If you’re Pagan; especially if you’re a techno-Pagan, interested in Paganism, or even just browsing, then please do visit this site. I very much doubt you’ll regret doing so.

What I am going to say is that I stumbled across it today; not for the first time, and had time to have a better look at it. I was quite amazed to be honest: So much so that I’m giving it a page of it’s own at no profit to myself whatsoever. - In fact I haven’t even notified the owner; who I have known online for a while, that I am doing so.

Why am I doing so? Because I like it: It’s a very good site in my opinion. I appreciate that you might not all be as enthralled with it as I was; but it’s well worth a visit.

This year I’ll be recommending a number of sites: Pagan, technology-oriented, individual; anything that really stands out to me. Some I’ll do for no profit: Some I’ll charge to recommend.

Feel free to submit your URL for consideration if you like. If I decide to review I’ll let you know along with my price, should I decide to charge. Drop me a line at urlsubmit at kustomkomputa dot co dot uk. if you want to submit your blog or a blog.

Windows is a good operating system in my opinion; particularly XP at time of writing. (Vista suffers from bloat.) One thing I’ve noticed with XP is how much disk space it allocates by default to System Restore: 12% of available disk space. That percentage can be quite a colossal amount on, say, a 1.5 terabyte disk. - And the more space occupied by the system, including System Restore, the less space available for you to store files.

Of course, the larger the disk, the more space Windows needs to store restore-point information: That is to say where a couple restore points covering all of the files on an 80GB drive could be crammed into, say, 4GB of space; it would take a lot more space to accomplish the same on a 1 terabyte disk. - Somewhere in the region of 50 gigabytes.

By allocating a proportion of the disk by a proportional percentage-value, rather than a given quantity of gigabytes, Windows always has enough available space to create a number of System-Restore points. However the percentage that Windows allocates for this purpose is to my mind overly large, and reserves too much space.

An option is to limit the percentage of the disk-space available to System Restore; which does limit the amount of restore points it can hold, but releases disk space for other things.

To do this:

*1 Right-click on the “My Computer” icon and select the System Restore tab.

*2 In the box select the disk on which you want to adjust the amount of space reserved for System Restore points and click “settings”.

*3 Adjust the amount of space using the slider. The default setting is 12% of your disk, but on disks of 160GB or more I find 6% is quite sufficient and a decent working amount.

If you have a disk below 40GB I don’t suggest changing this to below 10%, although I have got away with 5% before on a 40GB disk.

Do you think 12% is too much space; or do you think it better to sacrifice space to have more restore points available?

It’s Christmas Day 2008; and in view of that it just doesn’t seem right to post about technology today. - In fact most bloggers probably won’t be posting at all at this time. I’m my own person though; so as such I’m posting on Christmas Day 2008.

I write the odd Pagan article in this blog every now and again; because I can, and because I want to. Largely this is a technology-related blog; and as such it shall remain largely that way. As a Pagan, though, I see things from a Pagan perspective, and I therefore relate things from such a perspective. Although the subject of technology is very much identical despite whatever one’s religious beliefs may be; I do like to use this blog to focus, at times, on areas only loosely related to technology: Even at times I post the occasional article unrelated to technology, and this is one of those times:-

It being Christmas Day I thought I’d post about Christmas Day - And why not? Behold the following ramblings:-

I was watching the church service on BBC1 that interfaced Christmas Eve with Christmas Day: Yes I actually find even the Christian chants melodious; in a few cases even more so than a lot of the Pagan chants. - Anyway I was thinking of the Christian message at this time of year. A virgin birth? Yes it’s possible. There is a syndrome around even today, known as Turner’s Syndrome, where in certain women, unfertilised eggs can develop into embryos. Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote on Turner’s Syndrome in 2003, the content of which was sourced from a publication on the subject:-

"All such births are female and have a condition known as Turner’s Syndrome; signs of which include raised capillaries near to the dermal surface, sometimes causing vivid birthmarks and intermittent dermal haemorrhage, especially during periods of exercise and stress. Also breast development in these subjects is limited, however the rib cage is large in proportion to that of other females.

Despite having fully-formed female genitals; menstruation is uncommon in women with Turner’s Syndrome."

