Technology-2© 2000-2008 Richard C. Rhodes
This section is devoted to comments and original articles about modern technology, such as HDTV, Satellite TV, Broadband, Computers, Software, and Cell Phones. Click on a Topic to go directly to that topic. June 4, 2008 - Try Australian Sites for Drivers and New Gear Info Several times I have either bought or been interested in some new piece of computer gear or an add-on board, but could find no help on the U.S. Web site for that product. Looking for drivers one day, I stumbled onto the Australian Web site for a major vendor that had drivers not available on the company's U.S. site. First, Australia seems to get early delivery of many computer products. Second, the Australian sites are, of course, in English. The Australians are very computer savvy. I remember years ago talking with an Australian ham-radio operator and telling him that I had three computers. He said he had seven, and we spent the next hour exchanging information about computers, hard drives, add-on boards, and so on. From then on, I knew that if the Aussie had a ham-radio he or she probably had one of more computers, many of which were home built. The Aussies also seem to put Microsoft's feet to the fire, and post interviews and exchanges with Microsoft executives that you may not find anywhere else on the Web. Throw another Microsoft executive on the Barbie, Mate. I have a bookmark for: http://apcmag.com, for example. May 14, 2008 - Another "No Thank You" for Vista I have written several times that it is now my intention to ride Win XP Pro SP3 as long as it has security updates. Then, I might consider Windows 7 to dual-boot on whatever Mac I have when Win 7 comes out. Imagine my joy when I read that General Motors IT folks said they are running XP and may continue to do so, skip Vista, and wait for Windows 7. Now, I, and many millions of other individuals, have more credibility when we say we are going to run XP, skip Vista, and wait for Windows 7. Windows 7 is touted to not be just a rehash of Vista, but a new hack at an operating system that is lean, modular, stable, secure, and so on. Visitors to tech sites are already beginning to badmouth Windows 7 as "more of the same." Microsoft cannot afford to repeat the bloated mess they call Vista. So, even I am willing to keep an open mind to see if they really do produce a significantly different OS from previous "bloatware." Backward compatibility will probably take a hit, but something has to start giving or Windows OS offerings will ensure that they will be "sleeping with the fishes," with heavy chains tied around their neck. May 10, 2008 Only months after the introduction of the new line of iMacs, Apple has upgraded the line. They upgraded the CPU line, increased the Bus Speed from 800MHz to 1066MHz and put 2GB of 800MHz RAM in the standard configuration. If I had bought one of the new iMacs when they came out, I would be a little more than upset about the "upgraded versions" coming so soon. Good for new buyers. A bummer for previous "new" iMac owners. I did not like the original all-in-one Macintosh because of its lack of expandability, and I still don't like the concept, no matter how cool they look. One mystery is why they still offer only an 8X speed double-layer DVD burner in the iMacs. The new Mac Pro has a 16X burner, as does most every standard PC on the market. I bought my 16X double-layer DVD burners for my current PC for $39. What is the problem, Mr. Jobs? I have been a DishNetwork satellite TV customer for a long time. This article is about their predatory and incessant telemarketing and the difficult in getting on their internal "Do-Not-Call" list. Even though your phone number is on the National and/or State Do-Not-Call list, if you have a business relationship with a company they are allowed to make a telemarketing call to you. But, if you say, "Please put me on your do-no-call list," they are by law no longer allowed to telemarket to your phone number.
Back in early 2006, I began to get daily calls from collection agencies for some man I had never heard of. After weeks of this, I applied for a new and Unlisted phone number. Eventually, I supplied DishNetwork with this new Unlisted number. Within days, I began to get calls from DishNetwork telemarketers - with the notation "Out of Area" on the caller ID. One lady wanted to upgrade my package to HBO. I already had HBO. Finally, I just quit answering the phone. But, the calls from DishNetwork became incessant, several a day! I was on the National and Texas Do-Not-Call lists, so these persistent calls from DishNetwork were about the only calls I was receiving. I use my cell phone for most all of my personal outgoing and incoming calls. No matter how many times I asked to be on the internal Do-Not-Call list, or whom I e-mailed at DishNetwork, I could not get the calls to stop. I communicated with DishNetwork that I was disconnecting my phone and they waived the charge they impose for not having a phone line connected to your Dish receivers.
