rant: new laptop

[thrill]

I wouldn't hate on Windows. Your company is probably cheap and had the manufacturer produce these laptops entirely from counterfeit chips produced in China.

Hold on a sec, Jim. Let me go pop some popcorn before you respond.

[AdmiralKird]

I wouldn't hate on Windows. Your company is probably cheap and had the manufacturer produce these laptops entirely from counterfeit chips produced in China.

Hold on a sec, Jim. Let me go pop some popcorn before you respond.

Well, the touch pad error is hardware error. Something is sending Windows the signal to highlight the text, it doesn't just generate input commands by itself. Possibly one of the corners of the pad is being pinched by the laptop's casing, as the fans inside cause the casing to vibrate slightly, a sensitive pad will detect two button presses.

GRB not being displayed correctly is a software problem, but obviously since 99.9% of Windows computers do not have this issue, its not the software design itself, but a corrupt installation or someone's tampering.

The CD player skipping is a hardware issue, the anti-vibration mechanism inside is bonkers.

In my opinion, blaming these problems on Microsoft is a poor choice. It's like blaming Boeing for the crappiness of an airline's service.

[ghostrunner]

I don't get why the default on PCs is to make text look like absolutely unreadable crap. Macs have aliasing on by default and GRB looks a million time better. This isn't a Macs are superior thing. Windows is perfectly capable of looking better and smoother if you just change the setting. That's just not how they roll for some reason.

[AdmiralKird]

I don't get why the default on PCs is to make text look like absolutely unreadable crap. Macs have aliasing on by default and GRB looks a million time better. This isn't a Macs are superior thing. Windows is perfectly capable of looking better and smoother if you just change the setting. That's just not how they roll for some reason.

You mean like if the optimal monitor resolution is not set correctly? I do not know of any windows settings for text aliasing.

[JohnnyJay]

The touchpad on your laptop is set up so that if you tap it twice (it's very sensitive), it'll be the equivalent of double-clicking. To disable this, go into your Control Panel, click the Mouse applet, and look for a "Tapping" setting that you can disable.

After clicking the Mouse applet, I had to go to a "Device Settings" tab, and then hit a button labeled "Settings." This is going to vary based on what brand of software manages the touchpad on your computer.

I, too, found this "feature" incredibly annoying. I guess maybe after I gave it a shot and grew accustomed to it it may actually have turned out to be useful, but I didn't have the patience to attempt that.

That's it! Just give it a little tappy! Tap-tap-tap-aroo!

[ghostrunner]

I don't get why the default on PCs is to make text look like absolutely unreadable crap. Macs have aliasing on by default and GRB looks a million time better. This isn't a Macs are superior thing. Windows is perfectly capable of looking better and smoother if you just change the setting. That's just not how they roll for some reason.

You mean like if the optimal monitor resolution is not set correctly? I do not know of any windows settings for text aliasing.

I think this is it (for XP and up):

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display.
2. On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
3. Click to select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box, and then click ClearType in the list.

[jim]

The tap thing is gone thanks to Kyle.

The web page thing looking like crap is gone thanks to hours of troubleshooting by our desktop guy.

The biggest issue is WRQ(allows you to open up an X terminal on your windows desktop) - that was insane to setup. I watched in horror as our desktop guy must have clicked 25 buttons to get it setup. We have kerberos authentication which adds some steps, but good grief. 99% of my work on this laptop is opening up an X window and hopping on to a Linux machine, so this is kind of important. I have one setup, and I'll be damned if I'm going to setup another. If I need to get to machine C, I'll use my connection to B and then do a kerberized ssh to C from there. Hopefully it's forewarding my kerberos ticket correctly, I'll have to test that today.

It's beeping at me when I get new mail and when I am in the vi editor and hit the end of the file. I get email about 1 per 5 minutes, and I'm in vi most of the day typing like a madman and sometimes hitting the end of line. That beep is going off several times a minute, and it's freaking loud. The entire machine is muted, but he beep keeps happening. I'm hoping someone can tell me how to shut this thing up today.

There is some software that reportedly runs Linux executables on a Windows machine. Not emulates Linux - actually runs the binaries. I prefer Open Office to the MS product, and am hoping I can get that to work on my Windows machine. I don't have alot of faith in it.

Next step is to install a package that is going to require apache, modpython, python, the Olson Timezone database and ZODB. On Linux it's a snap of the fingers, in Windows I suspect it will be a complete nightmare.

[jim]

Oh, and my docking station is flaky. Two mornings in a row now that it didn't work. Should just dock it and it works, but for some reason I have to disconnect the video cable and reconnect.

I hate computers.

[thrill]

Do you use Outlook for your email?

If people have their outgoing mail set as high importance, it makes a loud beep when you receive it because they are just so goddamn important that every email they send needs to be preceded by an insanely loud beacon announcing the arrival of their oh so important correspondence.

[jim]

Do you use Outlook for your email?

If people have their outgoing mail set as high importance, it makes a loud beep when you receive it because they are just so [expletive] important that every email they send needs to be preceded by an insanely loud beacon announcing the arrival of their oh so important correspondence.

Thunderbird.

Found the x bell, if you go to Reflection which is the X windows managing software there is a checkbox a couple of levels deep "Compliant XBell". Uncheck that, and the bell goes away.

What irritates me, and this is typical of windows software, is I have the proper flags to start an xterm to turn that off in the command that it executes. I was able to get it to stop beeping if I used the xterm flag that causes the bell to become a windows flash, but as fast as I type hitting the eol and eof etc... it would cause a seizure inducing set of flashes.

Why these software products try to think so much for you is beyond me. I know all of the magic flags to start an xterm on the command line, which were properly set. I had no idea that there were all of these freaking checkboxes 3 levels deep that override what you tell it to actually run.

Heaven forbid we would want the end user to actually have to type something at a command line.