Friday, March 23, 2007
A really BIG lens
Sigma has recently introduced a new tele zoom. It's a 200-500/2.8 !! This one is really huge and very heavy. Wonder who the customers for such a lens are? From what I've heard, the weight of this lens is 15kg/30 pound. I think it's too heavy for sports photography. It would be great for wildlife photography, but who is going to drag this monster into the woods? You will also need a rather sturdy tripod. This will probably be at least as heavy as the lens. Well, at least Sigma has got a lot of press coverage. You can read more about it at: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0703/07030805sigma200500mm.asp
Friday, March 16, 2007
Backup? What backup?
I'm really surprised how many don't backup of their data frequently. Not even their photos. Don't they realize there are two kinds of disks: Those who have crashed and those who will crash. And making backups have really become easy. Those external disks you just plug into the USB port on your computer are a inexpensive and easy way to backup.
I use two of these USB disks for backing up my photos. One disk is always connected to my computer. I have software that automatically synchronises with the photos on the hard disk. The other USB disk is stored in a safe place (a bank deposit box). Once a month I swap these disks. So worst case, I may loose one month of photos if the house burns down.
Many uses CDs or DVDs for backup of photos. If you do, make sure to use high quality CDs. Some of the cheaper CDs will deteriorate over time and in a few years they are unreadable. I have experienced this myself with CDs that were just 4 years old. A good idea is to backup all photos to at least two CDs.
I use two of these USB disks for backing up my photos. One disk is always connected to my computer. I have software that automatically synchronises with the photos on the hard disk. The other USB disk is stored in a safe place (a bank deposit box). Once a month I swap these disks. So worst case, I may loose one month of photos if the house burns down.
Many uses CDs or DVDs for backup of photos. If you do, make sure to use high quality CDs. Some of the cheaper CDs will deteriorate over time and in a few years they are unreadable. I have experienced this myself with CDs that were just 4 years old. A good idea is to backup all photos to at least two CDs.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Fake Anti-SpyWare
The Internet can be a dangerous place, at least for your money. There are lots of crooks that want a piece of your hard earned cash. Just heard about a scam the other day that I thought you should know about.
I'm sure most of you know that your computer can come infected with spyware when you surf on the Net. Because of this, most of us have anti-spyware software installed that removes any spyware from your computer. But, some of this software does not always do what it says. It seems to scan your hard disk as all anti-spyware software does. This is free. The software will always report that you have spyware on your computer. To activate the spyware removal, you have to register (pay for) the software. The software then 'removes' the spyware and everything seems well. The only thing that really happens is that it stops displaying the warning. This program really doesn't anything other than displaying a fake spyware warning and stops showing this when you've paid.
There are a huge amount of such programs out there. You can find a list and more information at http://spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm
I'm sure most of you know that your computer can come infected with spyware when you surf on the Net. Because of this, most of us have anti-spyware software installed that removes any spyware from your computer. But, some of this software does not always do what it says. It seems to scan your hard disk as all anti-spyware software does. This is free. The software will always report that you have spyware on your computer. To activate the spyware removal, you have to register (pay for) the software. The software then 'removes' the spyware and everything seems well. The only thing that really happens is that it stops displaying the warning. This program really doesn't anything other than displaying a fake spyware warning and stops showing this when you've paid.
There are a huge amount of such programs out there. You can find a list and more information at http://spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm
Friday, March 02, 2007
Windows Vista and WinHelp
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Windows Vista. I didn't plan to write any more about Vista, but as I've started to use Vista, I noticed that help didn't work in some of the applications I installed. I started searching for information and actually discovered that Microsoft has removed the support for WinHelp. Very stupid. Seems Microsoft has lost touch with reality.
WinHelp is a small program other programs use to display help information (activated when you press F1). Yes, WinHelp was old and outdated. It was actually introduced back in 1990 with Windows 3.0 and there are now more advanced ways of making help files. BUT, there are many old but useful pieces of software that will not work on Windows Vista because WinHlp32.exe have been removed. A full Vista installation is more than 10 GB. WinHelp is 277 KB. That's something like 0.003 per cent.
Microsoft says software developers should rewrite their help files and use HtmlHelp instead because it's much better. Well, yes it's better, but what about people who have very useful software they frequently use, but the software vendor have gone out of business? May be this is a way to try to force people to buy new software? Doesn't Microsoft realize that some software are still as useful as when it was written ten years ago?
There may be a solution in the future. Microsoft says they consider to make WinHelp available to Vista users as a download. That's good but it had been even better if it was installed as standard. May be Microsoft has started to realize they have done something that is not too clever...
WinHelp is a small program other programs use to display help information (activated when you press F1). Yes, WinHelp was old and outdated. It was actually introduced back in 1990 with Windows 3.0 and there are now more advanced ways of making help files. BUT, there are many old but useful pieces of software that will not work on Windows Vista because WinHlp32.exe have been removed. A full Vista installation is more than 10 GB. WinHelp is 277 KB. That's something like 0.003 per cent.
Microsoft says software developers should rewrite their help files and use HtmlHelp instead because it's much better. Well, yes it's better, but what about people who have very useful software they frequently use, but the software vendor have gone out of business? May be this is a way to try to force people to buy new software? Doesn't Microsoft realize that some software are still as useful as when it was written ten years ago?
There may be a solution in the future. Microsoft says they consider to make WinHelp available to Vista users as a download. That's good but it had been even better if it was installed as standard. May be Microsoft has started to realize they have done something that is not too clever...
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