TechBite Technology
Steve Bass's Weekly Newsletter
TechBite's columnist Steve Bass writes weekly commentary on the technology products he loves, the strategies for getting the most out of them, and the gotchas that can cause computing misery.
Hard Drive Tools, Nifty Search Engines
In This Issue
TechBite: On Vacation
How's Your Hard Drive Doing?
Free Microsoft Technet Subscription
What's on the Radio?
Tech Tip: Two New Search Engines
Tool of the Week: PC DeCrapifier
Time Wasters
Someone's at the Door
Vacation Note: Yep, it's true. We've packed the Roadtrek and loaded up the dogs--we're going to find out if the Badlands are really bad. Our house sitter and her two Pit Bulls are staying at the house to help dissuade potential burglars.
Unless I find the motivation to write a newsletter while on the road (always a possibility, but highly unlikely), the next time you'll hear from me will be in late June. Send your complaints directly to Human Resources at Bass International. Operators are standing by...
How's Your Hard Drive Doing?
Hard drives are about as dependable as a teenager promising to come home by midnight. The more you know about your drive--the brand-specific idiosyncrasies and the diagnostic sounds that drives produce--the better prepared you are for the inevitable crash.
Hard Drive Inspector is a handy tool to monitor your drives for spin rate, seek time, and almost 20 other potential problem spots. The program also supplies specs--including drive model, firmware version, and serial number, all perfect when calling for warranty support.
The drive's temperature is displayed in the system tray; if the drive gets too toasty (I have mine set for 120 degrees Fahrenheit), you can get an e-mail alert, or better, automatically put the computer in Standby mode. You can view a summary health report that's enough for most of us; the S.M.A.R.T. report has the details. Hard Drive Inspector costs $30, but you can download a 15-day trial version to give you a feel for the tool; the trial is fully functional, though limited to one drive. Nonetheless, it'll tell you everything you'll need to know about your drive.
Note: At press time (an antiquated phrase if I ever heard one), the Hard Drive Inspector's site is temporarily down. You can read about the product by looking at a Google cache.
It's not as comprehensive as Hard Drive Inspector, but if you'd prefer a freebie (of course you would!), download CrystalDiskInfo. The tool will show you the number of hours logged on your hard drive and give you its health status. If you see caution or bad, cancel all your appointments and replace the drive, like, immediately, even if you don't hear any weird sounds from the drive.
If you listen to your hard drive, all you should hear is a soothing, comforting hum. Yet drives often make weird sounds--thuds, screeches, knocking, or whining -- and determining if a sound means trouble can be, well, troubling.
DataCent, a data-recovery company, has an extraordinarily helpful site that plays the actual sounds of flaky hard drives: stuck spindles, bad or unstable heads, bad bearings, and bad media, to name a few. You can listen to your specific drive brand, too. Even better, the data recovery company lists typical drive failures by manufacturer. Listen to a Seagate drive with bad heads making a clicking and knocking sound. [top]
Free Microsoft Technet Subscription
For what it's worth, I just heard about a way to get a free, one year subscription to Microsoft's TechNet. It's probably a limited-timeoffer, so I suggest you do it now. Make sure to read the following before you click the link:
Bass International Disclaimer
Bass doesn't know if the free TechNet subscription is bootable,comes in colors, or is submersible. Please don't ask.
Bass doesn't check to see if the offer is available outside the U.S., including Canada, anywhere in South America, Tunisia, or even East Yahupitz.
If Microsoft runs out of free firewalls, or you don't check e-mail but once a month, and you miss out on the offer,and feel miffed, don't tell Bass. Instead, consider it fodder foryour next psychotherapy session. And next time, read your e-mailearly in the day.
When you get your first free TechNet subscription and it formats your drive, it doesn't work as intended, your mileage varies, the results aren't typical, using it has an impact on the national debt, causes your spouse to ask for a divorce, or otherwise disappoints you, have another chat with your therapist -- don't write to Bass.
Thank you for your cooperation. [top]
What's on the Radio?
You have any plans for the summer? You might start tuning into radio tech guy and gadget guru Dave Graveline's "Into Tomorrow" show. Dave's pulled off a perfect win-win. Listeners get the chance to win over $75,000 in consumer electronics products in the "Hot Summer Giveaway" and the advertisers get plenty of air time. Each week, winners will be chosen using a random algorithm and Dave's staff will ship the giveaways for the next three months. When Dave pitched me, he said that he "sends consumer electronics prizes out every week, all year-long, but this is really BIG!"
Dave isn't terribly good looking, but he does great giveway...
Tech Tip: Two New Search Engines
Google's good enough for me, yet it's valuable to play with new search engines. It's like having an affair--you get to see how good things are at home. (No, I haven't; it was just a metaphor.)
