If I can help it, this is the absolute last time that I'll involve myself in a project that creates a Windows application program for end user consumption as an ISV.

Basically I don't want to involve myself in a Windows application project which will be available to the general public via the internet. The scope of such a project is just too great for an ISV to handle, mainly in the areas of support and testing.

A Windows applicaiton requires much broader test enviroments unlike a web browser which typically just requires you surf your site with the different web browsers.

When something goes wrong and the application crashes, there's just so many things that could be the problem, maybe there's insufficient RAM? hard disk space? Antivirus program? Spyware? As an ISV it's really hard to offer support to the client's target users cause an ISV is typically not in the business of supporting large global deployments.

How's this different from making a program for a client's internal use? For one thing said client would already have it's own IT support infrastructure thus you don't have to worry about the things like helping the user run an antivirus scan, or wheter his RAM is faulty or not. It's much easier to get answers about the system configuration compared to having to get it from your typical home end user.

Yup... this is the last time..

That's the equivalent of saying "We'd like it to work and look exactly the same across every single browser out there" for a Windows application.

It's not a problem writing a Windows application for Win98, .Net 2.0 installs and the programs runs just fine on the OS. The problem is what the client wants the program to do.

A Win98 machine typically has minimal memory, and yet the client wants the UI to look as snazzy as your typical skinned Windows application. So.. no problem I can whip up a skinend application engine, problem is.. what if the user doesn't even have enough RAM to hold all the resources needed to skin the interface?

The worse thing about it is when you try to explain this to the client they just never seem to understand the technical difficulties involved and instead just think the vendor is just trying to worm out of putting more effort into developing the program.

It's been a week now, I think I 'm ready to talk about it now. It all started with me and my friends heading to PC Fair. They all wanted to buy a printer, me? I just wanted to look around. Then we passed by the Samsung booth and saw them selling quite a few types of laser printers.

Then this stack caught my eye.

It was advertising a laser printer for RM199... which all things considered, for a laser printer is well until that day I didn't see one sellling for RM199. So I asked the sales person how much did an extra toner cartridge cost for the printer, he said about RM250. Oh.. you mean I should just buy a few of these now right? :P

But in the end, it was just too alluring, RM199 for a laser printer which my wife could use for most of her document printing. Saving the liquid gold in the ink jet for photos. And one thing lead to another and well..

While we were walking to the car we all mentioned that this was just a bloody impulse buy.. and why the heck did we do it!?!?!

Dear Mi Mi,

If you feel like giving out fake numbers to people so that they don't call and annoy you, please give them some other number other than mine. I really don't like the idea of men with deep voices calling me at 1AM at night looking for you.

I don't like the idea of explaining to my wife why people are calling me at 1AM too!

My Toshiba M200's battery life has dropped drastically, I think it's at the end of it's legs already. With less than an hour's worth of battery life, it just isn't all that useful without a power plug anymore. And since Toshiba wasn't exactly helpful in wanting to provide me with a new one so I had to improvise.

It was PC Fair last weekend and I knew about a stall that sold external battery packs that would always be there and so... behold the glory of my slab of Lithium Ion power!

On the sticker of the slab it says this thing is good for 133WHrs, my notebook's own battery charger has a maximum rating of 60W (15V*4A). If my current draw is at maximum I should get about 2 hours of juice from the slab, but since I'll just throttle the power usage I should be able to get more from it. As an added bonus, it also comes with a USB port which you can plug in your typical USB charge cables for 5V goodness.

One complaint though, the power cable which connects the notebook to the battery is just too damn short. I'm gonna have to hack up a longer one. Also... The damn thing weighs 1.3kgs.