EXCLUSIVE!: Apple iTablet Specs Leaked

Jobs: Officially launching iTablet later today.

Documents obtained exclusively by The Diary from Apple's Cupertino HQ, have cast light on the eagerly-awaited new product from the cult-like technology giant.

The tentatively-named iTablet has been Apple's most anticipated offering since the hugely-successful iPhone, and The Diary is exclusively able to offer the first definitive details and specifications of the product, to be officially announced later today.

We can reveal that the iTablet is a newly-designed pill for Apple fans, which will be available from Apple Stores worldwide and from all good pharmacists by Q2.

Containing a unique blend of MDMA, LSD, Ketamine and Jojoba oil, the iTablet has reportedly been personally tested by Apple supremo Steve Jobs. Insertion of the tablet in suppository form is reported to provide a number of positive effects including:

• Hallucinations of Apple OS X code in full, glorious psychedelic form;

• The ability to register one's brain with the iTunes Store by the power of thought alone;

• The recognition of Steve Jobs as a prophet and the architect of a Glorious iFuture;

• The irresistible desire to buy a black turtleneck. This will be addressed with the release of the iTop later this year;

• A consistent and irrational belief that Apple's product pronouncements are actually important in the larger scale of the real world.

The iTablet reportedly has the Apple logo on one side of its smooth, industrially-designed shell, and an image of Steve Jobs on the other, thus guaranteeing months of coverage in technical magazines about how amazing, far-thinking and incredibly advanced it is.

Apple's scientists have strongly denied rumours that the iTablet has addictive characteristics, with one member of the development team saying, "this is for marketing to fanboys. Come on, they'd buy a dog-turd from us if it had the Apple logo, it's hard to get any more addicted than they already are."

The 12 Days of an Engineer's Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
One real emergency!

On the second day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the third day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the fourth day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the fifth day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
FIVE BOXES DOWN!
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the sixth day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Six logins failing,
FIVE BOXES DOWN!
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the seventh day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Seven server reboots,
Six logins failing,
FIVE BOXES DOWN!
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the eighth day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Eight virus warnings,
Seven server reboots,
Six logins failing,
FIVE BOXES DOWN!
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the ninth day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Nine mails delaying,
Eight virus warnings,
Seven server reboots,
Six logins failing,
FIVE BOXES DOWN!
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the tenth day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Ten backups stalling,
Nine mails delaying,
Eight virus warnings,
Seven server reboots,
Six logins failing,
FIVE BOXES DOWN!
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the eleventh day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Eleven drives a'mapping,
Ten backups stalling,
Nine mails delaying,
Eight virus warnings,
Seven server reboots,
Six logins failing,
FIVE BOXES DOWN!
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

On the twelfth day of Christmas, the Helldesk sent to me:
Twelve lusers whining,
Eleven drives a'mapping,
Ten backups stalling,
Nine mails delaying,
Eight virus warnings,
Seven server reboots,
Six logins failing,
FIVE BOXES DOWN!
Four irate clients,
Three outages,
Two change requests,
And one real emergency!

A Christmas Message to the Helldesk

Dear Bane of my Life Helldesk Help Desk

Seasons Greetings, and my best wishes at this joyous time of the year.

As you know, as of early this afternoon our UK office shuts down, and to provide support to you I will be available on-call over Christmas for critical issues.

Please note the above - critical issues.

This means a major outage involving a large number of potential users for one of our 24/7 supported clients. Bearing in mind your recent phone calls to out-of-hours, 'critical' does NOT mean:

• A scheduled backup delayed in starting by 20 minutes;
• A single user unable to connect to the VPN on Boxing Day;
• Anybody not receiving mail on their Crackberry;
• One of our small clients wanting 'a quick change made while it's quiet';
• Any ISP issues for the clients which shut down over Christmas.

I fully intend to partake deeply of the Christmas spirit this Holiday season. Interrupting my festivities with non-urgent, pointless or stupid calls will result in my travelling to your offices and stapling you upside-down to the wall by your genitals.

And then setting you on fire.

Love and Yuletide Felicitations

Dungeekin

On Daleks in Business

Completely unrelated to Christmas or politics (normal programming will return shortly), but recent comments on Twitter by loudmouthman got me thinking - what if The Doctor had failed, and the Daleks had taken over the Universe?

Can you imagine Daleks in business and advertising?

Dalek Nivea Advertisement: "You Will Be Exfoliated!"

Dalek Bailiffs: "Your Goods Will Be Appropriated!"

