The Wacky Technology Geek

Why Indie is Better Than the "Big Guys"

2012-02-03T14:00:00.002-06:00

For years now small "companies, called Indie producers, have been creating music, games, movies and images. These small Indie producers take money out of their own pockets to create this content and actually have to market this content on their own. This naturally means profits are much lower than a box office hit like Harry Potter would be. So what makes these indie producers better than the larger corporations?

Well first off, you can normally ask any Indie producer for a discount or a free copy and they will likely give it to you. They are almost always DRM free so you can make as many copies on your own devices as you want. (iTunes only lets you have your music on up to 4 devices at a time, the same goes for movies). They also do honest work for their money. These Indie producers often consist of 1-5 people, but some times more, producing this content. They then split profits evenly or put most profits into the next project. There is no money grubbing CEO to take home $400,000/yr, so more money goes to the people to deserve it and not who just got lucky enough to sit in a mahogany office in a high-rise building.

Indie developers also help stomp out those have have monopolies in the market. For music there is only three "big guys" in charge of the market. These monsters take in billions (Literally) of dollars in revenue each year. Some say it's not a monopoly because of it being three corporations. It's just the same, though. They have the power in the market. Indie developers, with your help, can help to put out the flame of these huge corporations. Let the ones that actually earn their paycheck have the spotlight. It'll create a better market for new and interesting movies, games and songs.

So, how do you support these Indie producers? That's the tricky part. If you want games Tigsource.com can be a good place to look. A quick google search for "Indie" turns up 304,000,000 results. There's no lack of Indie content, you just need to find it. And once you find it, tell your friends to buy some their work. These Indie producers literally appreciate every purchase. I've had some directly thank me for buying from them. It's a good feeling when you get something you enjoy AND you helped make some ones day better by buying from them.

Surviving the End of the World

2011-12-13T17:38:00.001-06:00

In our technology rich age we tend to forget how vulnerable we are. With natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, earth quakes and volcanos having the ability to destroy everything we have in an instant. Most people don't care or don't think to care about preparing for some sort of end. Science has shown it's not a matter of if the world will end, but when.

Now, I'm not a believer in the 2012 apocalypse. However, I do believe some form of end could visit any one of us any day. So there's an important question you need to ask yourself: What do I need to survive?

Water

Water, the thing all humans need to survive. No matter what form of end our world faces, the water is sure to be contaminated. So lets start by doing some math.

According to Mayo Clinic (Source) men need 3 liters a day and women need 2.2 liters a day. Just for ease of calculation, we're going to just figure for the men.

Doing a quick conversion, 3 liters equals about 100 fluid ounces. One gallon of water holds roughly 128 fluid ounces of water. For one man to get his adequate intake of of water each day, he'd consume 36,500 ounces per year. That would require you stock up on 285 gallons of water. For comparison, your car holds about 16 gallons of gas. That's a lot of water!

What if, instead, we take the old fashion figure of eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day. That's 64 ounces a day, or 23,360 ounces a year. That brings us down to a mere 182 gallons, about 50% less than what would be required using the previous figures.

However, upon further investigation I found even more promising figures. According to Jurgen Schnermann, a kidney physiologist at the National Institutes of Health, humans only need about 1 liter of fluid, or 33 ounces of water daily. That drops us to 12,000 ounces needed in a year, or a mere 93 gallons of water. That's a bit easier to store in your basement than 300 gallons is!

A years worth of water should be able to hold some one over to figure out other means of getting fresh, clean water. If not, natural selection will take care of the rest!

Food

We all love food. It's what keeps us going. But what do we do if we have little food? How much food do we actually need to survive?

An adult that's 5 foot 8 inches and 160 lbs will burn about 1700 calories just by sitting around daily. This means you'd need to take in 1700 calories to maintain your weight. If you were to start losing weight and drop down to 100 lbs, you'd need to take in a mere 1400 calories daily to maintain your body weight. However, lets with with 1700 for now.

So how much food would we need to meet this base requirement to keep us from withering away to nothing? Well, a cup of chicken noodle soup will give you about 120 calories. A bag of Dorito's (11 1/2 ounce bag) will give you 1800 calories per bag, or 150 per ounce. A cup of Cheerio's cereal will run you about 140 calories assuming you have 1/2 a cup of fat free milk on top.

But how much food do we actually need? This one is a bit harder to calculate due to the diversity of food, so just for comparison sake we'll do something easy with the Dorito's. You'd need about
344 bags of Dorito's per year to match your base caloric needs of 1700 a day. Now, there's likely much better foods (Such as Twinkie's, since they'd be the only ones to survive a major apocalypse), but this is just a rough list to give you an idea of the massive needs a human has for food and water.

Now, what if you're overweight when the apocalypse starts? Every pound of body fat equates to roughly 3,000 calories. In our example we'll use a 350 pound man at 5 foot 8 inches in height. Our 350 pound man would burn about 3,000 calories per day just to keep himself sustained, or about 1 pound of body fat a day. Our overweight friend would survive a good half year without food, mostly just chomping on his own body fat. See, obesity isn't all bad!

Guns

Something most people forget is the need for protection. Lets say this apocalypse wiped out everyone but 1% of the population. This would leave us with 70,000,000 or 70 million people worldwide. You can also figure you'd need to prevent everyone within a 50 mile radios from stealing your food and water. I'm going to figure for my area on population density and see how many people would be within a 50 mile radius. In my area there's around 100 people per square mile. A file mile radius would give us 7,850 square miles, or 785,000 people. One percent of that would bring us down to a mere 1 person per square mile, or 7,850 people to defend from. To be safe we can figure one shotgun shell per person, so we need a simple 7,850 shotgun shells. If there's 15 per case, we only need 523 cases of shotgun shells!

Heat

To survive an apocalypse of any kind you're going to need warmth. One should keep at least 10 propane tanks in their survival room. You should also stock up on butane lighters, as they are very handy for lighting almost anything.

A small propane grill will be important for cooking certain foods and for warming yourself up. The 10 propane tanks, used right, should last you until you're able to go out and find wood and make a more reliable source of heat.

Candles are also important as they provide light and a small amount of heat. If an apocalypse happens, you likely won't have any power and candle light will be a welcome guest.

