goodbye, my friend

Today has been "one of those days" again for me, this time, something didn't survive.
My most durable technological possession of all time, my USB flash drive, my SanDisk Cruzer Micro, 512 MB version (click on photo to go to the Amazon store for a better photo).

I bought the flash drive in 2004 or so after my IT classmates kept joking around that I was the only one in the class still using floppy disks to transfer my work back and forth from classroom to home and vice versa.

Once I did buy it, I was really impressed with the design and abilities of the Cruzer Micro. It had nearly the capacity of a CD-R, was small enough to fit into the "key pocket" on my jeans, and even withstood the tortures of going through the wash three times and the dryer twice! I was astonished that the drive held up so well. And was behaving just fine the other day. As a matter of fact, I used the drive on Thursday at work, copying off files before I went on a service call. The drive was fully functional.

Today though, I only needed the drive once. I powered on a computer that couldn't see it's USB keyboard. It couldn't see the CyberMedics "internal store use only" USB keyboards or mice, so I thought there might be a problem with the HID (Human Interface Devices) subsystem on the computer... So I plugged in my flash drive and waited for it to be auto detected. During this process, the computer crashed. I was too focused on the customer, explaining things, when I finally decided that I should reboot the computer and run some diagnostic utilities on the system. To prevent erroneous readings, I powered the computer down and then removed the flash drive, which never was auto-detected by the computer, nor did the big bright blue LED light up on the drive either. I figured it was never detected by the computer. But when I pulled my cuzer out, it was hot. Not to the point of burning me or anything, but a good fifteen degrees or so hotter than it should have been, especially for not being detected by the system.

I decided to leave the flash drive out on the table to cool off while I troubleshooted the system further. Eventually, I decided to plug my flash drive into my g4 Mac (the "MacBench") at the store to see if it recognized. It did not. Just a quick blink of the blue LED, no mount point on the desktop, no detection by Disk Utility. A bad sign. So I let it sit for another few minutes and went back to trouble shooting the computer that started this whole mess.

Eventually, I started a hard drive diag on the computer that murdered my flash drive, and then went to plug the cruzer into a Windows Vista station we have at CyberMedics. Unfortunately, it yielded the same exact story. A quick blink of the LED, no mount point in "My Computer," no detection by Disk Management. Ditto goes for when I got the drive home on both my MacBook and SUSE Linux systems. If the drive doesn't come back by Friday, August 31, before I leave work, I'll be heading off around town to see about getting a new one.

It should be noted that I in no way fault SanDisk or the cruzer micro series of drives for this issue; in fact, I so favor the cruzer micro drives that I will lean very far toward buying only those flash drives, however, the new style just isn't the same. I've even thought about checking out Amazon and buying another cruzer 512 MB drive, same model as mine. It's price has dropped quite a bit, from the $45 I paid back in 2004 to around $12 at Amazon.

If it comes to that, I'll be writing an IT obituary for the drive this weekend.

Note: the above photo was taken shortly after the flash drive was removed from the dryer, after going through a fully cycle of laundry. It functioned for several months after ward, including going through the wash twice after this incident, and the dryer one more time. That is, until it ran into a defective computer that was putting excessive voltage though it's own USB ports, effectively killing various USB devices.

beating the horse

For the past few weeks Apple has been advertising their new iMac line, and with rumors of Mac OS X: Leopard (10.5.x) coming out soon, they are making some major headlines in the Alt-OS circuit.

But there is one Apple product that has been overlooked, the one item from Apple that I've never been able to understand or truly endorse: the Mac Mini. At the announcement earlier this month, Apple, Inc. announced the upgraded Mac Mini, which is, (IMHO) a total joke. It's got the Core 2 processor now, instead of the Core/Solo processor. It also have a few minor changes, but it is still the slower of the Mac series, starting off at 1.83 Ghz with a Combo (no DVD burning) drive, I believe it is the only Mac still available without a Super (DVD burner) drive.

And then there is the logic behind it:
FOR: The computer makes a great home theater PC
AGAINST: Since replaced with the Apple TV
FOR: It's small profile allows it to fit easily onto one's desk
AGAINST: the iMac does this as well, and going with small form factor, the MacBook/MacBook Pro function in the exact same way a mini does, plus they have the ability to be uber-mobile.
FOR: It's a great entry-level desktop-mac for those of us who want more than a MacBook/iMac but less than a Mac Pro
AGAINST: unfortunately, it's slower and less-functional than the MacBook/MBP... Which makes me wonder WHY does Apple still sell them?

I can only gather that there is enough of a niche market out there for them... But with Apple being in itself a niche market for computers, it's odd that they would cater to a further declining area.

