Activity for September 25

Review - Norton AntiVirus
2010 17.0.0.136 (Sep 11, 2009)

I'm calling bulls*** on CyberDoc -- I don't believe he actually downloaded and installed it. It isn't the same"bloated" AV they have always shipped. The 2009 version was completely rewritten from scratch specifically to be very lightweight, fast, and nonintrusive, in response to the overwhelming user complaints that it had become a massive slow intrusive resource-hungry overbearing heap of crap. Kudos to Symantec for finally getting the message and responding. I bought the 2009 version and it was in fact an entirely new code base, as promised. Review honestly, and don't make assumptions about the current version based on experience with past versions. I had stopped using their product many years ago, but was persuaded by competent reviewers that Symantec had turned over a new leaf and responded to user uproar.
Review - OnLine TV Live
6.3.18 (Jul 22, 2009)

How is this freeware if it has a 30 day timeout?
Review - Mozilla Firefox (v3.5) for Windows
3.5 Beta 99 (Jun 9, 2009)

I would have preferred to be able to award a solid 4 1/2. This is a better browser than 3.0 and as explained by the Foundation, the overhauled Javascript engine and several other internal changes have warranted a .5 version leap. Quite a feat, to improve the Javascript performance by 250%.

To address a couple of remarks below, I too am disappointed that the extension writers didn't just go ahead and set "maxver" to 3.5 final after the extensions related code had been totally nailed down (beta 3 or 4, I forget). That would have prevented so many extensions from appearing to break when in reality they will work fine. Mine all did. That's the extension authors' faults, more so than Firefox, though I wonder if it might be possible in the future to do something like what Google is doing and arranging for extensions to work independent of what happens in the browser along the way. Go get the Ngihtly Tester Tools extension and use it to force them all to work in the meantime. That's quite easy and it does the trick.

As for performance, let me be more precise than the reviewer directly below me. At least with respect to Javascript performance, it goes like this: IE is very distantly behind the rest of the pack. Opera is actually next to last but still well ahead of. Firefox is somewhat ahead of Opera. Chrome and Safari are running neck and neck vying for #1, but final Safari 4.0 and the latest Chrome dev build has Chrome ahead by a nose. Both are quite a bit faster than everything else. I really don't have objective performance figures for overall page rendering. Various reports put all of the browsers fairly close together on that. As for responsiveness, subjectively I'm giving that to Chrome, followed by Opera, then not terribly far behind is Firefox, and IE is well behind. I don't know where to place Safari because it feels kinda fast one day and kinda slow the next. Firefox is much more responsive with no extensions than it is when you do as I have and load it up with a ton of them.

With memory usage, I totally disagree with the poster below. I've seen others conduct memory usage testing, and I've conducted my own, with interesting results. Firefox is actually pretty much leading the pack over a typical usage session for memory usage. Safari, in my testing, was much higher on memory usage than everything else, and the rest all fell somewhere between Firefox and Safari. I kind of expected Opera to be at the top and didn't find this to be true.

Firefox is still king of the hill with respect to extensions, as no one can even touch its current ecosystem. I'm personally using Chrome most of the time because of the raw performance (responsiveness, rendering, javascript) but when I'm not using Firefox I seriously miss the extensions that I've come to enjoy. Furthermore, Firefox has an unparalleled bookmark management system with a fantastic inclusion of tags. I'm waiting for the others to catch up in this respect. Because of this, and the XMarks server sync addon, I'm still using Firefox as my primary bookmark manager. I just wish I could sync with the others more easily.
Review - Microsoft Windows Live OneCare
2.5.2900.22 (Mar 17, 2009)

Why is this still being marketed? The product has been scheduled for discontinuation and the antivirus portion is to be made available for free. Who would buy this now? I don't get it.
Review - Damn Small Linux
4.4.1 (Jun 19, 2008)

Let me offer another good use for this, aside from keeping it small enough to install on a business card sized CD (for wallet or s*** pocket, hence 50MB limit) or tiny memory stick. I use it in a VM inside Windows (runs great in the free VirtualBox) for totally sandboxed web browsing.

