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Sunday, January 11, 2004 |
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The curse of presents pastWhat does nearly every holiday gift have in common with every other holiday gift? The inscription (usually in about 2-point gray text on a dark blue background) that says "Batteries not included." A comedian once had a bit about going to the store to buy batteries but having to return for more because they weren't included. Double-A and triple-A batteries are the most commonly used cells for most gadgets that don't come with their own proprietary batteries. My digital camera, for example, came with a special battery that's designed specifically for the camera. From experience, I know that I can shoot at least 250 photos in a single afternoon, many of them with the built-in flash, and the camera's battery will still be almost fully charged. Nikon did an outstanding job with the battery. The external flash requires 4 AA batteries and it eats them quickly. It's a good thing that rechargeable batteries have come a long way in the past 40 years. I remember the first NiCad batteries. They worked fine for the first few weeks and then developed what users called a "memory". Unless they were fully cycled regularly all the way to empty, their power output declined. Lithium ion and nickel metal hydride cells are what you'll find in most computers and cell phones these days because they're good for 500 or more cycles and they're reliable. And for the past several years, AA and AAA cells that use NiMH technology have been available. The trouble is that the trickle-charge unit that comes with most of these cells works slowly. Batteries charge in 12 hours or 16 hours or 24 hours. Or you can buy more expensive chargers and cycle the cells in an hour. That's better, but an hour is still a long time, so I was excited when Rayovac sent me some of its special AA cells and a charger that cycles them in just 15 minutes. Yes, 15 minutes. And, yes, Rayovac. Don't laugh.There are probably two kinds of people who buy Rayovac batteries: Those who are cheap and always buy the least expensive item and those who know that the higher-priced cells cost more, in part, because of their advertising campaigns. In other words, you can spend more for batteries, but you don't have to. When it comes to standard (single-use) batteries, there is little to recommend one brand over another brand. There are advertised differences, but those are like the differences between* Pepsi, Coke, and RC. All are sweetened, flavored, carbonated water. They all have similar taste. You may like one more than the other, but much of that is based on the image created by advertising. So regardless of the name on the package, a single-use battery will use essentially the same technology.
Charge!The first thing I noticed about the charger is that it's a little larger than most. It has a cord that plugs into the wall and the charger sits on a counter (the 2-cell charger plugs into the wall directly). The next thing I noticed is that the charger has vent slits on top and there's a fan inside that runs when it's charging. The third thing I noticed that the batteries really do charge fully in just 15 minutes. The magic isn't just in the cells or just in the charger. The batteries contain some circuitry that communicates with circuitry in the charger. So you can charge regular NiMH cells in the Rayovac charger, but they'll charge in 12 hours instead of 15 minutes. Or you can charge the Rayovac cells in a standard charger, but they'll charge in an hour (or 12 hours, depending on the charger) instead of 15 minutes. Hold that chargeSo far, so good -- but how do these batteries perform in use? When I took the cells out (in a flash unit) for their first test, I took along a dozen or so "Monster" AA NiMH cells. Those batteries (and they're much more expensive than Rayovac's "15-Minute Rechargeable" -- clever name, guys) cells. At least they came up with a clever name for the technology – I-C3, which stands for "In-Cell Charge Control". Oh, and did I mention that Rayovac claims these cells will be good for 1000 cycles instead of the usual 500 or so. So let's do the math. You could buy standard batteries (4 Duracel alkaline batteries: $5). I'm unable to find specs for these cells, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt (and make life easier) by assuming that they are rated at 2000 mAh*, the same as the rechargeable cells. And let's assume that the rechargeable cells are good for only 500 cycles. 500 x $5 = $2500 for batteries.
Monster Cable sells a digital charger with its standard NiMH cells for $40. To get the higher-capacity cells, you'll need to buy another set of "Ultra-High Capacity" cells for $30. Total cost $70 and that's a huge improvement over standard batteries! But half of the cells will be standard capacity (1500 mAh or lower) and the recharge time will be an hour. Rayovac makes the math harder by providing only 2 cells with its 4-cell charger (why???) and then selling packages of 4 cells separately. So you'll need to buy the charger and 2 cells for $40 and then an extra set of 4 cells for $15. That's $65 total and all the cells are 2000 mAh cells and they'll charge fully in 15 minutes. There's not a lot of difference in price between the two kinds of rechargeables, but there is a significant difference in how long you'll wait for batteries to charge. The bottom line
Rayovac says its I-C3 technology controls the "internal cell pressure" with technology that's built in to the batteries. The fast charger monitors voltage and temperature to avoid excessive pressure build-up. I don't know about that, but I do know that it works. For more information, see Rayovac's site. The charger shown at the right is illustrated with 4 cells. When you buy the unit, you receive only 2 cells. This is probably done to keep the price competitive with products from other manufacturers, even though most competitors' batteries have a lower power rating. The charger also comes with a wall plug and a hefty power supply, so it's larger than competing devices.
