August 18, 2006

Leopard, the Next Big Flop

Well, at least in part. I watched the WWDC 2006 Keynote today as there was nothing else to do at work, plus I wanted to see the Mac crash. Needless to say, while it does look quite impressive, I don't really see it doing quite as well as they would probably like. They showed all the users there all these wonderful statistics, pictures and demos, but if one would stop and think about everything that was shown, you may realize the same things. One thing that I do have to admit though, it looks like Leopard will be quite impressive.

First, let me point out that I use a Mac, although not primarily. I mainly use Windows Vista and FreeBSD, although mainly Vista. I'm expecting that this will probably receive a ton of Mac fanatic comments and how I'm wrong and everything. It's expected and I've learned that anyone that puts up any comment against Mac will likely receive this. The same basic thing goes for those that are Windows fanatics or Linux fanatics, it's just something that is sort of expected. It's not that Leopard or Macs in and of themselves are bad, just that everything about them is meant to look like it's the best thing to happen to the electronics/computer world ever, and even the smallest things are blown out of proportion.

With that out of the way, lets get on with the reasons why Apple is going to have a bunch of short-comings with Leopard. First thing that is going to hurt it is that it's going to show up after Vista arrives. Even if it is going to be better, I don't know yet, it is still going to be behind by a few months, maybe more. Time is always a factor, and the sooner you can release something, the better off you are going to be. This holds true for nearly everything. The world is full of impulse buyers that want the latest and greatest when the get an upgrade. Many people will be upgrading their computers, and with the promise of a new operating system being closer for Windows over Mac, that is going to help Microsoft.

The next thing that I feel is going to hurt them, at least in the long run is the big new program featured in Leopard, Time Machine. Constant backups are great, we'd all love to have them, and Time Machine is a great idea. I'd love to be able to run the program myself, or something similar. Now what is wrong with Time Machine? Well, as we all know, backups take space, lots of space. So, lets say that I'm using my Mac that has Leopard on it for video or movie editing. I have a camera with a DV tape and a few hours of video that I need to edit. Well, to import that, it's going to take quite a lot of space. I work on my project and in the process of that, the system does one of the auto-backups that are performed via Time Machine. I finish my project and delete all the junk I don't want, but those files stay in the Time Machine and can be restored. Now, where are all of these gigabytes of backups going? They have to be stored locally to be effective and quick. So, that means that I've deleted a project that is several gigabytes to save space, but it isn't actually gone, it's still there. Even if the backups under-go extreme compression, to remain lossless, you aren't going to compress something like a digital video project all that much, possibly 10% at best, saving 1-2GBs overall, depending on project size. So, where is this going, well, you've likely deleted more than just that project, or changed more than that. So hundreds of gigabytes of data are being backed up somewhere on your computer over time. Eventually, sooner over later most likely, you're going to run out of space, and poof, your backups are gone as you need storage for a new CD or something similar. Basically, it's a great idea in principle, but you're going to need a terabyte of storage or more to make this work effectively, and have things spanned in some sort of RAID to keep performance up. If I attempted to keep track of all the changes that occur on my Windows system on a day to day basis, I would need at least 100GB of free storage to account for that since I last installed Windows Vista, and that was about a week ago. Think of how quickly all of this would build up for someone and then you'll realize how much storage this will need and how it isn't going to work and ultimately fail to live up to the expectations.

The next thing I see failing in some way is iChat. While I don't personally like the program, the new "camera" feature that is in it isn't something all that special. Windows Live Messenger, AIM, and Yahoo! all support this currently as far as I know. What is going to cause this to fail is the fact that it isn't bandwidth friendly. While a lot of people are on broadband, a lot of people aren't. There is also the fact that upload speeds are minuscule compared to download speeds, and that is going to kill connections offering streaming video. The quality of the video in the WWDC keynote was amazing, but people need to realize that it was likely run over a 100mbit connection. If you tried to accomplish the same thing on a low-level broadband connection out in the backwoods where 1mbit speeds are still pricey, the quality is going to diminish greatly. Also, think of someone on dial-up attempting to do this, or people that have bandwidth restrictions in place where you cannot upload or download more than a certain amount per month. Once again, it's a great idea, although a little behind, but it's going to fail until broadband is everywhere and high speed broadband is much more common, that being speeds in excess of T1 upload and download speeds, as upload is going to be very important here as well.

The operating system in general I see having a major problem as well. This won't be a problem such as those mentioned above, but a different problem, mainly the EU. Microsoft has been heavily sanctioned in the past few years by the European Union for "not offering enough options" by integrating many of the tools commonly used by a normal desktop user for everything. Recently, it was for not releasing copyrighted code that makes Server 2003 more efficient than its competitors. You may be saying to yourself that they deserve this, or wondering what this has to do with Apple. Well, if Microsoft deserves all the restrictions put in place by the EU, so does Apple. Why? Well, lets see here... iLife is included with every Mac now, allowing you to do so much more than you can on a standard Windows installation. You can edit audio, create webpages in a GUI, listen to music, watch movies, edit video and create DVDs and so much more. You can't do half of this on Windows XP or even Vista, let alone try to do this on the "N" editions that they are force to ship now. So, why hasn't the EU come down on Apple yet? You have far fewer choices here in my opinion than you do on a Windows computer. You have a narrower software selection overall, so there are less choices in general. Now you may say that it's easy to remove all those applications, well, you can do the same thing in Windows, or even choose another program in Windows, same as on a Mac, but that hasn't changed anything. If Mac continues to become more popular, it is just a matter of time before the same restrictions come upon them. There is absolutely no reason to include all of those programs on a Mac, but they are there anyway and preventing the competition from getting on to Apple computers.

The hardware and pricing is also always going to be against Apple. In the past, you were paying a lot of money, but you were getting a very well built machine that had hardware like no other computer available. Granted, the systems were very pricey, but at least the cost was backed up with a very stable hardware platform. The only major problem with these older systems is that they are kind of hard to upgrade significantly and are basically going to stay the same throughout their lifetime. The hard drive is the only really easy thing to replace or upgrade. Memory and the graphics cards can be upgraded, but at a high cost, on top of the already expensive system. While memory isn't going to be as pricey, you can still have issues with non-Apple RAM modules installed. While this may not happen, it easily can, and can cause a lot of issues. The new systems that are based on the Intel processors share the same higher price, although it is reduced from what it used to be. I do not know if they share the "hard to upgrade" part for hardware, but my guess would be that they do as they are still Apple systems. While the newer computers are cheaper and less likely to be upgraded, it is still an issue that the PC and Linux/Unix world of computers do not face. They are simple to upgrade just about anything that you want. The high price is also less justified in the newer Macintels. Where the old PPC based systems were nearly all custom parts that weren't in anything else, the new Macs use many more off-the-shelf parts that are produced in bulk for several manufacturers out there, not just for Apple. So, while you're still getting a really good system, the parts going into it cost less, are not quite the same quality (at least in my opinion), but you are still paying a significant amount for several of the systems available. Now, you may say that they are less expensive than a similar OEM system, but that isn't true either. I've priced out Dell Latitudes that have equal or greater specifications than the MacBook and MacBook Pro, and the price was less on the Dell systems, but the Dell's had better specifications on them. This was also looking at the Education prices at Apple and standard prices at Dell. While Dell may not have quite the same hardware quality, a 3 year Complete Care warranty covers basically everything that may go wrong so that you can get the system replaced if there is an issue. It is hard to get systems similar to the Mac Mini or the iMac, just due to their design, but you can get equivalent or better systems from Dell and other OEMs for less than their price as well. While you wouldn't have the same space saving design or anything, you would have a better system that was easier to upgrade. I'm sure that the same can be said about the Mac Pro as well. Apple hardware is overpriced and will likely continue to be. Just look at the "Mighty Mouse" which costs $60 or so, but has less functionality than the Logitech MX1000 which is better, unless you're left handed.

