The computer Gods aren’t happy
Ironically my main Tablet PC died on the way down to Silicon Valley two days ago. Just won't boot. I have a spiffy new Lenovo model now running Windows Vista and Office 2007. But, I just spent 20 minutes typing up a blog post and IE 7 bombed on me, restarted, and lost my post. So, now I'm typing in Firefox. We'll see how that goes. Eating the dogfood of unreleased software isn't fun sometimes. Anyway, lots of things are happening, so let's see how many posts we can get done before the computer Gods decide they've had enough. Heheh.
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June 22nd, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Robert,
I thought that you might use an offline edi9tor like the OPML Editor or something like w.bloggar to do your blog posts?
After using programs like that, I will never go back to writing my posts on the web.
June 22nd, 2006 at 9:58 pm
But that’s okay because you restart every day to keep the computer gremlins away.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Bob, nah, after getting hell about it I don’t restart anymore. I just sleep my computers and restart every weekend. The weird thing was it just never came back from sleep.
Weiyen, yeah, I have to start using one of those.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:16 pm
[...] One of Scoble's computers just died. I upgraded Sue's laptop last night to the new version of Panda Security and it refused to boot. Even F3 to get to Safe Mode didn't work. [...]
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:27 pm
Why would you use Internet Explorer anyways? You’re not with Microsoft, so feel free to admit that you want to switch to Firefox because it kicks ass. Oh, and I’m typing this from OpenBSD using links. Yes, I’m using a TEXT BROWSER. w00t, I’m hardcore. ;)
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Cody: cause I’m using Vista and I like IE, actually.
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Bleh, IE sucks. Just because you’re using Vista isn’t a reason for using IE.
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:07 am
Robert, why don’t you use Word 2007 to do your blog posts? Beta 2 seems like it’s pretty stable for such tasks; far more so than a web browser, especially since it has auto-backup.
Nick
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:07 am
The Microsoft gods are finally turning on ye … you should not have left the mothership ;).
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:47 am
Following-up a bit on Cody’s comments…
How come your site’s title is still “Microsoft Geek Blogger”? (does that still fit well for you or have you just not gotten around to changing it? ;)
What version of Firefox are you using? (1.5 or are you testing out 2.0, aka Bon Echo? Also, have you tried Opera 9? a comment or two about IE 7 vs FF 2 vs Opera 9 would make a great post, BTW… hint hint ;) and are you using any extensions or themes? (if you’ve customized it a bit, I don’t suppose you’d mind sending a screenshot to the Firefox Screencap Project? :) http://katyggls.blogspot.com/2006/06/firefox-screencap-project.html)
June 23rd, 2006 at 4:03 am
I see an Apple Computer in your future Rob
Learn from your son !
JP
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:34 am
Dunno if it applies to your case, but I have a BenQ notebook that works wonderfully well EXCEPT that sometimes it won’t come back from sleep mode IF I’ve unplugged any USB devices while it was dormant. That is, suppose I have a USB keyboard and mouse, and I put the laptop to sleep and then unplug them. I have to remember to plug them back in (possibly even in the same port; I don’t remember if that affects things) otherwise when I tell it to wake up it just sits there with a DOS cursor at the top left of a black screen until I press and hold the off switch to reset it.
Presumably it’s all to do with one part of the system not realising it’s been asleep, and getting confused about whether it needs to wait for all its bits and pieces to come back on line. Maybe this is what happened to you?
Incidentally: how’s the reliability of IE7? Better than the previous ones? I’ve had no complaints about IE6 from that POV; I just use Firefox because it’s not 2001 any more, and I prefer not to use abandonware if I can avoid it. I’ll check out IE7 when it arrives, but it won’t convince me to switch; it won’t be as good as Firefox at the things I care about, being as I am a web developer.
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:43 am
I wondered what happened! Hey, I enjoyed that interview on Ch9 with Jawad Khaki. I appreciated the question, “What will IPv6 do for me at home?”. I think I am still digesting his answer but glad you are asking the questions.
Lenovo then?
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:46 am
It is only a matter of time before the Scoblizer comes into the light. You can only hold out for so long until you realize that everyone else in the web 2.0 world uses Macs. And yes you can still use Mac Office (which by the way is Windoes Office 2007 only released a couple of years ago).
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:56 am
Robert, you should have tried the new Opera 9 :)
June 23rd, 2006 at 6:56 am
All these problems. All you need to do is get a Mac.
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:12 am
Well you got company at least, take a gander around the Tablet PC scene, Lenovo models are Horror Story Double-Features, not to mention running with Vista (I had tons of lock-ups on my Tosh test laptop, so much that gave up).
Opera 9.01 just got released, and although it has no Firefoxy extensions, it’s faster than a rocket. Opera 9 becoming my browser de jour. I haven’t used IE as a workhorse in years, and if needed, usually with the Avant front-end. The Opera tie-in with Bitorrent is an annonyance however, wish they made that optional.
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:40 am
I usually edit (and periodically save) longer posts in Visual Web Developer (as HTML files). This has eliminated the frustration I use to have when the computer gods decided to punish me. Which for me, I blog a lot, was several times per week.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:47 am
Doc Searls had lots of problems with his Macs over the years. Macs aren’t immune from hardware problems either. Always back up, no matter what your religion is!
But, don’t tell anyone, but I just ordered a MacBook.
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:59 am
Are you going to run OSX on the Macbook, or Windows XP? or both?
The new core duo kit from Apple is nice. And you’re right, “always make backups”. There’s no magical data protection aura cast by an Apple logo…
June 23rd, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Hey - you might want to try out the new Opera - v9 just came out.
June 23rd, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Thats strange when I tried IE7 - I couldnt use Firefox - just kept crashing - ended up removing IE7 now everything is fine again :-)
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Ah-ha! Now you see why I stick with clunky old MSN Spces. At least it has the blog-by-email function, and the random “burp” at the beginning of each post is easily removed.
I’m currently using Firefox as my default browser, but that won’t last. It annoys me greatly.
June 24th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
I used Fox for about a year and I really liked being able to use all the extensions. But I switched to Opera recently simply because the latest versions of Fox have become incredibly hardware-hungry, and on an 18-month-old office laptop this is simply ridiculous. Opera works fine for me, not so many extensions but then, it has some nice features (like RSS feeds and a much better download manager) built in by default… and doesn’t take ages loading…
November 1st, 2006 at 12:17 pm
i tried firefox 2 and dont like that crap, IE7 is much nicer than it and for me is a better rendering engine. I like Avant Browser 11, its uses IE engine but is able to be customised with skins and the like