But Jesus (Latin) or Yeshua (Hebrew) was a man wasn’t he? Well allegedly so yes; but factually we have in reality no idea exactly what he looked like, or for that matter what sex he actually was. Note I said what sex he actually was: All indications from the Bible are that he was a male; but the validity of, in places contrary accounts written by a number of different men over 40 years plus after his death, does not in any way appear to constitute believable evidence. On the contrary in  fact; it would appear to be drawn from local memory and from hearsay more than from fact. Could he not just as easily have been a non-menstruating Turner’s Syndrome female posing as a man?

All we have are seemingly-erroneous accounts from a few of his friends written a long time after he died, plus further accounts of a similar nature written by people who never actually knew him in person. I refer here to the Gnostic Gospel writers as well as to the four Gospel-writers in the Christian Bible as it is today.

The Biblical accounts are all synonymous with one another in their claim that this person was the "Son of God". The first question is; which god? Well from the Jewish belief we can safely assume that the writers mean Yaweh, the Jewish god. Once again, though, there is little if any, solid concrete evidence for this claim. He could just as easily have been a Witch; after all he did have a coven of followers. Yes; the Biblical account says that he talked to his father, god (Yaweh).- But we’ve already had ample cause to dispute the validity of those accounts which were written years after his death.

I don’t mean to go much further with this article; and I’m not going to do so, other than to point out in summary that we can’t be sure, without at least a shadow of a doubt, that Yeshua was even male; nor can we be sure that he was the son of the Jewish god - or for that matter any god. What we can be sure is almost certainly wrong is that Christmas was not the time of the birth of Yeshua, but rather the time of a Pagan festival that was adopted by the church.

Although I don’t myself celebrate Christmas itself out of personal preference, preferring instead to celebrate the Winter Solstice or Yule on or around the 21st December only; I see no reason why it should be against Pagan beliefs to do so; bearing in mind its Pagan origins. There’s certainly nothing un-Pagan or anti-Pagan about doing so. It’s the Feast of Mithras after all, and all of the symbolism contained therein as regards the "Christian" celebration has Pagan origins:-

The Yule-log, the tree, the baubles on the tree representing the Sun; indeed Santa himself, have Pagan roots probably stretching back millennia.

Whether you’re Pagan, Christian, Jewish, Atheist, whatever; enjoy this festive time of year. This is a truly multi-theistic celebration that pretty much all faiths or non-faiths can celebrate. Enjoy it and season’s greetings to you all.

If you’d like to comment I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this.

- And don’t worry: I’ll be talking tech again very soon; so do drop by again for more in the line of geekery.

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Are the secret Royal Codes now in the Public Domain? What other secrets accompany them?

On Thursday 18th December 2008, The Daily Telegraph reported that a laptop belonging to Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, had been stolen when A thief broke into a photographic studio in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, in England.

One of Fergie’s aides had taken the computer there in order to have private snaps of the Duchess, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and her former husband Prince Andrew downloaded and archived.

They have very little, if any, chance of being published in a British newspaper, unless the editor is willing to be interrogated and probably charged by police. The thing is that there was almost definitely other data on the laptop’s hard-drive that was of a more sensitive nature: Passwords, address-book, secret royal codes? Would some mad identity thief attempt to pass herself off as Sarah Ferguson? It is a possibility.

Let’s hope that the Royals encrypt their data. Do they though? The UK Government don’t; or at least they didn’t: ‘Remember all the hoo-hah over the last couple of years when sensitive unencrypted records on disks were "lost" in the post, when ministers left laptops with unencrypted disks on the train, and when drives with unencrypted sensitive data were sold on eBay? The UK Royal Family will probably have to change all their passwords and security codes, if they haven’t already done so.

Whether or not the thief was an opportunist who stole the laptop to sell for drugs or similar; the criminals who end up with the machine in all probability are going to be trying every effort they can muster to get at the data on the hard-drive.

While the Duchess has had personal details disclosed in the past without her permission; could this lead to an expose’? Can you imagine headlines such as:-

"Laptop Thief Exposes Diana Death Royal Conspiracy" ?

Everything has both a negative and a positive side at the end of the day; although maybe not for the Royals if this were the case. - However such an occurrence is unlikely.

It does make one wonder, though, about what secrets are contained inside the laptops of the stars and the like.

If Madonna or some such celebrity were travelling on a train in the same carriage as you, and she left her laptop on the table when she got out; what would you do? Be honest now; and do tell.

