As you may or may not be aware, Microsoft has something of an “open beta” going on for Windows Vista. Basically, a time limited version (good until mid 2007 I believe) known as “Release Candidate 1″ can be signed up for and downloaded for free from their website.
Despite being called a “release candidate”, this product is by no means ready for release. Things do look promising, but there are still a few things that have to be worked out. For one, it’s still got a lot of bugs that need to be ironed out. The interface could use some work as well – some of the changes are good, but others are just terrible. I’d actually prefer if they scrapped the new interface and started again from scratch, but Microsoft’s run out of time, so I’m sure they’ll simply “refine” what they have.
Anyway, debate as to what’s good, bad, ugly, and what needs work has been covered in depth and discussed to death by others. I’ll give you my impressions, as well as why I made the transition from XP to Vista RC1 to Ubuntu Linux.
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Yet another how-to that should apply to most 1989-1991 Sprints, Fireflys, Metros, and Swifts. This was done on a 1.0L 3-cylinder, so those with the 1.3L are out of luck. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take pictures during this procedure, but I’ll try and be as specific as possible. This was not performed on a vehicle with air conditioning or power steering. If you have either of these, there may be more steps involved. Oh, and as with all vehicle work, it may be a good idea to disconnect the battery. After all, you don’t want to lose your hand/arm/life because the car tried to start at the wrong time.
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If you find yourself driving down the road and hear a “crunch crunch crunch” coming from one of the back wheels of your car, there’s a good chance you’ve got bad wheel bearings. Actually, your bearings probably went bad long before you heard the crunching, but as with many other parts, they were nice enough to make a really awful sound to let you know they were preparing to leave you stranded.
Replacing the bearings isn’t a particulary difficult job. If you’ve ever replaced the brakes in your car, you’ve probably got the ability to do the bearings. It’s a job I recently tackled, and I thought I’d share the steps I took in doing so. This was done on a 1991 Chevrolet Sprint, but the process is very likely to be extremely similar (if not exactly the same) for a 1989 or 1990 Pontiac Firefly, Suzuki Swift, or Geo Metro as well. Read more…
For some reason or another, certain things from your past pop into your head at the strangest times. Here’s a program that came with my old Sound Blaster (way back in the day of 386’s and 486’s… back when computers didn’t have onboard sound and you had to actually buy a soundcard for $40-60). Read more…