Dalek Santa: "You Will Celebrate!"

Dalek Funeral Directors: "We Will Cremate!"

Dalek Divorce Counsellor: "You Will Both Be Mediated!"

Dalek Zoologist: "This Is An Invertebrate!"

Dalek Accountant: "Your Tax Will Be Enumerated!"

Dalek Painter: "We Will Decorate!"

Dalek Labour Minister: "Our Records Show! A Rise In Living Standards! Do Not Investigate!"

Dalek Police Officer: "You Will Be - Interrogated!"

Can you think of any others? Winning entry will get a personalised extermination by Davros.

Techno-Rant.

Dear $LuserManager

Let's get something straight here. If I've taken the trouble to clarify the request with the requesting engineer, detail the steps necessary to implement the (complex) project requested, and made a recommendation that it's chargeable based on the technical information obtained. . .

Don't, don't, Don't You fscking DARE go over my head to the requestors saying it's simple, takes less time than recommended - and non-chargeable.

It isn't simple. It isn't supported. It sure as hell isn't free. Listen, you overpaid, underqualified, microscopically-genitalled, sub-protozoan excuse for a salesdroid. Your job is to go and make money, you simpleton - not to hand out the time of those who are actually competent as if it were Halloween sweeties. Your job is to generate profit. I realise that's not particularly easy, but it's a shitload harder if you don't fscking charge for anything, moron.

And there's more. When I've spent the last three MONTHS proving, with Crown-Court standard, beyond reasonable doubt evidence, that there's a bandwidth problem on a fscking site, don't you think that it's totally reprehensible, stupid and downright insane to recommend, implement and SCHEDULE a VoIP implementation? Especially without referring to me, without recommending a line upgrade and without any form of technical audit or input?

I knew you were an idiot. I knew you were dishonest. Now I'm firmly convinced that you should be nowhere near my Clients. In fact, I'd prefer it if you were straitjacketed, pumped full of Thorazine and dumped in landfill.

We are the Engineers. We know what is needed and how it is to be achieved. You cannot even connect your laptop to its power supply without raising a Helpdesk ticket, yet you presume to question the technical recommendations we offer, and make recommendations to Clients that will not only fail, but will backfire onto us? Quite frankly, we would see superior management decisions if you were replaced by the chair currently supporting the fat arse you clearly make decisions out of.

Consider yourself LARTed, you prize piece of reptilian pond-slime. A second rantable offence will result in The Wrath of Dungeekin being applied to sensitive parts of your anatomy with a claw hammer and lashings of Mains voltage. And a few of my Toys above.

FOAD - and your little dog too.

Love

Dungeekin

Sony Ericsson K850i - New Shiny! Toy!

So the newest Shiny Toy arrived at Dungeekin Towers today.

It's a Sony Ericsson K850i - the 'Cybershot'-branded camera phone, replacing the basic and buggy Nokia 6300 I had been using.

The SE is my latest attempt to get a phone that does just what I want it to, and does it well. I originally went for a Nokia N95, which was a brilliantly featured phone yet too bulky and over-specced for my needs. I didn't need wi-fi, I don't need GPS. So that went onto eBay and was replaced by a Nokia 6300 - which had a great UI, and was light and easy to use. But the 2MP camera was shoddy and the 2GB Micro-SD card I bought for it wouldn't work. Neither would any other card.

This time, I put together a list of my wants before ordering a phone. It was surprisingly short, really. Phone calls, SMS messages, MMS messaging and a good camera - which leads me to the K850i.

With Cybershot internals, the K850i is, essentially, a camera with a phone attached rather than a phone with a camera attached. It feels less bulky to the hand than the N95, the screen's large and bright, and a few test pictures so far show excellent picture quality and, most importantly, a fast shutter reaction time.

I'm initially less impressed with the keypad, and I do worry about the super-shiny surface which shows fingerprints if you so much as look at the phone, but they're small niggles. I'm sure I'll get used to the keys quickly enough.

The K850i also accepted, formatted and is using my 2GB card, and did so without fuss or hassle, which is a major plus.

So now it's time for a few weeks of using the phone, and I'll post a fuller, more detailed review once I've lived with it for a while.

Ultio Ultionis Superne

It's not the network. No, seriously, it's not.

My network is fine. It has a single, relatively simple job. Packets come in, packets go out. Job done.

It's not the network. I'll only believe it MIGHT be the network when one of my switches is a puddle of molten slag on the server room floor, the fire-suppression system's gone into overdrive and your entire staff are evacuated.

