Nicholas's Profile

Member since November 20, 1999

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  1. Review - Mozilla Firefox for Linux (v2)

    2.0 Final (Oct 24, 2006)

    Forget Firefox, stay free, get IceWeasel

  2. Review - Pidgin for Windows

    2.0.0 Beta 4 (Oct 19, 2006)

    This is my IM client of choice on Linux but it's not so great on Windows. If you want a much better Open Source alternative for Windows use Miranda. GAIM is king on Linux though.

  3. Review - Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows XP

    7.0 Final (Oct 19, 2006)

    The new security features are GREAT. The css support is greatly improved but still lags behind the competition a bit. The "Find on this page" stinks as does the lack of a download manager (but that you can get by with 3rd party tools). The worst thing though it the HORRIBLE UI. I've been using IE7 since beta 1 and it most certainly has NOT grown on me. Whoever designed the UI should be fired. It is THE WORST UI design I've ever seen on a professionally developed app by a large commercial entity. I wouldn't mind so much if you could at least customize the default layout more but there is very little customization options available. One of the main "features" of Firefox over the Mozilla suite was customizable toolbars, seems Microsoft didn't learn that lesson.

  4. Comment - Analyst: Blu-ray may never replace DVD in PCs

    7.0 Final (Aug 26, 2009 - 10:57 AM)

    I have a laptop with a BD drive and when your collection of movies is on BD discs and you want to watch a movie, say on a long flight, then sitting on your couch just isn't an option. Furthermore if you have a BD drive on your laptop hopefully you also got the thing with and HDMI out (mine does) which is nice because you can hook it up to the LCD TVs in hotels or even friends houses and watch the movies on the big screen even if they don't have BD players of their own. Also if you start recording video in HD the capacity advantage over DVD is great. The media price still needs to come down a lot from where it is but it will and as it does it will replace DVD.

  5. Comment - Analyst: Blu-ray may never replace DVD in PCs

    7.0 Final (Aug 26, 2009 - 10:48 AM)

    Your perception of reality seems to be screwed. I know you and I and most likely most people who read this website have broadband but here's a reality check... most people don't and won't anytime soon. Will online distribution continue to rise, sure. Will it pass physical media in the next few years, no. Games are already getting too big for a single DVD, the XBox360 is starting to run into that now. Sure it doesn't matter as much if it's multiple disc on PC's because you just use them during the install unlike a console where you need them to run but downloading a 10+ GB game is simply not going to be a reasonable option for most people anytime soon. Us "geeks" sure, the great unwashed masses, no.

  6. Comment - Firefox captures twenty percent of net; Chrome ties Opera

    7.0 Final (Nov 6, 2008 - 11:06 AM)

    "...it's made by Google. Once it reaches 1.0 Google will plaster it everywhere."

    Google products reach 1.0? So we can expect Chrome to come out of beta in what, like 2020?

    Chrome is never going to have more the an 10% market share and that's being VERY generous. It is a good product though because with it's very open licensing pieces of it will be taken by other browser projects (both in code and ideas) and ultimately that's what Google really wants.

    I'm not sure what Firefox's future is. It's doing great now but most projects seem to be moving more toward webkit then gecko. Apple (Safari) and KDE are already khtml/webkit. Gnome is moving toward webkit with Epiphany. Chrome is webkit based.

    Does Opera have a next-gen javascript version in the works? I've not heard of one but for them to continue to be competitive they're going to need to have something to compete with Safari, Firefox, and Chromes next gen javascript engines.

  7. Comment - PDC 2008: Cross-platform .NET surprisingly makes a fast game scripting engine

    7.0 Final (Oct 31, 2008 - 2:06 PM)

    Miguel works for Novell via their 2003 purchase of Ximian. He does NOT work for Microsoft.

  8. Comment - Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is the beginning of something...just a beginning

    7.0 Final (Oct 16, 2008 - 10:53 AM)

    Too bad the updated JavaScript parser you mention is disabled by default in this release. It's not really worth mentioning a feature that requires you to manually edit the about:config in order to activate it.
    When they turn it on by default or at least add a ui option to activate it (maybe beta 2?) maybe it will be worth mentioning.
    And for the record it beats Google's Chrome V8 in many tests, the ones often cited where it doesn't are the ones made by google that pitch to their own engines strengths. I'm not saying it's definately faster then V8, they both have their strengths and weaknesses and are very competitive but I don't think your "nowhere nears as fast" comment is accurate.
    The speed winner however is SquirrelFish Extreme from the WebKit team which is faster then both TraceMonkey (Firefox) and V8 (Chrome).