ThoughtStook.com

Time Warner Wants to Gouge for Internet Access

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Internet, Technology

Does Time Warner want to offer more service to a broader base of customers, or are they looking for new ways to generate revenue through backdoor methods? It is the same goal.

Time Warner Cable company spokesman Alex Dudley announced Wednesday that the broadband service provider will be testing new pricing tiers for their new broadband cable users later this year. The idea is designed to tax the heaviest users of the companies bandwidth, about 5% of users who use 50% of the network capacity according to Dudley.

There can only be two reasons for this change in pricing structures, and in the end it boils down to only one. Either Time Warner is trying to even the playing field by discouraging internet users from making heavy downloads, so they can accommodate more subscribers on their current network space, or they have found a convenient argument to simply charge more money for users that are actually using their internet service to the full capacity. Both options accomplish the same goal, which is to make more money for Time Warner Cable. And you cannot blame them for doing what the business is designed to do, make money.

Tags: Internet, Technology

CompUSA is Closing it’s doors.

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Deals, Technology

After 23 years in business CompUSA is closing it’s doors.  According to the WSJ, CompUSA will close or sell all of it’s remaining 103 stores in 68  markets, after the holidays. The company has been up for sale for over a year.  There was no indication if they were going to go strictly to online sales, but it has not been mentioned and is highly unlikely with the tough competition from NewEgg and TigerDirect already claiming a large share of the online tech market.  Be on the look out for deals as the company will be liquidating it’s entire inventory.

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Important!!!! This is not a joke.

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Culture, E-mail, Technology

Have you received an e-mail with the above message in the subject line? I did recently and I opened it to find a warning about a phone scam that lures callers into calling certain phone numbers that look like regular U.S. area codes, but in fact they are redirect area codes to the British Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic and Jamaica. The result is that the individual is charged $2400 a minute with a final bill in the 10’s of thousands of dollars. The e-mail appears to be signed by an AT&T Field Service Manager along with a contact phone number, and is accompanied with a link to AT&T’s website describing the scam. So I decided to check out the e-mail’s claim.

I followed the link in the e-mail http://www.consumer.att.com/consumertips/areacode.html which redirected me to http://www.att.com/gen/landing-pages?pid=6456&DCMP=att_safety . The link is a legitimate AT&T webpage. I then proceeded to follow another link describing the scam. AT&T describes the scam this way,

Tags: , E-mail, Scams

Gallery2 Uploading for Vista

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Blogging, Gallery, Photos, Software, Technology, Vista, Websites

One of the nice features of Gallery2 is the ability to upload pictures directly to your online gallery from your hard drive by clicking the option publish this in the Explorer sidebar. However, in Vista you loose the publishing option in Explorer. But never fear! Where there is good software, there is a good programmer that finds a way to accomplish the task.

After scouring the gallery forums I found my answer. In the Gallery plugin experimental repository there is a upgrade to the WindowsXP Publish (v1.07) module called Publish XP (v1.07.1). Who knows why they didn’t just call it Windows Publish? After upgrading to the latest version of the module:

1. Go to Add Items => WindowsXP => and download the registry file specifically labeled for Vista.
2. After the registry file is successfully added, go into Windows Photo
   Gallery and select the pictures that you want to upload to gallery.

Tags: Blogging, Gallery, Photos, Plugins, Software, Technology, Vista, Websites

The Woes of Vista - Preformed by Apple

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Comedy, Software, Technology, Video, Vista

Now, I’m not an Apple fan. I would prefer to use WindowsXP or even a Unix based system. But I have had to deal with Windows Vista on my sisters computer and so far I’m not a big fan, so here’s a little fun at Vistas expense.

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Because of all the problems with Vista in the last 11 months since it’s release some people are asking to switch back to XP. I would be one of them until all the bugs are worked out of Vista in 3 years

Tags: Comedy, Software, Technology, Video, Vista

A Successful Black Friday

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Deals, Technology

Well at least for me. My goal was to find a desktop to replace my 4 year old system. After careful review of the ads I decided on the HP Pavilion m8226x at Circuit City. I believe it will give another 4 or 5 years. Here is what it is loaded with.

