High speed broadband

Just a quick note to say thank you Virgin Media. As my ISP (previously NTL cable), you've just upgraded my broadband bandwidth from 3.8Mbps (nominal 4Mbps) to 8.4Mbps (nominal 10Mbps) on my cable connection without any extra charge.

I've been paying £25 per month for broadband for a few years now and it has been upgraded at least twice before. But this latest upgrade has really improved the connection speed to what a lot of my customers could only pray for. Especially, as I can offset this cost to my company and claim back the VAT.

It is amazing how quickly you can become accustomed to these speeds. So now when I visit a typical customer here in Basingstoke that has a connection speed of just 512Kbps to 1Mbps it seems really slow to download files, web pages, emails, etc. Almost like a telephone dial-up connection was when broadband first came along. Why wait when much better speeds are available? Mind you I still have customers on that dial-up connection but at least I can take along mobile broadband without having to wait as much any more.

Thanks again NTL, sorry Virgin Media! And I'm really enjoying it.

HL2: Episode Two

So that's it. I've finished it. Half Life 2: Episode Two. Not bad for a Christmas present from my son. Nine months to the day to complete the journey to White Forest base. And I still didn't want it to end. Hopefully Episode Three will come out soon.

No more Combine to kill. No more vast landscape vistas to admire and wonder at. No more heart pumping moments. Admittedly I got stuck a few times and left it for a while, only to be drawn back to see if I could go a little further. My all time favourite game has been completed again. The final battle with the Striders was awesome, but would obviously lead to the end of this episode.

There were so many places that required a little extra thought or strategy to proceed and then a little bit of luck just to go a bit further. Sections where nothing challenging was happening but were part of the plot to be led into a trap that was sprung and had to be conquered and then an escape onwards to new discoveries.

I've enjoyed Team Fortress 2 as well and will start Portal now.

Adobe Reader Lite

I've just downloaded another piece of bloatware. The latest version 9 of Adobe Reader is over 200Mb installed (up from 85Mb) and it includes something called Adobe AIR which I didn't ask for.

Ever noticed that when you click on a PDF link, your browser now freezes? Takes no notice of mouse, button or keyboard. Sits there for a while, completely comatose, until it finally gives you the first half of the front page of the PDF document and then freezes again. This is the user experience of Adobe Reader.

There is a really good alternative called Foxit PDF Reader. Freely downloadable, takes less than 2 minutes, installs immediately and works just as well. Get it from www.foxitsoftware.com

Configuring updates:

After a busy couple of weeks followed by my summer holiday, it is back to writing my blog. This time Windows Update is the subject of my wrath. When Microsoft released the concept of Automatic Windows Updates it all made good sense, but now I'm not so sure! With Windows Vista these updates are always applied both before a shutdown and after a reboot, making the restart process a lot longer. And they always seem to need a reboot which nags away at you until you feel forced to go away and have at least one cup of coffee.

Over the last few months this seems to be the normal mode of operation now. I timed a mid-specced, modern PC with this month's updates and it took 6¼ minutes to shutdown and 3¼ minutes to reboot making a total on almost 10 minutes. And as I type this, it is nagging away again saying that it needs to reboot again. I find this obtrusive and takes the control of the tool away from the user. And it is not just Windows but every application you have and some you don't want, are all asking to be updated.

I'm an engineer who believes that 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' so why should I continually be changing a proven software configuration with some updates that could cause the thing to fail? Security I hear you say. Are we really sure that leaving an unpatched computer on the Internet with a good a security suite on it will really fall victim to a piece of malware? I see many computers that never install updates and aren't completely ridden with viruses, worms, etc.

I upgraded the memory in the PC and I have to wait many minutes while the thing shuts down and restarts and no option to avoid it. I'm seriously considering turning off Automatic Updates and relying on a three or six month 'grab 'em all and install once' option.