My Mac Makes My Mind a MuddleLast week, I told you about Apple's new version of OS X (Panther) and how great it is. Here's the story of the difficult path Panther traveled to make its way onto my iBook. I keep trying to make sense of Apple's OS X and about the time I think I have a few things figured out, Apple changes something and I'm transported from "Feeling Pretty Confident" all the way back to "Turnip-Brained Know-Nothing". Take the "easy" task of upgrading OS X 10.2 to 10.3. By the time I received the evaluation copy from Apple, 10.3.0 had been replaced by 10.3.2 and the .2 was an on-line update. But first I had to install version 10.3 from the CD atop version 10.2.6. Each of these has a cat name, but I can never remember which is which. I think my job was to replace a Jaguar with a Panther. The process seemed easy enough. The readme file said that any required firmware flash upgrades would have to be taken care of before I installed the new OS and it gave me a website URL. There was nothing about a firmware upgrade for the machine I own (an aging, slow 500MHz G3 iBook). There was nothing on the page about any kind of firmware upgrade for any kind of computer. Oh well. Because this isn't a production machine, I decided to proceed. If the upgrade failed, I could figure out what went wrong and fix it later. The upgrade process started without asking any of the questions the readme file, the PDF, and the booklet that came with the CDs all mentioned. I've always said that Apple doesn't particularly care if users read the stuff that comes with their computers. After two and a half hours (I said this is a slow machine) the process was complete and the computer restarted. And immediately crashed. I've installed OS upgrades before and know that this isn't a particularly uncommon occurrence on PCs or Macs. Usually the second boot is OK. Not this time. Every start-up application seemed to crash, but the sequence of events suggested that the real problem was with LaunchBar, an add-on application that's one of many 3rd-party applications designed to replicate Microsoft's Start Menu on a Mac. (My usual plea to Apple: Look, Microsoft got the Start Menu right. Why can't you just borrow this from them?) A trip to the LaunchBar website told me about a bug in OS 10.3 that would cause LaunchBar to crash on startup. In fact, it would try to start, crash, try to start, crash, try to start, and ... well, you get the idea. The crash also took down the Finder or anything else that was running, so it was virtually impossible to get to System Preferences and stop LaunchBar from loading. I logged on as "root" and installed the LaunchBar update from there, making sure that it would not activate for the root account -- "just in case." Expecting success, I restarted the computer and logged on as me. LaunchBar tried to start, crashed, tried to start, crashed, tried to start, cr .... Yeah. Nothing had changed. One thing I have to say for Panther is that pressing the power button gets the operating system's attention now and I hadn't yet had to pull the battery out and unplug the computer just to get it to shut down. My next step was the brute force approach. Logging on as root, I found the LaunchBar directory and deleted it. If the application isn't there, the OS can't start it. I rebooted and logged in as me. Success! By now I'd spent another 2 hours just getting the machine back to where it would boot. Once I got to that point, I could install the new version of LaunchBar and hope for the best. And then I could update the OS from 10.3 to 10.3.2. Fortunately, I know just enough about Unix to have made sure that I had access to a clean root account -- and enough to make sure that the likely problem application wouldn't try to load automatically when I logged on a root user. I sometimes wonder how long-time Apple users deal with situations such as this. As a final resort, the frustrated user could format the disk drive and start over. That's fine if the important data files are all backed up and you know how to restore them, but lots of people risk losing all their data by installing operating system upgrades without having a current backup. You might be wondering whether I had a current full backup. The answer is: No, I did not. I don't back up the IBook because it's not a production machine. If I do "real" work on that machine (such as writing a snotty report like this one) the document is stored on the IBook's hard disk, but it's also copied over to my primary Windows desktop machine, which is backed up. Regularly. What's my point? Is this another Apple bashing?None of this is a criticism of Apple. With the exception of the problem trying to figure out whether a flash BIOS upgrade was needed (I guess it wasn't) none of these problems was the fault of Apple. My point is simply this: The IBook is a computer. Computers run software and firmware written by humans on hardware built by humans. Humans can think of a lot of problems and prepare for them, but they can't think of everything. I've had similar problems when upgrading Windows machines. What annoys me about Apple is the company's insistence on advertising claims (false and misleading) that Apple computers are reliable while Windows computers are not. Whether you own an Apple or a PC, you'll experience occasional crashes and the computer will do things you don't expect it to do or want it to do. Depending on your knowledge and understanding of how these machines work, what causes the problem, and (maybe) whether there's a full moon, you'll resolve the problem quickly, slowly, or not at all. Use whichever computer you like best, just don't expect it to work flawlessly every time you use it. At least not until the hardware and software are