The other thing that is against them as far as pricing goes is that they never offer any big sales. Sure, if you're a student, you can get a free iPod with a purchase, but what if you already have one? Your "special" has now become useless. While you could sell it and make a couple hundred dollars (depending on the model), it still isn't the same as if you saved $300 on the system itself. Just think, you've likely purchased the system by putting it on a credit card. Unless you pay it off all at once, interest is going to build up. On a different system that had a special running where you save money on the purchase price over getting something like an iPod for free, that is money you'll never have interest building up on, saving you even more in the long run. Dell and HP, along with other OEM PC manufacturers offer big sales consistently. This past summer, there was a deal at Dell that could have saved you more than 30% on the purchase price of their systems, depending on which you wanted. On a $2000 purchase, that is a significant amount of money that you'll never have to worry about spending on a system. Apple has not offered any major sale of this sort to anyone that I'm aware of, ever. While they may not be a huge company, maybe spending a few less thousand on advertising and giving a big sale at some point would help out more. Their huge advertising campaign has been doing a lot for them lately, but just how long will it last with the problems users have been seeing with the new laptops, such as over heating and stained keyboards.

The last thing that they really need to adopt is multi-button mice on all computers. While they do have the Mighty Mouse, which is nothing special, they really need more than one button. Why? Well, you switched to Intel processors and developed Boot Camp which allows for Windows to be installed. I've seen several people running Windows in some way on their new Intel Macs, either through some sort of virtual machine or by dual-booting. The question is, if you have a laptop with Windows and want to take it somewhere and not take a mouse, how do you right click? While this is easy in Mac OS X, it's really difficult in Windows. Plus, how do you right click if you have to hold on to your laptop while using it, even if you are in the Mac OS? There needs to be some easier way to right click. Get out of the stone age and put two buttons on the laptops. While it may be cool for some, it is really dumb to not have a second button when it is so useful in any operating system you may be running.

There are other things that are going against the Operating system and the computers themselves, even if they are some of the best systems out there. The operating system is great, but it does have issues, and they are only going to become more and more prominent as more and more people buy into the ridiculous advertising campaign being run by Apple. The "Mac v. PC" ads that are on TV are completely stupid and shouldn't be run at all. They don't portray either system correctly, it's just a simple little scheme to make the Mac look like the best thing in the computer world. How much software runs on a Mac? PC's can do so much more than make a pie chart, have better hardware support, and the virus "problem" isn't one if people just weren't stupid. If Apple really wants to take down Microsoft and Vista, they have the creativity and capability of doing so, but their current strategy isn't going to cut it. They need more compatibility and lower prices before they even begin to make a significant dent in market share.

Posted by imnuts at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 02, 2006

Coming Soon: New Vista Build

I'm sure this is great news to some, and others are probably wondering where this info may be coming from. I don't know what build number it may be or anything, but supposedly, there will hopefully be another build released to the beta testers in the coming days/weeks. While I will admit, I don't have any concrete evidence that says exactly when or what build or anything, there is a feeling in the air that something new is going to ship soon.

There are a few different reasons why I feel this way, and I'm sure many others do as well. If we take a step back and look at things, there are a few good signs pointing towards another release sometime rather soon. While 5472 was released to testers no all that long ago, it was about 3 weeks ago now. Many of the bugs that are going to be submitted on a build about any issue is going to be submitted within the first week, at least for the most common bugs that are out there. The article by Robert McLaws are Longhorn Blogs shows this. What the analysis also shows is that build releases have slowly been getting more and more frequent as we approach RTM. These are two big points that are sort of hinting at a new release as many of the issues that exist have been reported.

Another thing that is sort of "hinting" at a new build is the release schedule that was around the Vista Beta 2 schedule. The beta testers received a new build shortly before the release of the actual beta build. This was done to try and detect any major bugs that may have popped up to be sure there wasn't a big problem when the build went public. The testers had a week or two to submit a few bugs, the received Vista Beta 2. The first RC (release candidate) build is right around the corner, with a planned release this month. It would make sense if RC1 was going to be released in mid-August that a pre-RC1 build was released now to work out any major issues that may exist in the close to RC1 build. Unless the planned August release of the next publicly available build has been pushed back, there should be something soon if a similar schedule is to be kept.

The Windows XP release schedule from it's beta days as Whistler also point that a new build should be around soon, as the closer it got to the final release time, the more frequent the build releases became. With the release of Vista supposedly happening in November for the OEM companies and around January for the public release, we are getting very close to RTM. In order to get as many issues worked out as possible, they would want to release more and more builds as more and more bugs get their fixes migrated into the main release branch. To be sure that these fixes don't cause an issue in some other area or bring up an unknown issue, it would be good to have the testers get the updated releass to work out the bugs.

Overall, it will likely be either this weekend at some point, possibly Monday if it follows the 5472 release, or next weekend, as this would make the most sense overall. That would give the tester community 1-2 weeks of testing and still allow for an August release of RC1. While everyone would prefer to have it sooner rather than later, I'd like to see it next weekend or Monday would be best since I would be able to get it as soon as it is released, rather than wait for a lot of other people to start first and get in with the huge train of other downloaders.

Posted by imnuts at 03:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 17, 2006

Using Unsigned Drivers in 5472 x64

As I noted earlier today, Microsoft released Vista Build 5472 to Beta Testers today. I have since learned that this is a CTP build and should be available to TechNet and MSDN members as well, so enjoy if you have a subscription or are a member of the beta program. If you aren't a member of any of the above, just wait until RC1 is released to the public. Unfortunately, you will have to have installed and activated Beta 2 to be able to download RC1, but that isn't an issue for me and not the topic of this post.

For many people out there, moving to 64 bit has been a very painful process. Manufacturers put hardware out there and then decided that they don't want to support it, so we're left with unsigned drivers for our systems, if we can even find those, to get things working. I'm sure that there are many people out there having this issue. The problem I'm having is with my on-board Promise Fasttrack 378 SATA/RAID controller, but there are many other devices out there with the same issue. For some, the drivers aren't really a problem as it is non-critical hardware, or something they don't use. I have a somewhat needed drive that is sitting on my controller that isn't supported, like backups, installation keys for various software/betas I have and install, and just some other random things. It isn't really needed, just highly wanted. Up until this latest build though, installing unsigned drivers hasn't been much of an issue. There has been the bcdedit method

bcdedit /set {current} nointegritychecks on

that would prevent you from having to press F8 on boot every time. The latest release of VistaBootPRO has also made this easier, giving you a graphical method of performing the command.

The entire ballgame has changed with 5472 though. You can use the bcdedit method from above and it will say it completes successfully, provided you are in the Administrator command prompt, or set it with VistaBootPRO. The BCD Store will even tell you that the operating system should ignore driver checks. Unfortunately though, none of the convenience options will work anymore. You can use VistaBootPRO all you want, or bcdedit, and nothing you do will allow you to restart your computer and use unsigned drivers. The only way that you can possibly install your unsupported hardware anymore is if you use the F8 method when booting.

If you don't know what I'm talking about when I say "F8 method" this is what you need to do. When your computer is booting, press F8 as if you were going to enter safe mode. When the menu with all the different boot options is shown, there is one there that says something to the effect "Allow use of unsigned drivers" and you can select that option and continue booting and you can now use unsigned drivers. The problem is that anytime that you start your computer or restart, you will need to do this. It is going to be the biggest PITA most likely about this build, and all the more reason to get things set up the way you like them and let the system on as long as possible.

