Working from a Netbook

Decided to get a Netbook. I’m planning on doing some traveling & camping so I didn’t want to have to worry about carrying my MacBook Pro or my iPad.

I figure that since for the price of the iPad alone I could buy 4 of these machines it just makes more sense in the event that the machine was to be stolen.

This is a pretty slick little machine, not sure if I like Windows 7 Starter. It seems that Microsoft crippled the OS in some really annoying ways just so they could TRY and I mean TRY to get someone to pay $119 for the ability to play DVDs or change the desktop background.

Uh hello? the shareware market is amazing and Microsoft really hasn’t done anything but slow me down for about 4 minutes! NEXT!

This little thing is not all that fast but it sure as heck is serviceable.

It should allow me to do a little editing on photos that I may want to take. I can keep up the blog, get my email, and do some writing.

Not sure that I’ll ever completely give up my Macbook Pro, but for an inexpensive traveling computer this is a pretty good deal.

 

 

I HATE Adobe FLASH!

I have hated Flash since the time it was MacroMedia Flash.

As it became more and more ubiquitous I began to hate it passionately.

My reason for hating Flash is simple. I’m impatient by nature.

If I’m navigating to a corporate web site and I just want to look up some little tiny bit of information I absolutely fucking HATE being stalled out because I have to update my version of Flash to get to the site.

In general I don’t want to see what your web designer, or marketeers think are cool, cute, or interesting movies in preparation to me actually GETTING the data from your site.

For years I  refused to have Flash on any of my computers (work or personal). And during that time I simply wouldn’t purchase products from sites that forced me to have Flash installed to view their products.

Unfortunately as time went by and more sites incorporated Flash, I relented. After a while you just need to get to an operators manual for a product that you own. So you bite the bullet and download the crap so that you can get on with your life.

I brought up my Windows machine this morning. In addition to all the normal Microsoft security patches. I got a message from Adobe Flash saying that YET AGAIN I was down level and needed to update.

FINE! I click on the install button and then was presented with the “Do you accept the EULA?” which I thought “I dunno, I don’t know if I’ve ever read it”.

Thank you Matt Stone and Trey Parker for your Southpark episode lampooning Apple and their EULA! I will probably Never be able to update iTunes again!

I clicked on the link and was taken to a listing on the Adobe site of every EULA they have. After Finding the one for Flash, which by the way DOES NOT include the version they were trying to update me to, I click on the link.

Then a 260 page Combined, international PDF starts downloading. While downloading it hangs, and screws up Firefox so badly I had to do a 3 finger on the machine.

When the machine came up again, I tried this procedure again (I’m a Software QA guy right to the bone!) And again got the hang, again requiring a 3 finger.

So when the machine came up again, I told Adobe Flash NO I don’t want to update. What I’d really like to do is read that damn EULA. I mean, what do they have to hide??