Blankets are also a must. The human body puts off a very warm temperature of 98.6 degrees of heat. If you're able to trap this under a bundle of blankets then you're sure to keep yourself warm. You may also want to cover the windows and walls in blankets as to keep more heat in and more cold out. I recommend at least 10 blankets for each person and some extras just in case. This will allow for plenty of warmth and versatility.

Recovery

Recovering from an apocalypse can be just as challenging as surviving the initial wipe of the population. The worlds population would have dropped from 7 billions down to a small 7 million.

To give you an idea, New York's metro area, currently 18,897,109 people, will drop down to 188,000 people. Chicago metro area would drop from 9,461,105 down to just 94,000 people.

Rebuilding the population would be a must. Lets figure half those people alive were women, so we'd have 35 million women in the world. We immediately take out the 25% that's under 18 and the 13% over 65. This leaves us with roughly 21.7 million women in the entire world that are candidates to be mothers. Then we take out the 16% that suffer from infertility (The 16% is couples, but the numbers will work for this point). This leaves us with 18.3 million women worldwide that could contribute to repopulate the world. For sake of making this article make some sense, we'll call the year 2020 when they decide to start repopulating. By 2021 we should have the first round of children. Accounting for failed births or women that didn't actually get pregnant, we'll figure only 60% had children. This will give us 10.9 million children born. We can then figure by 2024 there would be another wave of children, which should give us another 10.9 million children using the above calculations. This leaves us with a world population of 91.8 million people. Now we figure these parents stopped having kids, as to keep the population from outgrowing the food each family is able to produce.

So in the first 4 years after the massive wipeout, we bring the population from 70 million to 91.8 million, which will grow even more as more children grow into adults and decide to also have children. Within no time at all the world will once again have a large population capable of sustaining life.

However, regrowing the population is only half of it. You also need to save seeds in your survival kit, since you need to be able to grow your own crops once spring comes. You'll also need to learn to farm animals, get fresh water and cut trees for fire wood.

So, this is a basic and rough guide to survive the next Apocalypse. I must warn you, though. This guide is extremely basic and if you follow only these tips, you might as well stand under the meteor that's hitting the planet. I hope you found this look enjoyable and gave you some different views on the end of the world!

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review (Spoiler Free!)

2011-11-23T20:33:00.001-06:00

Skyrim, the new title in The Elder Scrolls series. This new title brings many new features to the table, most of which are amazing. Here's a quick review for those without the time to read the whole article:

Note: This is a review of the Xbox 360 version.

Overall: 9.3 (Not counting load times)
Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 10/10
Storyline: 10/10
Load Times: 7/10

Graphics:

The first thing you notice when you first start playing is that the graphics are already stunning. You can look into the distance and see very far away, yet look close and see extreme detail. When you look around you can see mountains that you can literally walk to and climb up. Nothing you see is "fake" or some sort of scenery backdrop. The characters are also very detailed, with the mouths moving really well with the voices. Adding to the already great graphics is the armor and weapons.

Bethesda didn't cut any corners when designing the armor and weapons. Everything is extremely detailed and you can tell a lot of thought was put into each piece. Nothing really looks the same, and the game features many different types of weapons and armor.

Dragons.. They are just awesome. They send a certain chill down your spine. First you hear their screech in the distance, you know they're around. As they come closer, your controller vibrates letting you feel the rubble of their massive wings. They swoop over your head, sending you into a sudden panic. As they drop to the ground in front of you, you can see the detail put into each dragon. Then comes the fire breath..

The spells in Skyrim look amazing. Some literally look like they could be real, as far as spells go. The blizzard spell looks much like a mini blizzard that you cast in front of you. The shouts you use warp the air around you, morphing the image you see into a wobbly mess for a second, then returning to normal as your enemy is just as disoriented as you would be in real life.

The only reason Skyrim got a 9/10 in this category is because of the many graphical glitches. However, those are to be expected in such a massive world such as Skyrim.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is like nothing I've seen. Movement is fluid, easy to understand and realistic. The interface is simple and straight to the point. Combat is mostly real and makes you feel as if you're actually there.

Bethesda re-wrote the whole game engine, now called Creation, to make movement feel more real. The physics were updated to make everything have that realistic feel to it. In previous Bethesda games (Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc) your character sort of slides across the ground when walking and the movement feels stiff. Skyrim brings you very real movement that mimics real life. Ragdolls were also updated, so when you hit something really hard they enter ragdoll mode and fly around like a real person would if they were hit in a similar fashion.

The interface works really well for consoles, as it's designed with analog sticks in mind. The inventory interface can get a bit extreme at times when it gets full, but it's far from unmanageable. My only complaint is that the Skills interface is pretty awkward and hard to navigate at times.

The combat is completely updated and the collision of your sword to flash feels more real. When your weapon makes contact with the enemy, the sound and controller vibration make it feel very real. The only issue with the combat system is it is still really "floaty". By that I mean you will often not hit the enemy (Your weapon floats by them), yet the game still registers this as a hit. This is probably done to make combat easier and less frustrating when the enemy tries to move away from your blade.

Sound:

All the sounds are simply amazing in Skyrim. It's packed with over 200 different music tracks, all of which are extremely exciting. The gameplay sounds are also amazing to the point where you can hear bone cracking, flesh slicing blows. You can hear the fire burning after setting some one on fire. You can hear the wind blowing in the background and the water trickling down the waterfalls. Wolves howl and dragons roar in the distance, instantly striking fear into you. The sound is the best I've heard in ages.

Storyline:

The thing I really like about Skyrim is that you can dive right in without knowing the story. All the dialogue is spoken, so it's very easy to catch on what's actually happening. It's massive and has no lack of quests to do. Bethesda counted over 300 hours worth of quests. This paired with the many skills you can raise.. You're talking many, many hundreds of hours of gameplay for the average player. Overall, I approve of this very in-depth story.

Loading Screens:

The worse thing about this game is the loading screens. Expect to spend many hours in loading screens by the time you beat the game. This isn't a game changer, though. Although the loading screens do get annoying, they are well worth it.

Last but not least.. Do I recommend this game to you? If you enjoy RPG's with a heavy storyline, then you'll love Skyrim. Even if you don't like RPG's, I'd still recommend you to try out Skyrim by renting it. I hope you enjoyed the review! Happy gaming!

How to Make Minecraft Faster

2011-11-08T14:31:00.000-06:00

Minecraft being slow is almost like the Minnesota Viking and losing. It's just a common problem. Luckily for one of them there is hope!