The biggest selling point of the Mac Mini is the price, starting at $599, it happens to be the cheapest Mac available, however one should note that this configuration doesn't come with the DVD burner nor does it come with a monitor, both aspects are standard features of all of Apple's computers, save for the Mac Pro, which doesn't come with a monitor in the default configuration.

The biggest thing against the MacMini, of which I can only hope they've improved in this new version, is the horrendous upgradeability of the unit... Popping the case requires the use of one of three tools: an "Apple specialized" tool to open the case, a putty knife, or a lot of wire -- all operations require a decent bit of time and patience to actually "crack" the case. The design could not have been more horrid! It is so difficult, that there actually isn't a single user-serviceable internal part on the unit; even the MacBook and MBP can have their RAM and HDD upgraded by the home user.

Apple, this horse is dead... It's time to put it to rest.

Keynote: The Presentation

The presentation went well... I would have been happier with questions during the presentation or at least a little less yawning! Seriously. I suppose I understand, I used to yawn all the time during my MCSE classes with Tim Brock, even though I would be really interested in the class... Just too tired not to yawn, especially when the lights are dimmed and one has to listen to someone talk for half an hour straight!

After the presentation, we had a "hands-on" session, with three broken down old Dell Optiplex systems (PII processors, 2.0 GB HDDs, etc.) -- easy to open, no worries if they break afterward.

The only part that was truly difficult for me to deal with was how so many of the students would try to talk over one another, and it was really difficult for me to deal with two or even three students trying to ask me questions at the same time. Over-lapping voices like that yields one confused guest speaker. I suppose I should have been prepared for that, seeing as how I was speaking to a group of high school freshmen on their second day of class and not a group of college seniors on their way into their professional careers.

I thought about putting up the presentation here on IndigoJake, but there really isn't much of a reason for it... Just a bunch of pictures of the innards of an eMachine... I still hate putting text into presentations, much preferring to just use photos and sort of wing-it.

Keynote

On Thursday, I'll have to make an IT presentation "keynote" at Spring Vale Academy to a collection of 15 or so high school freshmen. It's been ages since I last did this, I'd like to do a cut-a-way presentation, but since computers aren't really layered so well, that's not going to work. Perhaps an "activated first," "activated second," strategy would be okay, but things are just so instant on computers that'll be a chore to figure out. Perhaps most important first? But if even a single component is too far out of range, a computer won't boot.

~sigh, I'll just have to do it in a seemingly random order. I think my keynote presentation is setup as motherboard, processor & cooling, hard drives, optical drives, and a few other minor things. I suppose that'll do.

iWork '08

After all the hype, and countless recommendations of using Keynote for presentations instead of PowerPoint, I've finally decided to take the plunge and try out the new iWork '08 that Apple announced only a few days ago... Especially after I found out that iWork '08 has a free 30 day demo as well as finding out that my ol' iWork '06 demo was activated back ages ago when I first got my MacBook, sat unused, and finally expired (about 10 months ago).

I think it's time to try out a new version! Now, with Numbers.

To get your free copy of iWork, just click the image above to be redirected to Apple's website.

Best line from Apple

iMac is the ultimate accessory for your iPod or iPhone.

Apple: iMac: Technology: iTunes

When did the iMac itself become an accessory for the iPod?
Tuesday, August 7, 2007.

Mac Attack!

Quick post: new iMac line is out. Faster processors, new design, new commercial! Nice to check out.

New keyboard (both wireless and wired) are out. Super thin!

Adjustments to the Mac Mini line, definite plus... I've never been much of a fan of this line.

iLife and iWork 2008! Gotta love that.

No major changes to the iPod, MacBook, Apple TV, iPhone or Mac OS X... Leopard is estimated out by the end of the year.

Firefox Memory Leaks: Feature?

For those Firefox users out there, I just happened to stumble across information regarding the trend of Firefox (including the most recent releases of 2.0.x) to leak memory. Turns out it's a "feature."

Yes, a feature. A feature that was commonly used back in the days of dial up, according to John C. Dvorak, on TWiT: 42. The problem stems form the browser cashing the previous 8 pages as one navigates the page. There is also concern that this feature may be compounded per tab, of which has been refuted by MozillaZine. TO adjust the setting, you need to type in your Firefox address bar: about:config and then set a filter for browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers. Check out the MozillaZine article for more information about what the number means. Set it to "0" to disable the cashing feature.

Do to my seemingly never ending problems with Firefox in Linux ballooning to an extreme in SUSE Linux 9.3, I've decided to give it a try on my Linux machine, and we'll see if this improves performance at all.