Quickie - Computer Wipes Battle

Occasionally on one of my many trips through the hallowed halls of Best Buy, I pick up a container of Falcon monitor wipes. They deal with the unmentionable mystery grunge that builds up on, and inside the computers that I deal with. Even the migratory blorg that ends up on the table after venturing inside to check dark and dusty innards, can be contained. They do much more than just monitors it seems.

Falcon wipes are actually wet, and useful. But on this occasion they were out, and Office Depot nearby had a similar product. It's only wipes, what could be the problem there? The Office Depot brand are very dry and not very useful. You cannot really clean anything with them, just brush things around. I suppose if you were super paranoid about damaging a surface these would do, but the material is not even very soft, so you could end up scratching what ever it was anyway.

Both sets are usually around $7 a pack. I never buy them when they come with the compressed air container, as I don't want to blow pieces off the motherboard by accident. I prefer the close the eyes, blow hard, and try to convince yourself you have not inhaled all manner of someone-else's-prehistoric-household-airborne-crapola induced lung death method.


Brought to you in association with "This didn't seem like it would take very long when I first thought of posting such a small thing" department of Work Avoidance.

HDTV over the air antenna horror story "The TV24746 Chronicles"

Bought a GE Branded, Futura TV24746 internal HDTV antenna, along with an external Futura TV24769 (there was no information regarding this model anywhere that I could find) to power some of my HDTV screens. Getting rid of standard definition DirecTV Tivo means I can have full HD programs for free, rather than pay a fee (extra for local) for TV which I am not currently watching anyway. But that's another story.

To get to the point. The GE Branded Futura TV24746 antenna is terrible. I tested on three different TV sets, in three different locations, three times. Every single time it was worse than the old $12 RCA ANT121 that I had a few of lying around.

Not much more to say really, except I am not even going to bother unboxing the Futura TV24769 because it is nearly the same exact model, but it's supposed to go outside. I don't want to kill myself while trying to hang this thing outside somewhere, just to get crappy TV non-reception at my own funeral. Sorry GE, these are poopy.

The test I did was as follows. Attach the antenna, do a scan of the channels, try watching the channels. Repeat three times. Then place the other antenna in exactly the same place and do it again. Every time the old antenna performed better. I even tried to give the TV24746 a break, by scanning using the ANT121, then swapping them over, so there were potentially more channels for it to try to receive. No good. To make things worse, a lot of the channels the TV24746 did 'find' when it was used for the scan, were simply blank when I tried to watch them. Like it knew there was something there, but wasn't able to make it out. With digital being pretty much an all-or-nothing way of viewing, I was surprised to see a large percentage of even the channels that the TV24746 did claim to find, freezing and messing up. No ghosting and fuzzy image, just large green squares and partially updating images (as is normal with poor HD reception). Reminded me of a crashed arcade machine.

Another thing to note, is that the ANT121 wasn't made for HDTV reception. It's not magical, as any antenna will get you SOME HD signals, but it just goes to show how terrible the made-for-HD TV24746 antenna really is in comparison. The quality of the analog channels was completely useless too. When it (quite often) failed to find the digital version of a local station, it left you with a totally unwatchable fuzzy mess. Every analog station I found using the TV24746 was not watchable at all. Now I know that like wireless internet reception, TV reception is very dependent on your environment, but this antenna just has no redeeming qualities. So before you rush out to buy that latest and greatest antenna, go get that old set of rabbit ears and give them a try, you may be surprised.



The TV24746 failed even against the ANT121, which costs a fraction of the price.


Futura TV24746 connectors. Even powered, and being able to connect a higher grade cable, it still just fails.