There is an amazing Minecraft mod called Optifine. You may remember it under an old name called Optimine and Optifog. Since then they have merged together for one amazing add-on called Optifine. This mod gives you precise control over how Minecraft runs.

Right now there are 3 version of this mod. I'll list them off:

OptiFine 1.8.1_HD_D

This is the standard version of OptiFine. It still allows very good control over how Minecraft runs and doubling of FPS is not uncommon. This is recommended for those that are not able to get the other two versions to work.

OptiFine 1.8.1_HD_S_D

This version prevents lag spikes by attempting to average your frame rate better. This results in an overall lesser frame rate, but less drops in frame rate when you need them most. So instead of your frame rate fluctuating from 60 FPS and dropping to 10 FPS, it will better keep it at 30 FPS (Which is still very good, mind you). This version is more for people with constant frame rate spikes.

OptiFine 1.8.1_HD_MT_D

This is the multi-core version. It uses the second core of multi-core CPU's to render the world, which keep the world loading from slowing down the game. This equates to 3x faster world loading and the world loading does not prevent gameplay.

This version also extends on the classic and smooth FPS versions, meaning you don't have to choose between the two if you have a multi-core CPU. If you don't have a multi-core CPU the mod will still work, just not as good than if you had a multi-core CPU.

You can view the thread and download the mod here: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/249637-181-optifine-hd-d-fps-boost-hd-textures/

Know of more good Minecraft mods that you'd like me to review? Just leave a comment!

How to Speed Up Mac OS X

2011-11-04T13:51:00.000-05:00

Feeling the pain of your mac bogging down from when you first got it? Programing taking twice as long to open as they used to? Random lock-ups in the middle of work? Your beloved Mac may be getting a tad cluttered with all the stuff that's built up over the years. Lets see what we can do about that!

1) Them pesky icons...

Did you know Mac OS X treats each icon on your desktop as it's own window? This means when you have 50+ icons it's the same as having 50+ windows open, each taking it's own time to render. This gets even worse if you have item previews turned on. How do you fix this? Create a folder on your desktop called "Stuff" and put all your random things in there. Learn to use Spotlight to get to programs. Ideally your desktop should have less than 10 icons, but less is even better!

2) Clean that hard drive!

I recently made an article about this which you should really check out to keeping your hard drive clean. But for the purpose of this article I'm going to say this: Backup the things you don't need and delete them. If you don't need them at all anymore, just delete them! You can reach my other article to keeping things clean by clicking here.

3) Disable startup program. To do this go to the Apple Icon > System Preferences > Accounts > Click on your account name > Login Items. After this uncheck the items you don't need.

Some items may not be in this list. For those you'll need to go into each individual program and tell them not to run anymore. You can normally do this in the system preferences menu of the program that you notice starting up.

4) Quit applications your done with!

If you're new to Mac OS X you may not know that when you click the red X on an application, it doesn't normally quit that application. This means when you close an item, it may still be chilling in the background and sucking up your valuable system resources. An easy way to tell if an application is still open is to look for a blue dot under the icon in the Launcher. Just right click it and hit "Quit"! Goodbye, clingy programs!

5) Unplug external devices.

It may not seem like it would matter, but those 15 USB devices you have daisy-chained on your Mac do make a difference. If you don't need it at the moment, your best bet is to unplug it. This is also the case for your favorite USB mouse. If you don't really need it, just unplug it.

6) Upgrade your RAM.

RAM is an important thing on your Mac. I notice I need more RAM for my Mac than I do for my PC. This isn't a bad thing, though. If a program needs a lot of RAM, why constrict it? It may be a bit pricey, but an upgrade from 2 GB to 4 GB or from 4 GB to 8 GB could make a huge difference for both startup and for day to day use!

7) Don't be afraid to restart!

A good restart is an awesome way to give your computer a breath of fresh air. Just like a good nights rest helps us humans, a quick restart can make your Mac move quicker. Try to restart every week or so, but more won't hurt. Just remember to save your programs!!

I hope this helps you enjoy your computer more! A slow computer is always a pain, but this should certainly help. Good luck!

We always need more topics. Leave a comment on any post telling me what I should talk about. Thank you!

What is "Defragmenting"?

2011-11-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

You may hear about defragmenting all the time as a way to speed up your computer. You may also hear people say "Your hard drive may be fragmented". What does it mean to be fragmented, though?

Hard drives aren't like flash memory. They store everything around the disk in a track. When you delete something it leaves a space. If that space left is smaller than the next file wanting to take it's place, it stores part of the file there and the rest somewhere else. Think of it like this:

[Photo: 5 MB]|[Music: 2MB]|[Document: 1MB]|[Free Space: 500MB]

So say you wanted to delete the Music file to make more space. It goes from the above to this:

[Photo: 5 MB]|[Free: 2MB]|[Document: 1MB]|[Free Space: 500MB]

Now say you wanted to put a movie in its place. The movie is about 300 MB. Since the 2 MB of free space is first, the hard drive puts it there for faster access. But it's not near big enough, so it needs to "fragment" it so it's in two pieces. One gets place in the first Free space and the other gets the Second free space. It now looks like this:

[Photo: 5 MB]|[Movie Pt1: 2MB]|[Document: 1MB]|[Movie Pt2: 298MB]|[Free Space: 202 MB]

This is a really simplified version of it for explanation sake. The hard drive makes it much more complex when you get millions of files.

What happens when you DeFragment is it puts Movie Pt1 and Movie Pt2 together in one place, thus making it faster to read it. Think of it like this:

You have a wall full of books. Two books have two pieces of information that you want to access. To speed up access you put the two books together so you can find what you need faster.

I hope this clears up what defragmenting is and what it does. Thank you for reading!

How to Keep a Clean Hard Drive

2011-10-30T12:00:00.000-05:00

Hard drive space... It seems like the more you have, the more you use. With ever increasing sizes pushing well past 3 TB per drive, you begin to wonder what we ever did with less than 100 GB! So if four years ago you some how got by with 100 GB, what's changed now where you can't even get by with 500 GB?