If you liked Microsoft's Live Search, Bing is for you. That's because Bing, Microsoft's latest search engine, is more of the same. What I like, though, is the quick rundown of the site, along with related links. Play around with it and decide for yourself.
Bing pops up a synopsis of the site's content.
Upstart Wolfram Alpha, the search engine that could give Google a run for the money, acts like a universal reference library. It shows terrific examples -- a "D dominant eleventh chord," for instance -- and it lets you play the notes and chord. It didn't know what I meant when I asked for the slide positions on a trombone, but quickly told me how many calories were in an average portion of cottage cheese and the probability of getting four of a kind in poker (1 in 649740).
Watch the slow-loading screencast to get a better sense of Wolfram Alpha's capabilities. [top]
Wolfram Alpha calls itself a "Computational Knowledge Engine."
Tool of the Week: PC DeCrapifier
Have a new PC? I'll bet you've noticed dozens of applications and tools in your system tray, on your desktop, and stuffed in the Start menu. Most of them are 90-day trials or "lite" versions. That's because companies can't make much money selling computers, so they hope to get license fees when you renew the bundled products or upgrade to the full version.
You can safely and easily send all those annoying apps to the bit bucket with PC DeCrapifier, a nifty freebie. You choose the programs you want to remove from a list of typically bundled apps. Unlike Windows Add Remove applet, PC-DeCrapifier does the dirty work automatically, removing all the apps in one fell swoop. Read the FAQ. The tool works on XP and Vista-based computers. By the way, you can use PC DeCrapifier on an old PC, but note that it will remove only programs listed in Add Remove. [top]
Time Wasters
You still go to the movies sometimes, right? Chances are good, though, that with those big soft drinks, you can't make it through to the end without having to--okay, I'll say it--go pee. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you RunPee, the site that tells you, movie by movie, when's the best time to hit the john. For instance, in the new Star Trek, there's one about 50 minutes in. [Thanks to Ken S.]
Get the timing down and you won't miss a thing.
After watching "24 hrs of World Air Traffic Compressed in One Minute," I think it's a good thing I'm not flying anytime soon. It was made by a technology institute in Switzerland and shows the entire air traffic of one day compressed into one minute.
Follow the night moving on the globe and see the traffic flow between Europe and the U.S. during mornings and afternoons. Amazing. [Thanks to Steve Jordi and Dick Cowell.]
See all that yellow? Those are planes trying not to collide.
Are you good with colors, more specifically, color spectrums? Arrange the colors according to hue by dragging and dropping them. [Thanks to Cousin Judy]
Row of colors before rearrangement
Row of colors after rearrangement
I like optical illusions. From Inside Science, here are the three best visual illusions in the world. The "The Secret of the Curve Ball" still has me scratching my head. [Thanks to Paul Corning.]
The three optical illusion winners.
The one thing you never want to do is raise a parrot with a baby in the house. You don't believe me, eh?
Trying to get into a tight parking spot? Just drive sideways... [top]
Someone's at the Door
It's me, and no, this will be short, so you don't need to RunPee. Now as much as I hate bugging you (not really, I live for it), could you pass this newsletter along to your cohorts, former business partners, and maybe even your significant other? It's a quick, easy, and rewarding task. Thanks. Then suggest they sign up to get their own copy by going to: http://www.techbite.com. By the way, if you're enjoying this newsletter and getting something out of it, become a TechBite member by sending us some financial support using PayPal. I promise, good things will come your way... [top]
Steve Bass is the publisher and self-appointed Chief Content Officer at TechBite; he continues to experience the cool feeling of having his own newsletter. Send him your feedback at TechBite. To sign up for TechBite's free Steve Bass Technology newsletter, head for our signup page.
Steve's also the author of "PC Annoyances, 2nd Edition: How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Personal Computer," available on Amazon. You haven't purchased your copy today yet, have you? Don't wait, supplies are limited...
Newsletter Subscription Resources
Sign up for TechBite's free Steve Bass Technology newsletter by heading to our, well, signup page. Previous newsletters are available online.
Want a TechBite RSS feed? Here's the link to stick into your RSS reader.
To change your e-mail delivery address, or to unsubscribe, click the link at the very bottom of this newsletter.
Worried that your ISP may someday arbitrarily black list this newsletter? Us, too... So take a proactive approach: Find your ISP in our handy How To Whitelist TechBite in your Spam Filter ditty, and white list yourself.
TechBite is a joint effort of Steve Bass (80-degree Pasadena) and
Mike Kronenberg (in still-cold Denver).
Copyright 2009 by TechBite, LLC.
