Gondorff

IIRC, Windows Update was an ME original, which is a pretty big deal.

Damn you, my wrist is starting to hurt now!

Don’t forget that most of the time, the license key on the back of the laptop does not even work with a stock version of Windows—it’s been tied to the laptop manufacturer’s bulk Windows license. I’ve done this, and I end up having to call MS support and (to their credit) they then give me a new key that does work. But this is really not newbie friendly at all.

I find SkyDrive the most compelling for personal use, simply due to its sheer size. Haven’t done it yet, but I plan on using Link Shell Extension to make a symbolic link (or junction or w/e) of some of my folders in my SkyDrive folder, and voila: perfect cloud backup and access.

For collaboration use, however, the best one is whichever one everyone else is using. Most recently, that was Dropbox.

I saw something similar once in IE; if I scrolled all the way up, past the top of the page, I could see bits of other graphics, like the address bar etc.

My guess is that the graphics memory is getting overloaded or improperly accessed, so you’re getting random pieces of graphics dumped on the screen. With the extent that you’re getting it, it could be a hardware issue, though it is equally possible that it is just a software glitch.

Okay, have some more time now; here are my recommended apps:

INDISPENSIBLE
AppFlow App Discovery — great way to find even more apps!
MetroRadio Pro — Pandora. Nicer than any official Pandora app I’ve seen.
Tip Calculator — Great if you eat out in a tip-customary country
TuneIn Radio — If radio is your thing, this is pretty great

AWESOME
Wordament — Did I mention I’m a Wordament addict?
Civilization Revolution — Amazing, especially if you love Civ games.
Baconit — For your Reddit needs.
BoxFiles — For Dropbox and/or SkyDrive needs
Flixster — For movie needs (IMDB app is also good, but I prefer Flixter’s UI)
Fandango — If you want to actually buy movie tickets
Gchat — Lets you use gChat…
Weather — I like the basic MS-made Weather app. Simple and elegant.
RadNow — If I want to check the weather radar. MyRadar also looks good for this.

PROMISING
Flud — I prefer it to the more popular readers (Weave, NextGen Reader), but it does lag a lot. Needs work.
Skype — Great for simple needs, but really needs multitasking abilities!
gMaps — If you must have Google’s maps. The maps are fine, but the UI is painful, so it remains a 3rd choice after Bing Maps and Nokia Maps for me.

There are some others that look pretty good, but I haven’t had the chance to use them much yet, like Parcel Tracker and Package Tracker, LinkedIn, Youtube Pro, and Google Voice apps.

I passed Intro to CS with flying colors. One of my good friends really really struggled. She was definitely smart, but the abstract rules and concepts of programming really did not lend itself to how she understood things. I worked with her a lot, but it was really difficult. Later took a logic class with her and it was the same sorts of issues. Different people are wired differently, and what is intuitive to you and me can be very unintuitive to someone else.

For the record, I often spent more time helping her with coursework than I did on my own work for the same class, and she spent more time in professors’ offices than anyone else I know. It wasn’t lack of investment.

Get a room, you two!

/annoyingguyfromofficespace

Aesthetics are a part of design just as much as usability etc. is.

Sorry… it’s a pet peeve of mine that people these days define ‘design’ as whatever they feel is actually important.