Lets take a quick talk about managing your hard drive space. When I had my first computer I normally would be forced to backup pictures, music, movies, etc. to a CD or DVD in order to keep my hard drive clutter free. With ever increasing sizes we no longer feel the need to do that. This causes issues, though. As you load more pictures your hard drive becomes more and more full. Some pictures these days take up to 5 MB each. That wedding you just took pictures at? Yeah, you took 100 pictures at it. That means you have a whopping CD sized batch of pictures (Around 500 MB) sitting on your hard drive. Along with that, you just downloaded an HD movie off the internet which is sucking up 3 GB alone. On top of all that you just downloaded your favorite Cold Play album in high quality. See where your space is going? So lets take a look at some ways to keep that space under control..

1) Do you really need 8 MP sitting on your PC?

When you snap a picture with your modern camera you are probably taking a 5-8 MP picture. These take a lot of space on your PC, some times up to 5 MB per picture. How can you reduce this? Pop that photo into GIMP or Photoshop and shrink it down, then export the copy. Make sure you export it as a copy as to not hurt the original. Now back up the original on a CD or flash drive and enjoy your new, smaller picture that takes up way less space on your hard drive but still looks good!

2) Take it easy on the music downloads.

With Peer to Peer, iTunes, Amazon and the like, you are able to stock up on a lot of music files. But ask yourself, "Do I really need these on my computer?". With YouTube signing a large music agreement, Pandora becoming more open and Slacker on the rise, there are MANY more ways to get music streamed to you. This means that it doesn't take any space on your hard drive! All you need is an internet connection to stream it. This used to be an issue, but internet is extremely available now. Stream it, your computers hard drive will thank you!

3) 1080p does you less good on a 1440x900 monitor!

When downloading an HD movie, think about it first. For most people 1080p won't do them any good. If you have anything smaller than a 1080p HD monitor, then 1080p might not look any different than 720p. Actually, for most people, 720p is just fine for HD content! Actually, some may not even be able to tell the different between 720p and 480p (SD). This is all subject to the viewer, but try to figure out what looks best to you before downloading that movie.

4) Lots of documents? Compress!

If you have lots of documents you rarely use, then compress them! ZIP and RAR archives are really good at compressing documents to extremely small sizes. If you are some one with a lot of documents, like Excel spreadsheets or Word Documents, then the compression may be massive! You can do this with pictures and video, too, but it's MUCH less effective than with documents.

5) Clear your downloads folder.

If you are on FireFox or Chrome, every time you download something it stores it in a folder. If you download lots of programs to install, these installers hang behind. A good way to quickly clear space is to go into that folder and delete the stuff you don't want/need anymore. You may be surprised at how much space you save!

6) Un-Install games you don't play anymore.

Most games these days can take from 10-20 GB of hard drive space, which is a very sizable amount. Give your hard drive a break and delete the games you no longer play. Many popular titles, like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty or Sims 3 can take a lot of space compared to some games. While these are good games, if you no longer play them.. There's no point in keeping them! Who knows, you may be able to try some new games with this new found space!

7) Most importantly: Think before you download.

You may not always need the feature filled Adobe CS5 Master Suite if all you are going to use is Photoshop. You also may not need that program that you are about to download. Before downloading, assess your need for it. If you decide you may not use it much, if at all, then don't download it.

I hope this helps everyone on their path to re-claiming their hard drive space!

7-Zip: Free WinRAR Alternative

2011-10-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

ZIP archives have been around for ages and are extremely common. They were quick, easy and convenient to use. Windows, Mac and Linux all had built in ZIP support. Recently, however, things have changed. The RAR archive came along with higher compression rates which would mean smaller file sizes when you'd transfer them. For awhile RAR's were used in tight knit groups (Like the BitTorrent community), so the regular user never needed a program to extract RAR's. Lately that hasn't been the case. Every day more and more people are compressing using RAR's, even regular users. This means that friends and family need to also install a program to read those RAR files. There was one problem: The de-facto standard was WinRAR, which costs $29. This means using WinRAR in free mode with annoying popups asking you to buy OR buying it for $29. There must be a better way, though.. Well, there is!

Introducing 7-Zip (Click here to download), a very nice free alternative to WinRAR. It's fast, open source and has it's own compression format which has proven better than RAR in some tests. 7-Zip isn't ad supported, won't spam you with annoying popups and is integrated into the Windows Send To menu. This makes it easy to compress files without having to open up a program first. 7-Zip has no downsides, either. It's simple, easy to use and even sports a command line interface!

I really hope this article saved you some money before you went out and purchased WinRAR. I personally love WinRAR, but I don't love the price tag! You have nothing to lose by trying 7-Zip and can always switch back to WinRAR if you find you don't like it.

Why I'm Looking Forward to MW3 More Than BF3

2011-10-27T14:45:00.000-05:00

Let me start off by saying both look like completely awesome games based on beta and trial footage. Let me also say that I'm not a fanboy of either. I'm just a gamer that likes to game.

So why is it that I want MW3 more than BF3? For starters MW3 just feels more fast paced. BF3 you can heal up using health packs and you don't die nearly as much. Something about the face paced feel of the CoD series has struck me and fun and interesting.

I also like the CoD series because of Kill Streaks. Something about being rewarded for getting lots and lots of kills makes a person feel good. In Battlefield, if I were to get 20 kills I get nothing. In Call of Duty I get a very nice kill streak that will further boost my score and help out my team.

Another point for CoD is that it feels more fluid for me. When watching MW3 and BF3 the movement in BF3 felt very stiff (Granted, it was just the Beta). Call of Duty always has been good with having very fluid movement compared to other games I have played. It just feels real, as if I'm actually there. For me, being engulfed into a game just feels really nice.

A point I will give to BF3, however, is that it will have dedicated servers. I can't tell you how many times I've had to migrate hosts on Call of Duty because some 12 year old got butt hurt because he got killed too many times. A bonus of having no dedicated servers and using the player host system is that multiplayer can go way beyond the lifespan of the game. Most companies cut multiplayer support after a few years because it doesn't pay to keep the dedicated servers going.

One more reason I want MW3 is because that's where a lot of the players will be. It's just how CoD is. It has a huge fan base and a huge following. If I'm going to have a multiplayer experience I like it to be instant. I don't want to be waiting in a lobby for 15 minutes just to find a group. This, however, has nothing to do with how well each of the games look.

All this being said, I may still buy BF3. Overall it looks like an interesting game and the co-op campaign looks really fun. For now, though, I'm going to stick with Call of Duty and play that for awhile.

A quick comment poll: Which game are you going to buy and why?

