Mind Circus

I’m curious about this. How does a company come to settle on a specific brand or specification of laptop - or any PC for that matter?

Lately, I’ve gone for Dells, as they make it nice and easy. I can call or email my account manager, give him a base unit reference from their website, ask for a number of changes (”I want a spare power adapter, an x res screen and a y size HD instead”) and they do it all for me, and, more often than not, get me a quote within an hour.

So far, I’ve found it hard to find that flexibility and convenience. Unless I’m missing something/someone…

So the question is…

Everyone: What brand machines does your current company use?

IT Pros: Which brand(s) do you buy for your company PCs, and more importantly, why?

It seems Microsoft is still employing that pesky 8 year old.

Yesterday, we released a beta version of the Mac driver for DisplayLink-enabled products. The guys working on this have done a fantastic job in a very, very short time and should be commended for their efforts. Sadly, due to the closed nature of OS X we’ve been unable to get the performance as we’d like it.

As the Beta page says:

DisplayLink is committed to making a Mac release that is just as good – if not better – than our Windows Vista release, including full support for OpenGL 3D acceleration. Unfortunately the Mac OS X operating system is a closed system, and unlike Windows XP and Windows Vista, it is difficult to make significant improvements without the direct support of Apple. If you would like to see improved support for DisplayLink USB devices from Apple, please let them know through the Apple Feedback form for Mac OS X.

Hopefully Apple will be able to help us out with some of the issues we’ve been having

So I upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 the other night. Nothing’s really changed on the front end, but the new backend is great - sure it looks nice, but more importantly, it’s very intuitive and far easier to use. And the icing on the cake was that most of the plugins I use already support 2.5, which is nice.

I think I’m in lurve

After cutting out a good 99% of dairy from my diet, I managed to make myself lactose intolerant.

These delicious cookies are not just free from dairy, they’re free from all animal ingredients

You’ll need…

• 225 grams of dairy-free margarine at room temperature (1 cup)
  • Pure, Suma and Vitalite are all Dairy-free margarines.
• 280 grams sugar (1.25 cups)
  • Fair-Trade if you can
• 1 tablespoon molasses
  • Molasses is sometimes hard to find in supermarkets. Try somewhere like Holland and Barrett or your local health food store.
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 280 grams all-purpose flour (2.5 cups)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• A pinch of teaspoon salt (I don’t use any at all)
• 100 grams of Dark chocolate chips (1.5 cups)
  • SuperCook Plain chocolate chips are good - and Dairy free.

I have tried to quote products available in the UK, but you can find most of these ingredients in your local supermarket or health food store.

Let’s go…

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius (350 F)
2. Cream together margarine and sugar until fluffy.
3. Add molasses and vanilla
4. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt – Mix well.
5. Fold in the chocolate chips
6. Put on an ungreased baking tray, in teaspoon fulls, 5cm apart. (2 inches)
7. Bake for 8-10 mins – until slightly browned. Don’t leave them longer - they might not look ready after 10 minutes, but they are, trust me!
8. Leave to stand for a minute and slide them off onto a cooling rack before running your next batch.
9. Have a sneaky one while you’re waiting for the rest to cook, then share and enjoy!