I found a site on the Web where you could check for active numbers. If the phone was not in use, it was possible sometimes to see when the last time it had been a live number. Also, our local phone book, in a very sparsely populated telephone exchange, lists all the active numbers in sequence. Using both sources, I compiled a list of about nine numbers that were not in use in my area. I called the phone company and by invoking the name of the president of AT&T, from whom I had recently gotten a personal note about my letter to him regarding the Bell South/Cingular merger, I talked the phone rep into searching for a number that had not been used in several years. Normally, they just reach into the pot of inactive numbers (possibly not in use for a year, I don't know). The phone rep put me on hold and came back with a number that had not been in service for three years! I'll take it. (My old UL number was reassigned within about 9 months, as far as I can tell.)
This time, I knew better than to give my new Unlisted number to DishNetwork, so when I called in, I had to punch in my long Customer ID number. No problem.
All went well with the new UL number. I put it on the National and State Do-Not-Call and gave it out to maybe a half-dozen people, like my bank, insurance agent, dentist, and family. Months went by and the phone never rang. I needed it for 911 because it was tied into my physical address and my cell is not. Also, I have WildBlue satellite Internet which constantly went out with heavy cloud cover or rain - and it was back to dialup for a while. Then I made a fatal mistake. One of my DishNetwork receivers had gone bonkers and I called tech support. The lady asked if my phone number was xxx-xxx-xxxx (my old Unlisted number that I knew had been reassigned in the nearby town.) I felt sorry for the guy who might still be getting Dish telemarketing calls, so I gave her my current Unlisted number, which I had withheld from Dish for over a year. Well, in a few days, I began to get as many as five or more "Out-of-Area" calls, which I traced via two Internet sites to DishNetwork telemarketing. I sleep late due to health problems. I finally turned the ringers OFF. I wrote an e-mail to an executive e-mail address not widely known and received a response that they would look into who was behind the calls from "Out of Area" 866-668-8047 and 888-285-9984. Days went by and no positive response, other than "we are working on it." If you look very closely at the bottom of www.dishnetwork.com, in subdued, sort of light gray is: "Legal agreements and policies" On that list is link to a Do-Not-Call Policy. Here you have three choices. You can fill out an online form with your phone number. I did that and got back a response, "Your phone number is already in our Do Not Call registry." Oh, really! Then why do I still get five or six calls a day? "Phone requests should be made by calling EchoStar at 866-668-8047." That is one of the numbers that had been calling me incessantly. I'll pass on that. Phone calls are too easy to deny being received. Another option is: "Written requests should be sent to: EchoStar Satellite LLC, Attention: Do Not Call, P.O. Box 9008, Littleton, Colorado 80120." I sent a Certified Letter, return-receipt requested, to that address with my phone number and the other information called for on the online form. One of my phones has a subdued flashing light in the antenna stub, that flashes even if the ringer is turned off. Last night (4-17-08) I saw the light flashing. It was "Out of Area 888-285-9984, and I decided to answer to see what I could learn. It was a nice young lady representing DishNetwork in Denver, so she said. She gave me a first name. She wanted to know if I would like to upgrade my Dish package to Showtime, etc. We had a nice chat. I said that I had too many channels now to watch. I asked her if she had my file up on her computer, because she could see that I had just cancelled HBO. She said that all she had was a printed list of customer names and phone numbers. I apologized for not being able to help her make an upgrade sale, but had one question. Could she put me on the Dish Do-Not-Call list? She said she could try, but it was best to call 800-333-3474 (which is the main Dish number with a bunch of prompts for sales, tech support and so on.) She did not mention calling 866-668-8047, which is noted on the EchoStar Do Not Call Policy page - the one buried (well, at least