Drag and drop in the OS X Finder stops working

I’ve been having my Macbook for about 7-8 months now, and this problem occurs on a regular basis: The drag and drop functionality in Finder stops working.

After googling for a bit, it seems Quicksilver is the problem. Drag and drop only goes away if QS is running, according to this forum thread. It seems the number of items Quicksilver is cataloguing might have something to do with it – it would certainly fit my profile, as I have about 70.000 items in the catalogue. Apparently, this can cause Quicksilver to experience errors and affect the Drag/drop functionality.

This post will be expanded as I look for solutions. Please leave a comment if you’ve also experienced this issue, or if you know of a workaround / solution.

Windows Vista

OK, I was just provoked into writing a few words about Windows Vista, as I got my second bluescreen of the day. I haven’t had so many BSODs in such a short time since Windows XP SP1… or was it Windows 2000?

Anyway – it bluescreened on me just now when I tried to patch Company of Heroes, and earlier I am guessing that it was because of Realtek sound control panel application. As far as I know, both of these should be Vista compatible. Oh well.

My main conclusions on Vista at this point:

– It is unstable
– OS X feels, works and looks a lot better
– Once it is actually stable (Service Pack 1?), it will be like XP with a fancy skin and more pre-installed applications, which is probably mostly a good thing. And it should be more spyware-proof than XP is now, which is good.

(Of course, the lesson here is – don’t bother, get a Mac…)

The Linksys Compact Wireless-G Broadband Router

I was just on the phone with a friend, who couldn’t get his new D-Link router working. He was on the phone a few days ago too, concerning the same router. This time, he concluded – “Why are these things so unreliable??”

I had to fight back an instinctive urge to defend wireless technology, brought on by my techno-geek spine. It is actually true that wireless networking is less reliable and more difficult to set up than it should be. That goes for most wireless products I’ve tried. However, some are worse than others, and the D-Link my friend consulted me about wasn’t the router I recommended to him.

In fact, I recommended the Linksys Compact Wireless-G Broadband router. After reiterating my recommendation to my friend and commenting that D-Link is crap, I decided I should give the Are Wold Seal of Approval to the Linksys Compact Wireless-G Broadband router in the hope that more people will buy decent, high-quality networking products.

If you are looking for more specific reasons to get it, I’ll offer the following:

– Stable/reliable
– Reasonable cost
– Very small!
– Good range

STOP THE PRESS! Preliminary testing indicates that the Linksys does not pass the Torrent Test ™. The Torrent Test involves me and at least one other person maxing out our 3,5 Mbit connection with 3-6 bittorrent streams. So if you are torrenting heavily over a line that’s this fast, the Linksys might not be for you. I’m looking into this – our modem could also be the problem. (April 2., 2007)

The first one of these is actually the most important. I have used both Linksys and D-Link routers which have caused me a lot of pain because of unreliability. Sadly, you can’t reason that since one Linksys router is good, another will be decent too – that’s not how it works. However, this specific router is really the first one I’ve had no complaints with whatsoever. Well done, Linksys.

Norwegian readers can check the product page for the Linksys Compact Wireless-G Broadband Router at Komplett.no, which also includes some consumer reviews.

Two mobile applications no W800i should be without

Over the past year, I’ve been a very active user of my W800i mobile phone. I find that it is one of the best consumer electronics devices I’ve ever owned. It is a very good music player, overall good phone, and great camera (for a phone) – all in one compact 2×5.5×10 cm / 99 grams package. (More on that in my 6 months on review of W800i.)

The size of this phone and all the features it offers means that I can do stuff I simply couldn’t before. A few of my favourite examples include:

– Lighting up the dark path in the woods or finding the right cable connections at the rear of my receiver using the camera light

– Listen to music while walking without being concerned about missing calls or texts (the phone automatically pauses the music for me when something happens)

– Do document scans anywhere – need a copy of that A4 sheet? Just photograph it!

Mobile phones today are really small computers – increasingly similar to the general purpose computers most of us use daily. My two favourite applications are brilliant examples of this trend.