Posted by imnuts at 11:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Download Windows Vista Build 5472

Today, Windows Vista build 5472 was released to beta testers. I wasn't actually around when it was released unfortunately, but I do have it downloaded and ready to be burnt to DVD. All data has been backed up that I need, so as soon as I can get to it, it will be installed. If you are looking for screenshots of build 5472, you should watch the PROnetworks Album as there should be a wealth of screenshots post there shortly. If you are in the Beta Program on Connect, head to the downloads section and get the build, which is about the same size as build 5456.

Another thing that you should do, if you haven't done so already, is download VistaBootPRO 2.1 Beta. It features the following changes from 2.0:

• Fixed bug which occurred on some systems when renaming entries.
• Added advisement to backup bcd file before making any changes.
• Adjusted font size on pages.
• Refined Check for .net 2.0 framework prior to installation.
• Updated backup file dialogs and default filename.
• Added code to check for valid partition before creating new entry.
• Updated Help File.
• Updated Codebase.

The main reason for an updated release so soon after version 2.0 was the bug occuring on systems with renaming/reordering entries. Sorry for any inconvenience for people on this. It has also been confirmed to work on the latest build just released as well (build 5472), so you will be able to use it on all Vista builds that utilize bcdedit.exe for altering the boot menu.

Posted by imnuts at 06:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 13, 2006

Getting Vista to Work with Linux

Yes, that's correct. Despite the tries from Microsoft to make Vista less Linux friendly, such as altering NTFS and changing the bootloader, Linux still plays nicely with Windows Vista. The past week, I've been working with a few other users at PROnetworks in the compilation of a guide for installing Linux alongside Vista. Seeing as it is something that is bound to show up, and the fact that more and more people are trying out both now, it is only logical to figure out how to make them play nicely together. There are two big factors that are making it easier for users to test out both here too. The main factor is that Microsoft just released the public beta of Windows Vista (Beta 2). This allows users to install the operating system legally for the first time, and with all the hype around it, people are installing by the thousands. The next big factor that's causing people to test out Linux is that there is finally a very easy to use and install version with great support, and that is Ubuntu, which has taken the Linux community and the rest of the world by storm. A minor factor which is helping things along is the fact that more and more users are switching to broadband, making it all the easier to download both Linux and Vista to install. Back in the days of dial-up, it would take a solid week just to download a CD image required to install any sort of Linux. With broadband, it takes a few hours; making it much more convenient to do. The guide has been posted, so if you were looking at trying this, check it out. And, as always, you can easily get support in the forums of PROnetworks.

Posted by imnuts at 09:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 11, 2006

Bugs Galore in Vista 5456

Over the weekend, the Vista team was nice enough to drop off another build for us beta testors to start working with. It is really nice to have since the Beta 2 build was in our hands for testing for more than a month and was starting to get old. Many promises of changes and fixes were made, and it seems like many things have been fixed so far in this build. UAC, which used to create problems when doing simple tasks has been toned down, the graphics have been smoothed out, and things are running a little better overall. However, there are a lot of little things that are just sitting here that seem to be oversights that should not have happened. The nice thing about this though is that the download size has been reduced a lot, by about 1GB on both the x86 and x64 download from Beta 2. It is also probably the fastest installation for many people to date as well. There is also the option for upgrading Beta 2, which I haven't tried yet, but will in due time. So, there has been work in doing various things to make this good, but it seems like things have been overlooked that shouldn't have been.

So far, I've barely closed the bug reporting tool that is used with Vista. In fact, in the first 12 hours of this build being installed, it wasn't closed. There were also several bug reports filed in that time. So far, this is probably the buggiest build I've worked with that is still usable. There were past builds that were more troublesome, but I couldn't use them as they just wouldn't work and posed to many problems for day to day use, which I've been doing for some time now. So far, many of the problems that I am seeing are in the administrative areas of the build. The firewall, management consoles, and the control panel are all displaying things that shouldn't be happening. The big issue that I'm seeing that is really odd though is that the individual management consoles are missing something, GUI related, functionality, something, but the full Computer Management console which has many of the functions built into it for easy access to a lot at once is working fine and doesn't really have any issues. I'm not really sure how you can build two things that are nearly identical yet one works and one doesn't, or one looks different than the other.

Other issues that I'm seeing that shouldn't be there are things that work, but not until after you restart a time or two. In past builds, the firewall would start prompting you immediately if there was a program that it didn't recognize accessing the internet. Now, it takes a couple restarts before it starts prompting about allowing access. The Welcome Center can't be turned off until you log in for a second time either. I'm not sure what it is, but there must be something going on that is preventing stuff from happening in the first couple logins. I also see the firewall issue as something that should probably be addressed as that is kind of a security hole if it isn't working properly. It's really nice that all programs I had accessing the internet were doing so just fine, Winamp, WLM 8, Thunderbird, Flock, and I had no prompts for allowing access for them. Who knows what might have been able to get out and possibly in if this was a computer that wasn't protected from the outside world. I trust my setup fairly well, so it didn't bother me all that much, but I hate to think what might happen to a standard user or the average Joe out there if this would happen to them.

Even though this thing is buggy and has random oddities, there are a few improvements that have been made and are worth mentioning. The big one that has been a major point for a few months now is the User Account Control (UAC) feature. It has been the most annoying thing for most beta testers since it has been introduced. While it is a great concept, it has been poorly implemented in past builds. You would be getting restriction prompts and access denied messages when trying to do simple tasks, like deleting stuff from the desktop, or installing programs. They have done a good bit of work on it and while there are still prompts, they aren't quite as annoying now, unless you have sound. They have added the critical error sound to the UAC prompts. It's nice to know something needs attention, but it is the wrong sound, and shouldn't be around if accessibility is enabled to make use easier for blind persons as that is the reasoning behind the sound. So, hopefully, the small issues that are still around in UAC are being looked at and fixed for the future builds. It's nice to see that they are in the process of listening to folks and revising the system though.

The other thing that has seen some improvements once again has been Aero, the graphics theme and probably the most notable new thing in Windows Vista. If you are looking as to what some of these changes may be, head over to the PROnetworks gallery as there are quite a few screenshots of various things in the build. It is really nice to see how the details are being worked on and different views are getting more refined. Things like Flip3D, which used to look nice from afar, but kind of ugly up close, have received work to make the window edges smooth, and the transitions between open windows smoother as well. The transparency also seems to be better and clearer, that is if you can get Aero Glass to work. If you have trouble with it, see if this helps, as it seems like this has been a somewhat common issue for some reason in this build. Not sure what it might be though as transparency is working just fine for me as it has been for a long time now.

The other nice thing about the graphics in this build is that they kept the animations functions that could be added into Vista Beta 2, so if you want to get some cool effects with windows, try this out. Save the following code in notepad it as "dwm.reg" someplace that is easy to get to (like the desktop)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM]
"Animations"=dword:00000001
"AnimationsShiftKey"=dword:00000001

Now, double click the file to add it to the registry. You'll likely get a prompt about administrator rights being needed, this is normal though. Then, all you need to do is open up the services panel and stop and start the Desktop Window Management service. You can get to the services management console by typing "services" into the start menu search box. After restarting DWM, if you hold down on the Shift key, all the windows will minimize and maximize much slower allowing you to get some amazing screenshots. This also works with Flip3D, so you can slowly rotate through all the open windows you have.