not obvious to the casual visitor to the Dish page) in the non-highlighted link for legal agreements and policies on the DishNetwork page. Update May 10, 2008: Since I exchanged several e-mails with DishNetwork managers about their abusive telemarketing practices, and noted my intention to complain to the FCC, the FTC and the appropriate committees in Congress, I see a small change on their Web page. Although the links are still in very light type on a gray background, and thus not very obvious to the casual observer, "Do Not Call Policy" has been moved out of "Legal agreements and policies" and given its own link! One of the methods of contact is "2. Phone requests should be made by calling EchoStar at 866-668-8047." Since that is one of the two mystery Out of Area numbers that constantly called me and many others, this should lay to rest any doubt the calls from 866-668-8047 were (are) from DishNetwork. And as noted later, I had a conversation with a lady who called from Out of Area 888-285-9984 who said she was from Dish and wanted to know if I wanted to upgrade to a Movie package. It is possible to "spoof" a phone number so that you think it is coming from one source but actually is from another source. But, in all of my research, I found only one person who claimed that they were put up to a "sting" by DishNetwork to catch someone who was spoofing Dish's phone number. So, when a senior person at Dish e-mailed me that he had turned my complaints over to the team that processes the telemarketing complaints, it was, like Ivory Soap, 99.44% Pure (B.S.) They know damn well that Dish is the originator of these calls - or could easily check, without telling me that someone would call me. Call me with an Out of Area caller I.D.? Good luck. I had painfully documented my complaints with dates and times. I did not need to be contacted by anyone. I just needed to be put of the internal Do Not Call list. Finally, a few days after my last blast, in which I mentioned that I had signed up for Do Not Call on their Web page, and that I was also sending a Certified Letter, return receipt requested, the calls from Out of Area 866-668-8047 and 888-285-9984 stopped. End of Update. I have informed my e-mail contact at DishNetwork, with recent e-mail copies to ceo@echostar.com, that I am preparing a package to present to the F.C.C., the F.T.C., the appropriate House and Senate committee chairmen, the Texas Attorney General - and others - in which I will make a case that DishNetwork/EchoStar engages in predatory, harassing, unethical, and in many case probably illegal conduct, in its telemarketing, in particular from 866-668-8047 and 888-285-9984. And that they appear to not be very faithful about taking people off their calling lists when they are asked to do so - in one or more of the various methods; ask the phone solicitor to do it, fill in the online form on the Dish Do-Not-Call Web page, call 866-668-8047 to ask to be put on the Do-Not-Call list, or write a letter to EchoStar Satellite LLC, Attention: Do Not Call, P.O. Box 9008, Littleton, Colorado 80120. There is a .PDF file you can download from the Dishnetwork.com site entitled "ECHOSTAR SATELLITE, L.L.C. 'DO-NOT-CALL; POLICY" Here is some of the language from that document: "What to say when a party requests to be added to our Do-Not-Call List: Mr.(s)------------------, please excuse this call, I will have your phone number removed from our calling list immediately." Update: July 18, 2008: Two telemarketing companies that sell Dish Network satellite TV services will pay fines of $95,000 for ignoring the federal do-not-call list and hanging up on customers. Planet Earth Satellite Inc., of Phoenix, Ariz., and its president, have been charged with calling people whose numbers are on the National Do-Not-Call Registry. Star Satellite LLC, based in Provo, Utah, was accused of making telemarketing calls that failed to connect consumers to a live telemarketer within two seconds after consumers answer the call. The two companies fined do not take into account the calls made from phones used by DishNetwork itself, such as the calls that I and many others got repeatedly. I would hope that the complaints from me and others to the FTC, FCC and so on, will result in fines against DishNetwork/EchoStar itself. And a reminder that it is not against the law for a company with which you do business to call you. You must ask to be put on their internal "do-not-call" list when