RE: [OT] Purchasing an iPad
In general it’s pretty rare they go on ‘special’ Try and get the largest ram one you can afford. Just walk into a Big W / Kmart (I think) and apple store and compare prices you and find they are all pretty much the same. The only place that I have seen maybe 10% is Dick Smith but even question that. My wife bought a 128g a little while ago and absolutely loves it. Me meh! They don’t interest me. Good luck. Dave. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Friday, 27 June 2014 10:11 AM To: ozDotNet Subject: [OT] Purchasing an iPad Folks, my wife is an editor and technical writer, and she just told me she needs an iPad quickly for her work. We are not familiar with the language, conventions or pricing of the Apple world. To hopefully avoid being robbed blind, can anyone here suggest the best way to chose and purchase an iPad? By comparison, a few months ago I purchased a Nexus-5 phone from the Google online store thanks to sage advice from my nephew and it was $300 cheaper than walking into a Telstra shop and buying one. I wouldn't want to fall into a similar trap by maybe walking into an Apple store. Cheers, Greg K
RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
I had something similar not too long ago. I have a 128g SSD that all it's had was my Virtualboxes on it. After the same thing happen and after some investigation I removed the SSD for a large Velicoraptor drive. The diffence between the SSD and Velicoraptor is minor in speed but I was sceptical that the SSD wasn't going to hold up. As much as I'd like SSD's I have seen quite few fail over the past 2yrs. The SSD in this machine had been running for easy over 12mths without a hiccup. I moved all my development to a set of VM's so if something goes wrong I can be back up and running in what it takes to bring back a backup. Good luck. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 2:00 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Folks, I have a warning post: Since I installed a fresh Windows 7 on an SSD as Xmas I've been suspicious of how one time in 20 it will stop and say Bad boot drive and I have to power off and on again and then it always starts okay. No other symptoms have been observed. Well today, I was shutting down my PC when it blue screened on the way down, it said SERVICE_EXCEPTION. Just to be safe I rebooted it normally to check it was okay. First problem. IE 32-bit shortcut says it's invalid, but I can see the iexplore.exe in the correct place. Double-clicking it does nothing. The 64-bit iexplore.exe tells me The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Then I notice most of my Start menu All Programs are gone. The Administrative Tools menu is empty. I searched for an hour but none of the advice is relevant or useful. Last known good config recover did nothing. I even thought I had a virus, but found no evidence. Finally I did a chkdsk C: /F and rebooted and I saw about 20 repairs (including iexplore.exe) and now it seems to be back to normal. However I suspect the SSD is about to die unpredictably and all of my mysterious symptoms were side effects. I'm just posting this in case it might be useful for someone in a similar situation. Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. Greg K
RE: [OT] Noise cancelling earphones for a quiet programming environment?
Ah, you are at the point little noises frustrate you - remember to keep calm and walk away if it all gets too much. Yes I work in a open plan office too, I have support people and sales that like to yell into the phone so they can be heard J Look I have friends and myself have been down this path your are not alone. Expect to pay a few hundred dollars for peace of mind and personally it's worth it in the long run. To cut it short I ended up with 'fischer audio FA-003' can's style head phones cost me around $200 - I can crank my music up so loud and no one next to me can hear it nor can I hear them. Personally this is the way I like to operate but I can still have at a reasonable sound volume and it will drown out people completely. It's quite interesting when I take of my headphones and find people half way through a conversation with me - nicely explain I can't hear them. That is the strange thing about our office people don't understand that we programmers don't want to listen to everything around them we want to focus and concentrate on what we have to do. I have friends that have tried the Bose wireless models and thought they were ok but not perfect. There is a more expensive model above the Bose which is around $500 but the consensus is they weren't perfect either. At the end of day most of my friends are were some kind of can style headphones. The problem with a lot of these headphones is comfort. As in the earbud style nice and compact but can annoy your ears after a while, also you can find the music can bleed out and then you can become part of the problem. I found a headphone shop in Lonsdale st in melb (just up from Elizabeth st) that was very helpful and at the end of day I wasn't shopping for price I just wanted a solution. Good luck Dave. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Kirsten Greed Sent: Sunday, 23 March 2014 1:21 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: [OT] Noise cancelling earphones for a quiet programming environment? Hi All So that I can concentrate better, I am trying to filter out the mouse clicking sound from person at the desk next to me. Has anyone any tech recommendations on how to do this? Thanks Kirsten
RE: Changing from VS 2013 Ultimate Trial to purhcsing Professional
Agreed - I was given a friends pc recently to have a look at complaining about why they were running sql server and a complete VS2012 on her machine as it taking forever to crank up. Apparently her son had installed a trial of VS2012 - with everything installed - this machine was not a development spec machine to start with. Took me few hours to clean up and get rid of it all. I run all my VS's in VM's best thing since slice bread - except for game programming though L Dave. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Nathan Chere Sent: Thursday, 16 January 2014 9:55 AM To: ozDotNet Subject: RE: Changing from VS 2013 Ultimate Trial to purhcsing Professional Nope. If you've installed as Ultimate it won't accept your Professional key as valid. You'll need to uninstall the trial and re-install. PS: In future you should consider using a VM when you want to trial-install something as pervasive as Visual Studio. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Arjang Assadi Sent: Thursday, 16 January 2014 9:21 AM To: ozDotNet Subject: Changing from VS 2013 Ultimate Trial to purhcsing Professional Hello I have been enjoying the trial version of VS 2013 ultimate, but all things considered would rather purchase a Professional edition when the trial expiers. Is it possible to get the Professional key and disable some features of ultimate instead of uninstalling Ultimate and installing the Professional ? Thanks for any info on this Regards Arjang Click here https://www.mailcontrol.com/sr/MZbqvYs5QwJvpeaetUwhCQ== to report this email as spam. This message has been scanned for malware by Websense. http://www.websense.com/ www.websense.com
RE: Documentation Wiki?