How to speed up your Windows 7 PC

2011-10-25T14:00:00.000-05:00

Here some quick tips to speed up your Windows 7 PC:

1) Disable startup items.

To disable startup items click your start orb and in the search type "Run". A result should pop up that says "Run" next to a little window style icon. Hit enter. The run prompt will pop up. In the run window type "MSConfig" and hit enter.

Now that the MSConfig window is open you need to click on the "Startup" tab at the top of the window. Once you're on that tab just un-check anything you don't need. Leave your virus scanner checked if you want to quickly open your virus scanner to scan removable drives.

2) Delete files you don't need.

If your hard drive is nearing full (20% free or less) then it is a good idea to clean out your drive of large files/documents. A good way to quickly free up space would be to copy all your music/pictures to a external drive (USB Hard drive or flash drive) and then delete them off your main computer. On my computer over 25% of my space is consumed by pictures and music!

3) Add more RAM

This isn't a free way to speed up your machine, but some times for a low price you can get a lot of speed from extra RAM. Go to your PC Manufactures website or call them and ask what type of RAM your computer needs. They may even be able to offer you a decent price on that RAM!

4) Clear your cache.

If your web browser is going slow it may help to clear your web browsers cache. This is where a lot of website data is stored and some times it can make your computer move faster if it doesn't have all those files to look through. All browsers have a slightly different way that you need to clear the cache. I recommend doing a fast Google search to find one related to your browser.

5) Remove Norton/McAfee

Norton and McAfee Anti-Virus have a way of really slowing down your computer. For home users I strongly recommend you remove those from your system and install a good, free alternative. Here are some free alternatives:

-Avast! Antivirus
-AVG Free Antivirus
-Microsoft Security Essentials

All of the above have good detection rates and will protect a home user from any virus that will try to sneak on their system.

6) Remove Limewire/Frostwire

Limewire and Frostwire and very notorious for housing loads of viruses. They are file sharing programs that are normally used to illegally download music or movies. A lot of the music/movies you think you are downloading are actually viruses! These viruses can slow your computer down to a crawl. Remove them and your computer will thank you.

7) Switch Internet Browsers

Most people use the browser that came with their computer: Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has a habit of being very slow and having poor security. I recommend you switch to one of the following:

-Firefox
-Google Chrome

They can make the difference between Internet Explorer feel like night and day. Both are very good and very secure. It's up to you on which one you would like to use as the interface is only the real big difference.

I hope some of these tips helped you make your computer experience much better! Enjoy your new and improved computer as it clips along faster than ever!

The Walking Dead (TV Series) Review

2011-10-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

Overall: 9.75/10
Acting: 10/10
Audio: 9/10
Special Effects: 10/10
Storyline: 10/10

The Walking Dead is an AMC original series about a Zombie apocalypse.

The acting is very well done. I feel as if I can relate to all characters on an emotional level. None of it feels fake and the emotions are very deep. When some one dies they act as if you'd think. Whoever wrote the script thought it out very well and the actors are amazing at acting it.

The audio could be better in some areas, but overall it is done very well. Gunshots sound real, growling sounds real and the ambience and music fits well. The audio doesn't make you feel scared, either. It keeps you on the edge of your seat and the sound sets the mood.

The special effects are very nice. Some of the zombies look so realistic that it's hard to tell them from what would be real. Explosions look very real in those scenes and the blood/guts is very convincing. I have no complaints whatsoever when it comes to the special effects.

Storyline.. My god it's amazing. Everything is very well detailed and everything seems to add up very well. The main character wakes up in a hospital room all alone, with tons of dead bodies. And it gets to this point very fast. Within the first episode there is killing going on and you know how all of the crap started. Very well played out, makes sense (As far as zombies go..) and is extremely in depth.

This is a VERY good TV series and I would recommend it to anyone with a strong stomach. The rating is TV-14 but some of the scenes may be a bit too graphic for some one that age. Keep a barf bag handy!

The Universe, Big Bang, God & Us

2011-10-20T09:25:00.000-05:00

One of the most perplexing things known to man is where we all came from. Was it the Big Bang? Was it God? Where did the Big Bang come from? Where did God come from? How does anything come from nothing? Lets take a look at some facts, opinions and theories and see what we can come up with...

It all started 13.7 Billion years ago. This was before humans, before dinosaurs and before any form of intelligent life. Somewhere in nothingness was a small point. Infinitely small and infinitely dense. One day it suddenly exploded in an extremely large bang. Trillions of particles flew through the brand new universe, which was still expanding. According to scientists, the universe is always expanding, even today. It's actually expanding at the speed of light! This makes it impossible to get to "The edge" of the universe because since it's moving at the speed of light you'd never be able to catch up to it.

After some years past (Millions upon billions, that is) planets and galaxies started to form. One of those magical galaxies was the Milky Way galaxy. It's home to, you guessed it, Earth. To those of you who are a tad slow, Earth is where we live :). So there we have it, a planet where we will eventually live. It's not the blue and green planet we know and love, however. At this point in time it's extremely hot and the surface is molten. On top of that there is no air or water yet. In this time frame the Earth isn't exactly a paradise.

Roughly 3.8 Billion years ago (About 700,000,000 years after Earth was created) simple cells started to develop. 1 Billion years ago we started to see multi-cellular life. This means it took 2.8 Billion years for those simple, single cells to develop into multi-celled organisms. 600 million years ago we started seeing simple animals. Jumping forward to a mere 200,000 years ago we started seeing creatures that looked like us. Although these creatures didn't have as developed brains as we do, nor did they use their iPhones to text. A small blip in time went by, and 25,000 years ago the last Neanderthals died off. This made room for more advanced, smarter creatures which eventually became who we are today.

However some one that believes in God will say that all the above is false, fake, made up or just plain "Shit". For those that believe in God an altered timeline is given. Now, before continuing I must say that these are my opinions and I'm far from an expert on the Bible. That said, lets move on.

Christians believe God created Earth, the Heavens and the Universe. This all happened not too long ago. At least not even close to 13.7 billion years ago. God is the one that made things come from nowhere. He made the universe and everything in it. But it begs the question: Why does science show that the universe was created 13 billion years ago? Looking back in time we can see that it was indeed created then because of how things happened. Almost like re-winding a tape.

