When Microsoft Update thinks I’m using a Mac. Yes, last night I went to get some updates from Microsoft Update and I got the message…

Thank you for your interest in obtaining updates from our site.

This website is designed to work with Microsoft Windows operating systems only.
To find updates for Microsoft products that are designed for Macintosh operating
systems, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/mac/.

Nice. I was using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP MCE SP3.

It knows which system I’m using from the “user agent” but one of many websites which displays your current user agent information, showed that I was happily using Windows. Weird.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; WTClient2)

Weirder still was that if I used IE Tab in Firefox, the page would appear without a problem. As IE Tab simply uses Internet Explorer but in Firefox, it shouldn’t have been any different. Again, I checked the user agent and that was the same as running it under IE normally.

Double weird.

Anyway, after a reboot even IE Tab stopped working.

Googling the issue found that most people seemed to have Spyware or Virus’. In panic, I did a check but found nothing. However, I also came across a Microsoft blog on how to reset all of IE 7’s settings - I tried that and Microsoft Update is now working again.

I’ve earned a bit of extra money recently from some web ventures, so I’ve been able to buy some thing that I’ve planning for a while.

First of all, it’s my wife’s 30th birthday in a months time. I’d planned to get her an Asus EEE PC. Stock seems to be quite variable, so when I saw one in stock at a reasonable place I ordered one.

I’ve also been after a new scanner too. My eye was on an EPSON V350, which has a film loader built into the lid.

After cocking up delivery, and accidentally ordering next day, instead of free (and a cock-up that cost me £8. Grumble) I received both yesterday (the former now hidden away, naturally).

So, what do I think?

First of all, the EEE PC. It drew quite a crowd and work and everybody loved it. I have no intentions to install Windows on it, but leave the standard Linux install on it instead. I’ve performed updates to the existing software and set up the default settings. It reads all my USB keys and SD cards (including SDHC), including the Windows files that are on them. To my surprise it read a key formatted as NTFS (this is not usual in Linux). So, once home, I tried to get it to access my NTFS formatted NAS drive… it worked! She will now have access to a half Terabyte drive wirelessly, including my entire CD collection. Fantastic.

The Asus is easy to type on and incredibly easy to use. The only gripe is that every time you restart the machine it doesn’t automatically re-connect to your wireless network - you have to go and select it again and re-connect. After such a quick boot up time it’s disappointing that you’re then way-laid by such a simple thing.

The box doesn’t have a huge amount in - CD’s and DVD’s with manuals and Linux builds on, a really smart power supply (with the transformer on the plug, rather than a box half way along the cable), and a black slip-case.

Recommended? God, yes.

Now onto the EPSON V350 Photo scanner. What can I say? It’s a scanner. However, it does have a neat film feed in the lid which will perfectly scan 35mm film. I’ve not tried it yet but reviews say it’s excellent. However, I did get a chance to scan a single item - something my previous scanner struggled with. It’s a certificate in a sealed frame. My old scanner had problems with reflections in the frames glass. The EPSON? Perfect. And damn quick too.

Lots of software too including a copying facility that, matched with a printer, will turn it into a photocopier.

My only bug-bear (and there has to be one) is the amount of power it consumes when not in use. The alternative is to have it turn off with the PC, but that means the scanner making a noise and calibrating each time I turn the PC back on again. My solution was simple - leave it unplugged. But I’d like to think that manufacturers can think of better alternatives to this.

For some time I’ve been struggling with a problem with my Google Maps API - an error that will sometimes appear in Internet Explorer.

Anyway, I did some research yesterday and found a number of possible solutions. They all revolve around the idea that IE doesn’t like you displaying the map until the page has completed.

The three solutions I found were…

1. Load the map script using an onload event
2. Use the setTimeout javascript function to delay the execution of the code
3. Move the javascript to the end of the HTML

I used the third one and it now appears to have cured the problem. Hoorah!

XP SP3 is due to pop-up on Automatic Updates very soon.

In the meantime you can download it directly from Microsoft. This is the final, release version of the SP.

As well as rolling up past fixes, this adds new features ported from Vista and early reviewers suggest that it increases performance by up to 10%.

Me? I’m installing this as soon as possible. Who needs Vista?

After spending much time over the last couple of months looking at improving website performance I took the plunge and even bought a book on the subject - I find reading technical material in book form far easier than online.

Anyway, High Performance Web Sites by Steve Souders is recommended.

Now that the plug is out of the way, I am happy to report that on a test version of the BMTG site, I’ve finally achieved my goal - the best YSlow score I’m likely to achieve - a grade B (88%). The remaining 12% is down to not having a CDN and due to Google Analytics not having an expires header. Anyway, this translates to a 19% increase in speed compared to the current site.

The current site (launched a couple of weeks ago) had massive improvements made to it but only achieved a grade D (64%) score. The previous version of the site was a grade F.

The changes I’ve made were those that weren’t covered by PHP Speedy - namely having an expires header for image files and turning off eTags. This was acheived by the following lines added to my .htaccess file…

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 6 months"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 6 months"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 6 months"
Header unset ETag
FileETag None