The Web Changes

It’s been a nutty week as we decided last weekend to move the TechtalkRadio site from Web.Com to Go Daddy. Part of the decision to move the site came from a price increase at the site we had been with since it was Interland back in 1997. I understand that companies have to pay for new technology but when you get nothing new, it’s time to start looking. One would think that with Offshore Customer service, they could afford to increase the storage, add features..no, we seem to have gained little with the company we had always given high marks to.

Go Daddy is an interesting company as over the last 5 years they have become a giant in Domain Registration. The offered a smaller price compared to Network Solutions and made the process easy and soft on the wallet. We had heard though that GoDaddy was not a company for hosting and your best bet was Domain Registration with Go Daddy and hosting with another company. After trying some hosting of other accounts at 1 and 1, which was a totally awful experience, we decided to give GoDaddy a try.

This was one of the best moves we’ve made! Go Daddy service agents are the easiest to understand and they do their best to help and truly support the product. We also are saving a great deal of money with our hosting which allows us to purchase extras that we didn’t have before. We have gone from a 5GB site to 200GB, not that we have gotten close to the 5GB, upward and forward – this is good to have.

The problems though, came this week, when we finally decided to move the site. After hosting the TechtalkRadio test pages for the last couple of weeks, we decided the speed was just as good as web and the load was handled no problem. Originally we were going to stay with Network Solutions however after some customer service that we couldn’t understand due to the langauge barrier and that had us questioning the answer more then our original question we decided to move the entire package.

Five days later, our site is back up!! The problem came when we had started the process and then realized our Mail Server settings we’re not correct! We went in and adjusted them through the Network Solutions panel, throwing out our DNS information in the middle of the change, when this happens – you can’t do anything till the site is transferred which is 5 days! Luckily it’s done, and the problems are behind us. I just wish we would have looked at GoDaddy sooner and that we would have known about the timing issues when moving the site. Probably our error on a couple of counts.

buying monitors

Wayne called about buying monitors: he was shopping for one…

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Some info from Smart Computing:

A perfectly flat screen is easier on the eyes…

According to IBM, the average life span of an LCD (liquid-crystal display) was six years versus three for a CRT (cathode-ray tube)…

A monitor’s advertised size is the size of the CRT measured in inches along the diagonal area. The viewable glass is generally an inch or so smaller due to the plastic casing surrounding the tube…look for the measurement of the viewable area.

Dot pitch: the space between pixels. The more closely spaced pixels are, the clearer the image.
The lower this number (generally between .24 and .28mm), the smoother the image will be.

Resolution is the measure of the number of pixels that can be displayed on a screen. This measurement is noted as the number of horizontal pixels by the number of vertical pixels (for example, 800 x 600, 1,024 x 768, and so on). Higher screen resolution accomplishes two things: since more pixels mean smoother edges, it increases the sharpness of text and images. Higher resolution lets you fit more information on the screen at once…

VGA (Video Graphics Array) resolution (640 x 480)
SVGA (Super Video Graphics Array) resolution (800 x 600)
XGA (Extended Graphics Array) resolution (1,024 x 768)
SXGA (Super Extended Graphics Array) resolution (1,280 x 1,024)

The larger your monitor, the higher the resolution you can comfortably use.
Graphics professionals and desktop publishers need monitors that support higher resolutions, such as 1,600 x 1,200. These high-end users should stick to 19-inch or larger monitors.

If the refresh rate is noninterlaced, it means the monitor updates every line of pixels during each cycle.
If the refresh rate is interlaced, it means the monitor updates every other line of pixels during each cycle.
The average user probably won’t be able to tell much of a difference between interlaced and noninterlaced monitors.
Monitors that offer noninterlaced refresh rates can produce higher-quality images and typically cost more.

Analog LCDs require incoming video data to go through a digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion, which may lead to on-screen flitters, fuzzy images, and other viewing problems. These viewing problems are not an issue with digital LCDs.

Broken Pixels…manufacturers vary in their definition of what constitutes a defective LCD display…find out what your seller’s or manufacturer’s policy is on this point before buying…

Talk to the salespeople and ask what extras come with each monitor.
Three year parts-and-labor warranties are considered to be the standard…a monitor should come with at least a one-year parts-and-labor warranty.
The manufacturer should provide a toll-free number you can call if you experience any technical problems or installation issues.
Find out if you’ll have to pay for the delivery of a large monitor and be sure to ask about the shipping price.

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Some other weblinks to look at:

http://tech.msn.com/products/article.aspx?cp-documentid=2746106

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125652-page,1/article.html

Windows Media Center and playlists

“marbleslinger” had asked about using a playlist with Windows Media Center for music videos and music…

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I found some information at “Windows Help and How-to”:
To add music to the queue
To view and edit the queue
To save the queue as a playlist

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Smart Computing had some info…

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PowerToys…are not supported by Microsoft…but it does have The Media Center Playlist Editor…

Notepad++ text editor

If you have ever opened multiple files in Notepad, and wished its interface were more like a word processor, try this…

It’s described as a generic source code editor.

I LOVE that:
I can open multiple documents and have tabs to switch between files…
…and there’s an “explorer” available to make it easy to get to files, and then open them.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/
http://www.download.com/Notepad-/3000-2352_4-10637422.html

The version I use, Notepad++ Portable (there’s nothing to install), is available at http://portableapps.com