Latest reports appear to indicate that Apple  aren’t quite as bad as it seems; in fact it might appear at first sight that they had a windfall.

That’s not exactly the case though: Despite news of their taking top customer-satisfaction honours among personal computer manufacturers, as released on Tuesday of this week, there are two things you should note before assuming that Apple are the tops and that this blog is heavily biased against them:

Firstly nobody even thought to ask Kustom Komputa if they even wanted to be included in this award; probably because they knew Kustom Komputa would trounce Apple into second place. On a more serious note, though, the index measures results only for the three-month period ended in June – Before the crap began to hit the fan for Apple, starting with the release of the iPhone.

Also on Tuesday; Apple admitted that a software update for their much troubled iPhone only partly fixes the connection problems it has had in connecting to 3G networks: In other words; honestly this time: “FAIL: We scratched again.”

It has been reported that it isn’t only Apple’s buggy software that’s to blame: There have been reports that the Infineon Technologies 3G chipsets used in the iPhone are faulty. That could mean that no matter how good the software, the hardware issue might cause the problem to never totally go away.

It has been reported that it isn’t only Apple’s buggy software that’s to blame: There have been reports that the Infineon Technologies 3G chipsets used in the iPhone are faulty. That could mean that no matter how good the software, the hardware issue might cause the problem to never totally go away.

The crap certainly has been hitting the fan lately for Apple; and maybe rightly so too: It seems that Steve Jobs has always been a bit of a dreamer;   and now incarnated as “Jobsweh”; the god of all things Apple; it appears that the power has gone to his head and mingled with his dreams, turning his wallet into a bottomless pit that seeks filling with loot, no matter what the cost.

As reported here on kkomp.com; Apple were recently forced to extend the free trial of MobileMe in a face-saving operation.

“We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make.” Said Apple.

To me that sounds like: “We did it again by releasing a service well ahead of schedule in order to market before the competition: It wasn’t actually ready to be released; but we did so out of a case of having to. We hope we can eventually get it to work.”

If they don’t it’ll end up costing them a few dollars more; which could incur the wrath of Jobsweh!

In the same email Apple stated “We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour.” ROFLMAO – You’re telling me! What exactly has been Apple’s finest hour during the past two months? Steve Jobs seems to think he’s Apple’s answer to Bill Gates of late. The question is; is Jobsweh, the god with the bottomless pockets, fit to run Apple any longer? Should someone more competent and less greedy take over?

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Being a geekette; that is a female computer designer/builder, as well as a blogger, I often get asked by my girlfriends (And some of their boyfriends too – Shh!) to pop over for a cuppa and attend to some problem they’re having with their computer. Most of these problems turn out to be software-related, so it’s always a good idea to come prepared – Although I can download most of what I need from the internet, sometimes their internet connection is not working for whatever reason, and more than one is on dial-up – Which can make downloading a program a 2-hour job in itself.

To combat this I have a 1Gb USB flash drive with most of anything I might need on it; plus loads of links to anything useful on the internet itself that might be useful which I haven’t bothered to include because I probably won’t need it.

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I pop the cord from which the USB stick hangs around my neck, and go to sort out their issues.

I mainly have program installers in the form of .exe files on the USB drive: These are always useful. I also am able, in a worst-case scenario, to provide them with a temporary internet connection via my mobile device, for which I also carry a USB bluetooth dongle to plug into their computer on the rare occasions where it is necessary; such as an instance a year plus ago where a friend somehow lost the driver for their network interface device and was unable to communicate with their router as a result: I removed the old driver which was faulty but obviously didn’t have that particular driver on the USB device; so I set up a temporary internet connection via my mobile phone/bluetooth and downloaded a new driver, installed it – Target neutralised.

The items I have on my USB drive are listed below: I’m sharing this with you as I’m assuming that as a geek you too get called out to similar situations; but being unable to fix it on the spot you end up taking their computer home, doing the work in your spare time, and returning their computer at a later date; which causes inconvenience to both parties.

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The files I carry around on my USB device are as follows:

1. AVG Anti-virus.exe installer: You’d be mightily surprised how many people don’t run an anti-virus program! They might find that their computer slows down with use; and, not realising that it is caused by the registry getting cluttered with crap among other things, they start removing programs which they think are unnecessary in order to attempt to get the machine to speed up again, one of those “unnecessary” programs being their anti-virus program.

2.. A free anti-spyware program; such as AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy – For the reason stated above or that they didn’t even know what spyware was etc. The latest AVG antivirus has built-in spyware-protection, but that protection is not exhaustive, so it’s always a good idea to install extra spyware protection supplemental to that.

3. Free FTP clients in .exe installer format, such as WS-FTP-LE and FileZilla: They do occasionally come in handy.

4. Diagnostic programs; such as Core Temp.exe, Diskcheckup.exe… I know; rather than listing them all here I’ll show a picture of all the icons below and to save a lot of my time I’ll let you Google for them all.

Obviously the folders are of my own making: Batch Files contains some useful batch files that I wrote or copied, Dragons Websites contains the URLs of the websites of the millionaire entrepreneurs from the BBC series “Dragon’s Den”, Glint(Program) contains the .exe file of the Glint System Monitor program, KK contains pictures which I use regarding Kustom Komputa; Suppliers, Parts, and Circuits contains URLs to suppliers of computer hardware components, plus a few electronic circuits, Web Shortcuts contains hundreds of various useful URLs, Websites contains copies of all my website files from some of my various sites, WP Plugins contains some useful WordPress plugins. Some of the files, such as DSC00* are photos from my mobile phone. aports.zip shouldn’t be on there as it’s a program that contains malware. OEM Exel and OEM INXP are folders containing branding files which I add to the OS to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer. The file “Kustom Komputa” is a copy of some files from my Kustom Komputa website. WP Themes contains WordPress themes. The Folder “Self-Installing Scr” contains a number of screensavers that I created and which automatically install on the computer upon activation of the .exe file thereof. (No malware involved.) The folder Paint.net contains the program Paint.net, and the folder “Sounds” contains some alternative Windows sound effects as spoken by the Daleks from the BBC TV series “Dr Who”.

There are also a number of shortcuts which you don’t normally see on any Windows desktop. These shortcuts; such as “Sound Recorder“, “Volume Control“, “Command Prompt“, “Device Manager“, and “Sleep or Hibernate” are described on this site, including the method to create your very own icon(s).

So that’s pretty much it: Carry this lot plus your own personal files around on a USB flash drive and you won’t go far wrong.

HTH (‘Hope That Helps.)

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