Application compatibility has also changed some. While things are mostly compatible, there are some difference. The things that I've noticed thus far that have changed are NOD32 and VMWare. In Beta 2, VMWare Workstation was working mostly fine. It had some issues during the initial startup and also caused some BSODs when shuttind down virtual machines, but it worked fairly well. Now, in 5456, it doesn't seem to want to work. It could be that it has to do with this install being 64 bit and I had Beta 2 installed as the standard 32 bit install though. The other big change that I really like is that NOD32 is working again without issues. In Beta 2, there was an issue where NOD32 would cause 100% CPU usage for some reason. Some users got around this by disabling IMON (Internet Moniter), but that didn't seem to work for me. So, I tried it out again and it seems to be back in business. If you're wondering what NOD32 is, have a look at their homepage and a review I wrote. If you are wondering about other programs that may or may not work, well, I can't do to much help there as I haven't really gotten everything installed yet. I do know where you can find a fairly decent list of programs that do and don't work though. If you are wondering about Build 5456, see here, and since many people are still working with Beta 2, you could see this about the public release.

A couple final notes about this, I've been having fun using this build and will continue to do so until the next build is released. If you are wondering if you should install it or not, I would say that if you can live with minor bugs being everywhere, go for it. Otherwise, I would just stick with Beta 2. So, thanks to Microsoft for providing Vista 5456 to us.

Posted by imnuts at 02:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 10, 2006

Random Processes in Windows Vista

This was brought about when a few beta testers were chatting. As more and more people install the beta, it is likely going to be more and more noticed, but this has been somewhat unmentioned thus far. Vista, when compared to previous versions of Windows, has a ton of processes by default. Many of them look like the same old things, just different as they are updated for Vista. The thing is, there are tons of processes by default. Where Windows XP would have maybe 40 running processes after installation, Vista has closer to 60. There are some reasons for this that can be explained, and there are also unknown reasons why there is so much stuff running after installation. However, we can look at the stuff that is running and see what the reasons may be for them.

The first thing one may notice is that there are a lot more svchost.exe processes running by default when compared to Windows XP. This is likely due to the increased security and the hope for better stability in Vista. Now, you may be wondering how running 2-3 times more stuff makes it more stable or more secure. Well, the reason for this is that under XP, each svchost.exe process accounted for several different services within Windows. Many times, there were critical system services running under the same processes as other, not very important services, and there were also large groupings of tasks for each process. This has changed in Windows Vista though. The individual tasks that svchost.exe is taking care of are now much more distributed and split up more evenly now. Critical services also do not appear to be "bundled" with as many other services under one process, if the process is running multiple things at all. This makes things more stable as it prevents a bunch of stuff from stopping if one service has an issue. It also makes things more secure for about the same reason, as any security issues in a given service prevent access to as many other services.

There are also other services and processes that are new and are really unknown as to why they are running. Some of these are probably not going to be used at all by many users, but they start up anyway. They also seem to start up prior to having anything run that they are associated with. The most notable of these are two services/processes started for Windows Media Player. Both of the services deal with networking, and are possibly from the network sharing feature that is in WMP11. The problem is, there is no easy to find way to actually disable these, and they also startup without notification. While many users probably will never notice this with the PCs that are likely to ship with Windows Vista, during the beta with testing, the extra resources that these unknown and unnecessary services take up slow down the computer.

There is another service that is possibly needed, but likely not, that is the "Trusted Installer" service. This service is obviously for installing things, but, it is started before anything is even installed by the user. So, apparently, something is installing in the background, as there isn't any real apparent need for this service to be running otherwise. There are similar services, which may have some sort of functionality, but there is no indication that they should be running immediately after installation. Overall, there is a lot of stuff that just sort of runs for you. I'm guessing that it's trying to get more out of Vista with less user intervention, so that things are already running when the end user attempts to run them. That would provide faster startup of the item since it would not have to wait for the service to start. The problem is, that if the user never actually uses what these background services are there for, it's actually defeating the purpose. If the program the service(s) are there for are never used or run, then they just sit there consuming system resources with no purpose.

So, who is really configuring this system for performance? If it were me, I would have the system start only basic things upon first startup. After this, there should be something to remember what is used and what isn't. If something isn't used, then it should remain off. If something is used, it should be started. If it is not used after a certain period of time (1-2 weeks) then it should be set as off again. There shouldn't be any reason that Windows Media Player services are running on initial boot, especially when I haven't even opened WMP yet. Why should something running when I haven't even used it?

Posted by imnuts at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 08, 2006

Hardware and System Stability

People have long stated that Microsoft Windows is an unstable operating system. However, I have seen many cases where Windows is just as stable as Linux, Unix, and Mac OS, so what is the root cause of this assumption. My primary guess is that much of this stems back to the days before NT4 and then the period between NT4 and Windows 2000, the 95/98/ME days. This does a very large chuck of Windows history, but it also includes the worst of Windows in my opinion. Since many people did not even have computers prior to Windows NT4, we'll focus on Windows 95 and later here, mainly because this is also when most people actually started getting computers for themselves as prices dropped significantly. Now, in their day Windows 95, and then Windows 98, were not bad operating systems. They worked very well, but did have the occasional BSOD and did have their own issues. Overall though, Windows 95 and 98 were not that bad, although they were not rock solid by any means.

Then, there is what is likely the biggest reason that Windows is considered unstable, Windows ME. It is quite possibly the worst opperating system ever released, and was extremely unstable. A user could install Windows ME, and even as they were starting it up for the first time, they would get a BSOD. If you didn't restart or shutdown your computer everyday, it was likely that it was going to BSOD and shut off randomly, if it didn't do this on you already. If users got their Windows ME computer to stay on for a week without problems, many would likely consider them very lucky. Then, there was the whole issue of driver compatibility, or lack of compatibility. Since ME never really caught on, manufacturers soft of just skipped an entire generation of Windows and mostly just made products supporting Windows 98 or 98SE instead. With all sorts of random problems, lack of drivers for a lot of common devices, and just a poor system in general, I think this one poor operating system is haunting Windows to this day.

There was later Windows 2000, which never really came into the home user arena and stuck mainly with businesses, although gamers seemed to like 2000 a lot as it was very stable and ran games very well. Ever since Microsoft ditched the 9x series, which included ME, and switched back to the NT Kernel, Windows has been very stable. Now many people still say that Windows XP is very unstable, but I don't really see how this is true. I have worked on hundreds of different installations of Windows XP, both Home and Pro, plus MCE and Tablet PC, and I have yet to see where Windows itself is actually the cuprit of the operating system being unstable. Windows Vista seems to be behaving in the same fashion, even in the beta stages. While, there have been times when Windows Vista, or its alpha versions, codename "Longhorn", have been unstable, it has been very stable for a number of testers in the world. What is it then that is causing Windows to get a bad reputation as being unstable, even if it isn't.

I would have to say that the quality of the hardware underneath the hood of the computer would be the largest contributing factor to how well any operating system performs. Mac OS has been rock solid for a long time now, and despite the fact that they are pushing out a ton of security updates now, it continues to be, even on somewhat sub-par hardware. The big reason behind this is that Apple makes nearly everything in the system, and therefore, can essentially make a problem free operating system if you know the hardware that can go into the computer. Where as Windows has to be able to handle millions of different combinations of hardware, Apple has to deal with only a small handful, with the video card being the only major component that can really change all that much. With Windows, you have to worry about the motherboard, video card, chipsets, processors, network adapters, audio adapters, and pretty much anything that can go into the system. With all of these combinations, it's no wonder there are some problems sometimes.

