Reddnet Scribbles

For 4 years, reddnet has been hosted by Webhost4life, but over the last two years I've been increasingly unhappy with them. So I've moved on to a new provider, ReliableSite.net . I'll write up a full review after I've had a while to really get to know the new provider...

Google's new Chrome browser, which I reviewed earlier this week, is planned as a platform on which Google will build out more ambitious web applications...

Part 3 in my roundup of the new breed of web browsers. In this installment I'll discuss the beta version of Internet Explorer 8...

Part 2 in my roundup of the new breed of web browsers. In this installment I'll discuss the beta version of Google Chrome.

With the recent releases of so many new web browsers, I thought it might be time to take my bearings again and review the new landscape. I'll tackle Firefox 3 first.

The Medium Lobster is back! How did I get along without his wisdom for so long?

The regular non-technical folk around here HATE windows Vista. So I set out to catalog their complaints...

Dell has offered pretty much the same keyboard on their laptops for the last 10 years. They have been notoriously high quality with a comfortable layout, full size keys. a decent tactile feel, and reasonable durability. But over the years there has been no more than very minor tweaks to the basic design. The XPS Keyboard Into Breaking from the old and moldy, the Dell XPS M1730 (and some Vostro 17" models) now sport a much newer keyboard design featuring a full-sized numeric keypad. The keypad is a very welcome change for quite a lot of people. These have been around from other 17" laptop...

When choosing a laptop, an important aspect battery life. For me, this is perhaps THE most important aspect, so I'll be spending quite a lot of text on this post. Battery Life of the XPS M1730 The XPS M1730 gets much better battery life than older gaming systems, especially the original gaming rigs that used hacked-up desktop parts. My particular XPS has: Core 2 Extreme at 2.8GHz Dual gForce 8700M video cards Dual 7200 RPM hard drives Here are some numbers from my informal tests: Power Saver Mode, no wireless: 2 hours 10 minutes. Power Saver Mode, wireless on: 1 hour 40 minutes. Balanced Mode,...

I recently has to replace my old laptop (a Dell Inspiron 9400; a.k.a. Inspiron E1705). It was a fine machine and served me well for just over 2 years. But last week all the smoke leaked out through a hole in the video card and it stopped working. I'm a programmer, but I do quite a lot of my work outside the office. So rather than muck about trying to keep a home and work desktop both setup with identical development environments, I prefer a beefy laptop instead. I don't travel professionally though, so things like weight and space haven't been all that important to me. Instead, I want as much power...