michael p hines . net

Here's a little game to play.  This is a short list of the tasks running on my computer. 

See if you can't find what's wrong with this picture.

If you guessed that Firefox and Internet Explorer are combined taking up over 512 MB of memory, then you're in the same boat as me.  At least initially.  If you saw beyond that and wondered why RapidShareManager.exe was taking 50% of my CPU even though it's just a simple download manager then you get points for being extra observant, but I played this game with my good friend Alex, and he pointed out the most disturbing thing about this image that I didn't even realize:

Adobe Acrobat is taking up only 6.3 MB of memory!

When Alex pointed this out, I was amazed!  I had to double check the task manager to make sure that I didn't screw up the image when I doctored it to make Firefox take more memory than IE.  Sure enough, there it is, sitting in my task manager taking up a measly 6 megs of memory.  It's a mystery to me how this happened, has Adobe actually put some effort in bringing down the bloat?  Might I actually be able to use Acrobat Reader instead of Foxit Reader soon?  That would be fantastic!  I'll keep you guys updated on this astonishing new development.

I saw the following on AOL Money & Finance:

Struck by losing a multibillion-dollar Air Force contract to Northrop Grumman and Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence & Space, Boeing executives are preparing a formal protest of the decision. But sources say Boeing may hold its tongue, hesitant to hold up delivery of aircraft crucial to the military.

This is how I imagine the article continuing if news wasn't written by the public relations departments of megacorporations:

Says CEO McNerney, "I originally planned for us to bitch directly at the government in a privately.  Instead we just decided to publicly say that we WEREN'T bitching at the government, and list the exact reasons why we WOULD bitch at the government if we weren't so darn patriotic.  My people tell me this will be more effective AND better for PR."  Stopping to sip his San Pellegrino and clear his throat awkwardly, continued McNerney, "God bless America?"

Support the troops people.

If you haven't seen this, you're missing out:

Okay, you really weren't missing out on that much.  I'm going to put this in my "dumb features" category.  It's not that I can't appreciate an "unbreakable" monitor.  It's just that I don't expect some guy to walk into my room shooting a crossbow with metal tipped arrows near my monitor.  And if that does happen, I think I have bigger problems than a broken LCD.  At that point, I might start to regret not buying the $50 4-year warranty from Best Buy with my cheap little HP monitor.  Warranties and rebates are something I have no patience for. 

Here's a link to the product page for the LS201, but I really don't recommend clicking on it.  It'll take another post to fully discuss my pet peeve of Taiwanese hardware manufacturers with painfully slow websites. Asus isn't the only culprit, I have a feeling Gigabyte also hates their customers.  Oh, and don't expect that link to stay active for more than a month. 

Here's a short list of quotes, directly from the product page:

• The anti-reflection coating allows light to be transmitted more than 96%, and reflections are cut down to less than 2%.
• The unique Light-in-Motion LED lights on the base of the ASUS LS201 create a soothing effect and distinct feel to the atmosphere while in operation
• Adopt ASCR (ASUS Smart Contrast Ratio) Technology to provide the high contrast ratio of 2000:1, which can dynamically adjust contrast between black and white.
• The LS201 allows you to progress wall mount.
• The protection glass surface gently emanates an enchanting glossy sheen.
• The LS201 incorporates ASUS exclusive Splendid™ Video Intelligence Technology that detects activation and usage of video applications and automatically optimizes image quality for the best visual results.
• Note.The cover glass has passed the ASTM(American Society for Testing and Materials) D3363-92a standard of the hardness test.

At first I thought that the marketing department at Asus just doesn't have anyone that speaks fluent English.  Fine, maybe their primary market isn't in English-speaking countries.  Though I seriously doubt that from a business standpoint the market is small enough to justify this kind of disregard.  But the more I read, the more I realized, it's not the language barrier at all.  Their marketing is terrible. 

I was immediately curious about this "9H Hardness surface for protection."  What does the H mean?  How hard exactly is 9H?  What is this ASTM D3363 standard and what does it take to pass?  I'll give you a clue, here's the scale:  9H-8H...2H-H-F-HB-B-2B...8B-9B (see left).  So although I probably wouldn't recommend that you shoot a crossbow at your monitor, according to Asus, you can scratch at it all day with a pencil.  Just remember that when you get smudges on your screen, use only the included microfiber cleaning cloth, you wouldn't want to void your warranty.

Light-in-motion is Asus's fancy name for a power indicator (apparently it moves around while you're working on it).  I have a similar feature on my HP monitor, actually my ViewSonic monitor has a "Light-in-motion" feature too!  Even the Wacom tablet on my desk has a light to tell me whether it's on or not, and even if it didn't I'd still have over 3 million other tiny little lights telling me my monitor is on with a blinding "2000:1 contrast ratio."  2000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.  Their spec-sheet doesn't even list the static contrast ratio.  I guess you're out of luck if you want to do any kind of useful product comparison. 

If Splendid™ is anything like nVidia's Digital Vibrance feature, you'll also have automatically oversaturated video to look forward to.  Splendid™ also provides 3 preset skin tone [sic].  I don't know exactly what this means, but I know there are a lot more skin tones than Red, "Natural", and Yellow.  "To that users can choose to apply to the characters in display for graphics applications."  So apparently if I'm working with photos, I can choose to have my monitor display a different image than anyone else I send it to will see.  Here's a useful feature for you Asus, how about built in Pantone color matching?  That way I don't have to guess how much definition I've lost from dynamic contrast adjustments or how oversaturated my colors are because of automatic optimization.  Splendid™.