Four days ago, Microsoft unveiled the pre-beta of Windows 7 at PDC and offered up quite a few user interface changes meant to streamline the aging operating system. What they came up with was a taskbar that mimics the styling of the KDE on Linux and further extends the broken window preview concept introduced in [...]

“I missed you too” - on Flickr by süńdāyx

I’m disappointed with Apple. I’ve been using their machines since I was four years old and have been buying them personally for the past seven. It has been my preferred platform of choice and I’ve never been unhappy with the hardware choices available to me until now. [...]

There has been a huge amount of hype and misinformation in the solid-state drive debate as of late and whether it’s a technology that’s ready for primetime; I recently purchased one with my newest computer and want to offer some real-world tests. The drive in question is a Samsung 64GB SATA SSD (1.8″, Model No. [...]

Last week I wrote about a better than expected experience with a company, and now it’s time to take it in a different direction. I’ve mentioned the issue I’ve been having with my Xbox 360 a couple of times on Twitter, but I’ll detail the story thus far here.
About five weeks ago, my Xbox 360 [...]

The independent and smaller software developers for the Mac platform are the best in the business - they’re committed to the operating system and identify with the experience that the end-user has come to expect. On the Windows side of the aisle, this isn’t the case. Windows developers, as a community, seem horribly fragmented and [...]

The ubiquitous SSID that has been delivering free internet access since 802.11b, but many have argued whether or not this is theft of service or criminal behavior. Unsecured internet access points like a fresh out-of-the-box Linsys router will share your internet connection for anywhere from 50 to 300 feet, likely extending beyond the walls of [...]

In 2006, Activision acquired game peripheral manufacturer RedOctane and as a result, the rights to the ‘Guitar Hero’ game series. Whether or not this would be a productive move was to be seen. A few months later, Harmonix, the game developer of ‘Guitar Hero’, was acquired by MTV Networks. Neversoft took over development for ‘Guitar [...]

Brain-teaser time: is it wiser to invest in network upgrades or to purchase traffic-shaping equipment in a futile effort to combat the inevitable?
This is the issue I can’t seem to understand. At UC Santa Barbara, there is a pool of 200Mb of downstream bandwidth allocated for about 7,000 students. The logical response to that statement [...]