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How to prevent the “are you sure you want to leave this page?” prompt on Facebook?
18:05 August 12, 2021
Extending a Logical Volume on a Linux Virtual, Cloud or CloudNX server
11:41 August 11, 2021
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18:00 July 27, 2021
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Change user password in MySQL 5.7 with âplugin: auth_socketâ
11:03 July 23, 2021
How to enable AMD Virtualization on the Aorus X570 Motherboard
09:30 July 15, 2021
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How to install Windows 11 Insider preview on unsupported devices
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dbxcli: A command line tool for Dropbox users and team admins
09:00 May 27, 2021
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How to stop loading Microsoft Edge processes at startup on Windows 10
13:50 May 16, 2021
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Connecting to Microsoft Exchange Calendar from Mozilla Thunderbird
13:03 January 27, 2021
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Using mod_security2 with WordPress
WordPress â Mod_security problems with posts and comments fixed
17:59 December 14, 2020
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20:53 December 6, 2020
14:51 November 23, 2020
 How to force your computer to download the Windows 10 May 2020 Update
14:44 November 11, 2020
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Everything you need to know about DNS -- Plus a list of free public DNS servers
12:27 September 18, 2020
Securing DNS across all of my devices with Pi-Hole + DNS-over-HTTPS + 1.1.1.1
10:47 September 18, 2020
16:11 September 17, 2020
17:04 September 11, 2020
Improve Firefox Performance on Linux by Turning WebRender On
16:46 September 9, 2020
How to Embed an External RSS Feed in WordPress Posts via Shortcode
13:43 July 31, 2020
19:03 July 18, 2020
13:43 July 13, 2020
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09:33 June 16, 2020
Linux Mint 20 Blocks Snap App Installs, So Hereâs the Workaround
09:30 June 16, 2020
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09:31 June 4, 2020
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10:35 February 20, 2020
Change User’s MySQL Password | Reset MySQL Root Password Guide
12:38 February 19, 2020
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How to move docker data directory to another location on Ubuntu
09:45 February 14, 2020
The Complete Guide to âuseraddâ Command in Linux â 15 Practical Examples
09:43 February 14, 2020
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20:30 February 12, 2020
How to Optimize and Compress JPEG or PNG Images in Linux Command Line
17:41 January 29, 2020
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At the time of writing, this website uses an older version of TLS so you may see browser messages on visiting it. Hopefully, that will get sorted since it looks out for a security tool website.
20:57 January 16, 2020
12:19 January 15, 2020
12:17 January 15, 2020
The most important steps to take to make an Apache server more secure
12:17 January 15, 2020
How to Implement Security HTTP Headers to Prevent Vulnerabilities?
12:16 January 15, 2020
21:38 December 31, 2019
21:37 December 31, 2019
14:41 December 24, 2019
14:24 December 24, 2019
How To Protect an Apache Server with Fail2Ban on Ubuntu 14.04
This may refer to an older Ubuntu version but the advice contained in the article remains relevant to current ones. In fact, I have used it to harden some VPS systems that I have. Now, I only need to see what impact this action might have.
13:12 December 23, 2019
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10:55 June 8, 2019
How to disable Sign-in screen acrylic (blur) background on Windows 10 May 2019 Update
11:47 May 22, 2019
11:39 January 30, 2019
Psensor â A Graphical Hardware Temperature Monitoring Tool for Linux
13:34 January 29, 2019
20:03 December 8, 2018
How to commit changes to a docker image
Five Ways to Slim Your Docker Images
09:59 December 8, 2018
09:58 December 8, 2018
14:04 December 6, 2018
15:53 December 5, 2018
Show the slide number and total number of slides on every PowerPoint slide
21:28 December 4, 2018
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18:03 November 26, 2018
 Configure Postfix to Send Mail Using Gmail and Google Apps on Debian or Ubuntu
18:02 November 26, 2018
Configure Postfix to Send Mail Using an External SMTP Server
18:01 November 26, 2018
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How to Setup a Complete Mail Server (Postfix) using âSquirrelMailâ (Webmail) on Ubuntu/Debian
14:51 November 25, 2018
11:43 November 25, 2018
How to Configure WordPress to Use SMTP For Sending Emails Tutorial
11:42 November 25, 2018
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11:39 November 25, 2018
 How to Send Email in WordPress using the Gmail SMTP Server
11:38 November 25, 2018
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Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS Using .htaccess File: Step by Step
21:45 November 22, 2018
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apt-get install linux-image-extra getting âW: mdadm: /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf defines no arrays.â
12:04 November 17, 2018
15:40 November 4, 2018
Here are the 13 most useful Mac shortcuts that will help you do everything faster
11:02 October 21, 2018
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16:12 September 20, 2018
Use an Easy PowerShell Command to Search Files for Information
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Archive area of old releases of Java for those who need them.