The fact that the VM software itself adds relatively little overhead means that this whole distro plus its stripped Firefox 2.0 can run on my 1GB XP system alongside my other apps and only take less than 100MB, which is far less than any other distro and right at what FF2 for Windows ordinarily takes on its own. Add VirtualBox's seamless window mode, and I have a totally sandboxed browser right alongside my other stuff. For casual browsing (or venturing into the dark alleys of the web) you can't do much better for protecting your system. Presumably, you're doing banking or other commerce on that same system, and fewer ways for the bad guys to compromise your system is good. Doing that with such low overhead is even better.

I'm knocking one point ONLY because they're slow about getting the latest browsers stripped and rolled into the works. FF2 was JUST added as a replacement for FF1, and this is right when the more memory efficient FF3 is available. I do understand that FF3 wasn't final while this DamSmall build was in the works, but: (1) The FF3 betas have been very stable since beta 3 or so, and (2) They JUST GOT FF2 in.... and that's a LONG FREAKING TIME since it came out.

I do NOT recommend this distro for your day to day use, but for keeping a fully working distro on a bootable mini-CD (or business card CD) or memory stick for personal use on other peoples' systems, or for running in a virtual machine, this can't really be beat. If it can, I'd love to hear about it.
Comment - Is the Palm Pre still coming to Verizon?
4.4.1 (Sep 25, 2009 - 1:29 PM)

Nice. Android is starting to look very attractive to me.
Comment - Is the Palm Pre still coming to Verizon?
4.4.1 (Sep 25, 2009 - 1:26 PM)

I am Verizon customer who isn't switching elsewhere because I've been far more pleased with Verizon's customer service, quality of network in my area, coverage, and internet performance than I have with the competitors who I've used in the past. The only big letdown with Verizon has been the selection of phones. At present I'm using a Palm Centro, which has been fine in the past but looks ancient compared to the new large-screen modern OS phones with excellent full-featured web browsers. I'm due for a subsidized upgrade in February, and HAD been assuming I was going to be getting a Pre. This article has left me thinking that I'd better get to thinking about a contingency plan (other than switching carriers).

Unless this unannounced new Palm device is at least as nice as the Pre, I guess I'll be thinking very seriously about one of the many new Android phones. I liked the Pre because of the decent sized screen (contrast to the tiny screen on my Centro), the modern OS, and the hope that expanding WebOS to another carrier could finally spur the software development. don't want another device with a small screen, and the Pixi doesn't look like it's going to cut it for me.

Comments from Android and Pre owners -- how are you liking your phones, and more importantly, are you finding a nice assortment of apps for your phone?
Comment - Opera Mini 5 beta for mobile closely follows Opera 10 in design
4.4.1 (Sep 17, 2009 - 11:01 AM)

Too bad it isn't supported on PalmOS. My Centro has 5 or 6 months before I'm eligible for a subsidized replacement. It sucks when you get a viable phone at the time and then can't make it through the contract before it's already considered "old" and no longer seeing new software development.
Comment - Never mind the iPods, there's a new Palm device!
4.4.1 (Sep 9, 2009 - 10:55 AM)

Would someone who currently has a Pre please comment on the availability / selection of applications for your device? I own a Centro at the moment, and being with Verizon, there just aren't many other Smartphone choices available to me. The Pre is supposed to be arriving at Verizon early next year, around the time my contract allows for a new subsidized phone. Also around that time, Android devices are supposed to be appearing at Verizon. Functionally, either OS is fine for me, but the deciding factor is going to be the app selection.
Comment - Windows 7 Upgrades: Are they going to be too much trouble or just about right?
4.4.1 (Aug 7, 2009 - 11:50 AM)

Question is, is it even possible to do a true "fresh install" of an upgrade version of Windows 7? That whole business of needing to have an already installed and activated XP or Vista seems to make that impossible. That is, unless one of the following two things happen:

1) EVERYTHING from the Vista/XP installation is totally segregated and moved to another folder, and none of it mingles whatsoever with the 7 stuff. this isn't a completely fresh install in my view, but at least you'd only have one folder to delete and presume that everything from XP or Vista is in this folder.
2) Once it sees the activated copy on the drive, it then says, "OK, I see it, so you're now free to go ahead and format the drive and install Windows 7". That would be suitable for me, even though I'd still prefer not to have needed to install XP first.

Does anyone know which of these scenarios are going to be available to the upgrader who still wants a truly fresh install?