Joy to the world; the Sun’s to rise; let’s hail the newborn light.
On every hill, in every glade.
The shining Sun pervade, heat, shadow, life is made.
The Earth goddess awakes.
No longer the long dark night.

Joy to the world; the darkness fades. The Holly King deposed.

Soon night will fade away, in the lasting light of day.

There’ll be warmth and light and joy. Ev’ry girl and ev’ry boy;

The sun shall rise from rest, to happiness attest.

In long days - and short nights.

The dark disposed.

Hail to the Sun; the light has come.

The dark nights are no more.

We welcome in the spring; bringing life to ev’rything,

And buds and chutes appear; as the Winter’s end draws near.

In the growing light of the Sun.

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It would appear that the image of invulnerability that Apple attempt to portray in their advertising is becoming threatened. This is now concurrent with a Firefox trojan which tarnishes the open-source community’s similar portrayal, as well as another security vulnerability discovered in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The malware writers must be ready for a field-day!

On December 15th 2008, Apple released security updates for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, client and server, bringing the products up to versions 10.4.11 and 10.5.5. The updates address 21 individual vulnerabilities. 7 of the vulnerabilities are in the Adobe Flash plug-in.

If Apple dared to use severity ratings then a number of these updates would have been termed "critical": However the pretence continues, and no doubt Steve Jobs will manage to sweep this unfortunate necessity under the carpet in the usual style.

With all these circumstances which could lead to arbitrary code execution, Apple had no choice but to patch. I wonder how their advertising campaigns will be affected in the light of reality? :-

"I’m a Mac"

"…And I’m a PC."

"What’s up PC? Have you picked up another infection?"

"No Mac; my user stopped using Internet Explorer until Microsoft release a patch for a recently discovered vulnerability. - Just like Apple recently did for you. How many updates was that now..?"

"Oh a few…"

"- Twenty-something springs to mind: That’s rather a lot for an invulnerable system, wouldn’t you agree Mac?"

"OK, OK, But I’m patched now; so I’m still invulnerable. Your patch hasn’t been released yet."

"Now Mac; aren’t we getting a bit above ourselves? Invulnerable systems don’t need patches. - What’s that? We’re out of time? OK I’ll conclude this ad for you:-

Apple - Patching up the Future Invulnerability."

"Hey! Wait a darn minute PC…" (Sound fades out.)

Apple users should update their systems ASAP.

If you guessed from the title of this post that yet another security flaw has been discovered in Internet Explorer; then you’d be right:-

Details of the vulnerability are issued in Microsoft Security Advisory (961051). Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution. Published: December 10, 2008 | Updated: December 15, 2008:-

The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference in the data binding function of Internet Explorer. When data binding is enabled (which is the default state), it is possible under certain conditions for an object to be released without updating the array length, leaving the potential to access the deleted object’s memory space. This can cause Internet Explorer to exit unexpectedly, in a state that is exploitable.

For a less-geeky explanation of the issue; click here.

All you would need to do to allow your machine to become compromised via Internet Explorer is visit a site which has a special malefic type of scripting.

Microsoft have not yet released a patch for the vulnerability, although they are working on it. In the meantime I would suggest that all users of Internet Explorer download Firefox, import their settings to Firefox from IE when Firefox installs, and use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer whenever possible.

If you find that you don’t like Firefox and prefer IE then by all means change back as soon as Microsoft have patched the vulnerability. I advise everyone to avoid using all versions of Internet Explorer whenever possible for the time being.

Do you find that, as time goes by, the number of files and folders on your desktop accumulates to such an extent that there’s just no longer any room for any more?

I’ve been subjected to this problem myself, and although I’ve grouped the numerous individual files into folders, I’ve found that eventually the number of separate folders clutters up the desktop and eventually limits space to the point of overcrowding.

Obviously there is no necessity to have all these files/folders on the desktop; but it’s handy to do so. Even if the folders themselves aren’t actually on the desktop, I probably have a shortcut to the folder in question; and that means another icon cluttering the desktop.

…But with the multi-faceted Windows OS there must be a solution; and low and behold there is: Toolbars.

Toolbars? Yes, you read that right: Toolbars.

In all Windows operating systems, (And also with many Linux operating systems too.) there’s an easy method of turning folders into toolbars. The problem is that there’s only four sides to a screen, so you don’t really want to have loads of taskbars; although you can actually stack taskbars. More on that later.