they call. It is illegal for a telemarketer to make a "cold call" to a non-customer if that person is on the National Do-Not-Call Registry. The penalty for not connecting the person called with a live telemarketer within two seconds and hanging up comes about normally when a telemarketer makes several automated calls at once and is only able to talk to the first person who answsers. The others get a hangup and many had voiced concern about possible stalking. If you repeat an untruth long enough, people begin to accept it as the truth. My first HDTV set was a Samsung 46-inch DLP rear-projection set, with a color wheel and a projector bulb. Over the years, DLP sets got an enormous of amount of bad press or no press at all. First, they were too big front-to-back. My 46-inch set was about 14-inches deep and weighed about 67 pounds. It sat on a coffee table that used to be in my way and was always one more thing to bang my shins into. The coffee table "stand" allowed for free air flow around the unit. Given the layout of my living room, if I had a set that was 2-inches thick and weighed 15 pounds, it would not mount on the wall in a convenient viewing location. So much for the great LCD/plasma "mount it on your wall" hoopla. DLP sets have poor side viewing angles - is one rap. My new set shows 140 degrees side angle viewing in the manual and it looks fine to me off to one side. If you are six-feet seven-inches tall, close to the set, and stand up during an entire program, you will not get as good a picture as if you were seated at somewhere near eye-level. Like the man said, "Doc, it hurts when I lift my arm over my head." "My advice. Don't do that." Reviews of the DLP sets always seemed to mention the possibility of a "rainbow effect." I never saw it, nor could I find any forum where people described exactly how the rainbow effect manifested itself. The third "bad" thing about DLP rear-projection sets was that you had to "replace the very expensive projector bulb, at a cost of about $250 or more every couple of years." My Sammy DLP ran nearly three years, with heavy use, before the bulb began to dim. I ordered a replacement directly from Samsung Parts for $150. I opened the panel in the rear, pulled out the bulb housing by the convenient handle, put in the new bulb housing, and the set looked as bright and sharp as the day I bought it. For, you see, DLP does not suffer burn-in, the Texas Instrument DLP mirrors have an infinite life (as infinite as anything electronic) and have no delay caused, for example, by a slow refresh rate on older LCD sets. The color and sharpness were all I could ask for. I was probably the first person out in my part of the sticks to buy an HDTV set - connected to my DishNetwork HDTV satellite receiver. But the bad press has taken its toll. Sony is out of the rear projection biz. That leaves Samsung and Mitsubishi. Mitsu is going to try to outdo Sammy with a Laser Light Engine in models coming out later. I decided I did not want to wait, and the price will probably be considerably more than DLP/LED. Somehow in all the DLP bashing, the following facts seem to be ignored. As of June 18, 2008, there were 6,000 movie theaters in 42 countries using TI's DLP technology in their projectors. DLP is praised for its reliability, clarity, and 3-D capability in theaters. TI needs to do a better job of getting this DLP message across to the home consumers - and to the "experts" in PC magazines, tech sites, and newspaper technology writers and editors. All these folks ever talk about are Plasma and LCD and how expensive it is to replace a DLP projector bulb (now replaced with LED light engines). I like new and more-advanced electronics. I gave my grandson a perfectly good Athlon 64 dual-core PC with 2MB of RAM, so I would have an excuse to build a new and hotter one. And so for a long time, I scoured the Web for news of the upcoming DLP set with an LED light engine in place of the color wheel and projector bulb. Finally, when the second-generation LED light engine showed up, I pounced. I bought it sight unseen from SEARS, since their store is only 25 miles from my rural home and they do in-home repairs. And they will price match a big-box store. Sight unseen? I already knew I liked the DLP technology, and the second-generation LED light engines were getting rave reviews from a variety of Web sites. I downloaded the entire manual (.PDF) and read every page. Everything I needed was