Alex Leonard

Member since: May 23rd, 2007

Alex Leonard's Latest Comments

Blog Activity

Blog	# of Comments
Engadget	1 Comment
Download Squad	10 Comments

Recent Comments:

Auto wallpaper multiple monitors with...AutoWallpaper (Download Squad)

May 23rd 2008 5:41AM John's background Switcher. That's my favourite

Organize your music collection with TagScanner (Download Squad)

Apr 12th 2008 10:13AM This is really impressive

PDF-XChange: Another light weight Adobe Reader alternative (Download Squad)

Dec 29th 2007 10:00PM I've always liked sporks though. Incredibly useful ;)

Facebook News Feed Fatigue (Download Squad)

Nov 9th 2007 5:44AM Yeah, Facebook is weird. Sometimes I'm not sure I really need to hear everything my friends are doing.

I stayed off it for quite a while and recently logged back in to find 29 friend requests (from people I actually know or knew) and a host of messages.

Time will tell as to whether or not I stick around there.

XP or Vista for Small Business? (Download Squad)

Aug 31st 2007 5:44AM That last comment was meant to include links to my own Vista article and the study done on Vista's UI speed:

http://www.pixelapes.com/index.php/2007/08/27/should-vista-get-another-chance.html

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=windows&articleId=9011819&taxonomyId=125

Sorry about that.. I didn't realise that I couldn't use the anchor element in comments!

XP or Vista for Small Business? (Download Squad)

Aug 31st 2007 5:41AM I recently posed the question of whether I should move back to XP from the copy of Vista that came pre-installed on my laptop. After writing the article, I decided I'd drop by the Windows Vista discussion boards on the Microsoft website and ask the same question.

I was amazed by the response I got. After a host of people telling me that if I wanted to move then go, I decided to re-phrase the question to ask people what advantages they felt Vista gave them over XP.

About 2 people answered with the rest basically telling me that I should move.

The main reasoning behind a considered step back to XP was just the slugishness of my brand new system - an AMD Turion x2 with 2Gb RAM in the new HP 6715b. When I was buying this system I thought it would be well capable of working on Vista. I was disappointed.

I definitely get the sense that people should wait until service pack 1 or 2 before thinking of migrating. They should definitely wait until they get a faster machine as well.

Regarding business security etc. Without a doubt, Vista is a lot more secure. BitLocker must be an enticement for corporations wanting to protect data on lost laptops as well. However I think the hardware needs to be decent.

IT departments need to be aware of various methods to tweak Vista to speed up performance as well. While things like Aero are attractive enough, I don't think they really warrant usage on anything but a top of the line new system. Even then, there has been a study done showing how the new UI interface is a lot slower to use for basic tasks.

I think businesses need to ask some serious questions before considering moving, they need to look at their required applications and always ask the question "Will this help our productivity?"

Litepost: Streamlined web 2.0 webmail quietly open for registration (Download Squad)

Aug 19th 2007 6:59PM Hmm.. I've logged in and tested it out, and maybe I need to give it more of a chance but I'm not really seeing the attraction.

The navigation doesn't feel very intuitive to me, and though I know it's designed to be lightweight, and basic, but is there really a need to drop quick links to inbox and sent. I know "home" is the inbox I suppose, but having to click on Tags then Click on Sent to see your sent mail seems a little excessive.

Vayama : Travel internationally in frugal style (Download Squad)

Jul 28th 2007 4:44PM I don't know, I really liked the interface and speed of things. I'm not really up on flight prices though and what constitutes a good price.

I did check for a trip I am considering to India for a wedding in December and it beat most of the other travel sites I tried out.

Is this the new iMac keyboard? (Engadget)

Jul 27th 2007 12:27PM I've never liked small return keys. I hit it so often that it's nice to have a larger one so my fat fingers can find it without making a mess of things.

Is Google planning to add search to Google Reader? (Download Squad)

Jun 1st 2007 4:08AM That sounds great. I hope it's true as it's definitely been a missing feature in GReader.. And from the masters of search, you'd think they would have remembered to include it.