Every week, I get an email newsletter from Woody’s Office Watch. This was something to which I started subscribing in the 1990’s but I took a break from it for a good while for reasons that I cannot recall and returned to it only in recent years. This week’s issue featured a list of online paraphrasing tools that are part of what is offered by Quillbot, Paraphraser, Dupli Checker and Pre Post Seo. Each got their own reviews in the newsletter so I will just outline other features in this posting.
In Quillbot’s case, the toolkit includes a grammar checker, summary generator, and citation generator. In addition to the online offering, there are extensions for Microsoft Word, Google Chrome, and Google Docs. In addition to the free version, a paid subscription option is available.
In spite of the name, Paraphraser is about more than what the title purports to do. There is article rewriting, plagiarism checking, grammar checking and text summarisation. Because there is no premium version, the offering is funded by advertising and it will not work with an ad blocker enabled. The mention of plagiarism suggests a perhaps murkier side to writing that cuts both ways: one is to avoid copying other work while another is the avoidance of groundless accusations of copying.
It was appear that the main role of Dupli Checker is to avoid accusations of plagiarism by checking what you write yet there is a grammar checker as well as a paraphrasing tool on there too. When I tried it, the English that it produced looked a little convoluted and there is a lack of fluency in what is written on its website as well. Together with a free offering that is supported by ads that were not blocked by my ad blocker, there are premium subscriptions too.
In web publishing, they say that content is king so the appearance of an option using the acronym for Search Engine Optimisation in it name may not be as strange as it might as first glance. There are numerous tools here with both free and paid tiers of service. While paraphrasing and plagiarism checking get top billing in the main menu on the home page, further inspection reveals that there is a lot more to check on this site.
In writing, inspiration is a fleeting and ephemeral quantity so anything that helps with this has to be of interest. While any rewriting of initial content may appear less smooth than the starting point, any help with the creation process cannot go amiss. For that reason alone, I might be tempted to try these tools from time to time and they might assist with proof reading as well because that can be a hit and miss affair for some.
For someone with an more than passing interest in technology, it may come as a surprise to you to learn that mobile telephony isn’t one of my strong points at all. That’s all the more marked when you cast your eye back over the developments in mobile telephone technology in recent years. Admittedly, until I subscribed to RSS feeds from the likes of TechRadar, the computing side of the area didn’t pass my way very much at all. That act has has alerted me to the now unmissable fact that mobile phones have become portable small computers, regardless of whether it is an offering from Apple or not. After the last few years, no one can say that things haven’t got really interesting.
In contrast to all the excitement, I only got my first phone in 2000 and stuck with it since and that was despite its scuffs and scratches along with its battery life troubles. Part of the reason for this is a certain blindness induced by having the thing on a monthly contract. As that is not sufficient to hide away the option of buying a phone on its own, then there’s the whole pay as you go arena too. The level of choice is such that packages such as those mentioned gain more prominence and potentially stop things in their tracks but I surmounted the perceived obstacles to buy a Nokia 1661 online from the Carphone Warehouse and collect it from the nearest store. The new replacement for my old Motorola is nothing flashy. Other phones may have nice stuff like an on-board camera or web access but I went down the route of sticking with basic functionality, albeit in a modern package with a colour screen. Still, for around ÂŁ35, I got something that adds niceties like an alarm clock and a radio to the more bread and butter operations like making and taking phone calls and text messaging. Pay as you go may have got me the phone for less but I didn’t need a new phone number since I planned to slot in my old SIM card anyway; incidentally, the latter operation was a doddle once I got my brain into gear.