Even then, you'd better have done diagnostics on every single Windoze box, wired or wireless, in a three-mile radius of my network.

Specifically in this case, when you've had a power outage, and the 27 dynamically-addressed PCs in the office can't pick up DHCP, you'd best make damn sure you've started the Domain Controller for the network BEFORE you log a trouble ticket with the Networks engineers.

Oh look. You hadn't checked the DC. And it wasn't up. So no DHCP.

OADS will be delivering to your location shortly - I can honestly say that this will hurt you much more than it will me.

Remember this, on pain of pain.

It Is Not The Network.

kthxbai.

In Praise of Foxmarks

In common with many geeks, I have more than one computer. In my case, I have three - work laptop (meh), personal desktop/file server and the much-stickered Dell D430 that's my personal laptop and the source of most of the gibberish I spout here.

Now because I sometimes have to work at night, and because my work laptop is a steaming, creaking, barely-functional piece of HP Pentium M crud (and also because I'm lazy) I like to be able to use a personal machine to do so rather than wait three days for the work machine to boot.

So it's important for me that whichever machine I'm on, I can access the same information with equal ease. I've tried Del.icio.us but never really got on with it - besides, I have things like webmail accounts with multiple clients that I don't really want to publish on there.

Step forward and take a bow, Foxmarks.

Foxmarks simply synchronises my bookmarks with a central server, meaning that I get the same bookmarks in the same order on any machine I've installed the add-on to. If I add any new ones, Foxmarks regularly resyncs, so the next time I open Firefox on one of the other machines - there they are, ordered and ready to use.

If I'm somewhere else without my personal laptop, I can simply log into my account on the Web and, from there, access and go to any of my bookmarks from any machine with Web access - but without the privacy concerns caused by publishing a public links list as with del.icio.us.

Oh, and it's free too, which is a bonus.

I've been using Foxmarks now for about five months, and it's become pretty much indispensable. It's such a simple, sensible idea, well implemented and one that I'd recommend to any Firefox user who has multiple PCs.

QR Codes

So as an experiment, I've made up a QR Code of the same information that's on my MooCard.

It looks like this:

It seems to work for me - but if anyone has a QR-Code reader and can test to make sure it's making sense, please give it a go and drop me a line if you see anything hinky.

Inbox Zero!

My thanks to @chrisbrogan for his excellent article on achieving Inbox Zero.

I present, for your interest and edification, my own personal attempts to attain Inbox Zero:

Personal: Gmail


Work: Outlook Web Access


You know - it seems odd, but already I can see the benefit of having Inbox Zero.

It's easier to see what's new (well, DUH) but also it puts stuff that needs to be actioned in a much clearer space, and means that prioritising actions becomes simpler as well.

Thanks again, Chris!

What We Have Here, Is Failure To Communicate!

Communication, as we know, is an important thing.

However, while WE know that, our dear, esteemed Management seem to have missed the particular memo.

I'd like, therefore, to share with you two instances of supreme stupidity in Manglement communication, of differing types, for your entertainment and edification...

1. "Do What We *WANT*, Not What We Ask For!"

So. Yesterday we have a call logged by Manglement to the Security Team (me), and the request said thusly:

"Remove $COMPANY users from firewall."

Less than an hour later, this request is backed up by an email from said Mangler, saying "These need to be handled fairly swiftly (in other words they are 'easy wins')".

No problem. On to the firewall, and spend an enjoyable few minutes deleting accounts. I find that nuking accounts is always a pleasurable part of the day.

Once the deletions have been done, I fire off an email to the company concerned and the instigating Mangler, advising them of completion and providing a complete list of the deleted accounts and the remaining extant ones.

Nobody complains. Nobody. Not a word.

Fast forward to this morning, and a telephone call comes in from one of the recently-removed VPN users, complaining that they, and their cow-orkers, are unable to connect.

Well, DUH.

However, in the spirit of inter-departmental co-operation, I decide to give Manglement a quick call and let them know that someone Up There has neglected to tell anyone else what was about to happen.

"Oh, no!" is his terror-stricken response. "That wasn't supposed to happen - you were supposed to remove SURPLUS users! That's what we meant!".

"Well, the email and service request said you wanted all the users removed."

"I know, but that was a mistake - we didn't mean it! You'll have to fix it!".

< sigh >

Cue 4 hours of restoring users from backup configs, and calling round to check the lusers can all connect.

The fsking luser even tried to say it was OUR fault! No chance, pal - I've got the mails and the original call notes.