there. Anyway, after I ordered the set, I wandered into SEARS and they had my model on display. With all the bright lights, it is hard to tell one set from another. I would wait for delivery to make my judgement. I sold my old 46-inch Sammy DLP and waited for my new 61-inch Samsung DLP/LED 1080p (HL61A750) to arrive. I had a 37-inch Toshiba 720p LCD monitor I could watch satellite TV on in the meantime. Originally, I was going to order a 50 to 52-inch Samsung DLP/LED, but they currently make only two LED models, a 61-inch and a 67-inch. The LED models end in 750. The current Sammy DLP sets with the color wheel and projector bulb end in 650! That 6 and 7 make a big difference. Pay attention when shopping. I had moved my recliner back to about 11 feet from the TV stand. SEARS delivered the set. I invited the two men to sit down while I installed the cables, using a copy of the input connection page I had printed from the .PDF manual. I have two DishNetwork HD DVRs, and the 61-inch Sammy and the 37-inch LCD are cross connected, HDMI to one, component to the other, so I can watch either or both TVs separately or both at the same time (football season). Just let me hook it up. It will be quicker than trying to explain it. The SEARS contract delivery men sat in silence as I grabbed my printed page of the input area, complete with yellow highlighting and notes. A 76-year old geezer mumbling, "HDMI 1 for this cable from the top DVR, HDMI2 for DVD, Component1 (red, green, blue, plus red and white for audio) for the other DVR. And I might as well hook up the audio out for my RF headphones while I am at it." In one minute I had my cables hooked up and one of the delivery men took the remote and did the channel search, set the time, etc. I said, "click on HDMI-1. That is the main DVR." And there was a gorgeous picture. They packed up, I gave them $10 each for putting up with me, and off they went with the packing material. First order of business was to rename HDMI-1 to Satellite STB and HDMI-2 to DVD and Component1 to something about DVR ----. The choices are from a list. Later, I might use HDMI-2 for the second DVR.
For starters, the LED light engine has an estimated life of 60,000 hours, about 13 years of average use! Also, the power consumption is much lower than the old projector-bulb DLP, an LCD or a Plasma of comparable (not too many are 61-inches) size. So, the nay-sayers can quit whining about the $250 bulb (actually $150) replacement. The input and output jacks are on the sloping right side of the housing, which makes it much easier to work with cables than the older set which had rear-mounted cables. There are three HDMI v 1.3 inputs, two component inputs, standard Audio Out which I use to feed some RF headphones from Sennheiser, a digital Audio Out (Toslink fiber), S-Video, PC input, a jack for 3-D Sync out (which may be useful later), and a USB input. The USB does the usual stuff for digital cameras,.JPGs and MP3s, but perhaps most importantly, you can go to the Samsung Web site and download firmware updates. You unzip the file to a USB flashdrive and there is a TV menu item for Software Upgrade. LCD sets have gradually been decreasing their response time to avoid blurring of fast-moving action. Some LCDs now proudly report (e.g., Mitsubishi 52-inch 1080p LCD) a response time of 8-milliseconds. The new DLP sets have 16-microsecond pixel response time! Faster than a speeding bullet? It's all done with smoke and mirrors. Actually, it's done with the DLP mirrors, a patent held by Texas Instruments. The Sammy HL61A750 has two ten-watt amplifiers and stereo speakers. You can run high-end audio from the set to your home theater system, but I run Toslink cables from my prime DVR and my upconverting DVD to the big amp. HDMI allows audio to feed into the HDTV from my DVR and DVD if I want to keep my amp turned off. Of course, there is an antenna (F-type) input jack. I have a UHF antenna which picks up some HD stations in Southern Oklahoma, so we scanned those into the Sammy tuner memory. Both of my DVRs have OTA tuners. If I were so inclined, I could record four satellite shows and two OTA shows (from Okla) and watch a seventh show live via the tuner in the Sammy - at the same time. Again, I only come close to this overkill during football season. Although there are many ways to tweak the video, I like the way the picture looks on Standard, with no tweaking (I used to use Dynamic a lot on the old DLP). Sammy claims