Above you see my desktop; and you’ll notice a toolbar on each side. The one on the right is what I call the "Files and Shortcuts Toolbar": It contains links to files and shortcuts to files unsurprisingly. The one on the right I call the "Extras Toolbar": It contains everything else, including some shortcuts to programs.

How on earth did I create those? Simplicity itself: Let’s create another toolbar. I’ll talk you through the creation process step by step:-

We start by right-clicking the desktop and hovering over "New" in the menu that appears. Click on "Folder".

Voila! Un folder appeareth.

You’ll notice that I have lots of text files strewn about the desktop. Let’s clear those up and put them in their own toolbar.

First we’ll rename the folder:-

That’ll do it: ‘Not very imaginative, but quite realistic.

Now we collect all those text files, and drag-and-drop them into that folder we just renamed:-

Like that… Hang on: Where have those two toolbars gone? Oh they’re still there; they’re just hiding: I’ll tell you what I mean further on.

So now we try to drag the folder off the screen on the side where we want the toolbar to be. In this case the top of the screen: Left-click on the folder, drag it to the top. - Half of it is off the screen. Let go the left mouse-button, and a toolbar appeareth! A toolbar with all the text-files in it.

If you don’t want the name of every folder to appear next to the folder, taking up space; just right-click on an empty portion of the toolbar and click "show text". If you don’t want the name of the taskbar to appear on it; just right-click on an empty portion of the toolbar and click "show title".

Finally, if you want to make the taskbar thinner; position the mouse-pointer on the very edge of the taskbar so that a line with an arrow at each end appears, right click and hold while you drag the edge of the taskbar to the size you want. The contents of the taskbar will rearrange according to the space that you allow. Tidy up the remaining icons on the desktop and Bob’s your uncle; a tidier desktop.

Remember that I said that the other two taskbars were hiding? This one can hide too: Right-click on a blank area of the taskbar and click "Auto-hide". Also click "Always on top"; otherwise you won’t be able to see the taskbar when you bring it out of hiding as there will be a window on top of it most probably.

I think a video is called for here. OK you asked for it. Please forgive the video quality; I just threw it together, literally right now. I used anything I could lay my hands on to make it: I taped the webcam to the top of a curtain pole to get the right height for the screen even. I’ve not produced any videos as such up until now; except a couple for private viewing among friends. - And you can put that dirty mind away right now!¬

Who was it that commented: "I like reading your blog: It makes me laugh so much."? Well get ready to crease up, as Bodgit & Scarper Studios proudly present… This:-

You’ll notice that my clock was a little slow. - Like 20 years.

It gives you some idea of what I mean I hope, if it plays OK. (Remind me to sack the focus-puller.)

There is just one snag though; that being that the file corresponding to the toolbar has to remain on the desktop: If you move it to another file you get a blank toolbar.

Beggars can’t be choosers though. Having extra toolbars is very handy when using apps such as Windows Live Writer, as I am right now: I don’t have to shrink down the app to the taskbar and clear the desktop to find the file or shortcut I want: I just look in a toolbar and click. Easy-peasy.

Computing made simple; courtesy of kkomp.com.

That’s your lot for this post. - ‘Til next time.

Adios amigos.

Adverts time:

Think yourselves lucky: I could have plastered this post with ads.

oops!

Addendum: It appears that there is at least one other vid of the same nature dealing with this subject:-

‘Nice to see that I’m not alone.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, for ZDnet, has performance-tested a pre-beta build of Windows 7 against Windows Vista. The results are indeed promising:

"Conclusion

What we have here is one set of data points for one particular system, but I think that the results are very promising. The fact that Windows 7 comes out top in three out of four of these tests at this early stage is very promising indeed. The boot time and PCMark Vantage results are particularly good.

I remember benchmarking an early pre-beta of Vista and it was awful compared to XP at the time. At this stage I can only assume that the RTM release of Windows 7 will offer more performance than this build, and will at the RTM stage be better than Vista. This is great for those who are concerned about the OS soaking up too much system resources." :-

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3182&page=6

Pre-beta builds notoriously suffer from performance-deficits that do not appear in the final RTM version, nor indeed in some of the actual betas themselves. The fact that Windows 7 beats Vista in a significant number of performance-tests at pre-beta stage appears to indicate that the final retail version is going to be good indeed.

