| Week in review
This week, NEWS.com.au readers flocked to reports that Keith Urban has hit the headlines, again for the wrong reasons following his recent stint of drugs rehabilitation, after US model Amanda Wyatt claimed she had been having sex with the "deeply troubled" singer well into his engagement to Nicole Kidman. The South Korean Government also turned their attention to sex deciding it would be the perfect time to remind the country's workforce that brothels are not always that hygenic. The Ministry of Gender Equality came up with the plan to bribe staff with a movie pass if they agree to a "healthy night out". Amidst all this profanity it was left to the Pope to remind us of the spiritual reason for the season and readers joined the congregation to make this week’s top story the pontiff’s Christmas Eve speech in Rome.
Just One Question For Vista: Does It Simply Work -- Like An Apple?
Thomas Hawk submits: Jim Allchin responds over on his blog regarding a recent news report quoting him as saying that he would have bought a Mac if he weren't working for Microsoft in an email to Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. The email surfaced as part of an ongoing trial between the State of Iowa and Microsoft, one of the last remaining state anti-trust trials that Microsoft is defending. Allchin says that the email was taken out of context and that he was being purposely dramatic in order to drive home a point. Recently, after 15 years of using PCs, I switched to a Mac. My decision to switch and the articulation behind my switch got a lot of attention, ending up on dozens of blogs and even ending up on Apple's main home page. So far I've only been on a Mac for about a month now but I will say that the difference between Macs and my old Dell laptop running Windows XP is like night and day.
Protect electronic gadgets
Many of you were lucky enough to get new toys under the tree this year, ranging from computers to Nintendo Wiis all the way to the grand prize of a Sony PlayStation 3.
Now you have to take some precautions to keep your machinery in perfect working order.
Let's start with the computer. The first thing you need to purchase is a surge protector. The most economical way is to buy a power strip with surge protection. Plan on spending about $30.
What a surge strip does is serve as the safety valve between you and the power company. If a surge comes down the power line the surge strip commits electronic suicide and stops the surge from reaching your electronics.
(Most of them offer some kind of insurance, too; if your PC dies of a power-related event the surge company will pay for a replacement.)
A second idea to protect the computer is an uninterruptable power supply, or UPS.
|