Thanks for your thoughts on Confluence, We are currently using Jira for our bugs/Tasks working very nicely. We tried screwwiki quite a few years ago still going but nowhere near adequate. I have been using Evernote for all my personal and development notes the last 10yrs, recording a lot things but it was awkward to share things. Haven't tried the new shared Accounts yet. The problem with Evernote is that it really needed a google wave style tracking articles and was hoping that Confluence was going to give us that. But from your post I will consider looking closer and see if there is another solution. Regards Dave. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Corneliu I. Tusnea Sent: Monday, 6 January 2014 3:23 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Documentation Wiki? Hi guys, Happy New Year. I have a bit of a trouble creating/updating the internal/development documentation of our project and I was curious how do other people handle documentation. Right now we are using Confluence which is very nice. I like their diagrams and integration of the diagrams in the documentation but I find it hard to use overall. 1. Slow (OnDemand version) 2. Slow to navigate (only two level menu on the left) 3. Editor is buggy at times (e.g. deleting lines inside ULs) 4. Export to PDF or Word is mostly broken when you have tables. 5. Hard to link articles or parts of articles together. 6. Attachments are not really part of a document so hard to use. They are only visible as a little icon next to the document name. Does anyone have a better way of documenting a project? I want something easy to use, very fast, easy to navigate and search and easy to link articles together. Thoughts? Thanks, Corneliu.
RE: (sorry slightly off topic) Laptop Backpack
I have been using a Tatkonka Server Pack for the last 10yrs, one word perfect! For me I ride a motorcycle (150klms a day) rain hail or shine with it and it has carried all my laptops over the years from my current 13in dell xps, to a asus 17in. It goes everywhere with me, it's my man bag, I have done several overseas trips with it as well. It's quite comfortable, I would mind getting a new one as I have 1 zip that has an issue with it, they don't make them any more (I have been unable to find a new one) , the only thing that has come close is the http://www.kriega.com/ motorcycle backpacks - but it's a touch smaller than what I have been used to so I keep putting it off. The thing with Kriega is they are designed to sit on your back without you knowing it, they extremely well made and comfortable. Good luck Dave From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Preet Sangha Sent: Tuesday, 5 March 2013 7:36 AM To: ozDotNet Subject: (sorry slightly off topic) Laptop Backpack I need a new laptop bag (the previous one that came with MSI Laptop has has finally given up the ghost). Does anyone here walk or cycle distances (I'm doing 15k a day) carrying their laptop in a backpack? If so would you recommend you case? Ideally I need enough space to pack a towel and a bit of running gear too :-) yes I know I probably need a military style burgen but no I'm not getting one of those. -- regards, Preet, Overlooking the Ocean, Auckland
RE: Just seen the prices of Window 8 RT Surface devices....
The 3g is a mute subject how many times in our day to life we just portable hot spot our phones. From the kids in the car playing on the ipad to jump on the network to get something, to the network going down at work so your laptop can still keep going, to your tablet out of wifi range and you need to grab something urgently. Tell me I'm wrong? I am of view what can it be used for? I see no benefit from this device and yet to see why this is different in that I should purchase it over what is already existing. I am constantly asked by people around me and I cannot see why or even what I you could do with this device over the ipad and android other than Office. With Office I have yet see it running on it yet (though I reserve judgement here) though I am of mind that I would rather spend a few more dollars for atom version or a proper intel version and have a full win8 running and not running in its restricted environment. Personally I am waiting for the surface pro or ultra hybrid as to replace my aging 13in laptop, I have a set boundaries of operations and see this piece of hardware a very good step up, but a RT what's it for? Dave. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Tony Wright Sent: Thursday, 18 October 2012 9:22 AM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: Just seen the prices of Window 8 RT Surface devices Also, which would you prefer - a device that you can plug a SIM into, or one that you can't? Microsoft's tablet only has WIFI, which is a major market killer for business applications. So if you had to splurge on a tab, which would you go for - a tab that supports 3G, or one that doesn't? Very disappointing. Right now they appear to be going for the stupid rich Microsoft fanboys who will be silly enough to purchase this device and then pay again when the true mobile versions come out. This is the Zune all over again. They will have an initial take up from fanboys, and then watch sales drop dramatically afterwards. Tell me I'm wrong?
