SIGNIFICANT BITS
August 2008
by Sean N. Henderson
It seems like a good summer so far. For those traveling by car
this season, here is a reminder on how to save some money at
the pump:
- Slow acceleration to 15+ seconds
- Tires properly and evenly inflated
- Perform regular oil changes
- Use better gas
This last item alone saved me about 15% on fuel for my 2005
Ford Freestyle. The percentage increase in cost for better fuel
of the same grade was less than the percentage increase mileage
I experienced. No computer required.
Computers require the same type of care for increased mileage:
regular cleaning and maintenance. DACS has several resources
for helping with this, including newsletter archives, monthly
workshops, and the ASK DACS portion of the monthly public meetings.
SOFTWARE REVIEWS
Cyberlinks’s Power2Go application (P2G) and its desktop
widget Power2Go Express are nifty, both of which I used occasionally
to rip audio CDs. Normally, I rip audio CDs using Creative’s
Zen Nano Plus Media Explorer which came with my Creative Zen
Nano Plus. In this case, the Nano was busy ripping an LP from
my home stereo and I wanted to rip an audio CD at the same time
on my laptop. Not surprisingly, I’ve done this scenario
20 times before. P2G barked and said it was time to upgrade – no
more ripping. (And, yes, I have many LPs and CDs still to go
through.)
Well, there just had to be a better tool to rip CDs. RealPlayer
and Windows Media Player were no help because they create undesirable
directories and filenames, and other parameters are not controllable.
I came across AudioGrabber 1.83. This is an amazing piece of
award-winning software, and freeware since 2004! Here are
some of the features I liked about it:
- Can construct output directories and filenames with the song
info in any order
- Spaces in filenames can be optionally replaced with underscores
- Can use nearly any audio encoder for mp3's, including presets
for the lame encoder
- Seemingly DRM-free
- Can optionally access freedb service to acquire or submit
album information (like P2G)
Unbelievable – this software had more and better features
than P2G, and it was free! This is yet another case of
freeware trumping most paid software in its class.
TECH WISHLIST
I say PalmOne needs to make a portable version of their Palm
Desktop PIM application. Currently, my calendar exists on 4 different
applications (2 instances of 'pal', Lightning, and the Palm Desktop/PDA),
and having the Palm Desktop run portably on a thumb drive would
go a long way towards getting rid of the others.
Wouldn't it be a novel idea if Microsoft would publish the actual
system requirements for their software? Merely listing
hardware, OS, and RAM obviously isn't enough to guarantee an
installation. I've been caught twice recently with their products
not installing due to unlisted setup requirements, such as services
or other software dependencies.
FIELD REPORT
Recently, on a trip to California for a family reunion, I declined
to take my laptop. I knew my brother would probably have his
on hand. Other reasons included weight, going over bag limits,
potential damage to my flimsy laptop, or simply that I would
have no time to use it (more likely), since I was traveling with
small children.
My gear-list: an mp3 player, a USB thumb drive, a PDA, and a
universal IR keyboard. It turns out there was one moment during
the trip where there was time and need to check email. Putting
the PDA into the IR keyboard and using the hotel Wi-Fi, the first
thing was to fire up the Blazer browser (no pun intended) to
configure and establish a connection. I then closed the browser
and opened pssh and started an ssh session (a secure telnet session,
basically) into my main account to check my primary email with
'pine'. Zero problems and lightweight. Nice! Since this worked
out so well, this is likely how I'll travel the rest of the summer,
kids or no.
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