Posted 08/28/2008 at 04:14:59pm

Let's face it, corporate giants have noticed that most people can't survive without a basic form of broadband internet these days and are more or less gonna squeeze people as much as they can until they complain/revolt. I'm getting sick of these forced 'upgrades' to my service as well. I was with bell's Unlimited Sympatico service for many years and when it came time to replace my modem due to it burning out (I rent my modem), I found my service plan changed all of a sudden to their new 'Total Internet Performance' one and hit with a 60gb cap. I'm lucky I don't usually burn more than 30-40gb in a month, but there have been oddball times I've spiked to 65-70gb because I tend to use a lot of voice communications software as well as remoting into other systems for work and personal tech support... Not to mention I'm a streaming radio, anime and manga junkie and those add up a bit. Also, my younger brother pushes quite a bit of bandwidth as well for his gaming (and mine as well) and streaming movies.

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 08/15/2008 at 11:59:08pm

Why am I not surprised to see a MS blog pop up about the development of Win7? A good number of major companies are launching their own blogs to keep in touch with customers, but this can also be their own death knell if they were to delay he release...

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 08/15/2008 at 05:35:00am

I really do find this funny, I thought broadband availability was higher in the US than here in Canada. There's also a lot more competition too in the US. In my area all we have is 2 major providers, Bell and Videotron (3 if you count Shaw/Cogeco pfft...), and from what I can see our mainstream 'high speed' offerings usually sit about 3-7mbps where as 'ultra high speed' sits at about 7-15mbps and usually cost an arm and a leg... let's not go on about 'extreme' packages...

Videotron's Service Plans - http://www.videotron.com/services/en/internet/comparaison.jsp
Bell's Service Plans - http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpInt_Access.page?userType=NEW

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 08/07/2008 at 06:42:27pm

Well, there's an interesting debate going on now Efficiency vs. Performance vs. Price. Here's my take.

-If you're a person who doesn't have a lot of money or doesn't need extreme performance, go with ATi.
-If you're a speed freak, hevy duty power user, game junkie with a large budget, nVidia is your game.
-Hardware junkies who want bragging rights, nVidia again.
-HTPC users, quiet PC types or low energy consumption folks, ATi is your best bet (runs cooler and quieter).

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 08/05/2008 at 08:18:40pm

Can American politics get any uglier (or Canadian politics as well)? First it's these mandatory Secure ID/Passport at the border crap for canadians, now this electronic device seizure crap... what next? No more devices period? Boy wouldn't that kill industry right there. I guess there goes my vacation plans for christmas, so much for spending time in new york... I don't need my $1500 laptop being seized by some stupid flunky nor my blackberry...

- mike_art03a IT
Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 08/05/2008 at 04:23:20pm

Heh, it was only a matter of time and now the consequences of open wi-fi are rearing it's ugly head. Don't get me wrong, public hotspots are great, I'm referring to the bumbling homeowner who just left his router on it's default settings because 'it works' and wondering why his connection is so slow. It's these jerks (terrorists) that know how to use technology against ignorant people because they couldn't be bothered to spend 15 minutes properly configuring their routers so that no one could highjack their connection to perform illegal activities. Also, a good part of spam these days is coming from these unprotected networks... I can easily detect about 20 of them in my appartment complex alone and that's within range, I'm sure there a ton more...

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 07/25/2008 at 05:15:54am

"Towards the end of August, you'll also be able to pick up an 8GB or 16MB model in black for $249. Plan on getting one?"

16 megs? When did we go back to the stone age?

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 07/21/2008 at 04:59:10pm

Well, looks like the nVidia vs. ATi war is over for the most part now. Either way, if it ain't broke why fix it? Dream machine is supposed to be about cutting edge hardware, why is everyone bitching about a video card that's not even out on the market? The fact that MPC was able to pull this off was great. Now that's cutting edge!

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 07/21/2008 at 04:24:41pm

I always knew that there was a loophole in things. Our contracts at work prohibit us from taking old 'surplus' PC parts and peripherals (printers, scanners, large items) home because they're tagged with an asset tracking tag, anything else is free game (cables, connectors, plugs, etc.), my fave is taking a pile of DVI-VGA adapters whenever we perform LCD swaps when the machine has a VGA port on it (95% of them are VGA equipped) so we don't bother using the DVI port on the newer machines unless it's necessary to drive a large screen display (22+ inches).

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada

Posted 07/17/2008 at 02:58:28pm

Oops, my bad. Hehe... -.-;;

- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada