Tag Archives: comparisons

Reviews

A side by side comparison of the 2003 MINI Cooper S and the new 2007 MINI Cooper S

I posted a couple of days ago about the launch of the new 2007 MINI Cooper S, and I said I wasn’t too crazy about the exterior. I still hold that opinion, and to prove it, here are some photos of my very own 2003 Cooper S, alongside a couple of photos of the 2007 Cooper S.

Now, can you honestly admit the new 2007 MINI looks better? They did away with the aggressive, sexy curves on the hood! Where’s that nice, aggressive hood? They pinched it and made it thin. They also made the lights rounder and smaller, and they did away with the extra air scoop on the bumper. But in doing so, they didn’t compensate, and the MINI’s now lost its flair.

Sure, the new one is slightly more sculpted, and it looks like they did away with some of the fat, plus they added two fog lights instead of the single red one you see on the 2004-2006 MINIs, but still, I prefer the back of my 2003 MINI. It’s nicer.

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Lists

A new perspective on the Earth

Last week, I got the following photos sent to me by email, but I don’t know who put them together. But I think you’ll agree they’re interesting enough to share. They are progressive views of our planet, doing side-by-side comparisons of it and other planets and stars, in order to give us an idea of their relative size. We are truly just a speck of dust in the universe!

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Thoughts

Evolution, Creation and Logic

If you’re looking for a cogent comparison of evolution and creation, then watch this video. Dr. Doug Batchelor does a great job of presenting both topics in as fair a light as each deserves.

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Thoughts

Is it me or do these logos look similar?

Just had a look at a new handheld phone review from Engadget Mobile called the Helio Kickflip, and the logo looked very similar to something I’d seen before… Could it be? Well, here they are, side by side, for comparison purposes.

The logo on the left belongs to the phone, and the one on the right is the FeedBurner logo. I’ve been using – and loving the functionality of – FeedBurner for several months now. Photo of Helio Kickflip packaging courtesy of Engadget, and FeedBurner logo courtesy of FeedBurner.

What do you think?

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Reviews

New Hotmail shows Microsoft still playing catchup

I’ve been a user of Hotmail for several years, probably since 1998. I can’t remember the date very well, but it’s been a long time. The point is, I had a Hotmail account long before Gmail came out. Why do I say this? Because I stuck with Hotmail through the years. That’s not to say I wasn’t fed up with the service before – I had it up to my neck with the never-ending ads that overwhelmed the page.

What the Hotmail folks did recently is to move the service to the Live platform without regard for the users. While Hotmail worked fine on different browsers before, now it just doesn’t. Unless I use IE and only IE, the site doesn’t work properly. The functionality is stunted. I can choose between two modes, Classic and Live, and no matter which one I choose, unless I use IE, it just won’t work right. Just a few examples of the shortcomings: I can’t select multiple emails to designate them as Spam, I can’t empty my Junk Mail folder with one click, the site looks weird… The Live portal seems to do okay, but not Hotmail.

And while the Microsoft folks made a big deal about doing away with one of the ads on the page inside Hotmail, I still see two, and it’s still very annoying.

What’s worse, I can’t help playing the comparison game with Gmail. I love my Gmail account. I get barely any spam, and when I do, it’s sorted nicely in my Spam folder. Once in a while, a random message makes it to my inbox, only to be dispatched to its cyberspace grave. In Hotmail, unless I set my Spam filter to exclusive, spammers make it to my Inbox most every day. And if the filter’s set to exclusive, I run the risk of having legitimate emails end up in the Junk Email folder. I have to constantly check it and be barraged with ads for erectile dysfunction or penile enlargement and other such things. And the volume of spam that makes it to my Hotmail account is… voluminous, whereas at Gmail, it’s just a few every day. Hotmail obviously doesn’t have a very good spam filtering system, no matter what Bill Gates may say.

I also can’t help looking at my Gmail account’s size limit (now over 2GB), and Hotmail is still at 250MB. Let’s not forget that before Gmail came out, Hotmail was at 2MB. Not 20MB, not even 10MB, but 2MB! Pathetic… I had to constantly delete emails from my Inbox. If I hadn’t been able to POP into my Hotmail account with Outlook Express and download my messages, I’d have had to delete years’ worth of emails. That just wasn’t right.

While I’m on the subject, let me not forget that Gmail has worked cross-browser from the start. That includes IE, Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla, Camino, Safari, and I believe Konqueror. With Hotmail, and now with Live Mail, it’s IE or you’re guaranteed a less than full functionality experience. You’d think Microsoft, with all of its talent, could come up with something better, but no, they can’t… or won’t.

So, let’s see, Vista disappointed, Hotmail disappoints… Is there any other conclusion to draw, other than Microsoft is still playing catchup?

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