Now that I have replaced my mobile handset like I would for my land-line phone, I am left wondering why I dallied over the task for as long as I have. It may be that the combination of massive choice and a myriad of packages that didn’t appeal to me stalled things. With an increased awareness of the technology and options like buying a SIM card on its own, I can buy with a little more confidence now. Those fancier phones may tempt but I’ll be treating them as a nice to have rather than essential purchases. Saying all of this, the old handset isn’t going into the bin just yet though. It may be worn and worthless but its tri-band capabilities (I cannot vouch for the Nokia on this front) may make it a useful back up for international travel. The upgrade has given me added confidence for trying again when needs must but there is no rush and that probability of my developing an enthusiasm for fancy handsets is no higher.
When it comes to the technology that I carry with me on trips away, I have begun to start weighing devices on my kitchen scales. The results are a little revealing. The HP Pavilion dm5 that has gone with me to Ireland and other places weighs between 2.5 and 3 kg while my Apple iPad Mini 2 comes in at 764 grams. My 12.9″ iPad Pro with its Logitech keyboard weighs between these at 110 to 1200 grams. The idea of consolidating computing devices for travel has been discussed on here before now and the main thing stopping my just going with the iPad Pro was the viewing of photos without filling up its 32 GB of storage space.
Since then, I just may have found a workaround and it is another gadget, this time weighing only a few hundred grams: a 1 TB WD My Passport Wireless portable hard drive. Aside from having a SD card slot that allows the automatic backup of photos, it also can connect with tablets and phones using WiFi broadband.
It is the WD My Cloud app that makes the connections to mobile devices useful and it works smoothly on iOS and Android devices too. Nevertheless, there is more functionality on the latter ones such as DNG file support and an added slide show feature that works with JPEG files. Both of these are invaluable for viewing photos and I feel a little short-changed that they are not available on iOS. Hopefully, that will get resolved sooner rather than later.
Thankfully, my Pentax K5 II DSLR camera can be persuaded to save DNG and JPEG files simultaneously so that they can be viewed full screen on both types of devices without having to transfer them onto the tablet first as you would with Apple’s SD card reader. Usefully, that gets around my oversight in buying iPads with only 32 GB of storage each. That now looks like a false economy given what I am trying now.
Such is the weight difference, just taking along my Apple iPad Pro and the WD device will save around 1 kg and there is less fuss at airport security screening too. While my HTC phone would suffice for seeing photos as slide shows, I am wondering if my battered Google Nexus 9 could come too. The only dilemma then would be how to pack things since I am not sure how a large iPad screen would seem to cabin crew or other passengers during take off and landing. That makes using the Nexus 9 onboard more of a proposition and the iPad might go into the hold luggage to make life a little easier. Still, that choice is a minor concern now that I can try travelling overseas without a laptop to see how I get along.
Though my main home PC runs Linux Mint, I do like to have the facility to use Windows software from time to time and virtualisation has allowed me to continue doing that. For a good while, it was a Windows 7 guest within a VirtualBox virtual machine and, before that, one running Windows XP fulfilled the same role. However, it did feel as if things were running slower in VirtualBox than once might have been the case and I jumped ship to VMware Player. It may be proprietary and closed source but it is free of charge and has been doing what was needed. A subsequent recent upgrade of video driver on the host operating system allowed the enabling of a better graphical environment in the Windows 7 guest.
Instability
However, there were issues with stability and I lost the ability to flit from the VM window to the Linux desktop at will with the system freezing on me and needing a reboot. Working in Windows 7 using full screen mode avoided this but it did feel as I was constrained to working in a Windows machine whenever I did so. The graphics performance was imperfect too with screening refreshing being very blocky with some momentary scrambling whenever I opened the Start menu. Others would not have been as patient with that as I was though there was the matter of an expensive Photoshop licence to be guarded too.
