Digital Impulses

Re-instaling Vista: Using the SP1 DVD I got at the Microsoft HHH Global Launch Event

I just finished re-installing Vista on my main production machine in my office.  It took about 30 minutes and I just now started poking around the interface and desktop,

Depressingly enough, the two items I was having an issue with in the Device Manager are *still* causing problems, andf Vista appears to not know what to do with them.  I was holding out hope that since this version of Windows that I installed includes SP!, that it would have drivers for those two devices.

Sigh.

We'll see in the coming days how the machine handles and what I can do to resolve these problems.  Considering all of the issues I have had with the front USB ports on this box, I suspect that I have motherboard issues that Vista is not going to be able to fix.

I need a new computer.  And this time, I am going to go strictly OEM.  I am tired of the issues involved with building your own box.  It will be either a Dell or an HP, and as soon as I get it in the door and plugged in, I intend to strip down the hard drive to bare metal and re-install Vista myself, thereby ridding myself of any crapware that might have been included.

Interesting times lie ahead, most definitely.

Bert's iBoss / iPhantom issues with Comcast

I just got off the phone with Bert, who stated to me that he is having issues with his Phantom technologies devices, the iBoss and the iPhantom. He tells me that last night, he started having trouble with his Internet connection and none of the remedies he tried helped.

We discussed a couple of possible solutions, but seeing as to how he was on the way to the factory with Adrian (Adrian works part-time at the factory now), there was not a whole lot of solution implementing to be done.

I then thought about the problem for a little bit and realized that the issue might have resolved itself overnight if it was related to a database corruption problem.  So I told Bert to call his wife and have her attempt to connect to the Internet to see if the problem is still happening.

Meanwhile, I went to the http://www.iphantom.com/ support site and created a support ticket (trouble ticket # DIV-443087) for someone on their end to start working the issue and get back to Bert with a possible solution.

This is being documented here for the purposes of review a year from now or whenever.

UPDATE: 1435 hrs.  I just spoke with Bert who states that his Internet connection is back up and running flawlessly.  He received an Email from Phantom Technology telling him:

"...There has been a temporary routing issue that has been identified and resolved which affected a few users. This has been resolved and everything should now be up and running..."

So, I was right!  They had routing corruption and it affected users whose iBosses/iPhantoms were phoning home to get updates to their local databases.

Awesome.  One more technical issue identified and put to bed.  Nice!

A nice Sunday after the Wedding

So, I spent a good part of the morning and early afternoon today working on the pictures of my brother Pete's wedding.

I gotta say, I love how absolutely trouble-free it has been to transfer pictures from my Nikon D40 to my computer, be it on XP or in Vista.

Editing Pete's wedding pictures
My current rookie workflow is to create a folder on my Server's external drive that I am dedicating just to media and then manipulate the pictures once I have them safely transferred there.  Once I had all of the images off the Nikon D40, it was time to get them tagged.

I am excited at the possibilities offered by developing a real discipline in getting images tagged the instant they come off the camera.  I think the real trick is to split the task into manageable, bite-sized tasks, using multiple folders created by picture theme to tags bunches of images at a time.

Once the images are tagged, doing a search for a place or someone's name, having just those pictures show up in the search results really rocks.  I am really having fun with this digital photography hobby I am filling my time with.

Printing a CD Cover.  NOT.
After getting the pictures from the wedding sorted out, it was time to try and print to a CD.  Hah. In short, all I managed after nearly two hours was to get extremely frustrated and pent up with the desire to just throw my printer into the middle of the street.

It simply *REFUSED* to print on a CD, and all I can think is that the mechanism to pull the CD Tray in is broken.  time for a new printer.  I am not going to invest any more time in this.  I hand-wrote a title on the CD's and left it as a bad job.  *sigh*.

Windows Movie Maker in Windows Vista
I should note that I created a "movie" slide show of the images using the new version of Windows Movie Maker included in Windows Vista.  It was utterly simple to do and added value to the CD's that I turned over to my brother and his new bride.

1408
After that, my boy, his girlfriend and I took off for the movies in El Segundo and stopped by Pacific Theaters to see 1408, a horror flick starring John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson and Mary McCormack.

The movie was typical nowadays horror fare with a couple of genuinely scary moments and a so-so ending.  All in all, it was OK and served as a nice ending to a hectic weekend.  In any case, the kids enjoyed themselves and that's what matters ultimately, right?  Right.

Alberto's Fine Furniture: 2 hrs work

This afternoon after work, I went directly to Alberto's Fine Furniture to help him get up and running on a NEW PC (HP Compaq tower, 3.0 Ghz, 512 MB RAM, 100 GB HD, integrated sound, graphics & ethernet, CD Burner/DVD Player) that he bought last weekend from Best Buy in Hawthorne, CA.

Speakers and a Printer
When I arrived, The PC had already been setup and he needed to connect his old speakers and install an  HP All-IN-One Fax, Scanner, Copier Printer that he had there already.  I connected the speakers and installed the printer without problems on Windows Vista Home Basic, the OS that came pre-installed on the PC that he bought.

Internet Connection
Afterwords, he wanted assistance getting connected to the Internet via D-I-A-L U-P (!!) via a company called "PeoplePC Online", which were offering basic 56K dial-up service for $5.43 a month.  90 minutes and 3 aborted billing sign-ups later, I determined that this software simply doesn't play nice with Windows Vista and there is nothing for it.

I decided to call it a night and told the owner that I would research alternatives for him and get back to him with a better connectivity option.