Now, you may be saying that Linux and Unix do not suffer from the same issue, but I have seen and heard of unstable installations of Linux. Usually, it's also on the same computers that have issues with running Windows as well, not much of a coincedence. The computer is much more than the operating systems that run on them, and thus, poor hardware results in a poor user experience. If the end user selects quality hardware to put into their computer, they are going to end up with a very stable operating system, no matter what they install. But, if you have low quality components, and many OEM manufacturers do, you can end up with a very poor computer. While there are several people that have much more luck with Linux and Unix even when Windows doesn't want to work properly, Linux and Unix have a huge developer base compared to Windows. You have several thousand distrobutions out there, a few hundred of them have funded projects for development, plus a ton of individuals writing their own drivers and patches to fix things. The nature of the operating system itself allows for it to be much more flexible, and thus can deal with sub-standard conditions better in certain situations.

There is also the fact that there many of the people in the world that do run an open source operating system tend to be running it on a decent computer as well. This is because they are already experienced computer users and know the difference between good and bad when it comes to system components. That, and if one is going to run soley Linux, they usually look for compatible hardware so that custom drivers aren't needed and they can get up and running quickly with the built in drivers. Odds are, that if you took the average Linux system and put Windows on it, Windows would not have a problem running either. It is really hard to compare Windows and Mac OS, seeing as they just become somewhat compatible, but all reports that I have heard thus far say that Windows is very stable on the new Intel based Macs. In fact, some users are having fewer problems with Windows on their Macs than they are with OS X on their Macs, at least after figuring out the right-click issue they are. So, what is really the cause for an unstable operating system, is the operating system itelf, or the components underneath the software that are making the system go that are the real issue?

Posted by imnuts at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 26, 2006

Where did PRO Go?

So, PROnetworks more or less fell off the face of the internet this afternoon. While most parts of the site and other sites hosted on the same server, such as this blog or Hawaiian Style are working fine, the main area, the forum is still dead. I'm sure there are a lot of people sitting around pressing F5 to refresh the page, just hoping it will come back, but you get no love and only a phpBB error unfortunately.

Now you want to know what is causing the issue(s). Well, if you're a regular visitor, you would have noticed about the same thing a couple weeks ago where PRO just disappeared. Apparently it was about the same issue then too. The web host had some power issues and, well, you can really run a server or anything without power. They got the issue fixed temporarily and things went back to normal. Well, at about 2:40pm ET, apparently there were some more power issues and we've been sitting around wearing out the refresh button on the browser ever since. Since I'm currently board out of my mind, I figured I'd post a little something at the blog to utilize it a little more since it gets no real use, but also to help pass the time as there is nothing that I want to do at the moment. So, until we're back, read on and continue to refresh in the hopes that we come back to life.

Posted by imnuts at 07:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 19, 2005

McAfee hates mIRC?

Today I found yet another reason to not like McAfee products. Unfortunately, I can't really do much about it as this isn't my computer. I came home from school to find out the operating system that I want to use doesn't like the modem, so I can't connect to the internet via our old school dialup here. So I have to use my mom's computer. The problem with this is that she uses McAfee, although she may ditch it for a cheaper and better solution of NOD32 soon (I hope). The main reason I don't like it is that it seems to have a way to "lock" your computer while you're using it if McAfee is in the process of updating something, doesn't matter what. It completely stops any new processes from starting somehow until the update is over. Now to the part about hating mIRC.

Since I don't have mIRC installed on my mom's computer I needed to download it and "install" it. I say install as all I needed was the program files and none of the links as I'm not completely installing it, just a temporary thing. Since I don't like the mIRC GUI, I also downloaded the script/GUI add-on that I like the best for it, PolarisX. So I extact all of the files and go to run the program. as the interface is loading the PolarisX custom settings, McAfee decides that the program has a "virus" file associated with one of the configuration files, mirc.ini, and decides that the best method of dealing with the threat is deleting the file. It doesn't ask me what I want to do, it doesn't allow me to say to just quarantine the file, it has to completely delete it. I don't know about other people out there, but I'd rather have a choice in what happens with files on the computer I'm working on as maybe I want to run a virus, or maybe it's just a file that 'could' have malicious intent, but doesn't do anything, like the mirc.ini file applying the PolarisX settings.

So I re-extracted the file in case there was actually something wrong with it. Try to start up mIRC again and the same thing happens, only I see that the file is caught just as the PolarisX script loads, meaning it thinks that the ini file that is telling mIRC what to do is something bad and shouldn't be there. I search around for a way to prevent the action from reoccurring or saying that the mirc.ini file was safe, but McAfee apparently thinks that the users don't know what they're doing, which they obviously don't really know if they're using it, but that's another thing entirely, so they don't offer people a way of changing their settings or ignoring files or anything of the sorts cause "McAfee knows best for your safety", at least that's what I'm seeing. Seeing as I'll never get the program working with the real-time scanner running in the background, I just turn it off and use mIRC as I normally would. Then turned the junk scanner back on so that it could keep "protecing me" from all the unsafe files that are out there.

The best part about this is what happens last, at least I think so. To make sure there aren't any malware items in the directory, I decided to scan the files that are in there and confirm the fact that they're safe. I'm not really sure how a text file can be considered a trojan, but just to be sure, I had to check. So I scan the mIRC directory with all of the files in it needed to run the program and nothing is found, although it took about 5 min. to scan about 100 files or so with the very slow scanning engine the program has, on top of the fact that it seems to like to freeze or run really slow. I'm almost tempted to try and run mIRC again so I can see the third false positive result in less than an hour. I'm also really confused in the fact that McAfee is identifying the virus to be a named trojan (although trojans aren't really viruses) and it isn't even an "Unknown" thing. McAfee is sure that this threat has previously existed and that a GUI altering script is a dangerous threat to the operating system. I'll let you all make your own conclusions on McAfee, but I'd rather go with the best, NOD32.

Posted by imnuts at 08:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 12, 2005

Windows One Care Live Beta - Protecting Me?

Since Microsoft decided to accept me into the Windows One Care Beta twice, once on the new Microsoft Connect Site and once a while ago on the aging BetaPlace site, I decided I'd at least download it again and test things out to see what they've improved in the past couple months as the last I used it was in Aug. or Sept. I figured with the bug reports that were submitted and feature requests and such, it would have had to have gotten better. So, after looking around for an hour for the web installation (the Microsoft Connect Install instructions are horrible) I finally got it installed on my fresh VMWare computer running XP SP2 fully up to date with next to nothing else on it.

Now comes to testing out how it works. At first, I was pleased, just after rebooting, it was already checking for updated virus definitions. It also displayed that the system was "Green" meaning that everything was up to date and running properly. I figured, "Hey, this might turn out to be a fairly good program" and continued about what I was planning for this test system. After a while, I had a few freeware/shareware screensavers that I wanted to install to get the final *.scr file from them, then remove what was installed as there is some spyware and junk that gets installed along side the screensavers. I didn't expect much to come of it, install the screensavers, take the files that I wanted and all would be good. The problem comes about 4 installations in.

So I'm installing and copying away, knowing that spyware is getting on the system and thinking nothing of it. I get to about the fourth screensaver or so and things went downhill fast for OneCare Live Beta. The spyware junk that it should supposedly protect a user from is completely ignored by the "protection" it offers. I can sort of see this as it is currently antivirus, firewall, backup, and general performance only with no antispyware component included. But after the spyware that was installing (same things over and over) finally started, I was disappointed by the bubble messages. Since I hadn't done any configuring of stuff since my system was good, the firewall recognized the spyware that was installed and of course accessing the internet. There were two things, Save.exe and one I never saw before VVDC.exe. As the firewall picked them up, it was still on auto-config, so it said "Lets allow these programs access, they don't look to bad" and the spyware now succeeded in its mission of getting into the system and tried to work.