In hindsight, a bit of pruning could have helped. An example would have been driver housekeeping in the form of removing VirtualBox Guest Additions because they could have been conflicting with their VMware counterparts. For some reason, those thoughts entered my mind and I was pondering another more expensive option instead.
Considering NAS & Windows/Linux Networking
That would have taken the form of setting aside a PC for running Windows 7 and having a NAS for sharing files between it and my Linux system. In fact, I did get to exploring what a four bay QNAP TS-412 would offer me and realised that you cannot put normal desktop hard drives into devices like that. For a while, it looked as if it would be a matter of getting drives bundled with the device or acquiring enterprise grade disks so as to main the required continuity of operation. The final edition of PC Plus highlighted another one though: the Western Digital Red range. These are part way been desktop and enterprise classifications and have been developed in association with NAS makers too.
Looking at the NAS option certainly became an education but it has exited any sort of wish list that I have. After all, there is the cost of such a setup and it’s enough to get me asking if I really need such a thing. The purchase of a Netgear FS 605 ethernet switch would have helped incorporate it but there has been no trouble sorting alternative uses for it since it bumps up the number of networked devices that I can have, never a bad capability to have. As I was to find, there was a less expensive alternative that became sufficient for my needs.
In-situ Windows 8 Upgrade
Microsoft have been making available evaluation copies of Windows 8 Enterprise that last for 90 days before expiring. One is in my hands has been running faultlessly in a VMware virtual machine for the past few weeks. That made me wonder if upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8 help with my main Windows VM problems. Being a curious risk-taking type I decided to answer the question for myself using the ÂŁ24.99 Windows Pro upgrade offer that Microsoft have been running for those not needing a disk up front; they need to pay ÂŁ49.99 but you can get one afterwards for an extra ÂŁ12.99 and ÂŁ3.49 postage if you wish, a slightly cheaper option. There also was a time cost in that it occupied a lot of a weekend on me but it seems to have done what was needed so it was worth the outlay.
Given the element of risk, Photoshop was deactivated to be on the safe side. That wasn’t the only pre-upgrade action that was needed because the Windows 8 Pro 32-bit upgrade needs at least 16 GB before it will proceed. Of course, there was the matter of downloading the installer from the Microsoft website too. This took care of system evaluation and paying for the software as well as the actual upgrade itself.
The installation took a few hours with virtual machine reboots along the way. Naturally, the licence key was needed too as well as the selection of a few options though there weren’t many of these. Being able to carry over settings from the pre-exisiting Windows 7 instance certainly helped with this and with making the process smoother too. No software needed reinstatement and it doesn’t feel as if the system has forgotten very much at all, a successful outcome.
Post-upgrade Actions
Just because I had a working Windows 8 instance didn’t mean that there wasn’t more to be done. In fact, it was the post-upgrade sorting that took up more time than the actual installation. For one thing, my digital mapping software wouldn’t work without .Net Framework 3.5 and turning on the operating system feature form the Control Panel fell over at the point where it was being downloaded from the Microsoft Update website. Even removing Avira Internet Security after updating it to the latest version had no effect and it was a finding during the Windows 8 system evaluation process. The solution was to mount the Windows 8 Enterprise ISO installation image that I had and issue the following command from a command prompt running with administrative privileges (it’s all one line though that’s wrapped here):
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /Source:d:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess
For sake of assurance regarding compatibility, Avira has been replaced with Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security. The Avira licence won’t go to waste since I have another another home in mind for it. Removing Avira without crashing Windows 8 proved impossible though and necessitating booting Windows 8 into Safe Mode. Because of much faster startup times, that cannot be achieved with a key press at the appropriate moment because the time window is too short now. One solution is to set the Safe Boot tickbox in the Boot tab of Msconfig (or System Configuration as it otherwise calls itself) before the machine is restarted. There may be others but this was the one that I used. With Avira removed, clearing the same setting and rebooting restored normal service.