Clearly I missed the Cisco training module 'How to read between the lines of ignorant and incomplete Manglement requests'.

2. Did You Need To Know That?

An Email Arrives.

The Mangler in this case, wanted to know the IP address a Remote Luser had connected to their firewall FROM.

One quick check, and I fire off a response with the source IP, and suggest she verifies it by getting Remote Luser to verify it on whatismyip.com.

Quicker than a luser heading for the donuts, she dashes off her reply - and it's a reply that fills me with dread and resignation.

"Oh, no", she says. I didn't need that information - I put the wrong thing in the email. What I wanted to know was what else she connected to afterward, as she's introduced a worm onto our network. Sorry, should I have mentioned that?"

< Gnnnn... >

'Nuff said, really.

Well, as it turns out, we don't manage any of the devices that got affected, our firewalls don't allow traffic inbound from the client in question, so we're safe.

Tomorrow will be spent crafting the carefully-worded email explaining exactly why I don't care that Remote Luser infected them, and perhaps suggesting that next time they pick up an infection they might like to tell us about it somewhat quicker than today.

As for Remote Luser - well, there will be LARTage, of that you can be assured. The Mangler resposible for my earlier suffering will be made to pay as well, in new and interesting ways.

Mark my words, There Will Be A Reckoning.

And, I think, a few lessons in communicating properly.

On $LUSERMANAGERs and Precise Requests...

Hehehe.....a nice little one today - just enough fun for a quick rant, with a proper post about life in general later.

$LUSERMANAGER calls in, ranting, roaring and raging because (he says) a recent firewall change isn't working.

"You're useless", says he. "I asked you to give me telnet access to foo, and it's not pingable from my machine! Fix it NOW!"

At this juncture, you'll need to visualise the bottle, dummy and cute little mittens being flung across the room in abject, infantile frustration. The mental image will work even better if you put the baby in a three-piece suit.

Hmmm.....

"So", I say, ever the voice of reason. "You can't ping it? Have you tried Telnet itself?"

"What's the point of trying bloody Telnet if I can't ping it?"

"Just.....humour me.".

It's at this point I should point out that our firewall rules are specific. Very specific, in fact. Right down to blocking everything except specifically-stated and requested ports.

Like, in this case, ICMP. Which he didn't ask for. So he didn't get.

The silence on the phone tells me everything I need to know. He needn't say a word.

Amazingly (I can't imagine why) his tone changes at this point. From the Incredible Hulk to Uriah Heap in one giant bound. One minute ago he was all for having me hung, drawn and quartered - now he's being so bloody obsequious[1] that I could request a blowjob in the middle of the office - and I'd get it, probably with a smile thrown in.

"Oh, thanks, it's working now. Thanks so much for doing this, I really appreciate it."

Yeah, right. Until the next time you want something and chuck a tantrum my 2yo son would be embarrassed by.

Which, if I know you, will probably be tomorrow morning.

FOAD.

[1]This post has been brought to you by Merriam-Webster and Carseycritter

Just *HOW* small is the EeePC?

Since getting my Asus EeePC, everyone who's seen it has commented immediately on just how incredibly small it is.

It's something all the reviews mention as well - so I've taken a couple of shots that I think truly put this amazing little device into perspective.

First off, here's one of the EeePC atop Gerry's Dell Latitude D420 - at 12.1", it's also classed as a subnotebook:

That still doesn't fully evoke the sheer tinyness, so here's one with both devices open:

Finally, the grand picture that proves it. EeePC atop 12.1" D420 atop 15.4" Compaq:

Do you see it now? This thing is SMALL. Tiny. Miniscule.

Yet to me, it's kinda like a soldier ant - tiny, yet for its size unfeasibly powerful. I plan to post a full review in a week or so, once I've had some more time playing with it, but so far it's handled everything I've thrown at it - including some clumsy cock-ups - with nothing but aplomb. In fact, it's proved so useful that I'm planning to eBay the 15" Compaq lappy in the photo, as I haven't use it once since the day the diminutive Asus arrived.

Damn, it's small. But it's perfectly formed and, as I once mentioned on Twitter, this to me could be the device that finally makes sense of Linux on the desktop.

Stay tuned for a full review.

The Event - a visit from the Fuckup Fairy

Normally, when one of our lusers does something that's common-or-garden stupid, we laugh (at them), die a little inside at the plummeting IQ of the world, post a mildly amusing rant on our Blog or Usenet group of choice, and carry on.

