Rants and Raves

Timothy C. Hain, MD

Professor of Neurology, Otolaryngology, and Physical Therapy/Human Movement Science, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago IL, USA.

EMAIL ADDRESS: t-hain@northwestern.edu

This space holds helpful information about various groups and companies that Dr. Hain has discovered by trial and error. Perhaps if enough of us do this, searches on these companies will bring up more relevant information.

Rants

• ADR data recovery -- disorganized, expensive and poor customer service.
• Au.D. degree. We are unenthusiastic about audiologists with 3-4 years of training calling themselves "doctors" in clinical settings.
• Banks
  • Bank of America - -clueless and site doesn't work.
  • Bank Financial FSB -- also clueless
• Elsevier exploits authors. Actually most publishers exploit authors. I will add more companies as I publish more chapters.
• Fed-X home delivery -- an express delivery service in Chicago that asks you to pick up packages 10 miles away (in Bedford Park) and takes mondays off (?). I guess express mail doesn't apply to monday in a little market like Chicago ?
• Linksys WRE54G -- doesn't work either.
• http://www.myworldphone.com/ -- awful customer service. Fake return policy.
• Software
  • Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0-- crashes routinely. Apparently Adobe didn't include all of the essential elements.
  • Asterisk telephony-- not ready for the big time yet. Efilmlite radiology reviewing program
  • Easymail plus mailing database program
  • Endnote-8 -- crashes routinely While endnote 7 is a nice program, endnote 8 doesn't work. Endnote 10 is OK though.
  • Microsoft Money Essentials -- garbage software -- avoid this one.
  • Microsoft Active-Sync -- avoid devices that use this (like the Blackjack-II) too.
  • Ulead Movie Factory 4.0 -- doesn't work. It is evidently hard to make functional movie software.

So-so

• Ad blocking using the "hosts" file -- much faster browsing and less annoyance! sometimes gets in the way.
• Brother MFC-8820D multifunction printer, built like a tank, but has many major software problems. There are workarounds.
• Hotel Reviews
  • Biltmore Resort in Phoenix, AZ -- no coffee here
  • Flamingo hotel in Las Vegas -- no coffee here either -- because of terrorists (?!)
  • Hotel 140 in Boston -- shouldn't it be "Hotel 'Y' ?
  • New Hankyu hotel in Osaka -- lack of coffee is the least of this hotel's problems.

Raves

• Irfanview -- awesome little program to display and downsize graphic files -- far far better than Microsoft's stuff.
• Electric Sheep Screensaver -- this is an awesome and free piece of fluff !
• Foxit pdf reader/writer -- very fast and better feature set than Adobe Reader.
• Roboform -- online password manager -- very useful for those of us with 100's of passwords.
• Too hot to Handel(concert)