Great comment on Word on Slashdot…

This pretty much sums up my experiences with Microsoft Word:

The way it works isn’t the problem

I read TFA, and these guys seem to be worried about the wrong thing. Word menus, etc, are easy enough to deal with. What makes it a god-forsaken piece of s**t are all the bugs. Documents are always getting corrupted, figures don’t do where you want and stay there, can’t save sometimes for no apparent reason, the entire thing just bombs out, etc. We had a “Platinum Support Ticket” or some similar nonsense open on Word for a few years. The upshot, direct from a Microsoft senior support line, was that if we wanted documents to not get corrupted, was to print it out on paper, make sure it was right, then use a scanner and save it as a TIFF. Thanks, that’s good advice.

What is so pathetic is that I have ordinary technical documents from the late 50’s and 60’s that are laid out better, have better graphics, and are still perfectly readable today. While at the same time, a Word document I saved last week either can’t be opened, or has all the symbols corrupted.

Brett

I have seen too many tech articles talking about how great the new Office 2007 is with is “Innovative” new ribbon interface. For gods sake, Microsoft fix Word from being the piece of crap that it is. If Microsoft could fix the program from mangling long documents, then maybe I’d be more excited about their lame new ribbons.

The Article where the comment was quoted from:
Slashdot.org – Goodbye Cruel Word

“Dear Apple, I Want My $200 Back!”

UPDATE: Steve Jobs has posted an open letter to iPhone early adopter. At least Apple is doing something right.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/

Some hours after Apple’s “The Beat Goes On” Special Event, I went to visit an Apple Store. Upon learning the $200 iPhone price drop, I was a little bit miffed at Apple. It’s only been 60-something days since the much hyped iPhone release, and now Apple in a way “screwing” the faithful early adopters. Prices drop all the time, but not by such drastic amounts in such a little time.

Upon entering the Apple Store, I was greeted by an Apple Store employee. He asked me if I needed some assistance. For some reasons, I blurted: “I am here to get my $200 back, for the iPhone.” Yeah, that blurb was responded by an uneasy “umm” and silence.

Anyway, I don’t think that it’s a good PR move for Apple to do such thing.

It’s time to call Apple Support and tell them how you feel.

Mini Review: iMovie ’08 – First Impressions

I finally had the time to go to an Apple Retail Store to pick up iLife ’08 and iWork ’08 today. Well, it’s because all the Apple Retail Stores nearby, about 7 of them didn’t have iLife ’08 in stock on Tuesday.

iMovie '08

Anyway, after playing with iMovie ’08 for 30 minutes or so, I missed iMovie HD (iMovie 6.x) already. Apple is apparently aware of this.

First, iLife ’08 installer actually preserves iMovie HD application and moved it into “iMovie (previous version)” folder inside the Applications folder.

iMove in Applications Folder

Second, Apple has made iMovie HD 6.0.4 as a free download for any iLife ’08 owner.
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html

About iMovie HD 6
iMovie HD 6, previously distributed with iLife ’06, is available for download for those who have purchased and installed iLife ’08

System Requirements

  • Mac OS X 10.3.9
  • Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later
  • Mac OS X 10.4.4 recommended
  • iLife ’08

UPDATED (08.09.2007 09:50AM)
So far, I don’t like using iMovie ’08. Actually now I prefer using Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro (because there are a lot of things that I can’t do in iMovie HD). Don’t get me wrong, I still need to sit down and use iMovie ’08 for a while and figure out a way to get comfortable with it. Previous versions of iMovie HD are a lot more simplistic, and yet lacking many editing features. Apple has made such drastic changes to the interface, it takes time to get used to it.

iMovie ’08 runs fast on my MacBook Pro Core Duo (early 2006). I can easily scrub scrub movie clips without any slowdowns at all. One thing I really hate about iMovie HD is the titling options. Sometimes you want to have a subtitle to last 6 seconds, and iMovie HD only allows maximum of 5.

My colleague found the iMovie HD 6.0.4 link in Apple’s own Discussion Board.

I will use iMovie ’08 to see if it is a worthy upgrade, at least for myself.

UPDATE (08.14.2007)
Next: iMovie ’08 to iMovie HD ’06 Comparisons (coming soon)

Dell Takes This Blog Seriously

First off, the blog post was from a while ago. Still it was amusing the fact that Dell PR machines actually left comments to “defend” their products.

Second, Vondiggity (the blogger) is a close friend of mine and we’ve been talking a lot about Dell PR comments. We’ve been having good laugh about it.

I do not know for sure if the comment is actually made by Dell PR people, I haven’t checked their IP addresses yet. Anyway, it is funny how one small rant about the new Dell line actually attracted their PR people to respond. They are pretty defensive about it, given that it’s their job.

Read it here, and don’t forget to read the comment too.

http://vondiggity.wordpress.com/2007/06/27/dell-has-really-hit-bottom/

Day of Wrong Moves

January 19th, 2006

A Friday. So many things went wrong.

  1. I lost my tiny flashlight. It’s a tiny one, no wonder I lost it.
  2. I was going to replace cooling systems on a video card. Got the kit, but it’s missing tons of parts.
  3. A power supply with busted fan.
  4. Smokes came out of the same power supply.
  5. Power supply was replaced only to find out the onboard USB controller was shorted out and busted. It could no longer supply power to USB devices.
  6. Wasting a few hours trying to install Windows XP on busted machine; see 3, 4, and 5.
  7. Found out the battery of a 13″ MacBook no longer holding charges. Now I have to go to Apple Store and get it exchanged.

That’s a lot for one day.

Asides from that, I purchased:

  1. Fujitsu MH2120-BH-R 2.5″ 120GB SATA 5400 RPM Hard Drive
  2. Corsair DDR2 1GB PC5300 (667MHz) SO-DIMM (VS1GSDS667D2)