Unto the pure, all things are pure

[Superceded by Super OLED .] Bought my second Nokia E-71 today, for US$140 on a US$30 plan contracted for two years. I could have traded-in my one-year old one for US$140 but I didn't as the new phone is for my daughter. This phone is still the best considering all factors. The GPS receiver alone is worth the price. What I like about the phone (all equally important to me except infrared): a. Tethering without issues b. Slimmer than an iPhone c. Exchange client d. Full QWERTY keypad, albeit a bit small e. Reasonably good camera for all the emergency situations f. Two cameras g. Video recording h. HSDPA, Wifi, Bluetooth with A2DP i. Expandable storage through MicroSD j. GPS k. VOIP according to standards l. FM radio m. Browser that can see most web sites n. Plays MP3 and WMA o. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF viewers p. Live Messenger client q. It's hardy. Have dropped it from height quite a few times and none the worse. r. It can stand upright on its bot...

I am wondering why people still need a mouse, especially on a notebook. A quite common scenario I see is someone brings a laptop into the meeting, and then spends the next five minutes plugging in the charger and the mouse and then booting up. With all those cables, the laptop is no more a mobile computer!! I have not used a mouse for the last thirteen years , that is, since I got my first notebook, a Compaq Armada 4100. It has a touch-pad. Between 2000 and 2004 I was using the Compaq M700 and that has the stick. The stick was tough on the finger due to the force required. Even the stick is better than the mouse. For the very simple reason that it takes less than one-tenth the time for your hand to leave the keyboard to reach for it. So I can do things ten times faster than a mouse user. The touch-pad is still the best pointing device as it requires the least effort for a lazy person like me. A well-tuned touch-pad would allow me to move the cursor across a 1600-pixel wid...

The only time I have used an anti-virus software for myself was in 1987 (yes, more than 20 years ago) when I checked out a version from an Israeli company. I disassembled it, examined the machine instructions, and promptly uninstalled it as I could not relish the idea that every int 21 call must go through a third party. Since then I have not installed AV software on any of my computers. If you have problems updating the MSE anti-virus files due to a proxy server, you may want to skip the long story and jump to the last paragraph below. My daughter started using Windows 95 at age 5 and went through the peak of virus mania circa post-2000. My wife uses the computer daily to check mail and browse the Internet but she belongs to the group of the most elementary and novice type of user you can find. So within my family you can find the full range of computer users. All our computers are running Microsoft Windows and none of them has AV software installed. It's 10 years later and ...