NaughtySpawn

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

This is just one example of the many problems I’ve been facing with Windows 7 and why it infuriates me. Things that used to work under XP without incident, don’t work under the "new and improved" OS.

I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 630 to replace an older Dell Dimension 5150. The Inspiron is an AMD Athlon II X4 chipset since I didn’t want to go with Intel this time around. Instead of using the onboard video I installed an Nvidia 8500GT PCIe video card and an Nvidia 6200 PCI card. I have two monitors plugged into the 8500GT card and one into the 6200 card for a total of three monitors across two video cards.

The funny thing, the system and Windows both recognize the cards. The drivers are installed and updated. And, when Windows initially starts it can see both cards and puts a display across all three. On the surface everything looks fine.

Until I start arranging windows. Within a minute or two of trying to use this configuration all three screen will lockup and it looks like the entire machine is hung. However, most of the time I can press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, lock the machine, log back in, and the video will respond again (at least on the main monitor, the video on the other two is completely locked and unusable). This usually gives me enough time to get to Control Panel and disable the 6200 video card. Once that card is disabled, everything works fine. I can drag and drop across monitors without issue and it doesn’t lock up. As soon as I enable the card, the problem comes right back.

As I mentioned, the drivers are updated and they use the same driver download. Windows doesn’t show any conflicts or errors in Device Manager. And since it can power that card and monitor it appears everything is fine. But alas, it simply can’t use it correctly.

Under Windows XP these same cards in this same configuration worked correctly. It just baffles me that Windows has a handle on the card to begin with then fumbles all over itself.

Is this a problem with Windows and dual video cards or is this some hate between an AMD mother/chipset combination and Nvidia? I’ve noticed hundreds of articles about problems with Windows 7 and multiple video cards and no one seems to have a solution. Since multiple monitors is extremely common, and multiple video cards is just as common I can’t see why Windows 7 can’t make this work. I’ve seen all sorts of comments about buying two identical cards, but Win7 isn’t worth $100 bucks to me, it’s certainly not worth me spending a few hundred more on video cards just to get it to do something an older version could handle.

Anyone else running into something like that? For the time being, I guess I’m just SOL and this is another problem with the latest and greatest Microsoft has to offer.

To put it bluntly, I can’t stand Windows 7. Since the day I installed it I’ve spend everyday fighting against the quirks, odd behavior, bad design and just one problem after another. At first it seemed like such a good idea, but I can’t find one single feature I like. I’ve run into problems with the machine crashing when it goes to sleep, losing the network when it wakes up, problems with 32-bit apps, fights with the UAC, troubles with multiple video cards, strange slowness issues and more damn updates than you can shake a stick at. I just can’t do it anymore. This relationship is too trying and too taxing on me. And through it all I can’t say I’ve gained a single feature from my days of working with XP.

And the funny thing is, I can’t go back to Windows XP because I don’t have the 64-bit version and even if I did, that OS is such a horrid piece of junk I would be facing just as many compatibility issues since nothing runs correctly on XP64. Talk about red headed stepchild.

It’s pretty ironic that Microsoft started off the decade with the launch of Windows Me, the completely unnecessary and instantly forgettable sequel to Windows 98. When it comes to OS duds, I’m pretty sure most people would agree that Windows Me is at the top of the list.

As the decade came to a close Microsoft comes out with Windows 7, the hurried yet completely necessary upgrade to the second worst OS they ever put out, Windows Vista. Vista was a dog with fleas from the day it hit the shelves, but the part that puzzles me is that Windows 7 looks and acts just like Vista that I can’t understand why people say Win 7 is so much better. The UAC is the same, the dialogs are the same, Control Panel is the same; the only thing that looks different is the Taskbar. If anything, Windows 7 should have been called Vista Service Pack 3, but MS was desperate to put Vista behind them so they had to make a new name for it.

I’ve tried to like Windows 7, really I have. I use it both at home and at work and I just can’t deal with it anymore. The constant updates are one thing, I’d rather MS fix the bugs as they find them rather than waiting six months, but come on, do we really have to have an update every other day? It’s a bit much and makes me wonder about the stability and security of this wreck.

The updates I can handle, it’s the constant crashes and fights to get the OS to do what I want. I’m tired of being told I don’t have permissions to files or don’t have permissions to run executables. I’m tired of all the compatibility issues with 32 bit apps running. Where are my 64 bit apps? Out of all the apps I have only 1 is 64 bit and that’s Photoshop Lightroom. Oh wait, I lied, I have a 64 bit disc defragger, color me impressed! It’s not that every other OS has 64 bit apps and Windows doesn’t, but let’s be real here. 64 bit processors have been around for more than 5 years and we still don’t have anything that truly takes advantage of them. We get four cores and can barely tap their potential.