Unfortunately for the spyware, I'm a little to advanced. After realizing that it wouldn't die just by ending the task and I couldn't delete it yet as I had more spyware installing screensavers to add yet, I just revoked it's permissions. It's amazing how quickly you can kill a program by removing all access priveliges to the folder that it's in from everyone, even the system and owner and administrators. It doesn't know what to do with itself. So I continued installing my screensavers, got all the files and uninstalled the screensavers. I forgot about the permissions thing, so I had to manually uninstall that junk after resetting permissions somewhat. But the thing that bothers me most is the fact that the firewall auto-configured itself to allow known spyware programs access the internet. I'll of course be submitting feedback on this issue (and also for the bug I found in the process). Hopefully, the developers see an error in their detection/configuration rules that can remedy the issue, as allow spyware access to the internet is a bad idea.

Now off to test it out against an AIM virus that was spreading a few weeks ago and see how the antivirus component stacks up against NOD32, which I already found out can handle the job, since I tried to install the virus on purpose to test out NOD32 since I don't get viruses.

Posted by imnuts at 11:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 29, 2005

VMWare Workstation 5.5 Beta

As I learned over the summer, a lot of place virtualize their systems to reduce costs for equipment. Thus, instead of having a lot of big servers to do all of your tasks, you get a couple big servers wtih multiple operating systems running on them simultaneously due to a virtual operating system running in the background to allow a lot of systems to be on at the same time. It also allows for better tech support as it's a lot cheaper and easier to buy licenses to something like VMWare and operating systems than to buy a lot of hardware to run everything on when you already have a lot of computers. It makes things easier and faster by being able to make and boot virtual systems much faster and they are platform independent, so if people have different hardware, they can run the same virtual machines. All of these allow tech support to have a lot of operating systems and configurations available all at the same time.

Now where does all of this go when talking about VMWare 5.5 beta and what does it all mean? Well I've been using VMWare Workstation for about 6 months now to have multiple operating systems available and to test different things out. Recently, VMWare released version 5.5 of their workstation product to beta testers. I've mainly been running 64 bit operating systems, so this latest beta was of great interest as it basically added support for the 64 bit world that is rapidly growing. There was basic support for 64 bit operating systems in version 5 of Workstation, but only for people running a 64 bit operating system already, and it was not gauranteed to work. So, after getting the email about the improved support and the new beta, I decided to download it and try it out.

What can I say about it, basically it's VMWare Workstation 5. If you know how to use one, you know how to use the other as there is nothing that I can find graphically or functionally different between the two, so this is just an update release to add support for the 64 bit world. What I found was greatly improved support for 64 bit operating systems. I haven't done a whole lot of testing thus far, but every 64 bit windows operating system has configuration options built in. I'll dig into the Linux based stuff later, but I'm imagining that there will be great 64 bit support there too. Now, since I already told you that I've been running some sort of 64 bit operating system, you probably think that I've been testing all of this on a 64 bit operating system don't you? Well, here is the great part, I've been running the 64 bit "virtual" operating system in a 32 bit operating system. I am very surprised that they found a way to virtualize 64 bit operating systems on a 32 bit system, regardless of whether the hardware could support it or not. My next testing will be to see if a 32 bit only system will also be able to virtualize the 64 bit operating system.

So what all have I done so far? Basically nothing as I just found out, by accident, that you could run 64 bit operating systems in a 32 bit operating system, so testing has just begun, but it shall expand greatly over the coming weeks. I'll be testing out more than just the basic XP x64 Edition and expanding to 64 bit Linux operating systems and also Server 2003. I plan to at least look at Ubuntu 5.10, FreeBSD 6.0, Debian, Fedora Core, and possibly others if I have time and space, as there is only so much free hard drive space to run these things, which will likely be my main problem to all of my testing. So, I guess it's time to save money for more hard drives as there are free controllers in my computer that can easily be filled if the funds become available. Until then, I would suggest that people go out and sign up for the beta and test it out as running multiple systems at the same time is pretty fun.

Posted by imnuts at 11:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2005

Spam 'o' riffic

Spam is what this world is coming to with e-mail now a days. Everyone gets it. You could have an e-mail account that absolutely no one knows about yet still receive a spam message. So everyone gets spam, and everyone hates spam, and there are more spam filters out now than you could ever need or want, but yet people are still sending it. I really don't have a problem with it as my filter is nearly perfect and only misses the random message that might just be useful.

So, what have spammers been doing to get their messages through? Lately, I've gotten about 15 junk messages. This has taken about 3 days as I've kept the e-mail account this is all based off of relatively hidden from everything. Out of those 15 messages, maybe 2 have been from an actual beleivable date. Most of them have been from either 1969 (did they have the internet back then?) or sometime way in the future, some from a few months down the road, others from 2050. So, unless time travel has come into exsistence without anyone knowing, they aren't helping their cause as a strange date throws up about a million red flags for "Junk" right away. Now, I get the point that people need this to make money, but it's just plain useless. People don't care, and the random sucker that you do find won't be that way for long, so they are slowly removing their pool of potential victims. And I feel that the people that 'support' spammers are really victims as they can't know what they're doing if they're helping out the idiots filling up my inbox along with everyone elses.

So, what can we do to prevent it? Really, there isn't anything we can do. There has been an idiot critcizing Microsoft of spamming users and telling the world about this through his own spam that he's sending out. Sort of defeating the purpose, rallying against spam with more spam, a little counter productive the way I see things. About all we, as annoyed users, can really do is find a filter and get rid of the junk. To date, a baynesian filter (not sure how that is really spelled, but that's close) is the best thing developed as it 'learns' what you consider spam and then gets smarter as time passes. After a few months, they are reportedly nearly 100% efficient at keeping the junk out of your inbox and keeping the real mail there. It's the best filter and that's what I use as Thunderbird includes this filter. Other programs that are out there, Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, all have tools that can be used to include this type of filter, although I think it's hardest to get around Outlook and Outlook Express's built in filter.

Now what I started considering is to just start replying to all of the e-mails. Send out about 5000 replys to it over a week and see if they get the point. Maybe I'll send out a couple 10MB attachments with it too and fill up their inbox while I'm at it. I have plenty of 10MB files just sitting around. Granted, it will probably be the most counter-productive thing I will ever do, but I just feel as though the people are sending out e-mail because they don't get enough contact with others and want to make themselves know. So, for minter@kumikazi.com, you will no longer feel left out and have a need to send me e-mails from 7:00PM on New Year's Eve in 1969 about enlarging my penis with patches that are safe easy and effective. You will get the attention that you deserve so you will no longer have to clog up my inbox, and the inbox of millions of others just like me with the crap that you're sending out. I'll do your mail server a favor and fill your inbox with more messages than you could ever hope to read so that you'll share the joy of receiving the junk that millions of us see and delete every day.

Posted by imnuts at 11:51 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 18, 2005

Welcome Back Sidebar

With every release of Vista, Microsoft's next generation operating system, there are new features introduced, and there are some that are removed. One of the biggest changes is probably the addition of a lot of games to the previous lineup from XP. On top of the new games, they've also changed how the games are displayed and they are much more graphical now. But, the most loved feature of what was Longhorn that was removed after build 4074 has returned. That's right, the sidebar is back for it's loving fans and it's looking great so far.

The sidebar was a feature that was mainly included because it was figured that most people would be running a widescreen or multi-screen computer in a few years. The problem is that this didn't happen as planned. The sidebar in general also got a lot of heat due to the many problems that were associated with it in early builds, mainly the massive memory leak in explorer. So with things not working out as planned, the sidebar was pulled. Shortly after discovering this, many people cried out in outrage to the fact that the sidebar that they loved was gone and it didn't appear as if it would make its way back. Then, talks started about re-introducing the sidebar since so many people complained about its departure. At the arrival of Beta 1, many people were disappointed that it hadn't made it back yet, but it's been just over a month since Beta 1 was released, and low and behold, the PDC of '05 has brought back everyone's friend, although not in the build that everyone in the beta program received. The internal build used for the conference showed everyone the new sidebar. Then, a couple days later, a sidebar for Vista has mysteriously appeared in many screenshots around the web on the 5219 build that the beta testers received. I'm not sure where exactly it came from, but this new sidebar is looking much improved over its previous renditions. Now we just have to hope that it continues to improve.

