Richard

I tried the Facebook chat in WLM a short while back and found that it incorrectly reported that people had just logged out, only for a few seconds later to show them logged back in again. This would spam the main window.

Even more annoying, when someone is "logged out" of Facebook, the input window in WLM is locked so you cannot type anything. So you start typing, they log out, you don't realise and continue typing (but nothing appears on the screen) and a few seconds later they log back in again and your typing continues. You end up having a sentence which is missing a chunk of text.

I went back to Digsby.

It's worth noting that the article seems to mix up AutoRun and AutoPlay - and that they are two different things.

AutoRun looks for an autorun.inf file on removable media and, if found, follows the instructions to execute a program (so for example, to start up the installer).

AutoPlay looks at the contents of the removable media and then presents the user with a list of possible actions to perform based on the contents of the media (for example, view pictures using a viewer).

Because AutoPlay uses the contents of the autorun.inf file to present the user the option of executing a program on the media, people (unsurprisingly) often get it muddled up.

In short, the difference between AutoRun and AutoPlay is that AutoRun would blindly run an application whereas AutoPlay presents the user with a list of possible options to perform.

You can get this today with Firefox and the "Webmail Notifier" plugin. Best of all, it works with more email providers than just Gmail (including Facebook).

Am I the only one (Firefox 3.6.12 on Windows) that has to reload the Download Squad page to get the comments to appear?

This reminds me of playing Biplanes on the Amiga back in 1991.

I used to work for a carrier (outside of the States) and it isn't impossible to tell if you're using tethering by examining your data.

As an example, if you try to connect to the Windows Update service.

Looks like they are using the Apple trick of pricing.

That is, put out a suggestion of a stupidly expensive price (up to $10) and then announce at launch that the price will be $4.99.

Everyone thinks they got it for a bargain rather than questioning whether $5 a show is a realistic price given the cost of a box set.

And, like all the other themes, they are really ugly.

I'm all for minimalism, small compact websites and fast loading times but Google really should consider hiring some people who know how to put a good UI together.

Here is a suggestion, get it to announce the name of the person calling or texting you. Useful if you're listening to music as you cannot normally see the screen.

I was thinking the same thing. I moved from Digsby to Pidgin as a trial and found that it took about 2 hours to get everything working the way I wanted.

Which seems stupid considering all I wanted was MSN, Facebook chat, a decent set of alert notifications and a UI that didn't look horrible.

In the end I gave up and went back to Digsby. It isn't perfect, but I have far better things to do with my life than faff around getting an IM client to work nicely.

How about fixing Windows Backup so that it doesn't run out of disk space and fail even though you've told it to manage disk space automatically?