ulyssesonline.com

Here’s the skinny on Toyota’s stick gas pedal problem.

Between 2006 and November 2009, there were a total of 5 deaths and 17 injuries in 13 Toyota vehicle crashes officially confirmed to involve unintended acceleration.

Four of those deaths occurred in a single incident: the August 2009 crash that killed an off-duty California Highway patrolman and his family in a Lexus.

The stuck-pedal recall of 2.3 million vehicles announced last week affects Toyota’s 2009-2010 RAV4, Corolla and Matrix models; the 2005-2010 Avalon; 2010 Highlander; 2007-2010 Tundra and the 2008-2010 Sequoia; and some 2007-2010 Camrys (only those with gas pedal assemblies made by a specific Toyota supplier; your dealer can check). No Lexus or Scion models are involved.

A Toyota spokesman has said that the carmaker is very close to announcing a solution to the issue for cars here in the U.S. Toyota still needs to get regulatory approval for a proposed repair in the U.S. and in Europe before a fix can be made.

While doing research for a Nikon 50mm lens, I found out that Nikon offers two types of lenses, the G and D. I found this forum discussing in detail the differences between the two types.

Essentially the G is the cheaper one of the two since it’s made of cheaper plastic. The G also doesn’t come with an aperture ring. You’ll have to set the aperture settings in your camera’s body. This means, you can’t use the G on older cameras.

I’ve been interested in acquiring a 50mm prime lens to go with my D90 camera. A 50mm lens, I think, is ideally suited for portraits, low light and bookeh photography. Speaking of forums, Dpreview is still one of my favorites. Although, I’m not a frequent visitor.

A recent article from CNNMoney stated that as many as 31% of Windows users have reported problems upgrading to Windows 7. Most of the problems are with the installation and migration of data.

One common gripe, experienced by 9% of installers, is that the half-hour to an hour-long upgrade process gets to the “62% completed” point and then freezes. It’s a problem that Microsoft is aware of, and can be fixed by rebooting the computer, going into advanced settings, and typing in a code that instructs the computer to ignore plug-ins.

Here’s the top 10 list of common problems:

1. Problems with installation – 31%
2. Missing applets or components – 26%
3. Aero theme is not running – 14%
4. DVD drive not found – 8%
5. Hidden extensions – 6%
6. Too many minidumps – 6%
7. Aero snap problems – 3%
8. iPhone won’t sync with Windows 7 – 2%
9. Custom icons get changed with new theme – 2%
10. Taskbar problems – 1%

If you are thinking of using Windows 7, you are better off not upgrading. The ideal is to get a system that already has Windows 7 installed. If you have Windows Vista now, opt for a clean installation. Backup all your data to a USB hard drive, install, and restore your applications and documents.