Tag Archives: WLM9

My Dell laptop has arrived!

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My new Dell Studio 15

 

My Dell Studio 15 (rear)

After debating about it for over a year I decided to take the plunge and get myself a laptop. I’ve told myself over all these years that nah, I don’t need one…but it seems the time has come when it becomes necessary for me to have one. I opted for the Dell Studio 15 because it had just the right mix of what I’ve been looking for in a laptop—a powerful Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 3GB of RAM (free upgrade), backlit keyboard, a 320GB hard disk with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit preinstalled. That, coupled with the gorgeous Ruby Red cover, 3-year warranty against accidental damage, and a free Belkin Messenger backpack, sold me completely on it. Furthermore the audio quality is excellent, a far cry from previous Studio laptops. The icing on the cake was when it connected without fuss to my Linksys wireless network at home—wunderbar!

Some minor niggles? Well get this—no indicator lights for hard disk operation, Caps Lock, etc. In fact the only light is the Power On thingy on the right-hand side of the cover, but the power cord does have a cool blue light to show that it’s receiving juice from the mains. I solved the Caps Lock problem by turning on Toggle Keys in Windows, also a little picture icon appears on screen whenever Caps Lock is pressed. I still would have liked a Hard Disk indicator light though. And there are only three USB ports. My, aren’t we miserly, Dell. I’ve already used one USB port for my Logitech cordless mouse with its Nano receiver. Looks like I might have to get a USB hub later on. The glossy surface of the touch pad and the surrounding area is also prone to fingerprints and marks, so be prepared to do some occasional wiping.

Now I’m exploring the new Windows 7. Some changes compared to Vista of course. I didn’t like the new wider taskbar but that can be changed to a more Vista-ish one, thank goodness. The notification icons on the right are also just a ghostly white color—oh well, can’t have everything. And I was surprised that Microsoft didn’t bug (excuse me, prompt) me to install their latest Live programs—I installed Live Mail, Writer, and Messenger since I use these three programs. I hated the way Windows Live Messenger would not remain in the right taskbar notification area; it would stubbornly anchor itself on the left side near the Start button. I solved this by closing and exiting WLM, then right-clicking its icon on the Start menu and selecting Properties. Choose Compatibility Mode for Vista, click OK, and restart WLM. You’ll find that WLM now resides in the right taskbar notification area.

That’s it for now, typing this on the Dell. It feels great!

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Dog-day afternoon

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Yup, the air is dirty

Today has been a miserable day for me. Students were very unresponsive, behaving like robotic units in permanent hibernation. However, the main culprit was the weather we’ve been having lately—hazy, hot, humid, no wind—in a word, awful. Furthermore this has caused my eyes to sting a bit, fortunately I have eye drops to alleviate this problem.

What the heck, I decided to clean and mop the floors this hot afternoon; it’s better to get some exercise and sweat, right. I went at it like a crazed maniac, but at least my apartment floors are clean now—ha, giving myself a pat on the back.

It’s 5:18 PM now as I write this post. Will have to cook rice for dinner, get the food sorted out, and then I’m off to teach, returning home about 9:30 PM. Boy, what a day—hope some nice friend will contact me on WLM for a chat before I hit the sack.

That’s all for now.

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The week that was…with apologies to Trillian

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I suppose everybody has one of those weeks where everything is pretty dullsville and nothing exciting is happening. My Monday started off with signs of a cold building up along the horizon. Meh, no problem, I thought—just stock up on the Vitamin C, paracetamol, actifed tablets, tissues, etc. Unfortunately this cold bug (bugger) was a little different, in the sense that it laid wastage to my voice (the last time I experienced this was during my teenage days)—fortunately I’m not a singer. My voice is now 20% of what it used to be, anyway I am having tea with some honey (and yes I know it isn’t good, but the coffee train rolls on) Thank goodness for Windows Live Messenger, a great IM program when it’s working properly (most of the time, must give some kudos to Microsoft) where I don’t have to talk, but type instead.

Speaking of IM programs, I confess I have to eat some humble pie. I have not spoken well of Trillian Astra in the past. What’s Trillian Astra, you ask? It’s a multi-IM client, meaning that if you have contacts using different IM programs, you can let Astra be a supervisor of sorts, incorporating all your WLM, Yahoo, AIM, etc contacts into one basket. I used Trillian 3.1 a long long time ago, and when they announced about going to version 4.0 I was thrilled. However, I didn’t expect Astra 4.0 to be in Alpha for three long years! Man, my patience has a limit, lol. Like waiting for grass to grow. That made me give up on Astra eons ago, and I never thought anymore about it.

Then I was browsing the Net last week and happened to read that Astra had entered into Beta and Trillian was encouraging users to sign up to test it. Like seeing a long-lost girlfriend again, I was enthralled, especially with the way she looked—Trillian must be the Jessica Alba, or Angelina Jolie, or Britney Spears, or (fill in the blank) of the multi-IM world. There’s so much eye-candy that it can be overwhelming at first. I mean, WLM9 doesn’t look half-bad, but when you compare it to this baby—wow! Seduced by the dark side of the Force, I signed up, and they dispatched an email with a download link and token key to me in a blink of an eye. So I download and install Trillian Astra 4.0 and—she’s beautiful. Just look at the screenshots. For a beta product, I’m amazed that most of the features work so well; the sounds are very very cool, and it uses only about 4 MB of system resources on my Pentium 4 computer.

Uh oh, I have to confess again, shucks. I’m not using Astra as a multi-IM client, since 99.9% of my contacts use WLM. I’m not breaking any laws here, am I? It’s my 5th day of using it (they just did an auto upgrade from build 103 to build 104 for me, it was painless) and I’m still enraptured with it. This Pro version times out after 30 days, reverting to the basic version. I don’t know whether I’d shell out $25 to keep the Pro version, I haven’t made up my mind yet. Stay tuned.

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