Dealing with a Dual Personality
One observer has stated that Windows 8 gives you two operating systems for the price of one: the one in the Start screen and the one on the desktop. Having got to wanting to work with one at a time, I decided to make some adjustments. Adding Classic Shell got me back a Start menu and I left out the Windows Explorer (or File Explorer as it is known in Windows 8) and Internet Explorer components. Though Classic Shell will present a desktop like what we have been getting from Windows 7 by sweeping the Start screen out of the way for you, I found that this wasn’t quick enough for my liking so I added Skip Metro Suite to do this and it seemed to do that a little faster. The tool does more than sweeping the Start screen out of the way but I have switched off these functions. Classic Shell also has been configured so the Start screen can be accessed with a press of Windows key but you can have it as you wish. It has updated too so that boot into the desktop should be faster now. As for me, I’ll leave things as they are for now. Even the possibility of using Windows’ own functionality to go directly to the traditional desktop will be left untested while things are left to settle. Tinkering can need a break.
Outcome
After all that effort, I now have a seemingly more stable Windows virtual machine running Windows 8. Flitting between it and other Linux desktop applications has not caused a system freeze so far and that was the result that I wanted. There now is no need to consider having separate Windows and Linux PC’s with a NAS for sharing files between them so that option is well off my wish-list. There are better uses for my money.
Not everyone has had my experience though because I saw a report that one user failed to update a physical machine to Windows 8 and installed Ubuntu instead; they were a Linux user anyway even if they used Fedora more than Ubuntu. It is possible to roll back from Windows 8 to the previous version of Windows because there is a windows.old directory left primarily for that purpose. However, that may not help you if you have a partially operating system that doesn’t allow you to do just that. In time, I’ll remove it using the Disk Clean-up utility by asking it to remove previous Windows installations or running File Explorer with administrator privileges. Somehow, the former approach sounds the safer.
What About Installing Afresh?
While there was a time when I went solely for upgrades when moving from one version of Windows to the next, the annoyance of the process got to me. If I had known that installing the upgrade twice onto a computer with a clean disk would suffice, it would have saved me a lot. Staring from Windows 95 (from the days when you got a full installation disk with a PC and not the rescue media that we get now) and moving through a sequence of successors not only was time consuming but it also revealed the limitations of the first in the series when it came to supporting more recent hardware. It was enough to have me buying the full retailed editions of Windows XP and Windows 7 when they were released; the latter got downloaded directly from Microsoft. These were retail versions that you could move from one computer to another but Windows 8 will not be like that. In fact, you will need to get its System Builder edition from a reseller and that can only be used on one machine. It is the merging of the former retail and OEM product offerings.
What I have been reading is that the market for full retail versions of Windows was not a big one anyway. However, it was how I used to work as you have read above and it does give you a fresh system. Most probably get Windows with a new PC and don’t go building them from scratch like I have done for more than a decade. Maybe the System Builder version would apply to me anyway and it appears to be intended for virtual machine use as well as on physical ones. More care will be needed with those licences by the looks of things and I wonder what needs not to be changed so as not to invalidate a licence. After all, making a mistake might cost between ÂŁ75 and ÂŁ120 depending on the edition.
Final Thoughts
So far Windows 8 is treating me well and I have managed to bend to my will too, always a good thing to be able to say. In time, it might be that a System Builder copy could need buying yet but I’ll leave well alone for now. Though I needed new security software, the upgrade still saved me money over a hardware solution to my home computing needs and I have a backup disk on order from Microsoft too. That I have had to spend some time settling things was a means of learning new things for me but others may not be so patient and, with Windows 7 working well enough for most, you have to ask if it’s only curious folk like me who are taking the plunge. Still, the dramatic change has re-energised the PC world in an era when smartphones and tablets have made so much of the running recently. That too is no bad thing because an unchanging technology is one that dies and there are times when big changes are needed, as much as they upset some folk. For Microsoft, this looks like one of them and it’ll be interesting to see where things go from here for PC technology.
