I've been using Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 for a while now, and I quite like it. Contrary to Google's whining, I think the ability to add new search providers is a nice, simple feature.
In fact, here's link that will give you a handy MSDN search provider.
(Yes, I know postings have been sparse. Deal with it.)
I recently acquired a new Compaq nx6125 laptop for work. It’s a nice system; my only complaint is that the battery life could be longer, but then again, I’ve never found a laptop that had a battery that lasted as long as I really want (read: about 200 hours), so that’s not a huge problem. Interestingly, the system comes with a built-in fingerprint scanner. This wasn’t a selling point for me; for a variety of reasons I’m not a big fan of biometric authentication (and this includes anything from retina scans to fingerprints to lip identification).
Regardless, the computer has a fingerprint scanner, so I figured it would be at least worth my time to try it out. After about a week of using it, I still don’t like it. Not that I really expected it to work this way, but it would have been a big plus in my mind if the thing made a show of using a moving laser light to scan my finger and then said something like “Scan complete, commence web surfing” in Majel Barrett’s voice or whatever.
My biggest complaint is that the fingerprint scanner is, well… finicky. I could understand having to quickly swipe my finger a couple of times, but this scanner requires me to push my finger along the sensor from bottom to top, which is the opposite of the direction I’d expect. On top of that, after some fair amount of experimentation, I have come to the conclusion that the fingerprint reader is most responsive when using a finger-swipe motion that is more of a… “caress”… than it is a “swipe”. Maybe this doesn’t sound so bad, but believe me—if you had to stroke a small square sensor on your computer before it logged you on, you’d feel a little uncomfortable about it too. It’s bad enough that I’m one of those insane people who yells at their computer when I’m angry, but trying to arouse a six-pound hunk of plastic and wires before I can use it? That’s just wrong.
Continue reading "Commence lip identification scan (no tongue, please)" »
