Tag: Technology

Windows 7 Beta

Posted on by Scott

Here are my brief impressions of it so far:

Installation

Requires that Vista be on the machine in order to upgrade to Windows 7 Beta.  Otherwise, you have to do a clean install.  Unfortunately, you have to attempt the illegal upgrade before you get the message that tells you this.  If Microsoft is trying to get people to let go of XP, letting them upgrade from XP directly to Windows 7 might be a good idea.  Otherwise, the install was pretty straightforward.

IE8

Disappointing.  It can’t render http://www.vmware.com correctly, so I couldn’t download VMware Player from the site.  I had a copy on a flash drive fortunately, and was able to install from there.  Firefox works just fine (so far).

Virtual Machine

It looks like there’s some sort of permissions thing preventing me from running them.  Adding the VMWare Player created an additional user on the machine.  When I tried to open the VM I already had, I got some odd sort of permissions error.

Drivers

Windows 7 Beta detected the biometric scanner on the Lenovo T61 I’m using and directed me to the most current driver.  Once I “enrolled” my fingers, it worked just fine.  It didn’t have any trouble at all with the SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2GB I’m using either.

Miscellaneous

The way Windows 7 handles active program icons in the start bar is rather clever, though it still retains the unfortunate multi-function button for logging out, switching users, shutting down, etc.

More impressions later as I play with the operating system more.  This version of the beta doesn’t expire until August 1, 2009.

New Toy

Posted on by Scott

Vacations and holidays are my primary excuses for buying new toys.  Since I’ve got a trip to the American southwest (at least the Utah and Arizona parts) coming up soon, I figured I’d buy a new lens to capture the landscapes and canyons I plan to see.  Since I don’t have any truly wide lenses, I settled on a Tokina 12-24mm for the Nikon D70s I shoot with.

I bought it used on clearance from Penn Camera, which probably saved me at least $100.  I’ve never shot anything as wide as 12mm (I think it’s technically 18mm because of the multiplier effect) before, so we’ll have to see how the vacation shots turn out.

First Impressions of Google Chrome

Posted on by Scott

I started using Google Chrome (hereafter referred to as just “Chrome”) yesterday to see how it compared with Firefox 3 (my current browser of choice).

So far, it does seem faster than Firefox.

I find the user interface to be clean and intuitive.  Particularly nice touches include:

  • The subtle “do you want to save this password” functionality (probably lifted directly from Firefox 3)
  • The default home page (most visited pages, recent bookmarks, recently closed tabs, etc)
  • Combination of location and search textboxes
The last of those changes is perhaps the most important one, because the current UI of both Firefox and IE keep page locationa and search separate.  While you can enter search terms into the location bar and get either search results or an actual page with both Firefox and IE, you wouldn’t guess if from the interface.
As far as how pages look in Chrome, they look the way they should (at least on the sites I visit regularly).  Pages that don’t render properly in Chrome don’t render right in Firefox either.
One thing that seemed odd was how long it took for the bookmarks I imported from IE to show up in Chrome.  They didn’t appear right after I was done installing, but later, after I’d done some browsing.
For now, I miss having plug-ins like FlashBlock in Chrome.  If I still feel that way after another week or two, I’ll stick with Firefox.

More frustration with Alienware

Posted on by Scott

Today I come into the office to work, and find that my machine blue-screened overnight. I figured it was Vista acting up (again), so I restarted. Once the machine is back up, I log in, only to discover that I have no network access.

This is only the latest in a continuing series of problems I’ve had with Alienware’s Area 51 machines. If it wasn’t locking up for no apparent reason, the performance of virtual machines (VMware or Virtual PC) was slow. One cause of at least some of the problems turned out to be incorrect voltage settings for the memory (though I’m not sure how they got out of the factory with that wrong).

We spent about an hour uninstalling and reinstalling drivers and rebooting to see if we could solve the problem ourselves. After those efforts failed, I spent 2 hours on the phone with Alienware (1/2 of which were wasted by their tech support person walking me through things I’d already tried). The one really new thing we tried (installing a new BIOS) didn’t solve the problem either. Alienware has concluded that the motherboard has gone bad and needs replacing. This is a stunningly bad result for a PC less than 2 months old.

Two thumbs down on Alienware and Vista. If you must run some version of Windows, you’d be better off doing it on a Mac.

If you’re wondering how I posted this without a machine with Internet access, the answer is, with my iPhone.

iPhoto Archiving

Posted on by Scott

When I bought my MacBook Pro a couple years ago, I didn’t get the largest hard drive available for it (in retrospect, a mistake). Between my music collection, digital photos, and Parallels PC disk image, 150 GB got close to full quite quickly. As a result, I’d been looking around for a way to archive some content (at least some music and photos) to an external drive to make more room.

I came across this old post that gives you a quick-and-dirty way to archive the photos (even if it doesn’t preserve the libraries).  What’s especially convenient about Time Machine in this case is that if I find a better way to do it, I can recover the old setup from it and then archive properly.

Upgraded to Leopard

Posted on by Scott

I installed it last Wednesday. My first upgrade attempt failed, so I paid a visit to the Tyson’s Corner Apple Store to get some help from the Genius Bar. Apparently the DVD wasn’t clean or something (since the guy cleaned it off), because when I tried archive+install as recommended, there were no problems.  The next day, I picked up a 1TB Western Digital MyBook Home Edition at MicroCenter for $220 + tax so the Time Machine feature would have plenty of room to operate.  It’s definitely as cool as advertised.  I was impressed that when you plug in an unformatted drive, Leopard asks if you want to use for Time Machine.  I was pretty lax about my backups before, so this will be a huge help.

Time to buy an iPhone?

Posted on by Scott

I went to the barbershop on Friday.  During my haircut, I ask my barber how he likes the iPhone.  He doesn’t just like it, he loves it.  I got quite a sales pitch from him.  Then the guy getting his haircut next to me chimes in.  He just got an iPhone as well.  He actually said he’d been thinking about getting a laptop, but found the iPhone did what he needed.Of all the iPhone owners I’ve talked to since it came out (friends, fellow conference attendees, even a guy waiting for the bus in Seattle),  I have yet to hear any complaints.I haven’t caved in and bought one (yet), for a few reasons:

  • I’ve been kind of annoyed with AT&T Wireless lately over dropped calls
  • Don’t really like the idea of a $70/month cellphone bill
  • I’m kinda waiting for the next version of the iPhone (new hardware anyway)

Every day that goes by however, I find I dislike the Motorola Razr I’ve got just a bit more.  The gap between my current monthly cellphone bill and that $70/month is starting to get smaller too (probably too much text messaging).  I’m also not sure I want 3G badly enough to wait months and months for it.