that the LEDs are 40% brighter than their old system, and it seems as though that may be true. If you are into saving the planet by reducing your carbon footprint (**), the power requirements for the Sammy LED set are informative. They claim about 1/3 less power use than other technologies. Crutchfield (www.crutchfield.com) always has good info on the small details of the gear they sell. My Samsung HL61A750 is rated by Sammy at a Power-On use of 200 watts and a Standby of .80 watts. Crutchfield's test showed Power-On draw of 156.29 watts and Standby of .59 watts. The Sammy 58-inch Plasma draws 670 watts! The Toshiba 57-inch LCD draws 352 watts. Both of these sets are smaller than the 61-inch Sammy for which I noted power consumption. If you are interested in having a smaller footprint in your wallet, my 61-inch Sammy DLP/LED cost me less than $2,000 (cheaper online, but what about service in a rural area?). SEARS will deliver and set up the TV for $65 (I am about 25 miles from their store) and come to the house for repairs (there is a one-year Samsung warranty). I bought my previous DLP HDTV from Best Buy in a Dallas suburb about 90 miles from my house. When the set developed an early problem, I got a giant run-a-round from Best Buy. I had a four-year extended-service contract (the last one I will ever buy, because it was supposed to cover the "expensive" replacmement of the projector bulb and repairs***). Rottsa ruck. Samsung sent the parts overnight, under the one-year warranty, and authorized a one-time pre-paid service call from a TV repairman in my local town who did not sell TVs, but ironically had once been in the repair department at Best Buy. The Sammy 58-inch Plasma is around $3600. The Toshiba 57-inch LCD sells for about $3800. If you are interested in avoiding Chiropractor bills, the Sammy 61-inch DLP/LED weighs 71.2 pounds. The Sammy 58-inch Plasma weighs 138 pounds. The 57-inch Toshiba LCD weighs 110 pounds. Purists will argue that either LCD or Plasma produces a better picture than DLP/LED. For some, this may be true. I get tired of experts who play a Blu-ray movie and quibble about some small detail's rendition on various sets. The lettering on a coin, or whatever. Give it a rest. But when you compare price, the longevity of a factory-fresh picture, the AC wattage used, and the weight, I will never understand why DLP sets, especially DLP/LED, don't get better press - and why many "experts" claim it is a fading technology. Not in my house. As for Blu-ray. I know this makes me really weird, but I don't own a single DVD movie! I have a couple of Diana Krall concerts, and a few other music DVDs. When Blu-ray players are really settled on the "real" standard, and priced under $200, and I can rent Blu-ray movies for a modest fee, I will get in the game. ** A friend came to visit after dark. I had the porch light on. After he entered the foyer, it looked like the porch light was off. He had turned it off to "save on my electric bill." When he left, I followed him down to the driveway. "I just wanted to see what kind of carbon footprint you are leaving," I said. Turn off the lights at night in all those office buildings in New York, Dallas, Boston, Houston, et al., and don't worry about my porch light - I thought. Turn off all those garish signs in Times Square. (Since I wrote this, RICHO is putting up a huge sign in Times Square powered by solar and wind power.) I have switched to CFL bulbs in every lamp or closet where I can. I paid big money for a new Heat Pump/blower that is super efficient. I have my computers set to go to Standby after 15 minutes of no input. I do not use the TV as a background noise source when I am not in the room for an extended period. I drove only 5,000 miles last year, partly as a protest over gas prices. So, please don't worry about my 60-watt porch light burning for 20 minutes once a week. ***Every source of warranty information will tell you to never buy an extended warranty. If an electronic item is going to fail, it will most likely fail within 90 days of heavy use, and certainly within the now-common one-year warranty period. With DLP mirrors of almost infinite life and an LED light engine (est. 60,000 hours), if my new Samsung HDTV makes it through the one-year warranty, it may outlive me. I get so tired of salespeople trying to pressure me into extended warranties. If the warranty is one year, my standard response is to look as sickly as I can and