The question in my mind, though, is; despite its advantages over and above Vista, will it be a better performer than XP SP3? We’ll have to wait and see.

Apple may not want to admit it, but there is already Mac-malware going around. Security experts have long raised concerns about a Mac-attack suddenly arising from a particularly virulent piece of malware. Meanwhile Apple continue to stress that Macs are invulnerable and don’t require anti-malware protection in order to generate their better-than-a-PC image.

Apple employees at their stores deny any need for anti-malware and anti-virus for a Mac. Apple’s own ads imply that a mac is pretty invulnerable. Yet despite this, even the Apple.com website has links to anti-malware solutions for the Mac running osX. Why would that be if there was no threat?

I’m sorry to say it, Apple-lovers, but you are being conned by Jobsweh and his followers. When the malware-writers have waited long enough to lull you all into a false sense of security while the Apple movement grows, and many more people are conned into getting an "Invulnerable" Mac, they’ll release their malware into the wild.

It’s obvious that Apple know that this is going to happen someday. Windows needs antivirus solutions, despite the fact that many of them are inadequate. At least it’s some protection rather than none. Windows gets targeted a million times more than a Mac; true, but as the number of Mac users grows then so will the target on the Mac osX operating system, and malware writers will strike a totally unprepared and defenseless market sector.

I wonder how Apple will try to worm their way out of it when it finally happens? What do you think?

- ‘Breaking away from the technology-oriented theme for this post, a little music to delight your listening lug-holes:

I saw the URL to this posted by the Kadaitcha Man in the newsgroups. I so liked this I just had to post it: Indie duo Pomplamoose, with a great rendition of the Julie Andrews song "My Favourite Things". I do suggest you get the mp3 if you like it yourself. Browse over to http://myspace.com/pomplamoosemusic  to hear more of their music, see more of their vids, order more mp3s, and not forgetting Pomplamoose soap.

About Pomplamoose

Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn started making music together in the summer of ‘08, and decided to form a band. Pomplamoose thus represents the collaborative efforts of the two afore-mentioned musicians. It also means grapefruit in French.

I’m getting hooked actually; the more of their music I hear the more I like it. In my opinion this couple are very talented.

This year, Microsoft forced major retailers to stop supplying XP. In January 2009 even small system builders such as myself will be stopped from supplying XP. Will that be a death knell for XP?

Not immediately, no; but if the pre-beta code reports are anything to go by, then Windows Seven may well be the start of the end for this almost seven-year-old operating system.

Some reports I’ve heard indicate that Microsoft will be launching Seven in October 2009. According to PCWorld.com:

"The word on the blogosphere is that Windows 7 should be released to manufacturing in October 2009 with general availability by November".

Microsoft haven’t yet released anything concrete yet as far as I know - Other than declaring that the new OS will be launched in the latter half of 2009, however some bloggers may be privy to insider information that I have not yet received.

Windows Vista; the disaster of an operating system in many ways, and the major trigger of the minor popularity-loss for the Softies, which did more good for its predecessor XP and the Apple Mac with its osX Unix operating system than anything else, has kept most of those users who continue to use Microsoft’s operating systems (Including myself.) with XP for the time being. In fact this blog’s visitor count indicates that almost 5 times more visitors use XP than use Vista, with a third as many people as those using Vista on a Mac using osX.

Seven is coming; and in my opinion we’ll probably be seeing most of those who upgraded from XP to Vista upgrading to Seven in 2009; as well as probably at least two-thirds of the XP users. That will be probably just as much a death knell for Vista as it will be for XP, if not even more so.

Seven will work on the same hardware as Vista; so there’s really no reason for Vista users not to upgrade. XP users boxes will be starting to clap out in a lot of cases, so those affected will no doubt upgrade equipment and operating system too.

If you have a perfectly good computer that’s still running XP, and either you can’t afford to, don’t want to, or simply can’t move to Seven because of the hardware requirements, then don’t worry:

Currently, as stated in the Microsoft XP Product Support Lifecycle page, partially shown above; they will continue mainstream support for XP until April 2009 - As they are currently doing that is - after which they’ll only be continuing support regarding security issues from that date until the currently scheduled day in April 2014 when XP becomes obsolete.

Then XP will go the way of 9x and ME. By then, however, Seven’s successor will probably have been long released, Vista will have been condemned, and maybe even a successor to Seven’s successor will be in beta?

