Vadim's Profile

Member since February 24, 2008

  • Name

    Vadim Rapp

  • Location:

    United States of America

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Recent Posts

  1. Review - Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3

    Final (Jun 3, 2008)

    After having used released SP3 for 3 weeks, I have removed it.

    1. sporadic blue screens here and there. No pattern. Various codes. Haven't seen as many blue screens in 3 years before SP3. After the removal, not one blue screen.

    2. There also was another, more scary effect. Suddenly, in the middle of work, the screen would slowly flash several times, after which video signal (NVidia 7800GS) went off and computer (mobo Abit AV8) became unresponsive. After hard reset, there was long beeeeep instead of short normal one, and again no video signal. In about 10 minutes, everything magically restored to the normal state; during these 10 minutes, even complete turning off the PSU did not have any effect. This was happening about once in 2 days. I have no explanation or even an idea about what might be causing this and how it was possible, but again, this never happened before, and never came back after having SP3 removed.

    3. Hibernation became impossible - computer was saving the state without a problem, but when trying to wake up, it said that the file was corrupted.

    4. Removing SP3 itself also was not smooth - the un-installation has failed with "file not found". Investigation showed that it did not like one particular kb937468.cat because it had expired certificate. So I used system restore.

  2. Review - doPDF

    6.0.259 (Apr 21, 2008)

    It should be noted that PDF files with graphics made by doPDF are 4-5 times bigger than other PDF makers - doPDF so far can't compress the graphics, unlike others.

  3. Review - Webopi

    1.2 (Feb 24, 2008)

    good idea, but I doubt it's going to live. Unless it's hosted on some offshore server, after just couple of reviews it will be sued out of pants for copyright violations or whatever else will come to mind.

  4. Comment - After backlash, Sony to drop $50 fee for not installing bloatware

    1.2 (Mar 23, 2008 - 1:03 AM)

    Actually, there are many who don't. If you go to pricewatch and look at the desktop systems, practically all vendors who offer web-based configuration offer "no o/s" as an option, and even with o/s, they don't install the crap. Just don't buy big brands.

    Not buying from big brands historically had yet another advantage: the bigger the brand is, the higher probability of deviation from the standards, hence incompatibility.