say: "I'm not well. I will be lucky to outlive the one-year warranty." End of discussion. I bought an $80 George Foreman grille at SEARS and was pressured to buy an extended warranty (where most of the profit comes from). I gave my standard "I may not outlive the one-year warranty" speech. As she was putting the grille in the sack, the lady said that if it failed within two years, just bring it in and they would give me a new one. What? It was all I could do to keep from raising hell about the attempt to sell me an extended warranty. I gave her a withering glance of disgust and walked off briskly. That is one of the delights of shopping online. All you have to do is make sure you don't click the box for "extended warranty." And if you miss the checkbox, delete the charge in your Basket. On the purchase of the HDTV, SEARS offered me either a 5% discount or no interest until sometime in 2009. I took the 5% and then told the clerk that I would not be paying interest in any case. The bill came in the mail on the same day the set arrived (there was a lag while they had to order this new model into stock). I went to online banking and paid the entire bill. Poor SEARS. They got no extended warranty money from me. They got no interest charges on my SEARS credit card. They made only their normal markup on the TV, which I am sure was more than adequate to keep the lights on for a couple of days. Perhaps it is a conspiracy between the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the manufacturers of TV remote controls. On every remote in the house, the MUTE button is one of the smallest buttons and often one of the most inaccessible. Before the advent of DVRs, where you can Pause a program, or skip commercials, the best way to keep the viewer focused on the program was to make the MUTE button small and/or hard to find. On the remote control for my new Samsung DLP HDTV, the MUTE button is about the size of two grains of Rice and is buried between the very large VOL and CH rocker switches. The MUTE is just above the SOURCE button and exactly the same size. If you don't wear bifocal glasses, you have to lift you glasses and attempt to read the small MUTE lettering, or learn its location by feel. Otherwise, you are constantly changing INPUT sources by mistake. The MUTE button for my LCD HDTV is about the size of half of a Tic-Tac, in a vertical stack of two other buttons of the same size, and the word MUTE is hard to read without my reading glasses. So I learned where it is located by a vague reference to the other buttons and memorization of the location. Finally, I had all I could take of this "Where's the MUTE button?" game. A search for Big Button Remote took me to www.bigbuttonremotes.com (Duh) and the TEK PAL. The TEK PAL has only six large buttons; ON/OFF, MUTE, VOL+, VOL-, CH+, CH-. The ON/OFF button on the top row is round and about the size of a 5-cent coin. The MUTE button, also on the top row, is square of equally generous size. The VOL and CH keys are triangular with sides of 7/8ths of an inch. You turn on your TV, press the ON/OFF and MUTE together, when the lights come on, let up, and then keep pressing the VOL until the set turns off. Press MUTE to save the setting. When you press a key, the backlight comes on for about 5 seconds. Naturally, this is a fairly large remote, but my hand covers it with some finger overlap. The two AA batteries are not included. The TEK PAL sells for $14.95, plus $10.66 shipping and handling via UPS ground. Their Web site is not well thought out. I have a different billing and shipping address and prefer small items to ship via Priority Mail. UPS has mangled too many boxes over many years and is my last choice as a shipper. At the Checkout, where you are asked for your shipping and billing address, you can't determine how they ship. I wrote an e-mail and asked if they could ship to a PO Box. A reply said, "Yes." So, once again to the Checkout, where I listed only my PO BOX. But when I clicked Next, there was no listing of a fee for mailing the TEK PAL - only several UPS choices, one of which was about three times more than the cost of the item! Man, I didn't need it that fast. It's just a remote, not a new Kidney. I like the feature in Opera which allows cookies but deletes cookies from your last session when you close the browser. As you know, a persistent cookie is where your Shopping-Basket choice is stored. With persistent cookies, if you have one item in