However, lets ago along with the idea that God created everything. It does make sense in some aspects. How something (The universe) was created from nothing (The lack of the universe). It also accounts for how something so advanced such as humans even came to be. If you stop and think how perfect things need to work for life to exist you actually start to appreciate what we are. Also, it explains for how lucky we actually are to be the perfect distance from the sun to not burn up and die, but at the same time not freeze over and die.

Overall, both ideas seem a bit far fetched. Whichever is correct is really up to you and your beliefs. Before we depart, lets cover one more topic: Are we alone?

No, we're not alone. To think that we're the only planet that was lucky enough to be a perfect distance from a sun out of billion and billions of other suns.. You'd have to be nuts to think otherwise. Sure, the other intelligent life may be far away. But just because we can't see it doesn't mean it's not real.

So there :)

And We're Back...

2011-10-19T00:15:00.000-05:00

Hello readers! After years (Literally!) of not posting reviews/tech related articles, I'm back! What does this mean for you? It means more reviews, more techie stuff and more awesome than ever before! In the coming weeks I'll be getting everything set up and ready to go for lots more content for all my readers. This includes tutorials, reviews and anything else I find interesting or useful.

We also may be changing the name from The Wacky Technology Geek to something more.. Appealing or catchy. That's all still being planned out, however.

I also welcome you to e-mail me topics you'd like me to write about! You can e-mail me at erickj92 [AT] gmail [DOT] com and I'll try to include your topic!

Please remember that I do this as a hobby and do have a job outside this site. As such, the site is ad supported. Thank you for your understanding!

Get great ringtones!

2009-07-26T23:19:00.001-05:00

Free Ringtones

WyldRyde IRC Network

2008-04-16T19:08:00.001-05:00

As you can see at the bottom of this page, I have a chat. This chat, and the client, are provided by WyldRyde free of charge. They are a great network, with lots of great people. I choose to have my chat hosted there, and I think you should too. The address to the website is www.wyldryde.org, and you can connect to the network by connecting to irc.wyldryde.org. Please stop by, join some rooms, and get to know the great community.

Some channels to join:

#Karol
#Chris
#SamF
#CM

And many more. Just stop by, and check them out.

Software Review - Compiz-Fusion

2008-03-07T22:54:00.000-06:00

I have been using Compiz-Fusion for about a year now, and they have made some amazing improvements to it. Now, while I'm no expert when it comes to Linux and Open Source, I know when I'm into good software. Lets just take a look at some of the many feature of Compiz-Fusion.

One of the most notable ones is the wobbly windows. Wobbly windows is your windows wiggling around the screen when you move them. You move them from side to side, and they sort of resemble finger jello that you hold and jiggle in the air. You can also set the window friction to be lower, so when you let them go, they will slide across the screen and continue to wiggle while doing so. Another neat thing about it is when you maximize it, and you can grab the corner and drag it down and around, while the window still stays in the same place. Then when you let it go, it springs back with great force, and waits for you to drag it somewhere else.

Another very notable and popular feature feature is the desktop cube. The desktop cube lets you have a 3D cube, that you can turn around and have windows on. You can have 1-32 desktops, which can give you unlimited space to store all your different windows with different actions on them. Each desktop has all the same icons of every other desktop, so you don't spend time searching for which which shortcut you need. All the windows stay on the same task bar too. That means that if you have a window open on desktop 26, and your working on desktop 4, and you need to get to the application on desktop 26, you just click the application on the task bar, and it will jump to desktop 26 and bring you to the window you wanted. This can actually save you a lot of time, and keep your work running smoother. Desktop cube isn't just for the worker, it is also for the show off. You can enable different effects to happen inside the cube. I personally use the 3D rotating gears. But you can choose anything you want (as long as its available!) Also, you can deck your desktop out with an amazing skydome. A skydome can add a new flavor to your desktop, and make it more your own. I use one that is in space, and has plasma like gasses floating around. Some have a skydome like this one: http://www.fedorasolved.com/Screenshotdiscocube.png. So as you can see, desktop cube will not only speed up your work productivity, but it will also give you breath taking style beyond anyone's imagination.

One feature that I really like is the paint fire on screen. It is like annotate, only it is in fire. It is pretty nifty, and it allows you to sort of "lock out" your computer. Most people will come on, and the fire will be there, and they will think they cant use the computer because of what is going on. Another thing it is good for is leaving messages when you leave. Lets say you need to go to work on your day off because you boss called you in, but you know your wife will worry if your not home when she comes home. Simple, you leave a short note on your screen and tell here where you are, and even leave a phone number for her to call to reach you. What I like to do is just use it to doodle and mess around when I have a little spare time, but that's just me, and the rest of the population probably has something better to do with it. Here is an example: http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa59/erickj922/paintfireonscreen.png.

One last thing I would like to talk about is the animations. Animation gives you lots of options to have various animation when you do certain things. I personally have the magic lamp effect for when I minimize a window, and I have the burn effect when I close a window. You could choose from many different options for many different actions. Window animations are very popular on many computers using Compiz, and more people are using them at more animations are born.

Compiz-Fusion is a very good program. It using very little memory to run, and very little CPU when doing most things. The only thing that uses a lot of CPU is the 3D cube, but even though it is using a lot of CPU, your computer suffers no lag what so ever. The only downside of Compiz-Fusion is that it is Linux only. But if you look back to one of my previous posts, you can see that Linux is a free alternative to operating systems like Windows or Mac OSX. I hope this post gave you a good idea of a few of the features of Compiz-Fusion, and I hope you check it out soon.

Thanks for reading! Suggestions for future posts are always accepted, and can be e-mail to me at erickj92@gmail.com. Thank you.

Ways to STOP supporting Microsoft

2007-12-14T19:51:00.000-06:00

Here are some simple ways to get away from Microsoft. Alone, I can not get rid of a corporate company, but with millions of people, we sure can make a dent in their business.

Get a new FREE Operating System:
Here are some good operating systems that are 100% free forever. (Note: I am not responsible for any issue's in installing your new Operating System.)

Linux Ubuntu: www.ubuntu.com (30 Min. Setup)

Sabayon Linux: http://www.sabayonlinux.org/ (1-2 Hr. Setup)

Solaris Operating System: http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/index.jsp (Unknown Setup Time)

Get a new word processing program:
I know of one very nice word processing program that is absolutely free, with no limitations. This is not only a word processor, but a suite of tools. Details can be found on their website.

