Wahoooo! Just got myself a Maxtor Personal Storage 3100 external USB hard drive. It's not the latest and the greatest but it gives me an additional 200 GB storage space. This is a big deal for me because my PC's hard drive is only 80 GB and I'm always agonizing what to delete. It's getting tedious to burn files off to DVD-R and deleting them from the hard drive. Looking for files from stacks of discs is not fun either.

I was looking for the 3200 model which has 300 GB but they didn't have it. The Maxtor OneTouch III models are too expensive. So why not just buy another internal hard drive to add more storage at a cheaper price? I plan to use the extra space not only for storing more stuff but also for making backups. Having it external will save my files even if my PC gets fried. I hope it doesn't happen but having nearline backup is very convenient.

I look forward to the day when I can finally replace my 4 year old PC. It still works but it's getting sluggish. A clean Windows reinstall can fix that but I'm suspecting the RAM or something else on the motherboard is malfunctioning. There were some recent incidents where there were inexplicable BSODs. Anyway, when that day comes, hopefully, the replacement is a Core 2 Duo. I can simply plug in my external hard drive into the USB port of the brand spanking new PC and all my precious data are ready for the transfer.

Firefox 2.0 vs. IE7

OK, new major web browsers back-to-back launch. Of course, comparisons are in order. On the surface, both look attractive. I like IE7's thumbnail preview of open tabs better than Firefox's text list. On the other hand, Firefox's Undo Close Tab and Session Restore have saved me a lot of grief already. On the security side, Firefox wins hands down. Just refusing ActiveX is one big security boost. Both have anti-phishing but only time will tell which is doing a better job over the other.

Who needs Internet Explorer 7? Firefox 2.0 is officially out and I'm already using it but I'm still installing IE7. Internet Explorer has got too many hooks within Windows XP that it's impossible to uninstall it without breaking something. Even if I'm not using IE for web surfing, XP still needs it. Besides, there are web sites that simply will not work with other browsers. Might as well update IE to version 7 to make it more secure though it's obviously not totally secure.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 will be out soon. I'm using Release Candidate 3 and it looks good. I like the close button on each tab. I'm not timing it but it feels just as fast as version 1.5. What's very interesting is Undo Close Tab. It's found by right-clicking on the tabs bar. Why? Because it's a time saver compared to hunting for a web site from the history list. It's also useful because of my mouse. Huh? What's a mouse got to do with browser history? My cordless optical mouse has been acting up lately. It's sometimes doing a double-click in place of a single click. So instead of just closing one tab, it closes two. Instead of closing one window, it closes two. Aaaaarrrrggghhhhhh!!! While you're at it, why don't you shut down Windows too? Wait, don't do that!

Alright, already! Everyone and his neighbor and their pets have blogs and I have been intending to do this for a long time so no more excuses! So there. Now what do I put in here?