Not only has the sidebar returned, a lot of DWM features have been updated and the GUI is by far the most impressive yet. Even though it has its quirks from time to time (it is a beta after all), the overall look, feel and performace of the new display system are impressive. There is one thing about it that is continually amazing me and that is the size of the installation. This thing just keeps growing and growing. You currently need a 15GB hard drive just to install it, and that isn't leaving you much breathing room in the way of installing programs. I surely hope that things improve down the road as people with older systems aren't going to be able to install this cause their 40GB hard drives aren't going to be big enough. While I'm sitting here just fine with my storage space, others probably aren't in the same boat and are probably wondering if this thing is ever going to stop getting bigger and bigger. One thing that is nice is that, at present, nearly all drivers that work in XP or XP x64 (for the 64-bit persons) also work in Vista, which makes testing it out on a daily basis fairly easy as you can do pretty much everything you're used to doing and have all your little add-ons that need drivers work too. Hopefully, Microsoft continues to push in the right direction with this and gets everything together, but they still have a lot of work to do to compete with Tiger from Apple, so I guess that only time will tell.

Posted by imnuts at 09:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 07, 2005

Tech (lacking) Support

I've recently learned to hate tech support more. I've been having router troubles lately where I can't get anything higher than a 25Mbit half-duplex connection on a 100Mbit full-duplex line. It's really annoying, so I've decided that I'd contact Linksys support and see what they knew that could help me fix this problem as it's painfully slow to transfer 20+GB between computers at 1MB/s if I'm lucky. Turns out, I probably know more than their "Technical" support, although the last agent I talked to genuinely cared about the problem and actualy tried to help, and soon my issue will be fixed.

I'm sure everyone has had at least one bad experience with Tech Support, especially if you've ever had to deal with big companies like Dell and HP. The first bad support that I got was from Dell, where I talked to about 10 different people before one actually answered my question. Most of the time, I felt as if I was talking to monkeys as they seem intelligent enough to come up with the responses I was getting. I got to experience the same thing a little later from Dell once again a month or two later. This time I just quit asking as I got tired of 5 responses that didn't give me anything more than I already knew. Most of the stuff that they were telling me was either a repeat of what I already did or what someone else already told me in a previous e-mail, which was always included in the reply. It's really sad that a company that can sell a computer for $400 can't at least afford to hire competent staff so that people actually get their problems answered.

Then, I went on a Tech Support dry spell for about a year until now. I've relied on PROnet for all of my answers since there is always someone there that can help you out in some way, shape, or form. I figured that this problem might be beyond the level of knowledge that is there though since the problem just appeared without any configuration changes or anything, meaning it's a hardware problem that needs to be fixed by Linksys. Before contacting them, I did everything I possibly could think of to narrow down the problem and everything pointed to a bad router, at least the hard wire ports part since wireless seems to still work fine. So, starting last night, I started up a Live Chat session with the tech support at Linksys. talked to hime barely enough to get the really small window to scroll, maybe 10 lines by me and 10-15 lines by them, and he disappears. Waited for a half hour hoping to get a response, but there was nothing. So, I went to the e-mail support, got my request in for e-mail support hoping that I would get a good response today. In the meantime, I started up another Live Chat, hoping this one would be more productive. Well, my wish came true, I got to talk about twice as long this time, but once again, tech support disappeared on me after just a short conversation that amounted to me learning that the person on the other side didn't expect me to try as much as I did.

So, after wasting an hour of my life waiting for two "support" personnel to get back to me, I decided I'd go to bed and hope for a better response in the morning in my inbox through e-mail. So, I looked when I got up, and a plausible solution comes up of trying a version of firmware that wasn't publicly linked to on the site and had to be downloaded from the Linksys ftp site. So I figured, why not, I've tried everything else. No dice, still have the same slow connection. So I reply hoping for a response later today since I replied at about 9am EDT. Gets to be 7PM and I still haven't gotten a response from another failed attempt at fixing the issue, so I get onto the Live Chat one more time hoping for the best. This time, the person actually tried to help me. We had a conversation that lasted a good 30 min. or more and was a considerable number of lines of text back and forth. This person even cared enough to see if the "Team Leader" that was currently working knew of anything. Turns out that the fact that this issue spanned across three computers with three completely different operating systems stumped them too. Luckily, at the end of the help session, I got what I was glad to get, a way to replace the router since my original thoughts on it being a hardware issue are likely correct.

So, after payday, I'll request a new router replaced under warranty to be sent so I can get back up to speed. Why after payday? Well, it turns out that if you want to have the replacement shipped first, you need to provided a credit card so they can be assured not to lose money on the deal and you are gauranteed to ship at least something back. This requires $75, and since I only have a check card that works as a Visa and not that much money currently, I have to wait. I really like the fact that I have the option to have the replacement sent beforehand so I can at least use the very slow connection that I do have right now. I'd hate to have to use one computer instead of my normal 3 on the school's network, plus the fact that I have 3 unique purposes for every computer and I like to have the options provided available to me.

So, the main question here is, since this is likely not the first time people have complained, and the fact that many people that I know and talk to have had similar experiences, why are companies just sitting around doing nothing about it? I mean, you should strive to have excellent customer support to back up your product. It doesn't matter if you have the worst product in the world or the best, if people know that they can get excellent support and service for something, they're going to buy it. If I was out to buy something, and there were two products that were similar as far as specifications go, I'd pick the one that had the better support sitting behind it so I knew that in the event that something fails, I can get it fixed easily, instead of wasting my time, and the people in India's time, on something and getting frustrated when the person on the other end has the intelligence of a rock, and even that is giving some of them credit. I'd hate to be the company known for unusually bad service as that puts a black cloud overhead that is hard to get rid of and can come back to haunt you down the road when people are in the market for that product once again.

Posted by imnuts at 09:28 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 24, 2005

Windows Vista or Mac OS X Tiger?

So with the latest release of what used to be Windows Codename "Longhorn", now known as Windows Vista, people got to oooooh and aaaah at graphical effects and all the other nice features. I too was very impressed at what the folks over in Redmond have put together for the initial beta release of the next generation of Windows operating system. Many people were saying that it's going to be OS X only better. I had limited experience with the Mac OS, only using it from time to time while at work since I could never buy a Mac as all the one's that I wanted were a lot more than I could afford on my limited college budget. Then one day this summer I was fortunate enough to receive an old Mac that was no longer needed by who I got it from, whom want's to remain unnamed. Since then, the world of the operating system has been turned upside-down.

So how did getting a really old Mac change everything? Well, I had the opportunity to test out both the 64 bit and 32 bit versions of Vista Beta 1. I was quite impressed as I said with everything that it has to offer. WinFS is very fast at searching through the small number of files that it currently allows you to index. On my nice computer, the GUI was fully active with everything running full speed ahead by default. Window animations, transparency, everything. I could even install all of the very common apps. that I use all the time (except NOD32 in the 64 bit version). There was basically nothing that I couldn't do with Beta 1. In the little experience that I had with Tiger, Vista really reminded me of it. The thing was, that Vista seemed to be a lot better, at least at the time. The MS engineers, despite only having done about a third of the final operating system. The only thing that Vista didn't really have that Tiger did was the Dashboard, but then there is Konfabulator (possibly spelled different) that you can install and use to have your own faked Dashboard on Windows.

