Category Archives: Product Reviews

GEEK! Product Reviews

Review: D-Link DSL-2640B ADSL2+ Wireless Router – A brilliant budget buy!

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I hate the supplied Tiscali router. It sucks. Port forwarding is stupid, there’s no DynDNS support, and overall it’s just a cheap piece of crud.

So, I decided to go and buy a new one. I needed to ideally stick to a budget of around £50, so I had a search around.

It wasn’t easy to find a router for under £50. I found out that routers are much more expensive than you think. I was rather surprised to be honest. If I’d have upped my budget  to £60 I would have probably found the task much easier – and I was thinking of doing so, until I found this.

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Two things I really want sorted in Chrome

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I love Chrome, it’s a fantastic browser that’s super-quick and very reliable. However, there are two things I really want Google to fix.

1. RSS: Why doesn’t Google Chrome support RSS? It seems a little dim, but can prove really annoying after a little while. Firefox shows an icon when an RSS feed is available on a website (see below) and even has a built in feed subscriber (see below), but Chrome has neither. Google need to sort this in my opinion. 

windowclippings_1c6f2f5f2b6442b6afb74ed86e013abd1Above: Firefox

ChromeAbove: Chrome

2. Downloads: I have a real issue with Chrome when you download something. When I download a file, I often ask it to download and then get into the habit of closing the web browser and forgetting something was downloading. In Firefox, this is no problem as a ‘Downloads’ window appears when you download a file and if you close the browser window by mistake, the file continues to download. However, in Chrome downloads run more internally and it doesn’t have a separate window for downloads. So if you close the browser, Chrome cancels the download! No problem if the file is 1MB or something as small as that, but if you’re in the middle of a 100MB file this is a pain. Even Internet Explorer (dare I say it) handles downloads better than Chrome. 

Those are my two rants with Chrome. Google, fix the RSS and the downloads. The problems aren’t big enough to put me off (Chrome is still my default browser) but they do get really annoying after a while. If Google would fix this in a later version, it would definately be to my benefit, and to many others.

Safari 4.0 Beta – The good, the bad and the ugly.

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It looks like Apple have been working on their next release of the well known Apple web browser which was released for Windows a couple of years back. Safari 4.0 Beta is their latest release, and I took the courage and downloaded the beta.

The first thing you notice when you download it is that it’s quite a big file – for a web browser anyway. Baring in mind that Google Chrome’s installer is about 3 or 4 MB (including the installer downloads), Safari’s installer size of 25.5 MB is a little bit of a shock. Once it has downloaded and you run the install program, you are presented with the usual terms and optional extra installs (which I proudly unticked – I personally think the Bonjour crap is a waste of time), after which it will spend a couple of minutes installing the program.

Once it’s installed you will find the program immediately fires up, and you are presented with a “Welcome to Safari” video, followed by a very snazzy looking frequently used tabs screen.

 

Safari

Safari

As for generally browsing the web, the experience is relatively good. There are a few bugs, but these can be reported with ease via the bug button at the top right. 

The new interface has definitely made an improvement to the general feel of Safari since version 3. I still prefer Chrome – despite what Apple says, Safari is not the fastest web browser. It has to be Chrome – by miles. Don’t you agree?

I recommend you go and try it. I don’t think I’ll keep Safari as it’s just unbeatable to Chrome, but maybe in the future when the final release comes around, maybe I’ll do a full review. Head over to apple.com/safari to try the new beta.

Vista SP2 and Server 2008 Release Candidate goes live!

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Microsoft yesterday lauched the Service Pack 2 Release Candidate for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista.

32 bit users click here for download, and 64 bit users click here. If you would like an ISO image, click here. 

I’ve downloaded it and tested it, and so far I cannot see many huge differences, both visually and internally. I haven’t found any bugs, other than the fact that I had to reinstall Windows Live Messenger before it would work properly. 

Also, bare in mind that you will have to uninstall the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta if you have it already installed, which is very time consuming. It’s unlikely the whole process is going to take you less than 2 hours, even on a fast computer.

So, if you want my verdict, don’t bother with it right now. There’s not much new to see, and personally I think it would be easier and less frustrating to just wait for the final release which is due in a couple of weeks time. 

By all means download it if you’re desperate to, but if you have Vista SP1 it is relatively pointless.

Windows Live Onecare – fantastic if it was free.

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I’ve been using Windows Live Onecare for a short while now. A friend recommended it to me, so I took the 90 day trial and that has just recently expired.

So what did I think? Well, I love it. It does my backups, antivirus, firewall, and all my other security for me all in one piece of it. It runs smoothly and quietly on my computer, doesn’t use much resources, and in general is very accurate on what is good and what is bad.

There’s one catch – it’s not free. It will cost you around £30-40 for a one-year license which will cover up to 3 computers in your home. That includes all updates and once you’ve paid up you can leave it alone. Now most people would say, “well thirty quid aint bad for a piece of kit that’ll cover my computers for a year” and I’d agree, but there is software out there that will do the same for free.

However, Microsoft (who owns and runs Onecare) did announce late last year that they were going to discontinue Onecare and replace it with a newer, better, free piece of kit that will do the same job. This I’m looking forward to. I’d love to use Onecare, but I just don’t feel the money is worth it when there’s software out there will do the same job for free. So if Microsoft can launch a good free piece of kit, I will definately be happy to use it.

But for now, I’m going to revert to good old Comodo Internet Security. I love Comodo software. It’s free, easy to use, and a “set and forget” firewall. It does my firewall, antivirus and anything else security related – like Onecare, but free. Updates are free, it doesn’t spam me with ads and adware, and I can just leave it to do its job. Perfect.