Computers – Page 2

April 22, 2012April 23, 2012

So #spectrum30 day is here

Today is the official launch day of the Sinclair Spectrum 30 years ago.

I’ll be posting a fair bit more tomorrow (after I’ve taken the daughter to school), but to get you in the mood – here’s one I did yesterday……

So in a rough form, the running order (I’ll tidy it later):

1) Jet Set Willy – Software Projects – 2 copies of this failed to load.
2) Manic Miner – Bug-Byte Software – Failed to Load

Ultimate saves the day –

3) TranzAm – Can you collect the 8 Cups of Ultimate? Well I managed 2 one my first go (4 on my second go), which isn’t great but at least I tried. Quite a tough little game to be honest. Go too fast and you run out fuel and over heat, go too slow and the ‘Deadly Black Turbos’ will get you.

Good fun and fast paced. Play area is a little squashed. But overall good fun.

TranzAm - Ultimate Play the Game

4) TLL – Tornado Low Level. Basically – fly around and wipe out enemy targets (by just flying over them!) Simple game, made more complex because of a ‘3D’ landscape and the compact screen. I don’t think the RAF will be calling to be honest.

Tornado Low Level

April 17, 2012April 20, 2012

Spectrum at 30

So what are you doing on Monday April 23rd? me, I hope to be playing retro games all day to celebrate the 30th birthday of the Sinclair Spectrum.

Spectrum30

Old school, rubber key action all day. I just need to find my old tape recorder. So expect a fair bit of blogging, tweeting and the odd youtube video.

/edit….

Spectrum30

TV and Spectrum setup, ready to go (just need to find a tape deck)

July 23, 2011July 23, 2011

OS X Lion

Well it’s here……

And I’ve installed it twice (Mac Mini and Macbook). It’s not an entirely new thing for me as I have used the developer preview version for a short time, whilst that was fine the transition to my main Mac (Mini) wasn’t as straight forward as you’d expect from an Apple OS

The initial issue the download, with Snow Leopard it was DVD based so as soon as I bought it I could use it. With Lion it’s an App Store purchase, so for me a fairly slow download. It took around 2 hours to download the 3.5 (ish) gb of data. Which isn’t great, but that’s more of an ISP issue to be honest.

So kicking off the install the application does a little bit of behind the scenes work, then you presented with what looks to be a standard ‘About 33 minutes to install’ – I know these timings are usually bad, the MacBook took around 50 minutes to progress the 33 minutes (the Mini was much the same).

After the initial reboot it’s ready to go…………

Well, for some reason the log process is slower than before but I’ll put that down to 1st boot

Once it’s up and running you get to play with new OS, well you do unless you open mail.app first. Though I’m probably awkward as I have large mail file. So Lion is effective a dead OS with this going on, what probably didn’t help was Spotlight’s insistance on wanting to search my HD. That was soon disabled and the sloooooow mail setup continued. Eventually it started and you are confronted with the new mail client.

Yuck

As you can see it looks like mail on the iPad, which works on the iPad – but looks odd on a 21″ screen to be honest (even as a small resized window it looks odd). However it’s not all lost as you can restore the classic Mail.app look, which I have done.

Less Yuck

So back as before, apart from larger looking, bland grey system font. Which doesn’t seem to be changable.

So when you first start properly what do you notice, as I have the Magic Trackpad the scrolling is immediately apparent. It’s wrong, actually it’s set to the way a iOS works, which is fine for a touch screen device, but seems unnatural for a desktop/laptop device. You can tailor the gestures a bit more than on Snow Leopard, so less need for BetterTouchTool (for me).

New icons appear in the toolbar, Launch Pad, Mission Control and bizarrely for a MacMini – FaceTime.

Lovely buttons

LaunchPad is effectively makes lion look and feel like iOS. To be honest I’ve not found that I use the feature, so the icon has been removed for me.

Mission Control replaces the Spaces Icon (although it’s still on my MacBook), but as the way to open it is easier on the trackpad (4 fingers swiped up) the icon has gone.

Lion seems to have picked up the fact I had 3 desktops setup on Spaces previously and those are displayed on the Mission Control Screen. Also using Control – Arrows you can navigate through them.

On a Mission

You might notice that Dashboard is missing from Mission Control, I’ve disabled it as it was an annoyance accidentally switching to that screen using spaces. The icon is still there so I can launch it that way.

So hows it looking in general, you may be asking. Well it’s a tale of 2 devices. The MacBook which is much older and has the worse specification looks to be fine, everything opens and closes faster. Startup seems snappier, shutdown was always quick. The Mac Mini however is slower, sluggish after the update. Maybe after a days it might return to normal.

As for Applications, CS3 looks to behave. I Know Adobe Lightroom 3 works along with my Canon Eos software. VMWare Fusion 2 is behaving as it should. iTunes was a bit weird though. I updated it before the Lion upgrade and it needed upgrading again afterwards. iPhoto is still a bloated piece of crapware (though needed for syncing photos with my iOS devices). Only thing that I use which I know is broken is Rsync.app – as a PPC app it wont work because Rosetta emulation is no longer available. Which means I need to fine another back up solution.

~~I’ll try a few reboots to see if I can improve the Mini~~ Seems to be much better at shutdown/startup since i’ve done a few reboots. So to conclude slightly disappointed in the performance issue on initial install, but I guess things take a little while to correct/sort out and I’m relatively happy about some of the improvements. Not too sure if it’ll change my life yet (maybe once the promised virtualisation comes out).

December 30, 2010December 30, 2010

So, iPad it is then.

Right probably my last Apple purchase for the year (MacMini – Magic Mouse – Magic Trackpad – BT Keyboard – iLife 11 – Battery Charger – iPod Nano – iPad and finally iPad case) and it’s the one I didn’t think I could find a place for.

Well I got thinking about it, and as explained in the previous ‘gimped’ post the current MBA is a non contender.

I’ll get round to posting a picture of soon, and completing this blog post. But i’ve suddenly gone tired, so need to drop off.

/edit note to self. Fix mobile wordpress so it recognises the difference between iPhone and iPad. Fix theme so it doesn’t look broken.

December 26, 2010December 26, 2010

Which gimped product for purchase?

You know it’s a hard life being an Apple Whore, to many shiny products but with to many what ifs?

So the latest quandary:

iPad vs Macbook Air or put another way £429 (£529 3g version) vs £850

Why gimped, well certainly in the MacBook Air’s case it’s because it comes with 2gb of Ram. I know I can get it built to order from Apple with 4gb, but this adds £80 and means I have to purchase from apple (no 12% discount nor decent warranty). Discount from them is around 6%. Also with regards to the MBA is the Elephant in the room, yep my old Core 2 Duo 2Ghz Macbook – which is still perfectly usable after 4 years.

As for the iPad, well we all know it’s superb but there’s two things: 256mb and iPad2. I could hold off, but there’s no certainty that iPad2 will be out soon (well within the next 4 months).

So my current line of thinking is a refurb 16gb iPad for £389 or new iPad (£429) with a store discount of 12% so pretty much the same price. Then if the iPad 2 is a reality then it’s no big deal to sell the 16gb for possibly £300 and upgrade then.

In terms of cash I have at least £100 spare at present and I’m owed 80 hours overtime (for 2 months) – which I should get end of January providing someone doesn’t cock it up again.