Windows 7 on a netbook

Posted on October 13, 2009 by admin

I have an acer aspire one. It is the 9″ model in white. The OS it was shipped with, a variant of XP home, is rather slow. It was actually slow enough that I didn’t like using the netbook. I tried the Ubuntu Netbook Remix and while I liked the speed, there are still too many issues with having a Linux computer. I thought about trying Mint or OSX but could never find a good guide for either.

Finally I was sick of a slow machine that didn’t do much. I wiped the 160GB hard drive and partitioned it to be useful: 40GB for XP Pro, 45GB for Windows 7, and the remainder to be used for something to be later determined. Installation was a breeze. The hardest part was reading the license key that I had written down a month ago. It found all of my drivers and even asked me if I wanted to connect to my home wireless network.

Immediately it updated some drivers and I assume installed updates. My first move was to disable the “pretty” graphics. I want performance, not beauty. So then I started installing the programs I use and trying the Google Apps that I use on a daily basis. I hate to admit it, but it seems faster than my XP machines: with an ATOM single core processor and 1GB of RAM.

Will it run Photoshop, MS Office 2007, and all of the stuff I use at work? Sure, but on the small screen its not very useful. I may try it with the intention of plugging into a big monitor. We’ll see.

Battery life seems to be slightly improved as well. I guess they really did intend on ’7′ running on netbooks!

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Forza2 Tuner Comp 944turbo

Posted on October 7, 2009 by admin

Ran this cool race with a 944 turbo and the following setup. Best time was a 1:32.393 at Sunset Peninsula. At the time of this post: 5th overall!

Lap time proof from the race with a 944 turbo

Lap time proof from the race with a 944 turbo

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Google and Gandhi on October 2, 2009

Posted on October 2, 2009 by admin

As a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, Google has featured the face of Gandhi in their logo today. Today is the day that Gandhi would be 140 years old. Gandhi’s birthday is celebrated in India as the holiday “Gandhi Jayanti” and the day around the world is known as the International day of Non Violence. Gandhi was known for his passive resistance and has influenced a great number civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King. Google’s own philosophy of only doing things that will have a positive effect on society. You can read more on Google’s philanthropic efforts at google.org.

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Forza 3 Demo Review

Posted on September 29, 2009 by admin

Being a huge fan of the original Forza as well as Forza 2, I just had to have the newest edition. In preparation for the official release in a few weeks, I have now replaced my RROD XBOX 360 with a brand new arcade edition and have downloaded the Forza 3 demo.

It is a HUGE download, so plan on it taking a while. I was able to watch an episode of Mad Men while waiting.

Once it booted up I was amazed already wiThu the level of graphics. As soon as I had the chance, I started up a race. For the initial I chose the mini cooper S. It is dog slow. I also chose advanced mode because that is how I race: no traction control, no brake assist, no stability management; just ABS. That car sucked and the best I could do was a 4th in 3 races. Moving along…. Ferrari California. Beautiful car, and a blast to race! I was able to win that race on the first try, but it took some aggressive and creative passing strategy in the alst turn.Next it was on to the 911 GT3 R3 car. WOW. It is fast! I couldn’t keep it on the road and finished dead last.

After losing, I was able to watch a replay and notice the detail of this new game. First off, the demo track is crazy narrow with almost all decreasing radius turns. It has mountain drop offs and cliff sides to deal with. Think back to the Pacific races in the original Need For Speed. What I was most impressed with wasn’t the detail of the actual road surface (complete with cracks in pavement and bumps) but rather the uneven edges of the pavement. It is just like one of those ancient roads! I also raced with the in car view and LOVED the detailed interiors.

I also noted that the car dynamics are much more realistic. Changing to the race car, you can actually tell that it is a race car with the way that it skips over the pavement and is much more unsettled than the street cars.

