BradFel.net

Also called, my pet peeve and current rant…

My father recently purchased two computers from Best Buy. He got a desktop and a laptop. Both are fairly decent systems, dual core AMD processors (Athlon X2 3800+ and a Turion X2 TL-50), 1GB DDR2-667 RAM, 250GB HDD for the desktop and a 120GB for the laptop. Both are running Windows Vista Home Premium with BitDefender Internet Security.

Even with Windows Vista’s shortcomings in the performance department these computers should by no means be struggling with it. My year old Inspiron E1505 (Core Duo T2500, 1GB DDR2-667, 120GB 5400RPM HDD, Radeon Mobility X1400) has no problems running it. However, booting either computer is mind numbingly boring. It takes longer on the desktop to boot than it does on my laptop.

I’m going to concentrate on the desktop, because despite being a much much more powerful system, it fails to outperform. The reason for this is simple. The desktop, an HP, was (and still mostly is) loaded down with tons of crap pre-installed by, guess who…. HP! I checked out the startup, and there were several HP programs that load on startup along with various other things. Whether this is some sort of marketing scheme to make people buy faster, more expensive systems, or simply their way of making systems less expensive. I don’t know.

However, OEM systems from HP, Dell, Gateway, etc… are loaded with useless shit that nobody needs, and most people don’t use or even realize what it is… It slows down computers, reduces stability, and most of all… IS ANNOYING AS HELL! I’ve had less damaging spyware infections…

Anyway, I propose that anyone looking for a new PC should do one of the following.

1. Build it yourself, install the operating system yourself, install the software you want yourself.
2. Find a local computer business that specializes in building custom PCs. Most have fairly reasonable prices, although they usually can’t compete with the big name companies. For the most part they offer a higher quality and better performance. Do your research though and make sure they provide a clean install with only the essentials!

More on this later… perhaps when I manage to pick out the shit HP and Gateway have installed and get them both up to speed…

Yeah… I realized I forgot something…

Yet another way to protect your computer is to use an alternate browser. Internet Explorer is one of the #1 ways most computers get infected with spyware, adware, viruses, etc… For the most part it’s just plain dangerous. For more info check out Web Devout.

Before I go on, I need a small disclaimer… In no way am I saying that other browsers do not have their flaws. Any peice of software has its own exploits, bugs, etc… Nothing is 100% perfect!

So here’s my suggestion… Switch to an alternate browser! Several alternatives include Firefox, Opera, Netscape, or Flock.

These alternate browsers offer greater feature sets (many had them implemented many years before IE did), greater security, and better web standards support. All together they provide a much improved internet experience. If you doubt me… Just give them a serious try. Use one for a few weeks, play with it’s features. They may grow on you… Anyway, I’m out. More to come later!

A little (well… not so little in the popularity sense…) Windows App that anyone concerned with how much bandwidth they’re using should check out.

It keeps track of download/upload bandwidth with options to display the usage in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years…. It’s completely customizable so you can have it display as much or as little as you want.

You can find it over at Rokario Software!

So I’ve been playing around with the idea of writing a few peices of software and making them publicly available… The first peice of software I have in the works is called “Atomic Wallpaper Cylcer”

I suppose by the name it’s fairly obvious as to what it does. Basically it takes a list of images (jpg, gif, png, etc) and cycles through them setting them as the desktop wallpaper. You can set the interval between cycles, positioning of the wallpaper, even whether you want to just go straight through the list, or randomize it.

I’m sure this has been done before (110% positive at that) but I figured I could just throw another option out there.

Anyway, I’ll post it here… “When It’s Done”