BSteng.com—- Brian’s Take on it.

I mean one that you actually sit down and read(It may not be my actual first but it has been at least 5 years since I voluntarily read one. I have bought books but not for entertainment in ages. I am really excited about it. Many would say since when has Brian gotten excited about a book. Well I guess it is now. Normally I read the Houston Chronicle and a couple of magazines. The book I ordered was “Divorce Your Car” to me it seems really interesting from what I have seen about it. I will let yall know how it is.

I guess one could say that my recent interest in bikes is good and bad for my health. I’ll talk about it more later though.

First off I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

I thought this video was kind of cool yet funny so I hope yall enjoy.

Today Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO was ordered to testify in court regarding the publicized case regarding the “Vista Capable” advertising campaign that Microsoft set up for computer manufactures. The issue with the case is that the requirements for being Vista Capable were too low and could only run the most basic version of Vista which is Basic. That was while they were also advertising all the new features of Vista that for the most part aren’t in Vista Basic like Aero. I knew about it some when I bought my laptop a few years ago and I can say that from my experience that most machines sold then would barely run Vista much less any reasonable distribution. I was in on the beta testing and I can say that Vista was a very heavy OS when in development requiring a lot of hardware. Some issues for example were the requirements allowing 1GB of ram. That on Vista is dreadfully slow compared to XP. Then “Vista Capable” machines were allowed to ship with graphics that couldn’t even run the Aero effect which was widely publicized and advertised. To get a Machine to run Vista decent at that time was about $1000 or a little more but they bent the rules in hopes of selling more units thus more copies of Windows. I know my laptop which is a HP DV5178 would do ok but it ran $1200 and I knew exactly what I was getting unlike most consumers that when you say video card they say “What?”. My laptop had at that point 1GB of ram a 1.66 Core Duo processor, Nvidia go7400 graphics and a 100GB SATA hard drive. I still think that the 1GB of ram would be iffy but I easily upgraded to 2GB for $20.

My views are kind of neutral but what I didn’t like were the uneducated salesmen that tried to sell anything without making the customer aware of such issues during that time. I find that even though what a customer really wants may not be in there budget but at least I feel they got the best solution and understand why it is the best for them. That doesn’t have to be real detailed but enough for them to feel good and to know what they are getting into. I find that they came back to me as well. Also eventually the sales people started coming up or asking me to come over and give better advice. I made a point though while at the computer store even though I was a customer I would chime in and help people out since half the time the salesman was clueless. There was nothing better than the feeling you got from knowing you helped someone get the right product and when you know that they will be happy for a longer period of time.

Well tonight I thought about something I saw on a guest speakers computer this week and it really interested me. So I decided to check into it. Windows docks really have come a ways since a few years ago when I last tried them.

I found that there are 2 major docks that are in use and are active. Rocket dock and Object dock. I tried out the free version of Object Dock though and Rocket Dock is free.

They both have some key advantages from what I have noticed in a couple minutes of use. Rocket Dock to me is simpler and it gives you the option to re open an applications window based off of the apps icon vs having minimized images for each window in Object Dock. However, Object Dock is good for when you maximize windows as it disappears automatically like the desktop I guess, where on Rocket Dock you can have auto hide like the windows task bar but that is not the same having to mouse around down there to get it back up. I think it is just personal preference as to the one you choose but personally I like Rocket Dock more.

Rocket Dock

Object Dock

The Rocket Dock site is a little slow so here is a link to it. It is 6.2MB.
It works on 2000/XP/Vista and they say that they don’t support XP 64bit or Vista 64. However, it is running on my Vista HP 64bit just fine.