But sometimes - just sometimes - a luser does something so dumb, so moronic, so spectacularly cretinous that simply finding the words for the rant becomes difficult.

When dealing with the full ramifications of The Event today, and the immediate aftermath, I thought tonight's post would be easy to write. My mind was awhirl with vitriolic comments - a cascade of inventive invective primed and ready to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting Web in all its diabolical fury. It hasn't ended up quite that way - simply because the sheer enormity of The Event was so staggering, so unbelievable that by the time I sat here at the PC, with its cursor winking expectantly, I found it hard to summon the words to describe it.

Still, nothing ventured and all that, so here we go...

Like many managed services providers, we host our client systems in large datacentres. The datacentre involved in The Event is a large one in London. You may have heard of it - however to protect the guilty and disguise it, I shall call it BlueCoach.

Two of our largest clients also have their backup devices in Bluecoach. These clients both have large tape stackers connected to backup management servers. Each client has their own rack in their own cage, and the cages themselves are situated some considerable distance apart. Each client performs daily, weekly and monthly backups, often totalling many Terabytes of data.

So - an email from BlueCoach arrives - the loading bay's locked on one of the tape stackers. I try and unlock it remotely - and it won't unlock. One quick check with our Guru later, we've established that the software is saying it's unlocked, while the hardware has decided to do its own thing, and is resolutely refusing to relinquish its tapes.

What do you expect - it's Slackup Exec running on 'Doze. AHS, ASS.

OK, no problem - we can drop the backup server, get the Tape Guy to powercycle the stacker, change the tapes, then he can restart the backup server from there. Simple.

Only the Tape Guy has gone home, and in his place is...well, I'm still lost for a description. Amoeba-man? A Neanderthal? A lobotomised three-toed Sloth? Gordon Brown? I don't know. But whatever it was, it sure as hell shouldn't be anywhere near a datacentre. Or computers. Or humans, for that matter.

But I digress. Anyway, I fire off an email to BlueCoach saying the following:

• I am going to remotely shut down the backup management server $foo-backup01;

• Please would you go to the tape library and physically power-off the library, then turn it back on, unlock it and change the tapes.

• Once you have done so, please restart the backup management server $foo-backup01 - it's a 1u server, in the same rack, and obviously its LEDs will be off.

Well...After three hours and two phone calls from the knuckle-dragging, subhuman fsckwit charged with carrying out the 'Intelligent Hands' request (probably the best oxymoron I've heard in years), he still hasn't found the server.

I get the feeling he'd be happier lolling around somewhere, learning how to find his arse with both hands, map and flashlight.

This pathetic pseudo-simian couldn't FIND server $foo-backup01, despite precise information even down to the rack name and its position in said rack. Finally, just as I'm losing the will to live (or, more accurately, losing the will to let HIM live), he sends me a triumphant email thusly:

• Request completed. The server was called $bar-backup01
  

At this moment, I discovered the Sphinctosecond - "that brief arse-tightening sensation which inevitably accompanies the realisation that Things Have Just Become Not What They Should Be".

He'd rebooted $bar-backup01.
...
A live, running backup server.
....
For our largest client.
.....
22 hours into a multi-terabyte full monthly backup that had been requested by their Auditors!

Even some 6 hours on, I'm still struggling to find any reasoning for what 'Homo Moronicus' has managed to achieve. He'd managed to go to completely the wrong rack, in completely the wrong cage - a significant distance from the correct one - and then reboot a live device when he'd been TOLD that the device he was looking for was powered down?

The mind boggles. Surely at some point, some under-utilised neuron must have given a brief fizzle and he'd have questioned the name of the server (suffice to say that my descriptions are much less detailed than our corporate naming protocol)?

Could he even READ?

What sort of bottom-feeding, scum sucking, microcephalic excuse for a proto-human would perform an act of such inconceivable imbecility? I appreciate that 'datacentre troll' isn't exactly the most intellectually challenging role - after all, you really only need one finger to turn the boxes off and on again - but come on, surely even a retarded chimp might have taken a brief second away from masturbation and dung-flinging to realise what he was about to do might need verification!

Well - the incident reports are filed, and I sincerely hope - in fact it is my most fervent wish that this thing, this creature, this floating blob of something unpleasant polluting the gene pool, receives a P45-shaped LART. Thanks for fucking up my day, dickhead. Don't let the door hit you in the brain-cell on the way out.

Photos!

A couple of photos of the new toy....

