Have Laptop Will Travel

Power Ballads

Originally posted on April 23, 2006 @ 1:53 pm

You pumped your fists when they rocked. Your heart pumped full of love when they broke out these sweet ballads. Go ahead, shed a tear or two.

That’s the introduction on the liner notes on the CD that I picked up yesterday titled “The Greatest Hits – Power Ballads” from my local Target.

The CD was only $8.99, so it was well worth the cash to have some songs from days gone by in my music collection.

I just finished listening to all 12 tracks straight through this afternoon while I was driving around. The songs brought back so many memories from high school and from when I was in a metal band. Good times indeed.

The track list has some of the biggest bands from the 1980’s-1990’s:

Whitesnake, Damn Yankees, Warrant, Poison, Night Ranger, Scorpions, Bad English, Skid Row, Extreme, Mr. Big, Cinderella and Queensryche.

So for any of my readers who are into late 80’s-90’s metal, go grab this CD. It’s less then $10.00, so it’s not a major purchase :)

Geek Squad Gets Slapped

Originally posted on April 13, 2006 @ 9:18 am

Geek SquadGeek Squad was reportedly using pirated copies of ERD Commander system recovery software to fix the computers of its customers.

The news came from employees of Geek Squad during training sessions at Winternals. You’d think that a company like Best Buy would know better than to use unlicensed software.

Geek Squad had previously entered into negotiations with Winternals in October 2005 to acquire licenses to use ERD Commander but abrutly ended the negotiations in February 2006 saying the company was no longer interested in licensing the product.

Source: WindowsITPro

My thoughts on this is basically Geek Squad was going to license this software for a fee then they “abrutly ended negotiations” because they figured out how to get around the licensing verifcation on install.

I guess the Geek Squad isn’t making enough money to pay for software?! Don’t they get a discount anyway since they work for Best Buy?

Instant Booting Hybrid Hard Drive

Originally posted on May 8, 2006 @ 9:12 am

According to The Korea Times, Samsung and Microsoft are close to unveiling a hybrid hard drive that will enable Vista-based laptops and desktop PCs boot much faster than is now the case.

This is really exciting. Not so much because it will help the new Microsoft Vista Operating System to boot faster, because I’m going to wait a while before I jump on the Vista band wagon but it’s exciting because this could help speed up all kinds of applications.

The HHD is the convergence of a flash memory chip and a conventional platter-type magnetic disk drive. To save the time and energy spent spinning a metal disk drive it is designed to use static flash memory when starting a PC.

I wonder if this will help with less hard drive failures by mixing the two technologies? That would be great because lately it seems there are a lot of hard drive failures going on with some of my clients as well as with some of my personal desktop machines.

So when can we see this new technology? The article says it will be introduced at Microsoft’s annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference on May 24 in Seattle.

Microsoft To Replace Counterfeit Office

Originally posted on May 3, 2006 @ 8:33 am

Microsoft confirmed this morning that they will offer free replacement copies of its Office application suite for users whose versions were marked as counterfeit. The catch, users have to prove they bought the bundle with the best intentions.

So how does one prove they bought Microsoft Office with the best intentions? That could be very tricky, especially if you are using the 2000 version.

Another solution if you are running a pirated copy of Office and can’t or don’t want to prove to Microsoft you purchased it, go download Open Office.

Taken from the Official Open Office website:

OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

Did you catch that? “Free to download, use, and distribute” so no need to prove anything to Microsoft.

For the record, I own legit licenses for Microsoft Office products but I always recommend Open Office to family, friends and business associates. Open Source is our friend.