One of my computers that I recently built from scrap components probably isn’t capable of running anything greater than Vista Home Basic. It has a 64-bit capable motherboard running a 32-bit AMD Sempron 1800MHz processor in a socket configuration that’s already almost obsolete; AMD socket 754. I don’t think they made any dual-core processors in that socket, and even if I could upgrade to a single-core Athlon 64 by buying second-hand, I wouldn’t bother upgrading to Vista. - So that’s one computer which’ll be running XP to 2014; if it lasts that long, that is.

Feel free to comment generally on anything you like in this article: There is a comment box below for that purpose. Have a good day/evening/night/morning, wherever you are on the planet.

There are times when things can be hard to write; and maybe this is one of them, but what the…

OK I’ve been somewhat of an anti-proponent of Apple up until now; and I have to say that I’m still having problems in my mind with what I term "the Steve Jobs modus operandi". I’ve borrowed incidental comments from others and expanded upon them, slating Apple and Steve Jobs in the process. I’ve even used the name "Jobsweh" as a derogatory name for Jobs, (A parody of the all-powerful and demanding Yahweh in the Bible.) which I picked up from a term used once in fun by Ded Ryzing in July of this year, 2008.

But it’s starting to get to my head, and after almost actually, without realising it, trolling in a comment I made on PC Mech earlier, which owner David Risley described in his follow-up comment as a "knee-jerk reaction every time he mentions the word "Apple"", I’m beginning to realise that all that’s happening is that I’m, without meaning to, starting a pointless one-woman-crusade against Apple; which is a ridiculous thing to be doing.

So what got me started on this foolhardy idea in the first place? Well during July I had a long conversation with a taxi-driver whose brother-in-law worked for Apple, and who had passed on some insider-information to him that Apple had rushed out the initial iPhone platform to get the iPhone to market ahead of the LG Viewty. I looked up the LG Viewty on the web and realised that it was a very nice cameraphone. From then onwards I became a proponent of the Viewty in opposition to the iPhone.

At the same time the world went iPhone mad: Suddenly everyone had an iPhone, but very few people owned a Viewty, despite the Viewty’s camera being far better than that of the iPhone. The thing was that the Viewty was a top-class camera-phone, but that’s all it was; a camera and a phone. It wasn’t a mobile personal computer like the iPhone.

At this point I was on the verge of admitting defeat and going with the flow; when suddenly up popped the news that Steve Jobs; control-freak extraordinaire, had a lever that would remotely block any chosen application on any selected customer’s iPhone. The iPhone suddenly became just like a Mac: The property of Steve Jobs, right down to which applications you could run on it. It was no longer a personal mobile computer as in your personal mobile computer; it was Steve Jobs’ personal mobile computer that you’d paid to lease on the proviso that he dictated what Apps you can and can’t run on it. It was yours to do what Jobsweh liked with, literally. It seemed like people were paying Apple for a computer that they were told was their property, but was under the remote control of Apple, with Steve Jobs at the controls. That; to my mind, is a con.

From that point onwards I’ve been expressing my distaste of Apple and Steve Jobs; which is starting to go overboard and is serving no useful purpose as such other than possibly to negatively affect my popularity of late.

Unfortunately it’s time for me to accept the fact: Apple, despite what I may think, and regardless of my opinion, have pulled it off, and they are a successful company, and growing too. Whatever I may think of the tactics of Steve Jobs; they work and they have made him a fortune: More than anything ethical or that I consider ethical has ever made for me. Do I need to redefine ethicality within my own mind? It may be so; maybe not? - I have to think a lot on that one.

Whatever the case; Apple have the iPhone as probably the most popular phone on the planet. Apple are the only company who managed to get everybody excited about their phone product: Think about it; no other mobile device has such a buzz associated with it. Why? The iPhone seems to just work the way people want it to. I don’t know if they envisage Steve Jobs at a remote-control booth somewhere in iWorld booming "I am the Almighty Jobsweh! Thou shalt not run that program upon thine iPhone that I have granted to thee." and pulling the lever. I have no idea whether they see it anything like I do but just put it out of their minds. Whatever they do or don’t do they buy iPhones - millions of them. - And now everyone is trying to make their latest mobile device look nd feel like an iPhone to the greatest extent that they can. Am I missing something here?