Site: http://www.openoffice.org/

This is a very nice program, and it is free forever. Much better deal than a $100-$300 Office Suite from Microsoft.

Another way to not support Microsoft is to download Firefox from www.firefox.com. If Firefox is not for you, you can of course try Netscape which can be found at www.netscape.com.
There are also many other web browsers out there, and they can be found by doing a simple Google search for "Free Web Browsers". But never, ever pay for a web browser, because there is just way to many free ones out there.

Also, don't use Windows Mail, our Outlook, use Mozilla Thunderbird. Here is the download page: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/.

And try not to but any Microsoft hardware, because you are still supporting them if you do. And yes, I am guilty of buying a Microsoft web cam, but that is the only thing of hardware I have personally ever bought from them. And, don't buy any software/games made my Microsoft. And, last but not least, don't buy a XBox!!! WHAT EVER YOU DO! XBox is one of Microsoft's large money makers, next to their Windows OS and Office Suites. Please help me in this struggle, and lets try to put Microsoft out of business, or at least hurt them. If you have anything to add, please e-mail me at erickj92@gmail.com.

Update: I know this can be hard, but try to switch your e-mail program to one like Gmail, or Yahoo! I personally cant switch to Yahoo! or Gmail fully, because I just have way to much on my Hotmail account. But I do use Gmail as my primary e-mail account, and my Hotmail as my primary chat account. For any further tips on this, and for any other questions related to technology, just contact me at erickj92@gmail.com.

Update: Also, don't use Windows Movie Maker, or Windows Media Player/ Media Center. They may be free, but any little change to another program will hurt them. Instead of using Media Player/ Media Center, us WinAmp, it is free and works will all versions of Windows. To this date, I have not found a free replacement to Movie Maker, but there is some very cheap software out there that will not make a big dent in your wallet. I use MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 12 for all my video making needs, and it is only $50.00.

Hardware Review: HP HX2490B iPAQ

2007-11-29T22:52:00.000-06:00

I finally got it, my new HP iPAQ PDA! The HP HX2490B iPAQ has a 520 MHz CPU, 56 MB of total RAM, and 133 MB built in memory for storage of personal files. The HP HX2490B iPAQ combined with the power of Windows Mobile 5 Premium, the HP HX2490B iPAQ gives optimal performance, and reliability. The Li-Ion battery gives you, on average, about 8 hours of battery life, and about 6 with WiFi enabled, and the HP HX2490B iPAQ can be turned off when not being used to make it last a very long time. When you turn your HP HX2490B iPAQ off, and turn it back on, it comes back on instantly, making your work go much faster if you need to turn your HP HX2490B iPAQ on and off many times a day.

Lets explore some details of the HP HX2490B iPAQ. It's dimensions are 3 in x 0.6 in x 4.7 in (WxDxH), and it has a 3.5 in. LCD TFT screen, with a back light that can be either made brighter or darker. It gives you 16-bit color, and a resolution of 240 x 320. It can play back most common audio file types, and it can also record voice for when you need to make a quick note on the go. Audio can be played back, and heard through the built in speaker on the HP iPAQ, or be heard by hooking up a head set to it, via a standard jack on the top. The voice recording, and the note feature can be activated via a very handy button on the side, which makes it very easy to take a quick note. It is very easy to take a note, then turn it off, because your HP iPAQ will save the file automatically, so you never need to worry about loosing data again. It has convenient 5-way navigation buttons, and 4 quick keys on the bottom to access your Contacts, Calendar, E-Mail, or the iPAQ iTask manager. The HP iPAQ has a SD card slot, and a MMC card slot, which can both be used at the same time to give optimal storage if you need to store large files on it. You can connect though wireless with either the WiFi, or the Bluetooth, what ever you choose. The WiFi has a fairly good distance considering the fact of how small the device is, and that everything is enclosed in the device. The device comes with lots of good software, which can make your PDA feel more like a real PC. Some of the software on it is: Clock, Calculator, Notes, Voice Recorder, Calendar, Contacts, File Explorer, Inbox, Solitaire, Tasks, ActiveSync, Memory, VPN Client, Terminal Services Client, Infrared Beaming, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Margi Presenter-to-Go (Trial), iPAQ File Store, iPAQ Backup, Align Screen, Jawbreaker, Bluetooth Manager, IPAQ Audio, IPAQ iTask Manager, Pictures, Volume Control, Self Test, Power Status, Adobe Acrobat Reader, HP Mobile Printing for Pocket PC, iPAQ Wireless, HP Profiles, Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, Microsoft Excel Mobile, Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile, Microsoft Word Mobile, Microsoft PowerPoint Mobile (Note: Software may very by model, or device). There is much more to this handy little device, but it would take far to long to post every little detail about it. I really recomend this device to anyone who is looking for a PDA. The PDA can be found on sale at www.geeks.com by clicking here.

That is about it for now, and I thank you for reading! If you have any more questions about this, or other posts, feel free to e-mail me at erickj92@gmail.com at any time.

Cyber Monday

2007-11-26T07:49:00.001-06:00

The Monday after Thanksgiving, whats so special about it? Well, the only special thing I see about it is that it is Cyber Monday, a day where you can save tons of money on tons of electronics in tons of stores. I really recomend going out today, and buying all your electronics if you want to save money. Most stores will have good deals on electronics, but not all, so just go out and shop around! The main stores to have deals would be Wal*Mart, or Best Buy, or other major retailers like that... So, I hope you go out today and find some really good deals!

Software Review - MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 12

2007-11-03T22:51:00.000-05:00

While I have used Windows Movie Maker to make all my video since I got Windows XP, I thought I would use some more powerful software. Now, Windows Movie Maker is great for your every day, average movie maker, sometimes you need more features... The software that I picked was MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 12, because it was cheap, feature filled, and had a free trial.

With Movie Edit Pro, I was not to happy with the free trial, because it was giving me a lot of trouble, but I decided to give it a chance because it was some of the cheapest software I could find for that price... It was $50.00 for the download version (e-version) and $60.00 for the CD version, and there is not much of a difference in features, because any features the e-version has every feature missing online for free, accept the video tutorials. I chose the e-version because it was $10.00 cheaper and I didn't want to wait for the disk to come in the mail... So I took the e-version, installed every thing and started it up!