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Why gmail went down for the afternoon of Sept 1

Posted on September 2, 2009 by admin

Gmail is a fantastic service. Even better than gmail though, is gmail on your own domain name. I work with about a dozen domains with mail hosted on gmail. When they all suddenly went down yesterday it was a big deal to me. That is a lot of users wondering why their mail won’t load.
Google answered the question of why soon after the 100 minute outage was repaired. As it turns out, they were in the midst of a hardware upgrade and did not realize that the load on gmail was as high as it is. While the servers were all able to handle the issue, the routers handling the traffic management were overloaded. IMAP and POP service was available, but outlook sync and web access were down. Google talk and and other apps were up as well.
My response to google: durring my workday, you have been down for a little more than 2 hours in the 5 years that I have been using gmail. Good work! Kudos on constantly upgrading services and servers. Not having to host mail on normal servers makes it all worthwhile.

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Backdate to XP with your brand new coputer

Posted on August 26, 2009 by admin

This seems to be an increasing problem with many businesses and individuals: new computers are needed, but so is Windows XP. For home, people don’t like change. It is why Linux in the home is still a long way off (with people being aware of it). In business, XP is needed by many software packages. XP has been around for a long time. I think I have personally been running it since 2003.

Along came Vista: I was an early adopter myself to learn the ins and outs, but have switched back to XP due to my own software needs.

Before anyone makes the smart remark that one could build their own XP machine or order from __________ with XP installed: I know. I believe that the problem stems from the price of DDR2 memory. A computer running XP with service pack 3 runs pretty nice with 1GB of memory and runs really nicely with 2GB. XP doesn’t do a whole lot with more than 3GB of memory. On top of this is the fact that people have somehow been sold on the idea that they need more memory. I have no idea why your e-mail reading, solitaire playing grandmother needs 4GB of RAM in her new $599 Gateway laptop with HDMI out. OK, there it is: 99% of people don’t need the power in the new PCs but the other less than 1% do. That 1% is also the group that wants the latest and greatest technology because “one day they might want to edit a home movie on their PC”.

So now that we have established that lots of people need XP for their existing software and that most people have no need for anything more we need to figure out what to do.

First off, you need an XP license. You can buy a new one from someplace like newegg or tigerdirect or you can probably find a way to use the XP license from that 5 year old computer you are replacing.  I always suggest XP Professional. Its better.

Now, if you bought more of a business line machine from a reputable name this shouldn’t be very difficult. Their biggest customers’ IT support teams have voiced to them the need for XP support. The problem seems to be in most off the shelf consumer level PCs. Brands like HP, Compaq, eMachines, Gateway and Sony to name a few. These are the computers with all of the “fancy new parts” that the sales guys tell you about.

If you’re still shopping, check with the manufacturer to see if they have XP drivers before you buy.

If you have already purchased the thing and are now stuck with an XP installation that has no sound, ugly video, no network connection, and has a really loud fan: google it from a working computer. Find your model number and search for “XP drivers”. Chances are that someone else has done it before and posted about it. My particular case (Compaq CQ60) required me to make a custom XP install disk with SATA drivers slipstreamed into it (future blog post about that).

This gathering of drivers took me a few hours to find them all and get them working, but now the computer is running XP quite nicely!

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Fix XBox 360 Red Ring

Posted on August 26, 2009 by admin

The Red Ring (3 light) normally indicates a cooling issue. My console was one of the release units manufactured October 2005 and was one of what I believe to be last survivors of those until I got the red ring.

If your console is still under warranty, you can send it back to MS and they will repair/replace it. The problem though is that they don’t fix the issue causing the overheating: the X-Clamps. Microsoft used a sort of spring in the shape of an X to put tension on the heatsinks for the CPU and GPU. Its a great concept except that the material they used in the X Clamp seems to weaken over time, especially under the heat of the console. When this happens, the pressure on the processor heat cores becomes uneven, the thermal paste may be forced to one spot (and make a mess), and the heat transfer it was designed for doesn’t happen.