Why iPhones? Why not Blackberrys? Why not Sony Eriksson z750i like I have? Why not a Windows Mobile-powered device like I have? Evidently the others seemingly don’t have what it takes. I love my z750i - It’s cute, it’s a cool girly flip-phone. I’m content with my Windows Mobile-powered device to a certain extent too; although it could be better. - But I heard something today which went down like a lead balloon with me: Microsoft are prepping the ancient IE6 to work with Windows Mobile: In itself that’s good news, the current browser I’m using is insubstantial. - BUT would you believe it - here’s the bad news - it’ll require a 500MHz processor to work properly! My device has a 201 MHz processor, 64MB RAM with 128MB flash RAM. Great! No wonder they’re not offering it as an update; millions of people will require a new device! Thanks Microsoft!

Will I be getting a new Microsoft Windows Mobile device? Will I fsck. I’m getting an iPhone next: Not right at the moment; but when I decide to upgrade, which might not be until a better model iPhone is released, I’m getting an iPhone. There you are all those who I’ve slated iPhone to. - Flame bait for you all.

I don’t know if it’s a wise move; I don’t know if I’ll regret it, but in for a penny, why the heck not: It seems to be the better of a bad bunch.

As time goes by I expect mobile devices to improve, and the future is anyone’s guess. Right now; if I can’t beat them - join them.

First-off let me state that this is not a how-to article: It’s an analytical article designed to prompt discussion, (If anybody can be bothered to comment.) on the subject.

In this Twenty-First Century I’ve tried pretty much everything regarding partitioning; and to be honest, I don’t see much point to it, other than if one is intending to run a dual-boot. (Linux and Windows installed on the same disk in different partitions, for example.) Even then I prefer to use a different physical drive for either operating system.

Partitioning was used primarily back in the early days of personal computers, when Windows and Mac operating systems, as well as at times the hard-disk controller architecture itself, were unable to recognise, and to interact with, a partition greater than 2GB in size. Some hard-drives were around that were larger than 4GB, so it was necessary to partition those. These days most operating systems can handle partitions of 2 terabytes or more. (One day we’ll think of a terabyte as a small disk size no doubt. I have a 760MB hard-drive floating around somewhere: Once upon a time even that was considered a massive-sized disk.)

I’ve tried the method of having many partitions: One for the Windows swap-file, one for the operating system itself, one for active programs, one for storage… Too confusing; and the operating system finds it so too, leading to unnecessary corruption. In addition the hard drive encounters more wear, having to keep changing the arm between partitions, and as a consequence system response time is increased.

Some people think that by keeping the operating system on a separate partition they can just reinstall Windows if the operating system goofs and carry on as normal. They’re forgetting one crucial factor, however: The Windows registry won’t re-register their programs which exist in a different partition on install. In fact the new operating system won’t even see their existing programs on another partition as it installs. The only true way to preserve things as they were is by regularly backing up to a source external to the computer; such as another computer, NAS box, external hard-drive, or online backup.

Putting the swap-file onto a different partition isn’t that good an idea either: Head-travel and hard-drive wear come into play as the arm swings wildly between partitions, causing a reduction in response time too.

Some think that if they put the operating system on a drive other than C: it’ll be safe from malware as malware writers target their wares at the C: drive. Utter crap. Get decent protection and learn how to use a computer while staying safe online is the solution to that; not trying to outwit the malware writers.

I have 2 computers: Both run XP and both currently have a single hard-drive. On the main computer, the one I’m writing this on, the drive is not partitioned. On the other one, the backup computer as well as the computer I’ll be watching TV on from now, having just installed a TV card, the hard-drive is partitioned into two. This is from the days when the drive was in a different (now dismantled) computer and I was playing around with Ubuntu. I use the second partition for storage and for backing up files, and the first one for everything else: Basically the second partition is for inactive files and folders, while the first partition is active.

Windows; at least the versions available within the last ten years, is designed to all be put onto a single partition, and it’s good at managing itself on a single partition. ‘Spread it across multiple partitions and it gets funny, becomes harder to maintain, uses more resources, slows down, corrupts easier, and wastes time. I’m not anywhere near as well experienced with any other operating system as I am with Windows; so I’m mainly referring to Windows in this article. I’d imagine, though, that the situation is the same or similar with other operating systems too.

Your comments are invited.