Have Laptop Will Travel

Many people have expressed their annoyance over their experience of Windows installing updates on its own even when the option not to do it has been checked.

Microsoft has acknowledged that these things do happen and that the company is now looking into the matter. MS has said in its statement that the problem seems to be stemming from the notification message in the tray being inaccurate.

MS further explained that in normal operations, the user will only get the notification about the updates being ready for installation when all of the said updates have already been downloaded and ready for installation. This could be the reason why the update may appear on Windows Update but not on Automatic Updates. Another instance is that the user may get a notification of the update having been downloaded and available for installation but the update has not yet been installed
First, you only get the notification that updates are available for installation when all of the available updates are downloaded and ready to install. So if they appear to be available on Windows Update but not through Automatic Updates, that could be the explanation. Second, you may get a notification of downloaded and available, but not yet installed updates, in the shutdown dialog. In this situation the user will only see the updates with updates that doesn’t need user intervention.

Hopefully, Microsoft does find the problem and fixes it. It doesn’t need the negative view that it is manipulating things even when it clearly does not.

Mobile phone users, rejoice! The top mobile phone manufacturers have finally agreed to develop a universal standard for phone chargers.

The agreement, which was signed by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other manufacturers, paves the way for the development of mobile phones that will accept the same standard charging device as early as next year.

This is really a welcome development. Any mobile phone user knows how much of a hassle it is that whenever we upgrade to a new phone, it generally means we’ll have to use a different charger, basically junking the previous charger. These unused chargers eventually find its way to the garbage dump, which helps create more waste. It’s really not an environment friendly strategy and quite wasteful of resources as well.

Under the agreement, an European Union norm or standard will be implemented and new mobile phones will now use a standard micro-USB socket as a way of ensuring utmost compatibility.

Aside from Nokia and SE, other companies that supported the move included Motorola, Apple, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments.

Mozilla announced that it will be releasing two new version of the Fennec mobile browser, a few days before the imminent release of Firefox 3.5.

Fennec 1.0 Beta 2 for the Maemo Nokia software and development platform, and Fenn 1.0 Alpha 2 for Windows Mobile can now be downloaded at Mozilla’s site. There are also desktop builds that users can install on Windows, Mac and Linux.

The Fennec browsers have been designed to make the user experience easier. A new theme that is more eye-pleasing is now used and a number of usability issues have also been addressed. Installing add-ons on the browser has also been improved, along with the download manager.

Mozilla also revamped the installation of add-ons, improved its download manager, and upgraded the look of the application, Parmenter wrote.

I’m definitely going to try this browser on my Nokia. I’m always on the lookout for a better browser experience on a mobile and right now Nokia’s default browser and Opera Mini is just not cutting it. Hopefully, Fennec will end my quest for a great mobile browser.

Palm looks like it actually has a killer device on its hands. In just three weeks after launching the device, the Palm Pre App Catalog has reached a remarkable 1 million downloads.

Palm reportedly sold about 50,000 Pres and also posted 100,000 logged downloads on the launch day itself. This is an average of about 2 apps downloaded for each device and about 5,500 downloads per app. Of course, Apple still holds the best numbers with its iPhone. It posted 1 million downloads 17 earlier than the Palm Pre, and we’re not yet even talking about the apps themselves.

Now that the Palm Pre is gaining maturity, it will be worth watching out how a public SDK will impact sales.

With the Opera browser’s version 10 already released as a public beta, users are now experiencing for themselves the additions and new features of what is considered “the greatest browser no one uses.”

The new browser has a new darker interface and and the tabs can be dragged down to show thumbnails of the site in the said tabs. One of Opera’s nifty features, the Speed Dial, is now customizable to take advantage of bigger screens (Google actually copied this feature for their Chrome browser).

Opera CEO Jon Tetzchner said that Opera 10 also has faster performance. Coupled with the new features, he said that both long time users of the browser and new users will be impressed with it.

For torrent users, it should be noted that Opera remains the only browser that has a built in torrent client. Other browsers do not incorporate it mainly because of fears of getting the attention of the copyright hounds. At just a lean 6.5 MB, you guys should really try Opera 10.