Asus gets into the sub-$200 tablet fray

Dave Farquhar Android, Hardware , , , , , , , ,

Now Asus is jumping into the sub-$150 tablet range too, but with a device that’s much more subdued than what Polaroid and Archos are offering.

It appears to me that Asus is trying to remain mid-tier, and hope that name recognition and reliability advantages (whether perceived or real) keep their tablet in the game.
Their $149 Memo Pad has a 7-inch 1024×600 display and a single-core VIA WM8950 CPU, running at 1 GHz. It will be running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and has the precious microSD card slot, which accepts up to a 32 GB card. Read more

Fixing mashed headings in Word 2010

Dave Farquhar Office, Software

I’m making some minor updates to the stylebook that my workplace’s technical writers use, and I ran across a weird problem. Some, but not all of the numbered headings had the numbers mashed up against the text. It didn’t the last time I looked at the document, but, guess what? That was when we were still running Word 2007.

It took some investigating, but I traced the problem to the margins. For some reason, Word 2010 decided to apply custom margins of 0.38 inches on the left and 1.0 inches on the top, bottom, and right. Moving the margins back to something more conventional fixed that issue for me.

Oracle (and Java) delenda est

Dave Farquhar security , ,

In case you haven’t seen, there’s a terrible unpatched vulnerability in Java right now that baddies are using to install randomware on PCs. Then, this morning, I saw that Oracle has known about this vulnerability since August, and hasn’t bothered to fix it properly yet. That should be criminal negligence, but the rules are different for billionaires.

Of course, I’ve been saying for ages that we’d all be better off if we just uninstalled Java completely, but I know very few people who’ve done it, out of fear they’ll break something. (Those same people often refuse to patch Java, out of the same fear.) I was trying to figure out why anyone would want to run Java these days anyway, and then I saw this quote, via David Huff:

“Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time.”  –Edward Felten and Gary McGraw

That explains everything. Java is exceptionally good at making animated dancing pigs.

All of the major sites are recommending that you disable Java in your web browser. I continue to recommend just uninstalling it entirely, since Oracle is more interested in dancing pigs than in security.

SSDs might be getting less interesting, but that’s not necessarily bad

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , ,

Ars Technica has a story about SSD news coming out of CES.

Basically, they’re predicting that the big news this year will be consolidation and lower prices. That may be bad news for someone who writes about SSDs for a living (I don’t), but good news for consumers. Read more

The fix when Firefox won’t let you cancel a download

Dave Farquhar Software , ,

It’s frustrating when Firefox won’t let you cancel a download. It took me a while to find a solution, but I found one.

Here’s some background. I started downloading this monster file the other day, not realizing I didn’t have enough disk space to store the blasted thing. So I went to cancel it. The problem was, it wouldn’t completely cancel. It would keep trying to download until it filled up my disk, at which point other terrible things would happen. I couldn’t cancel the download, I couldn’t pause it, and I couldn’t delete it.

The solution, as it turns out, is to close Firefox. Next, go into your profile. To find it quickly in Windows, you can hit the Windows key + R, type %appdata% and hit OK, then navigate to Mozilla, then Firefox, then profiles. My profile was in a directory named wtkz7xzy.default. Yours will be similar. On a Mac or Linux box, your profile is probably in your home directory.

One you’re looking at your profile, locate the file called downloads.sqlite, and delete it. When you launch Firefox again, the list of downloads will be blank, and the download that wouldn’t go away will be among the casualties. And that will stop the endless loop like I had, or other bad Firefox behavior.

More tips

If Firefox has gotten a bit sluggish on you, I have a number of proven tips to speed up Firefox.

Polaroid’s M7 and M10 tablets make me glad I didn’t buy a tablet last month

Dave Farquhar Android, Hardware , , , , , , , ,

I didn’t buy a tablet last month. I knew about Acer’s new low-end tablet, the Iconia B1, and that they were at least initially reluctant to release it in the United States, but I hoped that either Acer would change their mind or that someone else would decide that the U.S. market really needs something in between the $80 cheapie no-name 1-ish GHz, single-core, 800×480 tablets sold in every drugstore, closeout store, and vacant gas station lot in the country and the $200 tablets that the likes of Samsung and Acer sell.

I’d be lying if I said I saw the Polaroid M7 and M10 coming. Lying like the evil spawn of a politician and a used car salesman. Read more

Coming soon to Monoprice: WQHD monitors

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

Monoprice dropped a bomb at CES this week: a 27″ IPS LED monitor with WQHD 2560×1440 resolution for $390.

From what I understand, there are several Korean manufacturers who make monitors from surplus or rejected panels intended for Apple displays, then sell them for under $400.

This looks like Monoprice signed on to distribute them in the United States, which seems less risky than buying them from a small importer or exporter off Amazon or Ebay. These monitors are popular with enthusiasts, but I imagine with Monoprice distributing them, the following will only increase. Monoprice is a bit of a secret too, but I heard of Monoprice long before I heard of Korean-made WQHD monitors.

Monoprice estimates they’ll be shipping them by March.

If you want a lot of screen real estate in the form of pixels, WQHD is useful. If you just want a sharp display, though, calculate pixels per inch first.