Dual core/64-bit processing: The 3GHz Athlon 64 X2 6000+ This processor is also capable of processing 64 bits of information at once, twice as much as standard 32-bit processors.

• This desktop features 3GB of DDR2 system memory—enough for the most demanding users, vista, gamers and multimedia professionals.

• HyperTransport technology works like a fully-integrated frontside bus that increases bandwidth, reduces bottlenecks and enables processors to work more efficiently.

• Processors search for the same data over and over. L2 caches keep this data neat, organized, and nearby so it can be retrieved more quickly. This 2 x 1MB L2 cache is large, providing a potentially strong boost in performance.

Tags: , Black, Black Friday, Friday, Sales, Technology

Best Deals from Black Friday

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Deals, Electronics, Technology

These are some of the best deals of the 2007 Black Friday weekend.  The items are divided by store.

Circuit City - If you don’t want to wait in line most of the deals are available online starting at 12:01am on 11/22

• Acer 22″ Widescreen LCD Monitor  — $169
• SanDisk 2GB SD Memory Card –$6.99
• Sandisk 4GB High Capacity SD Memory Card w/ Free Reader — $27.99
• Element 7″ Digital Picture Frame — $49.99
• VisionTek ATI Radeon HD2400 PRO 256MB 16x PCIe Graphics Card –$49.99
• Seagate 500GB FreeAgent External Hard Drive –$79.99
• Wii Remote & Nunchuk Gloves –$2.99
• Wii Sports Set — $9.99

Best Buy

• SanDisk 2GB SD Memory Card — $2.99
• Seagate 320GB 3.5″ Internal SATA Hard Drive — $59.99
• Western Digital 500GB 3.5″ External Hard Drive — $99.99

Tags: Black, Black Friday, Consumer, Friday, Sales, Technology, Websites

The Best Desktop Computer Deals - Black Friday 2007

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Electronics, Technology

As the American consumer prepares for Black Friday, it is often difficult to determine which deals are the best and which stores to actually visit. With the help of sites like bfads.net the consumer has a chance to find the best deal. I’m looking for a computer this Black Friday season and have been scouting the sales to determine which system that is truly the best deal.

Here are my sale recommendations for a desktop computer sorted by stores.

Best Buy -

$399 - Compaq Dual-Core with a HP 17″ monitor. This is a basic system with 1gb memory, a 250gb hard drive, and a CD and DVD burner. This is a bare bones system without a lot of frills. The only obvious downside to this machine is the 1gb of memory supplied to run Windows Vista. I would highly recommend double the memory to 2gb if you choose to purchase this machine for a 56% savings.

Tags: , Black Friday, Computers, Deals, Electronics, Hardware, Reviews, Sales, Technology

A New Camera and New Plugin

Posted by Jonathan | Filed under Blogging, Electronics, Flash, Plugins, Technology, Video, Websites

This weekend Nikki and I purchased a new hard disk Digital Camcorder, the Panasonic SDR-H18 Palmcorder . We have been eyeing hard disk camcorders for a couple of months and had it narrowed down to either a Sony, which was the choice of all but 2 salesmen that we talked to, or the Panasonic that we ended up purchasing. We liked both of them for different reasons. The Sony is considered the main brand, and it had night vision for low light situations. However, the brand name was going to cost a premium. We liked the Panasonic because of it’s clear LCD screen, excellent zoom features and it’s O.I.S. (Optical Image Stablization) system. The O.I.S. system is a free floating lens to help stabilizes the recording of a scene, where as the Sony Camcorder had digital image stabilization that resulted in a fuzzy picture when zoomed in on a subject.While we are still learning all the features, we have been pleased with the results thus far. Once I’ve learned more about it’s uses and given it some more testing in real life, I’ll write a more detailed review. Don’t miss our first video.

Tags: , Electronics, Flash Player, Plugin, Technology, Wordpress