Free Headsets?

One of my clients sent me a link to www.freeheadset.org. Apparently, you can get a "free" wired earpiece for your cell phone, and you only have to pay for shipping and handling, around $5. It looks legit, but I think that it doesn't look that cool, and that's what really matters.

Recycle for United Cerebral Palsy

United Cerebral Palsy has partnered with BCS Recycling Specialists, enabling UCP to work with BCS to recycle laptops at a rate of $10 each and cell phones, Lexmark and HP Inkjets, and other PDAs at a rate of $2.50 each.

BCS provides collection boxes complete with the UCP logo and tagline and a prepaid FedEx Freight slip. So when the box is full, it's easy to send it in. BCS inventories the items and issues a payment to UCP National. 25% is kept by the national organization, with the remaining 75% being sent back to UCP of Georgia.

If you personally go through lots of inkjet cartridges, or you have a small business frequented by many people (dry cleaner, coffee shop, local lunch spot) and would like to support UCP of Georgia, let us know and we'll get recycle boxes coded for UCP of Georgia to you. (Laptop recycling is handled separately, so let us know specifically if you are interested in that.)

Happens to the best of us

I was screwing around with my computer today and messed it up. I had to reinstall XP Home from my recovery partition. I did the choice that said "Don't wipe my hard drive clean, but instead reinstall XP". It said that I would have to reinstall my applications to get everything working. I kept a log, just so that you can see what's involved when you do something really stupid.

1) installed firefox
2) installed firefox flash add-in
3) installed Office 2003 Student / Teacher and registered
4) installed iTunes and Quicktime
5) removed Norton Internet Security 2006
6) removed Easy Internet Signup
7) removed HP Web Helper
8) removed Netscape
9) installed AVG
10) installed FLV player
11) installed Canon MP830 drivers
12) installed Picasa
13) installed Outlook
14) removed weatherbug installer
15) removed My HP Games
16) removed quicken 2006
17) removed Rhapsody
18) removed Yahoo Toolbar for IE
19) removed realplayer
20) removed MSN, Outlook Express & Windows Messenger
21) repaired Microsoft Money 2006 OEM
22) repaired SyncBack
23) installed blackberry software

Dump Vista?

Ok, here's the problem. You buy a computer with Microsoft Vista and you hate it. Let's face it. It's buggy and slow. It will improve over time, but remember, before XP was solid with Service Pack 2, it was out for a year and a 1/2 or so. You can not downgrade to Windows XP. You need to purchase a license for XP ($200), backup your important documents, install XP on your computer, wiping out all of its contents, and then installing all of the XP specific drivers that aren't automatically identified. Reinstall your applications comes next and then finally, copy your data. At this point, go buy an XP computer (you have until June 2008 to do so), and have 2 computers. Or wait for Vista to stabilize.