First - the obligatory "on top of a laptop" shot - in this case my 15.4" widescreen Compaq:



now the 'comparison with something smaller that shows just how small the EeePC actually IS, shot - in this case in comparison to my Archos A504:


I have a plan for a *really* cool photo - the EeePC on top of Gerry's Dell, which is in itself a subnotebook - but that will have to wait until her return from the USA next week.

If I come up with any other cool things to photograph it against, I'll post them too...

It's HERE!!

the new $SHINY! toy arrived today - along with all the additional bits and bobs, so well done to the suppliers involved.

At this early stage (only 3 hours playtime, and I forgot to bring the box back home with me so neglected to bring the power cable!) I'm not forming any strong opinions.

Except. . .

DAMN, it's SMALL!!

As I don't have power, I was only able to spend about 90 minutes fiddling with it and surfing the Web - proper tweakage will have to wait till tomorrow. Photos and a review proper will follow in the next few days.

However, while I was shocked at the size of it - it's really incredibly tiny, even photos don't do it justice - so far I've found it pretty easy to use, and even the trackpad, though small, isn't overly awkward. I can't touch-type (yet), but the teensy little keys aren't a detriment to easy use of the laptop.

Though the 'Fisher-Price' simple GUI has simply GOT to go!

More to follow - watch this space....

Eee By Gum!

Forget AndLinux - I couldn't stand the anticipation, so I've done it...I've ordered my very own Asus EeePC.

I ordered the 2GB version in Black, for 2 reasons - one, because it was cheaper to get a 2GB and add on 12Gb of SD storage (one 8GB, one 4GB) than to buy a 4GB - and two, because Laptops Direct had the 2GB in stock and I didn't want to wait!

EBuyer are supplying the memory cards (and a wireless keyboard and mouse for the next project), so by the end of next week I'll be geeking out like mad!

The sad (or should that be sadder) thing about all this excitement is that I can even envisage the Blog photo....my EeePC, sat on top of Gerry's Dell subby, both sat on my Compaq laptop!

God, I love being a Geek.

AndLinux

I need a Linux box.

And I'm lazy, and can't face the hassle of yet more battling with wireless configuration on my laptop.

And, perhaps surprisingly, I don't detest Vista Home Premium.

So as an experiment, I've downloaded AndLinux, and when I have a few moments to spare in the next week, plan to install it.

It claims to provide Linux functionality - no, a complete KDE-based Linux distro - running inside Windows.

We shall see.

At the very least, it'll be something to play with until May, when I order my EeePC!

And it's gone....

The little Advent lasted just 3 days since its visit to PC World - and is now gone.

I came downstairs on Friday morning to discover a shut-down box. Again.

This time, a bit of Googling garnered me some evidence that I wasn't alone in experiencing problems with this box. This link is just ONE of the mentions of the problem I found.

I called PC World, who (at first) asked me to bring it in for further tests. However, I explained the evidence, pointed their Tech Guys team leader at the relevant pages....and got a callback an hour later confirming that they would simply take a return for a full store credit.

So the Advent went back, and has been replaced by a Compaq C757EA, as the price for a dual-core with 2GB RAM was just too good to miss. I also treated myself to an Archos 504 80GB PMP, which will be useful for my trip to Romania this month.

(For those who are shocked at my choosing Archos - I looked at the iPod Touch, but for £20 more than the Archos it's a tenth of the storage and, according to the owner of the one I was fiddling with, won't play Divx - which would make it completely useless for my purposes.)

Overall, then, I have to say I'm not displeased with the service and response from PC World on this. And I feel like I've got a heck of a lot more for my money than I had originally!

So to those who asked for my opinions or advice on the Advent 8212 - my advice is just DON'T. It's not DSG's fault - but the components and the mainboard appear to have known issues and, quite frankly, it's not worth the money you'll pay for it.

No Fault Found

I'm completely unsurprised.

I now have my little lappy back from the clutches of PC Worst - and they say that after two days of tests, they weren't able to find any fault with the box.

In their defence, however, they've agreed (in writing) to replace it immediately if it shuts down unexpectedly once more. So I don't suppose I can complain too much.

So....because I say there's a fault and they say there isn't, the plan is simple. The laptop will stay powered on (with the power management set to never turn off either monitor or PC) for a few days, and we'll see if it manages to stay upright.

If it does - great. If not....well, you can guess the outcome.

In other news, I'm soon to be the proud owner of an iMac. Only an old one, I grant you, but it's been upgraded and runs OSX so it'll be a good learning box for me. I'm looking forward to collecting it!