Bits and Bytes

• Internet Explorer 8 download bug?  I’ve written about issues with Internet Explorer 8 in the past and have retracted a major complaint that I had.  That said, there appears to be a small issue with downloading files.  I regularly download video podcasts and store them on an external drive.  This has worked well with Firefox and Safari 4 for Windows.  Since my upgrade to Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8 has been my browser of choice.  It is working relatively well and is pretty quick too. However, if I try to download to an external drive, the file starts and then stops.  It will sit for a minute or two and then act like it is done.  Problem is, it never downloaded completely. It is usually a two to five megabyte file.  If I try to re-download, to any location, I get the same truncated file. I have to clear the cache and then try again.  It usually works after that, even to the external drive.  Also, if I cancel the download and immediately try again, it works just fine.  Now, I suspect it has something to do with the external drive spinning up and IE just does not know what to do.  Timing seems to be the issue.  Anyone else experience this?
• Windows 7, in two weeks, surpasses Snow Leopard in worldwide usage.  Huh.  I would have thought it did even before its release.  At any rate, Gizmodo published an interesting graph showing worldwide OS usage.  Take a look here.  Steve Ballmer was quoted, elsewhere, that sales are already ahead of where Vista was at its same point in time.  If this continues, it will be the fastest adoption rate of any version of Windows.  Of course, comparing the release to Snow Leopard is a bit disingenuous since Vista’s install base is larger than Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard anyway.
• The Beatles are available digitally!  Yeah, yeah, yeah!  This past week, there two ways to get your Beatles tunes: via download or an expensive USB stick.  First, the digital downloads.  A company called BlueBeat was offering the downloads very cheaply.  Problem was, it was not legal.  They had no rights at all and, in fact, the true rights holder, EMI, had a judge slap BlueBeat with an injunction.  The second method, the USB stick, comes from EMI and contains the entire catalog, some video and other goodies.  The stick is housed in an ugly green apple.  It is yours for about $250(US).
• Peek goes all a Twitter.  Yep, Peek has taken its email only hand held device and grafted on a Twitter client.  For $99.95, you can get yourself the device and six months of service.  After the six months, service is $7.95 a month. Having recently purchased a Peek Classic, I can honestly say that the hardware itself is rather nice.  It looks decent, has a good feel, a decent screen and a workable keyboard.  That’s where my enthusiasm ends, however.  It is difficult, especially at $19.95 a month for the email service, to justify it for email and damn near impossible to justify it for Twitter ONLY.  Now, if they threw in the Twitter client along with the email service, it would make the device more attractive.  Even better, throw in a minimal but working BROWSER and they would have something. While I am sure they will find a few people to buy this, restricting it to just Twitter is absurd.  Sell the hardware for twenty bucks, charge $14.95 a month for email, Twitter and that browser and it would sell even more.  But, with Smartphone use on the rise, this thing has very limited appeal.  However, if you want to read more, go here.
• Windows 7 SP1 to hit beta this year with release for 2010.  Yes, that’s right, SP1 is due for beta release by the end of the year with the final going live mid-2010.  No doubt, SP1 will further improve the new OS’s performance.  If it does release on this schedule, it will have been released much sooner than SP1 for Vista-an operating system that disparately needed an SP release sooner than it got one.
• Windows Live, wave 4 coming soon?  Looks like Microsoft’s wonderful Live suite will be getting a client side upgrade soon.  There will also be some changes to the services themselves.  Ars Technica is reporting that there is one service in particular that looks interesting:  “Flix”.  Flix is like a mini-You Tube service, powered by Silverlight, and intended to be used like the Live Photo Gallery but for videos.  The target audience is family and friends and not the general public. Hop on over to this posting on Ars Technica for more.