Then I got my own Mac a few days ago. Since I've gotten it, the only thing it received was a memory upgrade (from 256MB to 640MB, going to 1GB later) and I also updated the operating system to OS X 10.4 Tiger since there wasn't anything on it to start with. The main purpose of it, at least at first was iTunes, and some other basic stuff. I mean, this thing is a 400MHz PPC processor, it can't be that fast, can it? Well, the PowerMacs are PowerMacs for a reason. I have the Dashboard open with about 7 or 8 widgets (well, running, not really active), iChat with a couple active conversations going on, iTunes with a streaming 256kbps audio playlist, and Safari, which is what I'm currently writing this in. I haven't seen an OS run so smoothly before. I have a 2.0GHz Intel P4 Dell with 1GB of RAM running Debian Sarge and it barely runs as fast as this does, and there are few differences between processes running, as I have a lot of the server related stuff running on the Mac to. It still can't keep up with what I was running Vista on, but that is expected as that computer is about 4 months old and cost a lot over quite a few months to actually get to its present state.

Feature-wise, I was pretty far off for Vista being the same as OS X. It doesn't have the F9-F11 functions of showing all open windows, all windows from a process, and show the desktop at the press of one button. Now all the Windows nuts are yelling saying they have alt-tab, well, I can use Apple-Tab and do the same thing. Plus I have the dock showing all running processes. Native support for nearly any type of archive file (Windows is ZIP and CAB only), SSH2 support, SSH Server, FTP and HTTP servers. Built-in drivers for who knows how many printers. I even have a very secure firewall. Then all my files are locked in an encrypted home folder. Now, Windows can get these things, but not built in, somewhat. The new firewall in Windows is getting closer to the standard *nix firewall, but it's still lacking some. You can have IIS for a server and Terminal Services for remote access, sure, but IIS isn't exactly the most secure of all servers, but there have been many improvements over the past year or so that made a huge leap in the right direction. Windows still doesn't have native ssh support though, and I find it to be a very useful thing, I even install OpenSSH for Windows just to have command-line ssh without needing PuTTY or another program. The one thing Windows does have is a very sophisticated encyrption tool, but it only works in the Professional version, where OS X has it for all. There are also a lot of really nice built in networking tools, which Windows is definitely lacking. The one things Microsoft does have that I haven't found yet for Apple, is Remote Desktop. It is here in OS X, but there are only clients for OS X. I can't connect to it from Windows, where MS has clients for older versions of Windows (back to 95 or NT) and also OS X. I haven't done to much experimenting yet, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing something, but Windows has one and only one thing that I can find better about it at this point.

Now, to quiet all the people yelling n00b at me, I'm very computer literate. I prefer doing a lot of stuff via command line/terminal/console. I'm running a Debian server, Windows Custom PC (XP and XP x64 currently) and now my old school PowerMac. I've used all versions of Windows from NT 4 to Vista Beta 1, minus a few early builds of "Longhorn" that I never got the opportunity to use. I've used more than enough Linux Distros, including Red Hat 9, Fedora Core 1,2, & 4, SuSE 9 & 9.3, Mandrake 9, 10, 10.1 (Mandriva), Debian Woody & Sarge, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and also some minor stuff with Solaris. Plus I've used OS X 10.3 and 10.4 a lot too. So I know what I'm doing when it comes to most common operating systems as I've used plenty of them. I can fix nearly any Windows based or related problem, and currently get paid to do so here at school (Bucknell University) and since Windows is plagued with problems for the unsuspecting user, I have great job security. I will admit that I am still very new to Linux in general, although I can do a lot of things since I've been using it more and more since April of this year, mainly to learn more about it. I have even been running my own web server and ftp server since the fist semester of my sophomore year, although it's meant for minor stuff like web programming that I am also slowly learning. About the only thing I don't do is 'hack' my files so I can do fun tricks with XP. I have gotten the uxtheme.dll patch, but that is about the extent of my 'hacking'. I'm a Windows guy at heart, and always will be as I like what I can do with it, despite the $300 price tag for the operating system, plus another couple hundred dollars for all the software that I use. But I really have to hand it to Apple for this one, they have the superior OS at this point in time. Really, we'll all have to wait and see what the future Vista builds hold to tell who stays on top of the Operating System world as far as the 'best' OS feature-wise is concerned. Vista was only about a third of the way finished at the release of Beta 1, if there was even that much done in it, but it's still falling short of the bar that has been set, at least at this point in time, by Apple with OS X, Tiger.

Posted by imnuts at 10:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 10, 2005

What to say

Well, I guess I'll introduce myself a little here first. I'm Mark and I work on syndication and search optimization at PROnet. Just turned 20 this past June and am currently attending Bucknell University going for Chemical Engineering, although I'm not sure what I want to do with that degree yet. I work at school during classes and have also worked there the past to summers, although the work I do is mostly a joke as you sit there doing absolutely nothing. It's the basic help desk tech support job, although someone that still thinks an abacus is a computer could get a job there. So, that's basically me, in short anyways.

Now what I like to do is play with computers. Many people told me to be a Comp. Sci. major, and when I think about it, maybe I'll go to school for that someday too, but not now. I had a Dell, although it's the best running Dell I've seen since I've gotten around to 'fixing' it. In case people don't know, Dell's don't like to work right out of the box, you need to fix them to get them to work right, and this usually includes installing an operating system without all the Dell support apps and other stuff they like to include. I also have a custom built that is finally nearing completion, especially with the last shipment of stuff that just arrived today. The new moniter is absolutely stunning, by far the best computer related purchase I've ever made. The one problem is that there are 3 bad pixels around the outside edge. It's a Sceptre X9g Gamer, 19" LCD with 12ms response time. I like the fact that it has S-Video and RCA Video inputs, along with the standard DVI and VGA, so I'll be hooking up my xbox to it later.

I've also started making my own server setup on the previously mentioned Dell, running Debian Sarge. The whole *nix venture is something that I wanted to do since I got to PRO over a year ago now, but never had the resources to do so until recently. It's going to be my own little area to test out phpBB, learn PHP, and also become a regular *nix user. I currently haven't done much with it though as I don't have a modem in it, which means no internet, cause here where I live, we're stuck in the stone age yet with dial-up. DSL is available, but didn't get here until a couple months ago and has just started to go down in price. Needless to say, I'm still a Windows junky along with most of the known world. I plan to also set up a file mirror with it, hosting many of the popular *nix distrobutions that are out there, so stay tuned for more info on that. So far, all this has really been used for is php based stuff, and I also have a couple test forums set up on it. My next venture will be into FreeBSD and also Mac OS X. I really like the Mac OS, at least the latest one's, 9 was absolutely horrible. I've also always liked FreeBSD, although that's probably because of the nice little logo that they use. Really, the sky's the limit when it comes to computers, and the more you know in this day and age on them, the further you can go in nearly any field, so I figured I might as well learn as much as I can before getting into the real world, to give me the slight edge over the competition, cause it surely won't be my grades that are going to get me there.

Other than that, I'm really lost as to what to blog about. There isn't really anthing interesting going on in my life as this part of the world is about as interesting as watching grass grow or paint dry. I haven't done anything spectacular or out of the ordinary either. My life during the summer is about as dull as it gets really, and the internet and PRO are my only escapes from the world. The only thing of any real importance that I've done lately is create Google Sitemaps, so hopefully, they work out and get the places indexed more thoroughly. If anyone wants help making one for their site, just let me know and I'll help you out. As for me, I'm done with this entry into the life and times of imnuts.

Posted by imnuts at 08:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack