Known Bugs

For those of you about to receive Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 9.0, there's a "known bug" with it. In short, it doesn't work with the beta of Windows XP Service Pack 2, because Auto-Protect fails to load. I called Symantec's support line (1-800-927-4017) and they confirmed that this is something they know about, but they currently have no workarounds for the problem, and they don't know if it's going to be something they fix, or something Microsoft fixes in the final version of the Service Pack. This means that we're not going to be distributing the new version to the incoming students at Orientation, as any new computers they purchase prior to starting the fall semester may include Service Pack 2, causing the software not to work. Version 8.1 continues to work fine on the Service Pack 2 beta, it just doesn't have some of the nice new features of 9.0, such as spyware scanning.

Darn

Well, I knew it was too good to be true, the PowerBook 15" had to go back today, someone else snapped it up before my department got the funding all figured out. So, I put in a request for a more expensive 12" PowerBook of the newest variety, we'll see how that goes. Honestly, I wanted the 12" to begin with, but now that I had the 15" widescreen for a few days, I got spoiled...

Master & Commander

We watched Master & Commander last night, which exceeded my expectations by quite a bit. I thought it was going to be one of those cheesy movies intended to draw a large audience that's completely predictable from the outset, but was surprised at how much originality there was to the movie. If you haven't seen it, it's now available for rental, and is certainly worth your money. The DTS soundtrack is great, when the scenes were down in the lower areas of the ship you can hear people walking or running on the decks above you, and it sounded so real that I thought there was someone upstairs in our house.

Can I keep it?

I'm testing out a 1.25 Ghz 15" PowerBook this weekend, in the hopes of being able to keep it. It's coming out of our on-campus Apple store, and has been used as a demo. Hopefully my dept. can come up with the money to make it mine permanently, I miss the iBook I used to have. I requested one of the new 12" PowerBooks, but our Director told me to check with the Apple Sales group first, as they'll usually give us a hefty discount on these slightly used models. This one has the SuperDrive, 80GB hard drive, and AirPort Extreme already built in. What more could you want? There are really some great apps for the Macintosh these days, and OS X is a lot more mature than it used to be. I think when my grandparents need a new computer, I'm steering them towards Macs from now on...

I'm back

Well, I'm back in Iowa, and back at work. I came back today for my first annual review since joining my new department. It was a good review, pretty accurate, both in where they complimented me, and where I was criticized. I was rated "Highly Satisfactory" overall, so I think that means they're keeping me. :)