your shopping basket and open the browser the next day and order the same item, you now have TWO items in your Basket. Not with Opera's clean-the-recent-cookies setting (an optional setting). In Firefox, you can manually delete the cookies, but often there are several for one site. Which one holds the Shopping Basket? I dunno. Occasionally, I will manually delete every cookie that I don't use on an almost daily basis. Browsers are not shy. They will make new cookies if you need them. I use IE7 only for Windows Update. So, close down Opera and reopen to a fresh slate. Once more to the TEK PAL Web site, where I filled in both the Ship To for UPS to my house and a PO Box for my billing address. After two days, I was getting close to actually placing an order. I got an e-mail confirming my order, but did not get a UPS tracking number, which all first-rate online vendors I deal with are kind enough to provide. In the country, with no close neighbors usually home, it helps to know when a box is to arrive. The TEK PAL showed up in about three days - and I was at home. I have a drawer full of batteries of all sizes, and I was MUTING like a madman within two minutes. The TEK PAL may not be the greatest invention since the telephone or sliced bread, but it is right up there. With a DishNetwork DVR with Pause, Skip, Rewind, and my TEK PAL MUTE/VOLUME, I am finally in control. By the way, it is educational when using Opera 9.25 to place something in your Shopping Basket and look to see what cookies have been set. And look again when you close to see if they are deleted when you closed. One of my favorite shopping sites sets 11 cookies for one transaction! For sites where I have cookies stored for shopping, banking, and Web-site registrations, I use Firefox 3.0, but I enter passwords by hand each time at a banking or shopping site. And no two passwords are the same, and none use English words - all alphanumeric. July 3, 2008 The Firefox Profile is the file that contains not only your Bookmarks, but Cookies, the Cookie Exception List, ad-on extensions, History, and more. The Profile name is an alphanumeric series followed by .default, as in 5forrqob.default. In Windows, the profile is located at: C:\"Documents and Settings"\User-name\"Application Data"\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles You can copy and paste the Profiles folder to a USB flashdrive. You can include the folder in a comprehensive backup program you run periodically. You can create a "batch file" in a text editor. For the batch file, name it fxprofile.bat and type in: C: F:\ is the name of an external USB hard drive, or a USB Flashdrive. For info on XCOPY, at a Command Prompt, type: xcopy /? Make a shortcut for fxprofile.bat and send it to the Desktop. For Mac OS X Leopard, the Firefox Profile is contained in: Library/ Application Support/Firefox/Profiles If you use Time Machine, the Library, which contains the Firefox Profile, will be backed up the first time you run it and every time you make a change to bookmarks, cookies, Firefox extensions, etc. Re: Copying an old profile to a new installation of Firefox on a PC. The first time you install Firefox, it creates a very simple default Profile. If you have a Profile on another computer that has an accumulation of bookmarks and cookies you want to move to the new installation, the easiest way I have found is: Copy the old Profile into the Profiles folder. Now you will have the simple one generated by the Firefox install and the old one you have been using on another computer. Under Mozilla/Firefox, you will find profiles.ini. Open this file in a text editor. There is a line Path=Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default. Edit this line to agree with the old well-established profile you have been using, Save and Exit. When you open Firefox, your old trusty Bookmarks, Bookmarks Toolbar, Cookies, et al., will be up and running. If you delete a Firefox installation using Add or Remove Programs, the Firefox Profile will remain in your "Documents and Settings" folder on the C:\ drive. So, if you install an updated version, you will have the same bookmarks, cookies, etc., as you had before. Of course, the same is true if you do an Update over the top of an existing version of Firefox. I deleted Firefox 2 before I installed Firefox 3, just to be safe. Otherwise, there is no problem with letting the Update process simply install the newer version.
Richard C. Rhodes |