made by something a lot smarter than human beings. And as I said last week, if you own an Apple, install Panther. If your Mac is so old that you can't install Panther on it, buy a new Mac! Nerdly NewsNormally this section comprises 2 or 3 short items. One of those short items this week was going to be about the problem of spoofed website addresses. The article became longer and more involved and I sent it as a "special bulletin" to the Technology Corner mailing list (CLICK HERE if you'd like to subscribe) on Friday. Then I heard from several people who had applied all of the critical updates but still see incorrect behavior from their browser. I've reported that troubling news to Microsoft security. In the meantime, here's a too-large-for-the-news news article: Avoiding rogue websitesMicrosoft has an outstanding description of steps you can take to avoid rogue websites that will try to hijack your computer. My first line of defense, BEFORE clicking any link in an e-mail message that's from someone I don't know, is to examine the actual link -- not the display text, but the actual link. How to do this varies from one e-mail client to the next. For browsers, you can usually see the actual address if you hover the mouse cursor over the link, but a clever spoofer will disguise this, too. To be sure, all you can do is inspect the source code of the page or the message. Good advice is NEVER TRUST ANYTHING you receive via the Internet unless you're absolutely certain the information is from someone you know and trust. Even then, verify it before acting on it. When I inspect the address, I'm primarily looking for tell-tale signs that the link is a hoax. If you see % or @ in a URL, it's probably NOT a safe URL. If you see an IP address (000.000.000.000) instead of a domain name, treat the URL with extreme caution. (There are legitimate reasons for using an IP address, but they are rare.) If you see a link like this - http://www.microsoft.com%01@blinn.com - you might think that it would take you to Microsoft's site, but it won't. It will go to my site. (The part before the @ sign is considered to be a user name and the part after the @ sign is the target domain.) If you have an UNPATCHED version of Microsoft Internet Explorer, the address line will display http://www.microsoft.com and will drop everything after the %. This means that http://www.microsoft.com%01@really.bad.rogue.com will take you to the "really bad rogue" site, which may be disguised to look like a Microsoft site. Here's an example of how spoofing works
Both of the links above will take you to www.Blinn.com, but the link on the bottom of the list will, if you have an unpatched version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer or an earlier version of some other browsers, display "microsoft.com" on the address line while you're looking at my site!
Spoofing is a favorite technique that's used by people who want to trick you into visiting a hostile site that can exploit browser weaknesses to commandeer your computer. Microsoft's anti-spoofing page, "Steps that you can take to help identify and to help protect yourself from deceptive (spoofed) Web sites and malicious hyperlinks," is at the URL below. At your earliest convenience, you should review the information on this page. http://support.microsoft.com/?id=833786. Safety isn't just for network geeks any more. For more information, see the Federal Trade Commission's Web site (www.ftc.gov) and the Anti-Phishing.org site (www.antiphishing.org). What if the "critical update" doesn't work?On Friday, I sent a warning about spoofing to the Technology Corner mailing list and promptly received this comment: Both you and the Woody's Watch folks recommend going to Windows Update to fix the problem, and I have, but it hasn't. I've always stayed current on Windows Update, and have installed every critical update they've offered for Windows 2000. (I've let two "nice to have" updates sit because my system doesn't have the problems they purport to fix.) Anyway, even with all of the patches, potions and lotions installed, when I click on the spoofed link in your newsletter, it takes me to your page, and "www.microsoft.com" still shows in the address bar. Other similar comments followed.
If you've installed all the critical patches and you're still seeing incorrect behavior from your browser, you might try going to http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ or direct to the security bulletins at http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/20031111_windows.asp and then choosing IE service pack 1 (#824145, 2.1MB) and installing it again. Installing the critical updates a second time is unlikely to remedy the problem. That's why I have already reported the this issue to Microsoft (Friday, January 9). It's entirely possible that more than a few Internet Explorer users think that their browser will protect them from spoofed addresses when, in fact, it will not. So ... BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! Let us know what you think about this program! Write to: |
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Rayovac claims (and I have little reason to doubt) that its cells will outlast standard batteries in high-current applications (cameras and flashes) by 4 to 1. My calculations assumed an even match. If the difference is as low as 2 to 1, you'll still save more than $4900 over the lives of the cells! (And figures like these are backed up by Consumers Union.)
The BEST solution I've seen comes from Opera 7, which displays a warning dialog. (See the image at the right.) To get to the spoofed page, a user must say OK to the security warning. The warning could be better written, but this is still the best solution I've seen.