NOTE: I need to put this project to bed already, as I have been working on it since 3/3/07 and I still have not seen a dime from it.

Microsoft: Launch Across America

Took a day off from work today to attend an 'IT Pro Track' Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007 System launch in Anaheim, CA.

The main lure to trudge the 35 miles out to Orange County in the rain and fog was the FREE copy of Office 2007 Professional and Microsoft Office Groove that we got just for attending the 4 hour session. As it was, they started handing out the copies of Office 2007 at the 11:00 AM break, so I was able to scoot out of there early and het a jump on the traffic.

They presenter was nice and funny enough to avoid total stupor, but he did seem a little ill prepared.  Regardless, the info presented was good to file away for later.

At 13:31, I am sitting at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Manhattan Beach using the AT&T WiFi connection ($3.95 for 2 hours) to blog about the event I attended.

It was a good day today.  :>)

Installing Windows Vista on a 3-year Laptop: A Wasted effort

So this evening, while watching TV at my mom's house, I decided to see what Windows Vista would be like running on a 3-year old Fujitsu E2010 laptop purchased in June of 2004 from notebookshop.com in Cerritos, CA.

First, the hardware specs of this Laptop:

• Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.0GHz (with SpeedStep® Technology)
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• 1 GB DDR266 RAM
• 30 GB Hard Disk (Ultra DMA/100 and S.M.A.R.T. Support)
• 14" XGA TFT Color screen (Max resolution: 1024x768)
• Internal ATI Graphics, 32/64/128 MB selectable with 3D graphics Accelerator and MPEG-2 Support (for DVD)
• Internal Speakers (Stereo)
• Integrated V.90 modem & 10/100 Base-T LAN
• 802.11b Wi-Fi compliant module (Optional)
• CD-R/RW Drive (Swappable device bay)
• External USB FDD (bundled)
• IrDA 1.1 (Max 4Mbps)
• Up to 2.7* hours (Standard Battery Pack Li-Ion 14.4V 3800 mAH)
• Approximately 2.65kg (with Weight Saver)

According to the Windows System Assessment Tool, the laptop was rated a "1.0" on a scale of 1 - 5, because of the low-end, integrated graphics.  Microsoft was not kidding when they stated that Windows Vista requires a high-end graphics card in order to run Aero, the new GUI included in all versions of Windows Vista except for the Home basic edition.

Regardless, I really wanted to demonstrate Windows Vista to a friend (although now, because of the sub-par graphic capabilities, one of the neater parts of the upgrade, the Aero interface, would not be present), so I trudged forward with the install and hoped for the best.

After inputting some basic information, I wiped my C: partition and proceeded to do a "clean install" of Windows Home Premium (Note: the install was performed via my Windows Vista Ultimate DVD; all versions are included on the DVD -- the version you are installing is determined by the product key that you provide).

Since I had not yet purchased a valid product key from Microsoft via their "Windows Vista Family Discount", I skipped the entering of a product key and did not activate Windows, as I figured that 30 days would be enough time to decide if I can live with Windows Vista on this under-powered notebook.

As was to be expected, Vista installed without issue and works fine for the most part, except for the fact that Aero is not present and thus most of the "eye candy" is therefore absent also. 

Games
Attempting to play any of the new games included with Windows Vista gets you a large pop-up box in the middle of the screen with a rather dire warning that graphics performance does not meet the minimum requirements and thus performance will suffer.

Conclusion
Graphics card strength is the single biggest factor affecting the performance of Windows Vista on any platform.  All in all, the machine runs well enough to be serviceable, but I am leaning towards popping Win XP Pro back on here as soon as my buddy is able to put what passes for Windows Vista on this notebook through its paces.

Windows Vista Launch Party: Ho-Hum

Monday, January 29, 2007:  Attending the midnight Windows Vista Launch Party at Comp-USA
Just returned from attending a rather uninspired "Windows Vista Launch Party" at the Comp-USA store in Redondo Beach, CA which is the same store that I went to for the Windows 95, Windows 98, & Windows XP launch parties.

My son and I arrived there a few minutes after 11 P.M. and decided to browse the product aisles for a while to kill some time. Near the entrance to the store, they had cookies and drinks as refreshments and bunches of balloons hanging from different sections of the roof.

Eventually, we wandered over to the Operating Systems aisle and after a few moments, I made the decision to go with the $399 full-meal-deal, non-upgrade, black-boxed edition of Windows Vista Ultimate.

The rest of the time until 12:00 midnight was spent over at the big screen TV pavilion in the store where we sat and ooohed and aahed at the incredibly vibrant colors and sharply detailed pictures on the $2,0000-$3,000 LCD and Plasma television sets on sale.  While we were there, we were joined by my cousin Alex who had come to see what all the hoopla with Vista was about.

A few minutes after 12, I picked up a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 MCE Kit TV Tuner card to purchase along with Vista, so that I can use the Media Center features of Vista Ultimate.  Aside from a 15-minute wait at the checkout line due to a less than clued-in cashier, little else of note happened. 

Arriving home a little before 1:00 A.M.,  I decided to call it a night, as I had to work in the morning and decided to postpone the install of Vista until later tonight.

Windows Vista has launched: The Wow Starts Now

Today, Monday, January 29, 2007 @ At 1437 hrs, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stood on stage in Madison Square Garden in New York City and have officially launched Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 System.

Learn more here:

• Microsoft
• Windows Vista Home Page
• Microsoft Office 2007 System Home Page