Technical Difficulties
Three weeks in, the jury is still out on Vista. Oh, I love having the Toshiba laptop, especially one that doesn't have to be plugged into the wall at all times. The rundown is as follows:
Likes:
-Battery that lasts for two hours
-fast start up
-the chimes at start up and shut down are pleasant
-the amount of shovelware was minimal
-it has a web cam
-it has a pcmcia slot (I just need to get the software installed to use my N card)
-it charges really fast
Dislikes:
-If my cursor lands on a button or a hyperlink, it automatically launches it, whether I've clicked on it or not
-When I upload pictures, (which is pretty much daily), it uploads EVERY picture on the card and doesn't give me the option of selecting what to upload
-It is difficult to create folders of pictures the way I did in XP (see above), especially when each folder has an extra 300 pictures. Vista defaults to uploading all into folders by date. Sorry, I am NOT going to remember I took that picture of fajitas on March 11th, but I will remember that I featured fajitas in WFDW
-the speakers sound tinny. I'm used to decent speakers
-I don't have a simple on/off for the speakers. It's a potentiometer that doesn't even have a stop point.
-This is dumb, but I can't hide my web cam control bar. The first couple of days, it was a bumpout if I put the cursor in the top left corner of the monitor-now, it's always there and in the way!
-it didn't see my old laptop on the network, so porting over pictures, iTunes and documents was a pain in the butt.
All in all, it's a good machine and I'm happy with it. Not thrilled with Vista, but I'll figure out all the quirks designed for people who don't know crap about computers and are a pain for anyone who does.
Now, the Flip. I bought it to record Gameboy's meltdowns for his psychiatrist. If this meant I had it to vlog, well consider that a bonus. (Now that I'm doing review blogging, it's kind of needed anyway).
So far, I've made three movies and have been really pleased, BUT there are some things that new Flip Ultra owners should know:
1.As soon as you take the Flip out of the box, plug it in and install the firmware updates. Trust me on this.
2. It uses 2 AA batteries. You may want to stockpile them if you plan on doing a lot of recording.
3. When you make movies, it doesn't like segments shorter than 3 seconds. This is because it does wipes from one segment to another, so it needs a buffer of each.
4. A five second video (such as Earthquake!) takes 25 MINUTES to load on Blogger. A movie I'm trying to load on Launchpad still isn't on there after 5 hours of fiddling with it. Part of the problem may be on Ning's end, since this is the first video that ever has been uploaded (or attempted) on the site.
I'll expand on these further and put them on the review blog, but most of the day has been spent working with the things I don't like about either gadget, so it's fresh in my head.
**once I verify how exactly to get my data files off the iPod, whether I need to do it with the old machine or the new one, the hard drive will get clipped on the HP and we will finally have 4 machines for 4 members of the household.
Likes:
-Battery that lasts for two hours
-fast start up
-the chimes at start up and shut down are pleasant
-the amount of shovelware was minimal
-it has a web cam
-it has a pcmcia slot (I just need to get the software installed to use my N card)
-it charges really fast
Dislikes:
-If my cursor lands on a button or a hyperlink, it automatically launches it, whether I've clicked on it or not
-When I upload pictures, (which is pretty much daily), it uploads EVERY picture on the card and doesn't give me the option of selecting what to upload
-It is difficult to create folders of pictures the way I did in XP (see above), especially when each folder has an extra 300 pictures. Vista defaults to uploading all into folders by date. Sorry, I am NOT going to remember I took that picture of fajitas on March 11th, but I will remember that I featured fajitas in WFDW
-the speakers sound tinny. I'm used to decent speakers
-I don't have a simple on/off for the speakers. It's a potentiometer that doesn't even have a stop point.
-This is dumb, but I can't hide my web cam control bar. The first couple of days, it was a bumpout if I put the cursor in the top left corner of the monitor-now, it's always there and in the way!
-it didn't see my old laptop on the network, so porting over pictures, iTunes and documents was a pain in the butt.
All in all, it's a good machine and I'm happy with it. Not thrilled with Vista, but I'll figure out all the quirks designed for people who don't know crap about computers and are a pain for anyone who does.
Now, the Flip. I bought it to record Gameboy's meltdowns for his psychiatrist. If this meant I had it to vlog, well consider that a bonus. (Now that I'm doing review blogging, it's kind of needed anyway).
So far, I've made three movies and have been really pleased, BUT there are some things that new Flip Ultra owners should know:
1.As soon as you take the Flip out of the box, plug it in and install the firmware updates. Trust me on this.
2. It uses 2 AA batteries. You may want to stockpile them if you plan on doing a lot of recording.
3. When you make movies, it doesn't like segments shorter than 3 seconds. This is because it does wipes from one segment to another, so it needs a buffer of each.
4. A five second video (such as Earthquake!) takes 25 MINUTES to load on Blogger. A movie I'm trying to load on Launchpad still isn't on there after 5 hours of fiddling with it. Part of the problem may be on Ning's end, since this is the first video that ever has been uploaded (or attempted) on the site.
I'll expand on these further and put them on the review blog, but most of the day has been spent working with the things I don't like about either gadget, so it's fresh in my head.
**once I verify how exactly to get my data files off the iPod, whether I need to do it with the old machine or the new one, the hard drive will get clipped on the HP and we will finally have 4 machines for 4 members of the household.
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