A positive piece to finish the week.

I’ve been looking for a pair of good quality binoculars as a birthday present for my partner. A couple of weeks ago I embarked on the usual research fest that precedes any significant purchase of mine, and after much to-ing and fro-ing, concluded that the Nikon Travelite V 8×25 CF best fitted the brief.

The hard stuff done (I thought), I moved on to Phase 2: comparing prices at local retail outlets. Annoyingly, forays to department stores and a multitude of camera outlets scattered around the Perth CBD were fruitless. Ditto the nearby suburbs. The ranges were generally poor, prices high, and none of them had the Nikon Travelite Vs.

Camerahouse in Leederville had the best choice of binoculars, but again, not the Nikon Travelites! These had been well reviewed and widely recommended on various web forums – I assumed they would be readily available locally.

Slightly daunted and running out of time, I hit Google and found a few Australian-based online stores that looked promising. I noticed their prices varied considerably, but were generally much lower on a model-for-model basis than those the Perth retail outlets were offering – and the range available online was far better. Continue reading After binoculars or a camera? Try www.camerastore.com.au →

I’m pissed off!

I did some way overdue computer housekeeping today. Having satisfied myself long ago via various tech-savvy sources that Norton and McAfee suck and that the best of the free anti-virus/anti-spyware programs – AVG, Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy – do the job just fine, I set about the once-routine task of running all three, clearing the cache, deleting temp and internet files, running Disk Cleanup, defragging…

I used to be diligent with this stuff and do it weekly. But bit by bit, I’ve returned to my default state of slackness. Dunno when I last ran Spybot Search and Destroy, but when I tried to update it I discovered it had been replaced with AntiSpywareBOT.

Not to worry. Spybot Search and Destroy is one of the good guys. No tricks. A quality program. And free when they say they’re free. It’s right there on their home page. See?

[click to enlarge]

Without hesitation, I accepted the free download invitation, then ran the program as instructed. Spunky new skin. Nice. Let’s put this baby through its paces. I selected the C drive, clicked on ‘Scan’, watched for a minute to make sure it was working, and went off to lunch. Continue reading AntiSpywareBOT – Another ‘Free’ Software Con →