The Google Reader sign-in page can be addictive: the poplar blog posts that appear there are often funny and interesting. Like this one yesterday: Introducing the Illuminato X Machina.

Apparently Liquidware is a company/organisation that manufactures electronic components in an open source spirit. You have all kinds of components that you can plug together and that are programmable with the available C++ IDE for Windows or Mac.

Their latest product is the Illuminato X Machina from the blog post above, which is basically a small motherboard with a 72 MHz CPU, storage and interfaces and which can be attached to other cells to increase computation power.

A early funny (geeky) example of the possibilities:

You can order any component separately or in starter kits from the Liquidware shop. I believe Christmas is on it’s way!

Once in a while you buy something you’re extremely happy with and this belongs certainly to that category.

The Logitech Wave keyboard.

Great feeling; ergonomic, but not to the extreme. Useful special keys but not too many. And it is wired (I don’t understand the use of wireless keyboards and/or mouses).
Note: an Azerty BE version is also available.

In the 8 months that I’m using it, the letter S is a bit worn off (hrmm… what would be the cause of that) but it has been worth every cent for me!

I do understand a huge part of Apples sales are driven by the hype they & others create.

I’m always amused when I notice how dumb people act in such circumstances. If you read the article above (which I don’t recommend) you’ll of course notice how Apple-minded the writer is: you have an Apple product and then you have other brands which should -try- to be as good as the former. Well… it’s the subject of that blog of course, but it can count as a general example.
It’s because of people like him that others follow. Most of us are really like sheep.

Personally I want to buy stuff that works or has features that are functional. Not things that sell by their looks. Stuff that make things easier for me. And if they have unexpected features that prove to be useful that will make me even more happy. In this specific case Nokia is making robust and user friendly phones for ages, but everyone “needs” an iPhone.

The same applies to Mac computers & their OS: they do not have loads of features that make competitors fade away. On the contrary.
It’s even worse if you think about the comparison of first iPods against other MP3 players (of which some of them were probably available on the market months or years before the iPod). They didn’t only have more useful functions, they also did not depend on software like iTunes.

Let’s just hope companies like Nokia and Asus keep making great products! :-)

Edit: @stijn: I still like to be friends with you!

After upgrading my nVidia display drivers to the latest version (175.19) I was losing huge amounts of time dragging maximized windows from one screen to the other. On most systems (as with these latest drivers) this is only possible by first unmaximizing the application and remaximizing it once dragged onto the other screen. However, for some reason I have always been able to just drag maximized windows in the past.

After loosing much more time searching for a solution and trying other options (keyboard shortcuts, nView buttons) I went for the best solution so far: I uninstalled the new drivers and installed older ones again (which I found on the graphics card manufacturers website – version 91.47 to be precise).
The good thing is that everything works like it did before and I can drag maximized windows again.

Hopefully you don’t suffer from the same window maximizing autism like me but please let me know if you do and have a better solution.