I recently updated the icon that appears beside this blog’s address in the address bar and bookmarks menus of some browsers. I gave it a go in GIMP but I seemed to get no joy. I pottered out on the web to discover what I might have done wrong only to find Dynamic Drive offering online favicon.ico creation. Out of curiosity, I decided to give the thing a whirl and download the result to upload onto my web server. GIF’s, JPG’s PNG’s and BMP’s with a size less than 150 KB are accepted and it did work for me.
When I start to lose interest in the features in a magazine that I regularly buy, then it’s a matter of time before I stop buying the magazine altogether. Such a predicament is facing PC Plus, a magazine that I been buying every month over the last ten years. The fate has already befallen titles like Web Designer, Amateur Photographer and Trail, all of which I now buy sporadically. Returning to PC Plus, I get the impression that it feels more of a lightweight these days. What Future Publishing has been doing over the last decade is add titles to its portfolio that take actually from its long established stalwart; Linux Format and .Net are two that come to mind and there are titles covering Windows Vista and computer music as well. Being a sucker for punishment, I did pick up this month’s PC Plus and the issue is as good an example of the malaise as any. Reviews, once a mainstay of the title, are now less prominent than they were. In place of comparison tests, we now find discussions of topics like hardware acceleration with some reviews mixed in. Topics such as robotics and artificial intelligence do rear their heads in feature articles and I cannot say that I have a great deal of time for such futurology. The tutorials section is still there but has been hived off into a separate mini-magazine and I am not so sure that it has escaped the lightweight revolution. All this is leading me to dump PC Plus in favour of PC Pro from Dennis Publishing. This feels reassuringly more heavyweight and, while the basic format has remained unchanged over the years, it still managed to remain fresh. Reviews, of both software and hardware, are very much in evidence and it manages to have those value-adding feature articles; this month, digital photography and rip-off Britain come under the spotlight. Add the Real Word Computing section and it all makes a good read in these times of behemoths like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe delivering new things on the technology front. I don’t know if I have changed but PC Pro does seem better than PC Plus these days.
This is a list that I want to build up over time and I am going to limit it to the U.K. for now. As should be apparent from any commentary that I have included, I have dealt with a few of the retailers that are listed below so I hope that it comes in useful.
My biggest purchase from this Guernsey-based lot was a Canon EOS 10D body that heralded the start of my journey into the world of digital photography at the beginning of 2005. There was a time when I was wont to buy film from them too, along with other bits and pieces but I then turned to Mailshots in Stoke-on-Trent for similar pricing and quicker delivery; it often took weeks for things to arrive from Guernsey after purchase.
Prior to my entry into the world of digital photography, this lot became a port of call for several pre-owned film cameras. A Minolta X-700 came from there in 2002 as did compatible Sigma lenses and a flash gun. During 2004, I traded in my Canon EOS 300 for an EOS 30 that they had on sale and an EOS 50E was acquired as a second body. A piece of fooling resulting from a lapse of concentration while on a visit to Harris in August has meant that the 50E has been pressed into service as my main film camera on any outings; it’s always good to have a spare and prices these days are more tempting than when I was buying second-hand equipment.
This is a name in photographic retailing that has been brought back from the dead. Before its collapse, it was the major retailer in Britain’s town centres and there was a branch in Macclesfield. However, the focus is more on online sales now with there only being a small network of city centre stores like the one on Market Street in Manchester. Having Jessops back is no bad thing and I wish them well for it was at a branch in Stockport that I bought my first-ever SLR, a Canon EOS 300, in July 2001. Purchases of Sigma lenses followed: a 70-300 mm one in Stockport and a 28-135 mm in Manchester. Admittedly, the latter of these saw more use than the former, but that always happens to me: I seem to be a one body, one lens man most of the time and it is only the prospect of a lost in quality that seems to keep me away from using super-zoom lenses.
It seems to have been Sigma lenses for my Pentax DSLR’s that I have been buying from these people. The first was an 18-125 mm offering that is the main one that I use and next came a 50-200 mm one that extends my photographic range further into the telephoto region. That I made the second purchase from them may surprise some given that there was a lengthy wait for the first one but I may have asked for a less common item and I allowed for this. The 50-200 mm lens was a far more timely arrival and there may be more purchases from them yet, subject to my actually having a need to do so.
