Lazy Man's XP Optimization

I recently did a Live search for the terms "optimizing xp in older machines". The first link Live gave me was Optimizing Windows XP on an older machine. The link led to a useful page. That's all I ask for from a search engine.

From there I chose Eric's first link, A faster Windows XP? Here's how. I followed the instructions to disable indexing services. Cool. I just learned a little about how Windows XP works, and I sped up my computer a little.

Afterword
The more I learn about how computers and operating systems work, the more I realize that they use a significant amount of resources doing things that most people don't care about or need. I'm also surprised by how much is required of a computer's processor(s) to just deal with the increasingly graphics/video-centric Web. I wonder how many computer crashes are caused each day simply by going to MySpace.

Cheap Phone Chargers and Predictive Texting

In less than a month I've gone
through three mobile phone chargers.

The first one to go kaput on me
was a wall adaptor for an LG
KE970 Shine. To be fair, it's not the charger the phone came
with. The AC adaptor shipped with my phone came from another planet
or something so I bought the only one I could find at Target. It
worked fine for about a year. Then the metal piece that goes into the
phone became loose. It would move inside its little black plastic
housing. I swear I didn't beat or mistreat the thing. Being a budding
electronics technician, I decided to open up the housing and see
what's up. Basically, one of the tiny plastic holders inside broke. I
still used that charger for a few months. I just had to open it up
every time I wanted to use it and get the insides resituated. Right
around New Years, the wires inside the charger came loose from where
they were soldered. I don't have a solder iron and I don't really
know how to do it so that charger was retired.

Fortunately, I had a back-up
phone, a CECT
P168 (iPhone clone) with adaptors for regular outlets and car
cigarette lighters. The home adaptor lasted maybe a whole day. Once
again, I don't think I was being rough with it. I missed the outlet
when trying to plug it in and its plug became loose and unusable.
Whatever. I still had the car charger. That one lasted a few days
before I accidentally yanked the cable and the USB socket it plugged
into became loose. I pried it open and saw that the circuit board had
snapped. Great. I returned to the wall adaptor to see if I could fix
it. I unscrewed it and opened it up nice and professional-like and
had a look-see. Like the adaptor for the Shine, an important little
piece of black plastic had broken. I tried to tape it (!) but my
pathetic attempt was mocked by reality.

So I returned to the Shine. I
went to Best Buy and bought a Rocketfish
USB charging cable. I'm satisfied with its quality. It feels
solid. It's lasted a few days. It seemed to charge the phone faster
than the wall adaptor did. I hope that doesn't lead to my phone
exploding.

While going through my phone
charger travails, I was switching back and forth between the Shine
and the iClone and I got to thinking about the merits of predictive
texting. The iClone's touchscreen worked quite fine. I might even
say it impressed me. I can't compare it to an iPhone's because I've
never used one. I found it a pain in the ass to use versus my Shine's
conventional keypad. It wasn't just a matter of not being used to
using touchscreens. The touchscreen requires more effort. There are
the 26 letters, plus keys for 0-9, and punctuation. The Shine has 12
keys. I don't need separate keys for every number and letter. It's
fine when I have both hands to use as on a conventional computer
keyboard but I don't need all that on my phone. I just need the bare
minimum of big fat keys to press. Qwerty keyboards on phones seem
silly and I prefer the feel of real keys versus touchscreens. I'm
happy to be back texting with my LG Shine. I missed the vast library
of personal and ridiculous words I've loaded into its predictive
text.

And I was thinking about the size
of various phones out there. The Shine is big enough. That iPhone
clone was even bigger. I want a phone that fits easily into the front
pockets of my jeans.

Author's Note: This post was originally created in NeoOffice. I wanted to try cutting and pasting it to see how it'd turn out. I'm too lazy to fix the formatting.

Infinite Changeability

I use browser-based email applications because they look better than Apple Mail, Outlook, Eudora, and every other conventional email app that I've seen.

Customizing one's computer experience should be at least as easy and have as many options as one's MySpace page.

I'm not saying Gmail's appearance is as changeable as a MySpace profile page but with the introduction of themes, it's showing itself to be on the right path. Maybe when I check my email I like to see a little anime raccoon raking sand in its Zen garden. I can do that with Gmail, but Apple Mail has no such option, that I know of.

I cleaned the keyboard!

The keys on this HP Pavilion laptop occasionally don't work, so I decided to clean the keyboard. That involved removing the keyboard, which wasn't difficult but it wasn't easy, either.

After some googling I found a service manual online and saw which screws had to come out. There was one on the back of each lid hinge. Once I removed them it was just a matter of popping off the plastic piece which has the speaker grill, one-touch buttons, and power button. And then there were four more screws to remove. Glad I got that set of mini-screwdrivers. When I finally freed up the keyboard I about tore the ribbon that connects it to the motherboard (or whatever it is the keyboard is connected to). So be gentle when you go to lift the keyboard from the computer. To loosen the ribbon I slid up a white plastic collar that holds it in place and the ribbon popped from on its own. Sweet. The keyboard was finally free of the rest of the computer!

I took some CleanSafe dust remover to it and blew the crap out of the keys...or at least a bunch of it, which appeared to be mostly cat hairs. Nice.

I put it all back together and here I am, testing the keyboard. It's performing better than it was before, but there are still some occasional hiccups. There are probably still some stray hairs in it, but I can live with its current performance. Maybe it was just a crappy keyboard to begin with.