Every OS Is Special

Every operating system has it's pro's and con's, and some of us are tired about the old "OS X is better" or "Vista sucks" arguments.

Review: Plantronics Discovery 925

The need to have a Bluetooth headset becomes apparent in a lot of places today. When driving, holding a phone is obnoxious. When talking with friends, you don't necessarily want to hold a phone to your ear for hours on end.

To solve this dilemma, I went out and purchased the high-end Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth Headset.

It's a great little headset that set me back $120 USD, but has some standard features that make it a nice competitor to other headsets on the market.

The packaging alone for the headset was higher class, showing the headset suspended in a plastic frame. Unpackaging it was straightforward, and I was surprised to see so many accessories coming with it.

The Discovery 925 comes with three silicone-gel earpiece inserts, the unit itself, an AC charger, a USB charger, a docking/carrying case providing mobile charging capabilities, a mini-USB lanyard, and the instruction book.

I was afraid the device would be loose in my ear, but since it comes wit three earpiece inserts, it fits snugly and does not fall out.

The device charges via mini-USB, so if you have anything else that uses the standard, this will work perfectly with it. You can charge the device alone, the docking battery, or charge them both together. The advertised charging times are 3 hours for AC power and 9 hours for USB power.

When I received the unit, it was already in a charged condition and didn't require charging.

This headset supports QuickPair technology, trademarked. When the Bluetooth headset is turned on, it will enter pairing mode automatically for 10 minutes. If no phone is found to connect to, it will shut off, and will continue this method until connected. Actually connecting the headset was simple, as it uses the standard 0000 code for connection.

The buttons on the device are easy to press, although I had some problems finding the volume button at times. There's only two buttons, a main one and a volume button, with the main on the front face of the device, and the volume on one of the sides.

The device has good quality itself, but the quality you get depends on the phone that you pair with. My LG Chocolate VX8550 has somewhat poor quality when connected, but my laptop connected with high quality. Range is advertised at 33 feet without obstruction.

The earpiece felt very natural to use, and has good sound. Talking to people, they said I sounded very natural and not distorted. I did not test it in a noisy environment.

The earpiece sounds very good in regular conversation, but depending on the kind of voice the other party has, it can have too much bass or treble to understand really clearly what they're saying.

Overall, the headset comes with a lot for the money, looks good, and offers great features that make it a strong competitor against other headsets. I would recommend it to others!

Pidgin + Facebook = <3

So I have some friends who can't use AIM for whatever reason and love to use Facebook Chat. I've always been disappointed because I could never keep in touch with them, since I don't leave facebook open on my workstation all day.

A solution came to me with some bored Google searches today!

Apparently there's a Pidgin plugin that lets you add your Facebook friends to your Pidgin messenger application! This means that you can chat with your Facebook friends alongside your AIM/MSN/Yahoo/MySpace/Google/etc. friends!

Moving all communication to one application is the best!

If you want to read more, check out these links:


Pidgin, The Universal Chat Client

Facebook Chat Plugin for Pidgin

An intuitive graphical OS? Where?!

So it's great that so many operating systems exist out there, Fedora, CentOS, Mandrake, Debian, Ubuntu to name a few. But there are inherent problems more or less across the board with Linux as an OS solution at all.

First of all, I run Fedora and have loved it for a long time now. There's been some issues with updates that have broken my systems, but every OS has it's problems, right?

My biggest problem with everything related to Linux OS's is everyone attitude towards using Linux. Basically, if you aren't a tech-savvy person, and you can't operate the command line, you are excluded from using it in most people's eyes.

An operating system that does not allow for full operation graphically is not user friendly, and will not sustain itself in a public market.

Linux provides opportunities for people who have computers that are too old, or people that want to save money, or not contribute to the growth of Microsoft or Apple.

Linux deserves to become a nice alternative to Microsoft OS's, but people need to give it a chance to grow. Developers need to make releases that don't require the use of the command line. Tech people need to develop methods to give support to non-technical people. We also need to test our releases to make sure they're not broken before they're released.

An OS should provide itself as these:
1. Easy to Use
2. Automatically Updating
3. Dependable
4. Low Cost
5. Providing Enhanced Computing Abilities
6. Compatible
7. Have a support team

So far, I've seen Fedora in particular struggling with 1, 2, 3, and 6.

I can't speak for all of the distro's out there, but Linux as a whole needs to rally to provide itself as more intuitive and usable to the real world.

Sure we're a bunch of geeks, but why not take open source to the next level of openness -- the non-geeks?

Facebook Virus - Be Careful!

A virus called Koobface has hit Facebook recently, and is currently the most commonly occurring virus, at least within my experiences with SSC tech support.

The virus appears like a video on a target's Facebook page. When the user clicks the link, a window comes up with what looks like a flash movie player, except that it prompts to "update" your flash player. When clicked, it installs a host of malware programs, and also setting up an HTTP proxy configuration at 127.0.0.1:9090 to filter web traffic for use in spyware applications.

The virus is easy to remove with Malwarebytes and any typical virus scanner, however after initial installation, your proxy server could still be set as 127.0.0.1:9090, disabling internet functionality. Koobface is able to set proxy information on all common browsers.

For more information about Koobface, please see these links:

PCWorld :: Koobface Virus Spreads

CNET :: Koobface Virus Hits Facebook

Symantec Technical Overview :: Koobface


W32/Koobface.worm

51 (or so) Things I Found Around The House

Random Road Trip...

Driving from RI to MA. Decided to turn on the camera, and tada!