We bought our first Tivo in September after we found an deal that made it very affordable – free – and although we did no fall in love with it as much as some other people seem to have, we do appreciate its features. It is great to have the guide once again (we lost the guide when we dropped our DirectTV service) and of course a simpler interface for recording our favorite shows is also a welcome benefit.

However, sometime in early December, right around the time a new version of the Tivo software was announced, the image in our TV lost its quality to the point that we had to remove the Tivo. We tried to place it in a different room and with a different TV without any better results. I followed just about every technical tip I found online but nothing worked. All of the symptoms pointed to a blown hard-drive or a problem with the real-time encoding since the cable signal was being corrupted somewhere within the Tivo itself.

I usually don’t buy the product insurance most retailers offer you while you are checking out. Most of the times I think it is lost money but given we were getting a good deal on it and the fact that I knew of hard-drive problems in some units (remember the hard-drive is doing something almost 24-7, that’s hard on any electronic component) we decided to buy the insurance. That decision payed off this past weekend when we had to replace our unit, we walked to the cashier and asked for a replacement. The cashier printed out a copy of our receipt and excused herself while she went to get a new one. Five minutes later we were walking out with our new Tivo!

The setup process was much smoother compared to last time since this unit had the latest service pack installed. The updated version meant I could use our home wireless network without any tricks or hacks. The whole process still takes a few minutes and the guide information downloaded overnight but it was a very pleasant experience. The latest service packs allow you to download your recorded shows to your iPod or PSP and brings other online services to your TV. I hope to check these out over the next few days and get more out of our Tivo

I have spent the last few hours trying to clean up a friend’s computer from a lot of spyware, adware, a couple of trojans and a couple of dialers. It is an absolute mess to say the least. We started early this evening and an AV scan is still going. I am trying to see how much can be cleaned up with the antivirus before moving onto removing the EliteToolbar (using this tool from SimplyTech).

The antivirus that was installed expired a long time so the AV definitions were too old to provide any significant protection. The machine was also running XP without Service Pack 2, which tells you more about the state of the PC itself. I wonder how many average family windows machines are in this state, letting spyware take over? I guess it is some what appropriate that we are doing this during Halloween, I should’ve asked for treats and not this trick :o)

update: A few hours since we got started, I was able to remote the EliteToolbar, remove a few trojans and one dialer that were installed on the machine. I have installed Firefox and AVG free edition as the web browser and antivirus solutions. I am also installing Service Pack 2, the rest of the windows patches and I will configure the machine to download and install any new MS patches released in the future. I hope this is enough to avoid re-imaging the machine and start all over from scratch.

Apple has had a pretty busy October, first with the release of the iPod nano, a few days later the release of the iPod with video capability and if that wasn’t enough, an upgrade to their selection of desktops (Power Mac & iMac) and powerbooks. This last update, to the powerbooks, was the one that I was a little worried about.

The moment you buy anything from Apple you have to assume that a week later they will come out with an updated version. This is because you simply took too long thinking about your purchase and the moment your credit card is swiped, an alarm is set off and the production of the new version starts. I experienced this when I bought my powerbook but that update was merely a speed bump, something I can live without.

When I started hearing they were going to upgrade their powerbooks, I just knew it was going to be a critical update. They were going to come out with something that I just had to have, even though my powerbook is about a year old. Although this upgrade was a little more interesting (longer-lasting batteries, brighter displays and better display resolution) I am still extremely happy with my own machine. The only thing that I would welcome would be the Superdrive but it not something I can’t live without. I wonder if the better batteries can be used with older revs like mine? That would be enough of an upgrade for what I need.

You know you are taking the geeky road when you decide to use XSLT to process an XML file just to create a simple report for a co-worker. What’s the alternative? Excel would accept the same information and I would’ve been done in 5 minutes but it would not have been as cool!

It had been a while since I had used XSLT transformations to parse an XML file so it was a good experience to stay in touch with the technology. Since I was doing some scripting with the xsl file, I even learned a couple of things I had not seen before, so it was a good learning experience without consuming too much time.

I upgraded my windows workstation to the newly released iTunes 5 and I just have to ask who hit it with the ugly stick. It certainly does not look like an Apple designed product. I just can get into the smooth metal look, which makes it the 5th different interface style for Apple in current systems.

update: so Apple started pushing out version 5 through the automated update mechanism. I’ve decided to not update my Powerbook for the time being, at least until someone comes up with a mechanism to provide a unified look that is not so ugly. I’ve also read that the new iPod updater breaks some functionality but I have not investigated these claims.