Updating iMac to Mavericks and Parallels Desktop 8

Last week I decided to make the jump and update my iMac to Mavericks. After using Microsoft Windows for years, I was a little nervous about such a major update. The download was about 5GB, which took about 40 minutes to download, then it needed to install. My main concern about the update was that I use Parallels Desktop 8 to run a Windows XP VM machine and that after the update there might be some issues with this. After the update I was surprised how little had changed and that everything just worked fine, including Parallels Desktop. Just wanted to write a quick blog entry to say that I had no issues with this update.

How Virgin Media could save customers money instead of increasing prices

Virgin media have just announced a price increase from February of 7%, this is way above the 2.2% inflation rate in the UK. I am not a Virgin Media customer and have no intention of becoming one, mainly because they are expensive and the people I know who use them do not recommend them.

They could however save a ton of money by not sending out massive promotional packs in A4 size envelopes packed with information that goes straight in the bin. I would have thought a company like Virgin would have been more innovative with how it does its marketing rather than sending huge amounts of junk mail. Come on Virgin and do something new to attract customers.

How is Twitter going to make money to justify its high share price

Twitter went public the other day with is price gaining just over 72% on the first day, the second it dropped about 7%, but is still 50 times the value of its sales. That means that Twitter has to have huge growth and increase in sales to justify this current share price, or what will most likely happen in the sorter term is the share price will fall, leaving some investors out of pocket.

Twitter should look at how it can increase turnover and usage, to justify the share value. A lot of people I know have tried twitter and have not got on with it and don't understand it, I can see there point of view and I only use twitter to tweet articles that I like. Maybe they need to promote twitter and make people realise it is not just for following people you know and minor celebs, but could be for following music bands or companies that give useful information. On that point I do find the problem with twitter is the amount of rubbish tweets that appear, maybe there should be a way to filter out tweets and only receive tweets other users have found useful by a rating method.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years with how twitter changes to make money and whether people will keep using it.

Why is Google Nexus 5 an LG phone?

The new Google Nexus 5 is due to be released soon, but why is LG making the phone when Google own Motorola. It sounds like Motorola are planning to also release a new phone, that will allow users to customise the phone by adding different components like cameras and keyboards. This sounds like an exciting development and look forward to see how this Lego smart phone will work. But it does seem a bit strange that Google is using LG to make their new phone, it could relate to resources and that Motorola currently cannot produce a phone to the quantities that Google would like, or maybe Google has a contract with LG for making the new Nexus 5.

Has the cloud really caught on

I have just been thinking about new technologies and what a few years ago was going to be the next big thing, the cloud. It seems that everyone has heard of it and most individuals and businesses have looked at what it offers, but few people have really embraced it.

From an individuals perspective I use dropbox and google for some online storage, but I have not moved all my data to the cloud and don't feel the need to. Part of me likes the idea that I own my data and have it close to me, and that if I lose the connection to the net I still can use programs and have all my photos and videos. Another problem with the cloud is not the cheap option, it can cost over £5 a month to store a reasonable amount of data, compared to an external 1TB hard drive that I can buy for less than £60.

From a business perspective it is also too expensive at the moment and you certainly need to have confidence in the hosting company. I do however think more and more companies will move to hosted services and that the price will start to come down.

In conclusion I don't think cloud storage has caught on the way people first thought, however over time with the amount you can store going up and the price coming down, more people and businesses will move in the online storage direction.

Owning a Nexus 4 after 6 months

I have now had my Nexus 4 for over 6 months, when I first received it I was impressed with what you got for the money. But here are some points about it after owning one:

1. It sometimes switches itself off when there is loads of power and to switch it back on you need to connect it to a charger.
2. Battery life has improved over time, this might relate to switching NFC off and the latest update of Android.
3. Updating Apps sometimes removes them from the main screen and you have to add them back, this might be an Android problem.
4. After updating some apps the icon gets removed and you have to remove the app from the front screen and add it back in. Possibly another Android problem.
5. Android is not as nice to use a iOS. 

Energizer leaking batteries - Hopefully in the future a thing of the past

I put some Energizer batteries into my sons toy car about 3 months ago, there is still charge and the toy was still working when I noticed a clear liquid coming from the battery compartment. Here are the pictures after opening the battery compartment.

As you can see 1 battery is clearly leaking, which I sure would be very harmful to my young son, or any child. I feel let down by this brand named company, and thought I was buying a safe quality product. Anyway I will not be buying these batteries again, and would advise not purchasing them until they sort out their safety problems.

Hopefully the future of batteries means that these sort of things never happens again, but I am not sure if this will be possible. It sounds like carbon nanotube batteries are the future, but they still contain acid, so how can they remove the risk? I am not sure, maybe the housing of the battery needs improving, also could improvements be made to the product that requires the batteries? I am not sure, but think it needs to be made a priority by the manufacturers to stop this sort of thing happening.

Parallels Desktop Review

I have had a iMac for a few months now and I love it. I moved over from a Windows XP PC with no problems, apart from one. I needed to access my work PC remotely using RDP, but I could not get it to work, when I worked for a previous company it worked fine without any problems, but after doing some research and contacting the people in-charge of our network I found out that they do not allow Macs to RDP on our network. The solution to this problem was to use a Windows VM (virtual machine) on the Mac.

I bought my iMac with a copy of Parallels Desktop because I thought I might need it and I had some software that would only run in Windows. I installed a copy of Windows XP and could RDP to my work PC without any problems. I found it really easy to setup and run, and it runs so much faster than my previous PC, this is partly thanks to the iMacs higher spec, but I run a Windows XP VM on my Windows 7 work PC which has a similar spec and it is over 10 times slower (Sophos could be the cause).

Here is a list of features I really like (Pros)

• Quick to start up and shutdown (seconds not minutes)
• Coherence allows you to run Windows applications in the Mac desktop, I generally do not use this, but it is a nice feature.
• Windows icon in Mac dock which lists Windows applications to run, basically the Windows Start menu program list.
• Multiple VMs.
• Specify the number of CPUs and amount of memory to use (RAM), I have it set to a single CPU and 1GB of memory.
• Loads of settings which I need to explore further.

Usually when I review something I put the Pros and Cons, with this software I have not found any at the moment. This is a great piece of software and makes the jump from Windows to iOS a lot easier and more gradual. You can have all the software you are use to on the virtual machine and as you get more comfortable with iOS, gradual move over.