A card reader and SD cards have been what makes up the custom that I have given this bunch. Delivery from the Isle of Man is quicker than from Jersey but you do incur additional charges even if you get that for which you are paying.
Formerly known as Warehouse Express, this operation has occasionally tempted me with promising goods at appealing prices. In the early days, a Sekonic light meter came from them but they now are a first port of call when pondering the prospect of a photographic purchase. Various cameras, lenses, filters and bags have been sourced there over the years.
For all the world, it looks like Microsoft has mined a concept from a not often recalled series of Windows: 3.x. Then, we had a Program Manager for starting all our applications with no sign of a Start Menu. That came with Windows 95 and I cannot anyone mourning the burying of the Program Manager interface either. It was there in Windows 95 if you knew where to look and I do remember starting an instance, possibly out of curiosity.
Every Windows user seems to have taken to the Start Menu regardless of how big they grow when you install a lot of software on your machine. It didn’t matter that Windows NT got it later than Windows 9x ones either; NT 3.51 has the Program Manager too and it was NT 4 that got the then new interface that has been developed and progressed in no less than four subsequent versions of Windows (2000, XP, Vista & 7). Maybe it was because computing was the preserve of fewer folk that the interchange brought little if any sign of a backlash. The zeitgeist of the age reflected the newness of desktop computing and its freshness probably brought an extra level of openness too.
Things are different now, though. You only have to hear of the complaints about changes to Linux desktop environments to realise how attached folk become to certain computer interfaces. Ironically, personal computing has just got exciting again after a fairly stale decade of stasis. Mobile computing devices are aplenty and it no longer is a matter of using a stationary desktop PC or laptop and those brought their own excitement in the 1990’s. In fact, reading a title like Computer Shopper reminds me of how things once were with its still sticking with PC reviews while others are not concentrating on them as much. Of course, the other gadgets get reviewed too so it is not stuck in any rut. Still, it is good to see the desktop PC getting a look in in an age when there is so much competition, especially from phones and tablets.
In this maelstrom, Microsoft has decided to do something dramatic with Windows 8. It has resurrected the Program Manager paradigm in the form of the Start screen and excised the Start Menu from the desktop altogether. For touch screen computing interfaces such as tablets, you can see the sense of this but it’s going to come as a major surprise to many. Removing what lies behind how many people interact with a PC is risky and you have to wonder how it’s going to work out for all concerned.
What reminded me of this was a piece on CNET by Mary Jo Foley. Interestingly, software is turning up that returns the Start Menu (or Button) to Windows 8. One of these is Classic Shell and I decided to give it a go on a Windows 8 Enterprise evaluation instance that I have. Installation is like any Windows program and I limited the options to the menu and updater. At the end of the operation, a button with a shell icon appeared on the desktop’s taskbar. You can make the resultant menu appear like that of Windows XP or Windows 7 if you want. There are other settings like what the Windows key does and what happens when you click on the button with a mouse. By default, both open the new Start Menu and holding down the Shift key when doing either brings up the Start screen. This is customisable so you can have things the other way around if you so desire. Another setting is to switch from the Start screen to the desktop after you log into Windows 8 (you may also have it log in for you automatically but it’s something that I believe anyone should be doing). The Start screen does flash up but things move along quickly; maybe having not appear at all would be better for many.
Classic Shell is free of charge and worked well for me apart from that small rough edge noted above. It also is open source and looks well maintained too. For that reason, it appeals to me more that Stardock’s Start8 (currently in beta release at the time of writing) or Pokki for Windows 8, which really is an App Store that adds a Start Menu. If you encounter Windows 8 on a new computer, then they might be worth trying should you want a Start Menu back. Being an open-minded type, I could get along with the standard Windows 8 interface but it’s always good to have choices too. Most of us want to own our computing experience, it seems, so these tools could have their uses for Windows 8 users.