Origninally, I was going to do a custom case for my 360 where it would have a better fan and better airflow but after lots of reading Idecided to just try to fix it with screws and get rid of the dreaded X-Clamp. I had to borrow a special tool from a friend to open the case, and then used some torx bits to get to the bottom of the motherboard. Its a pain to get to, but with the tool and a quick search on youtube its not that bad.

The fix took about 45 min to do. I used arctic silver heat sink compound and a screw kit that I bought on ebay for $6. I tried my local hardware store, but the nylon washers they had were too thick and I didn’t get the right spacing. I would guess it is about 2mm, but that may be too much. The kit worked for me though. If you’re nervous about doing it yourself, I’ll do it for you for $40, but can’t gaurantee that it was the heat causing your RROD in the first place.

UPDATE: fixed system ran fine watchign DVDs and netflix for a few weeks. Playing Forza 2 brought back the RROD though. I then tried several other methods, but in the end will be replacing it with a new console (jasper chipset).

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Search Engine Indexing in a hurry

Posted on August 5, 2009 by admin

About a week ago, I found out that a new job board was going up. This isn’t out of the ordinary to hear, but this one had urgency to get out in order to try some new things.

Immediately, I went to work trying to find keywords, making a site map and submitting the site to the big 3 search engines.

Only a few days later, Google Analytics hasn’t shown much activity but we discovered today that someone has posted a job! Woohoo!

This is just proof that with a little planning, a site can and will get activity soon after publishing it.

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Yahoo and Microsoft join forces…finally

Posted on July 29, 2009 by admin

After months of negotiations and failed agreements, it appears that there is finally a deal happening between Yahoo! and Microsoft. In the end it appears that Yahoo’s search will die. Current details are listed below, with more details to be released later today in a conference call.

Searchengineland.com reports the following details on the deal:

  • The term of the agreement is 10 years
  • Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms [Note from Danny Sullivan: Exclusive suggests Yahoo itself won't be able to use the technology or develop it, which means after 10 years, what's left probably isn't that useful]
  • Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.
  • Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.
  • Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.
  • Yahoo! will innovate and “own” the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology. [Note from Danny: AOL used similar words about how it would somehow make Google-powered search "better" despite not owning the technology. People still went to Google].
  • Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.
    • Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.
    • Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.
  • Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country. [Note from Danny: What's the amount? And this is far shorter than I'd have expected].
  • At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million.
  • The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.

This brings back some memories of my first time on “the net” in my “tech arts” class in the spring of 1995. David Mease, Ryan Vaughn and I had access to the school’s brand new Apple PowerPC. It was the only computer in the school with internet access. Ryan had somehow heard of yahoo.com stating “some kids from MIT built a directory of internet pages”, so we used that as our launch pad and slowly explored the ‘net with our cutting edge 14.4 modem.

Yahoo isn’t going away, but some of its magic and individuality will be mere memories.

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Ubuntu 9.04 released

Posted on April 28, 2009 by admin

In the past few months I have noticed a number of things about clients’ computers. The first though is what a pain they are to use. Why are there so many menus and folders to go through just to get something small done? It’s windows. Enough MS bashing for now…

Last week the latest edition of Ubuntu was released. Normally, I don’t care. This time though, there were a number of articles about how fast it is. Being a netwbook user these days, it seemed like a good enough reason to try it. My first install was actually done on a virtual machine using VMware ESX server. This was just to see how it was different. It is fast, and more consumer friendly. It also has loads of software to help you make the move from windows. Pretty nice.

So then I decided to try it on my netbook. I went with the actual netbook remix and I have to say that I like it. Everything is easy to get to. I still need to install a flash player as well as VLC and some codecs, but it is blazingly fast. My battery life seems to have improved with it as well. I went with a dual boot setup and it resized my drives in order to work. Pretty nice if you ask me! For most of my netbook needs, it is perfect. The fast book makes the mini-pc even more convenient. So far, all that have seen it seem to really like it. I guess my only complaint is that it doesn’t already have support for many media codecs until you install them.

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