When I first started it, nothing had changed from the trial version. But I was able to explore it a lot more, because I didn't have to worry about a trail or anything. When you start the program, you will notice two buttons on the main thing, and thats a record button, and a import button. What I really love about it is that you can record from your web cam from inside the program, so there is no messing around with importing, or looking for a file on your hard drive, and the program also stores all your recording in a folder on your hard drive, so they are all out of the way. The program also lets you record and export in many different file formats, like mpeg, avi, wma, mpeg, and many more. The program also lets you select the resolution, frame rate, and quality of the video. This program gives you many tracks to put video, sound, and effects on, there is a maximum of 16 tracks to be exact... The program comes with many pre-made effects, and transitions, and you can download more from their site. The program gives many options for transitions, that range from basic to 3D, and they give you many effects such as audio effects, and video effects, but I'm not going to get into detail on those. Another great feature is you can record sound from your microphone, with out recording any video, and it's all done within the program, and you can also easily import from your DV camera, or any camera of the sort. There is many, many more features in this program, that would take hours to tell about. I would recomend this program to anyone that wants a cheap video editing program. If I were to recomend a program to some one with a huge budget, I would recomend Final Cut Pro from Adobe... Thats all, and thanks for reading!

Increase Laptop Battery Life

2007-11-01T21:18:00.000-05:00

Like many people, I hate being stuck half way through a 4 hour car ride, with my laptop battery going dead in a few minutes... But, there are some simple steps to increase your battery life by as much as 30 minutes! To increase your laptop battery life, follow the simple steps below.

If your laptop has a screen dimming feature, bring your laptops screen brightness down to 50% or more, and that can easily give you 5-10 more minutes of battery life. If you have a wireless card, and you are not using it, turn it off either on your laptop, or in device manager in Windows, this will increase your battery life by a minute or more. If you have any unneeded USB devices, or other peripherals plugged in, turn them off, or unplug them, that can increase your battery life by a very small amount, depending on how many you disable, but it will help. If you have Vista, and Aero is turned on, go to your personalize menu, then to your theme manager, and turn Aero off, this can easily bring your battery life up by 5 or more minutes. If you have Vista, then get a 1 or 2GB SD or flash drive and use it with Windows Readyboost (watch my YouTube video that tells you how to enable ReadyBoost by clicking here) If you use Readyboost, it will decrease the time the hard drive needs to run, and use the Readyboost as the file cache, and your SD card flash drive has not moving parts, which can increase your battery life by as much as 5 minutes!

Well, congratulations, you have just increased your laptops battery life! Weather its 5 minutes, or 50 minutes, it all helps, and it could mean the difference between you getting to your destination with a working laptop or not. Thanks for reading!

Surround Sound Power

2007-11-01T15:19:00.000-05:00

Ever wondered how big your surround sound system should be? It is a very hard choice, because if you pick the wrong size, or wattage, then your sound will not be that good.

So how big should it be? Well, that all depends on your own preference. If you just need a simple system, with ok sound, and almost no bass, just go to your local Wal*Mart or Target and get a bargain system for about $30.00 to $40.00. If you are like me, and don't want to spend a ton of money, but still want amazing sound, I recomend going out and buying a 400-600 watt system for maybe $100.00 to $150.00, or maybe more. Now, if you have a huge budget, then go out and and buy a nice 1,000 or more watt system, those can be found at most major retail stores that sell surround sound systems, and they can be bought for as little as $150.00 and up to over $400.00 depending on the size of the system. If you want the best sound, then buy a Bose home theater system, because they give the best sound, and take up the least space.

Before you buy your home theater system, keep in mind that you get what you pay for, and remember that! If you buy cheap, you normally get cheap, and if you spend a lot, you normally get a lot.

Most surround sound systems are in the home theater system box, and normally come with a DVD player. The DVD player is also a big part, but if you spend a lot, then the DVD player should be fine, but keep in mind that the sound could be awesome, but still have a horrible image... I recomend spending at least $100.00, but not over $300.00. Thanks for reading!

Will Windows XP Die From Vista?

2007-11-01T00:45:00.000-05:00

A lot of people have been asking in forums "Will XP still get updates now that Vista is out?" The truth is, Microsoft almost has to, because there are so many people getting away from Vista, and switching back to XP. Now, what about after Vista Service Pack 1 comes out? Well, Vista has gave it's self such a bad name already, they may not get that many new customers no matter how many service packs they release... And, Microsoft is still releasing security updates for Windows 2000, and that is 2 versions of Windows back. So, the answer is no, because people are still using computers running Windows 95, so it will probably be 2015 before XP barely has any customers. Thanks for reading!

The iPod...

2007-10-31T22:45:00.001-05:00

A few months ago, I did something I told myself I would never do... I bought an Apple iPod Nano. I was on the border between a digital camera, and an iPod, so I went for the iPod. It cost $150, and some tax, which was about $10.00. When I got it out of the store, to my amazement it had half battery life on it, which I didn't expect, because a lot of electronics don't normally come with the battery charged. I didn't have my laptop with me at the time, so I couldn't put any of my music on it... But I was able to explore the features of it. That is when Apple became my favorite company, because the Apple iPod had tons of features I didn't expect.

When I got the iPod home, I connected it to my laptop, and opened iTunes, and went though the extremely easy process of setting up the options for it. I love the scroll wheel on it, which makes it very easy to scroll though all your songs, and the easy search feature to find your songs much faster. I also love the on the go playlist, so I can create a playlist without my laptop, or any other kind of computer. The thing that I love the most is the battery life. I am a huge battery life freak. I don't buy any product that runs on a battery with out knowing the life of it. Now, Apple says that you can get 24 hrs. of music, but I don't think I would say 24 hrs. its more like 12 at the least, but I have never counted it... Over all the iPod Nana is great, but like every thing else, there is room for improvement. Thanks for reading!

Firefox VS IE7

2007-10-30T16:56:00.000-05:00

While I used to be a Internet Explorer fan, I have just recently switched 100% to Firefox. I soon realized that Firefox is hard to get used too, and everything is switched around. To give Firefox the IE7 feel, I put in a new skin to make it more like what I'm used too.

Now, I will list some very nice features of Firefox. Skins, add-ons, security features, tabs and the nice download manager. Some things I like is that it enables my Flash objects automatically enable themselves. I really love the fact I can use different skins to make it more like my own. I like how easy it is to organize my bookmarks, and I also love the download manager! So, Microsoft lost me, how many more are they going to loose? That about all for now, thanks for reading!