Tag Archives: Internet

Social with Pieter Cloete

Posted on by
Reply

I headed up to Gauteng for another meeting of the Credit Technology Association.

After landing at OR Tambo, I headed to where I stay when I’m in Midrand and was surprised to find Pieter Cloete from inikak.co.za at the house.

We had a great discussion about social media and the web in general. It is awesome to be able to talk someone who is as excited about technology and social media as I am.

Pieter is an iPhone guy and puts his one to good use in keeping his various social media profiles up to date and keeping track of all things digital.

If you are looking for a good laugh and some South African humour, check out inikak.co.za.

Dell Studio 1558

Posted on by
Reply

I have had my new Dell Studio 1558, for just close to two weeks now and it is great.

The new Studio 1558 features, 500Gb 7200RPM HDD, Core i5 CPU, 4GB 1333 Mhz DDR2 and an ATi Radeon HD 4570.

So far battery life is about three hours and the embedded 3G connection seems a lot more stable than that of the 1555.

Right now I have got my eye on the new Dell U2311H as an add on to my workspace.

I have always liked the idea of a notebook with a big external display to be used as my digital canvas and a Dell monitor seems to be the perfect fit…

Office 2010

Posted on by
Reply

First Windows 7 and now Office 2010!

Microsoft has really come to the party with a higher performance and truly worthwhile business productivity suite.

For quite some time now, I have not been using MS office at all and have been an advocate for Open Office and all things open source, but I have recently grown closer to my proprietary roots and have developed much appreciation for the work and effort that goes into bringing out products like Office 2010.

The new version of the well know business productivity suite, is simply impressive. Office 2010, loads faster, can handle more diverse file types and offers a host of functions and embedded applications, for tasks that one would previously need to perform in external programs.

I have still not managed to pull myself away from using Gmail as my mail management system and I can’t see myself moving back to Outlook anytime soon, unless Gmail and Exchange can communicate with each other directly. Gmail simply offers me the flexibility and scalability I need to manage multiple profiles and access my info instantly from multiple locations on the go.

For business use and from a corporate perspective, I think the new MS Outlook is definitely becoming a player and integrated with MS Exchange 2010, it makes for efficient management of internal work flow and cost effective email.

I am looking forward to playing around with the latest versions of Project and Visio as planning and monitoring seems to take up most of my time these days.

All in all, the new Office 2010, is most definitely worth the spend.

Google Buzz

Posted on by
Reply

I’m one month older and Google launches Buzz. I think this is what many of us have been waiting for. Buzz is integrated directly into Gmail and can import a numerous amount of other life streams.

Buzz is new and will probably take a while to stabilise but already it feels as if it will be adopted very quickly and I presume that it will draw more people to the Gmail platform.

I am glad to see the integration with Google Profiles, this is going to make Profiles more relevant and content rich.

If you’re not on Gmail yet the now is the time to open an account. I recommend Gmail to all of my clients as a system to keep track of all of your various mail identities and manage your digital life. Once you’ve got a Gmail account check out all of the other services offered by Google, most of them are also available directly on your mobile phone which is great.

Windows 7

Posted on by
Reply

Got my Windows 7 upgrade DVD from the states a few days ago. Why it had to come from the states I’ll never understand. The DVD was free but the transport was flipping ridiculous, don’t Microsoft know that they have an office in South Africa and it would be cheaper for all concerned to ship some DVDs in one crate to SA and have them distributed locally. They could even have sent the serial code via email and allowed us to download the media kit, while we waited for the package to arrive from overseas.

Well, I did a fresh install and it was super fast. I was a bit frustrated with the fact that Dell didn’t send me a copy of the latest drivers. Windows didn’t natively support my integrated 3G, so I could not get online as fast as I would have liked to, thank goodness, Windows 7 had native support for Bluetooth and I could hook up my Sony Ericsson in a matter of minutes and downloaded the required drivers from Dell’s support site.

I have found Windows 7 to be an absolute pleasure to work with and had all of my programs installed and running in less than a day. I find the performance to be substantially better than that of Vista and it requires far less resources. Will make sure that I have got all the required drivers before I do a fresh install again.

If you have got the option to upgrade or you’re buying a new PC, if you’re not getting a Mac or going with Linux or Solaris, get yourself Windows 7 and be sure you’ll be happier than you were with XP or Vista.