Laptop Searches

It still astonishes me that the government can get away with this. As I have mentioned before, I am all for the protection of our populace. LEGALY. The article linked here gives one some insight in to what's happening. Googling would undoubtedly lead to more stories. So would looking at the articles posted at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) site. www.eff.org.

Call me a Conspiricy Theorist. I just don't think the Government needs to go about this in this way.

In my opinion, our Fourth Ammendment right to unreasonable searches and seizures are being violated by doing this. The authorities can search if it's -my emphisis added- IN PLAIN SIGHT And if not, then get a warrant. PERIOD.

Note: Clicking on the title links to the referenced article.
More to come

New Computers Pt. II

Well, yesterday, Monday 02 June '08 was the big day. We bought our new -I'm talking about BRAND NEW- laptops. No second hand desktop. "Two out of the box, wrapped in styro-foam, un-opened CD-Roms, all manuals, cords and all accounted for, SIR," computers.

Dell Inspiron 1525, 2Gig memory, 120Gig hard-drive, WiFi enabled Windows Vista Home Premium.

Had an issue setting up the wireless router. Our 6 year old Dell desk-top did not like being asked by the installation software to check the connection. When it got to that point in the process, the desk-top booted me off the 'Net. Not good. I tried again. Same result. Okay... NOT!! I ended up using thedesktop's now ainciant operating sytem to configure the router. Any normal bi-pedial mamal would think this the end of the problems. NOT SO. Jen connected with out a hitch. I, on the other hand, had problems with this as well. A program that took Jen all of 2minutes (that's 120 seconds people) was going to take me 34 minutes or more. NOT GOOD. I ended up thinking I had a problem with my WiFi. This is not a good. A brand new laptop should not have this type of problem. I asked about it at work. Thankfully my boss knows a good deal about such things. Long story short. He thought it may be a configuration issue. Maybe it was. After I got our son, Andrew from his after care program, he and I went to a local mall that I knew had an area with an "open" network. I logged on and, SLAM. Speeds more like I would expect.

As I stated in part 1 of this Oh the joy. Oh, the pain in the posterior.


-More to come

Shopping for new computers.

Such fun. Such a pain in the posterior. What type? Laptop, tablet, desktop? What brand? Dell? Compaq? HP? Toshiba? The list goes on. How much memory? Hard drive space? Screen size? On this one goes, as well.
Which OS? Windows and which variant? XP, Vista? Apple and, again, which variant?
OS X, Leopard? Linux -and the learning curve that comes along with that one. Which add-ons will we need to buy? Mice, thumb drives, cases, back-packs, batteries.

What ever we do end up getting, and we are pretty much decided on brand/s and OSes and all the stuff that is included on that front, it'll be better than a desktop that was handed down to us by father when he bought a new desktop five years ago.
At that point the handed down comp. was already two or three years old. At least it had XP.

Either way, it means brand new. NO MORE second hand electronics for us.
A few weeks to go and this will all be taken care of. I'll be able to sit in a comfy chair or lounge in bed and post to this blog. Jen'll be able to surf while I chat with friends two time-zones away on AIM. We can go to the local StarBux or other WiFI-enabled local and browse the latest headlines that are of interest. All that and more.

Now for the pain in the posterior part. Making sure that the programs we use the most are either copied to disc for easier movig to the laptop or downloaded to the new computers.
It also means that any shared programs have the appropriate personal files moved to the appropriate computer.

I'll post more on this later. In the mean time, Jen and I get to "shop" via the current POS and get an idea of what's out there, which additional items we'll need to purchase now and which can wait for a bit.

-More to come