As it stands now, my plan is to get rid of Windows 7. I’ll hold out until the first Service Pack comes along (remember, never buy a new OS until the first Service Pack hits the street) but unless things drastically change, and I doubt they will, I’m going to reformat this machine. I know I can’t get rid of Windows completely, I have far too much money invested in software, and quite frankly some apps just don’t exist on other platforms. Switching to Ubuntu would be my first choice, but what are my choices when it comes to Banking and Photo Editing apps? Ubuntu is a fantastic OS and serves my needs extremely well, but there’s a few places that still need work. But I have a plan. I plan to use Ubuntu as my main OS, I think after 10.04 comes out in April, then I will run Windows XP SP3 under Virtualbox. I think XP is infinitely more usable than Windows 7 and since nothing is truly 64 bit anyway, what am I losing? If I give the Virtual Machine 4GB of RAM I’ll still be in the same boat I am today. And then, within another year or so, I truly believe I will buy a Mac and use that for all my other software needs – banking, photo editing.

There is no advantage to Windows 7 so why should I keep using it? Worst case, I could just put the 32-bit version of Win 7 in a VM and use it that way. At least I wouldn’t have the compatibility issues, the network problems or shutdown hassles. The 32-bit apps wouldn’t know the difference would they?

Anybody else try a crazy idea like this? Even if I don’t do it at home, it’s what I’ll be doing at work. I have no need for photo editing and money management there. Everything we do is web based and that’s been working a lot better under Ubuntu than Win 7.

The clock is ticking, the days of Windows 7 are numbered.

If you’re using the new Personas feature which comes with FireFox 3.6 and have problems with the transparency of the Roboform toolbar the FoxTab plugin/addon might be the culprit. The Roboform toolbar looks fine right after FireFox starts up, but within a second or two the transparency is lost and the image is now cut with a dark toolbar background.

To correct the problem go to Tools – Add-ons and remove the FoxTab plugin. Restart FireFox and the Roboform toolbar should look normal again. Personas should now have the correct transparency.

Beyond Divinity:

You were a disciple of the Divine, a servant of light on a never-ending crusade to fight evil. But fate has made a terrible turn on you. During an epic battle with a powerful necromancer, dreadful daemon named Samuel tricked you and dragged you to his dimension. There you were trapped and tortured.
But like every typical daemon lord, he had a very twisted, sadistic sense of humour, so he decided to chain your soul to that of a Deathknight.
Thus he cursed you to spend the rest of eternity bound to a creature you were fighting all you life. Now you must work together to escape your prison and find a way to break this curse!

Divine Divinity:

The land of Rivellon ts about to collapse – dark, evil powers stared a war with the people of the Seven Races. But there is still hope – the ancient prophecy about the chosen one may come true with your help, dear player.
Divine Divinity is a role-playing game featuring a gameplay experience somewhere between Sacred and the Ultima series. You can choose from 3 typical character archetypes – Fighter, Mage and Survivor (Rogue-like class). Each one has a unique special skill. The rest of your character development its up to you imagination – you can even learn skills from other classes and make a very unique character build.
The game is long, challenging and very addictive. You will encounter many different enemies and a very big variety of quests and story missions.
When you add great music and not-so-dated graphics you will get a full RPG experience!

Get both games for $7.98, click here:

Yet another glitch for Windows 7. Seems every time the machine tries to come out of sleep mode there is no Network available. And apparently I’m not the only one having this issue. The Internet is riddled with this problem.

I was ready to unleash my venom on Windows 7 for its ridiculous behavior but my buddy Theo talked me down. After giving me a cold towel and a Mountain Dew, I have to agree, I can’t blame Windows 7 for this one, at least not completely. It seems Windows 7 and my RealTek onboard network card aren’t quite getting along or they have quite figured out how to talk to each other correctly. A pretty big blunder since Windows 7 is the predominant OS and RealTek is the predominant onboard network manufacturer. Nothing like a well oiled machine.

But anyway, the fix is simple.

Open Device Manager (Control Panel – Hardware – Device Manager)

Click the Network Adapter, right-click and get Properties

Click the Power Management tab

Uncheck the options for Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power

- All the other items should then grey out.

Update:Yeah too bad this didn’t work for me. When I brought the machine out of sleep mode last night, it still had no network connection. I guess this doesn’t work in all cases. Of course, I decided to be smart and assign a static IP address to that machine. Just caused Windows 7 to lock up on the TCP/IP Properties page. Damn, what a great operating system this is!

Update #2:I ended up fixing this by giving my machine a static IP address. Funny, I thought DNS should serve this function, but I guess when it comes to Windows 7, if you want it done right, or at least without something crashing, you have to do it yourself. At least now I always have an IP address when the computer wakes up.

Came across this cool cartoon of Hot Fuzz.

I dropped it into Paint Shop Pro and resized to 8.5×11, printed it out and stuck it on the wall. Scales nicely and looks cool as hell! Click the image and check it out!

To put it simply, I can’t work without Roboform. There is no better way of dealing with web site passwords. Now that I’m in the midst of my Ubuntu musings I find I don’t have Roboform at my disposal as I once did. However, until there is a native version of Roboform for Ubuntu there is a pretty easy workaround to make your passwords available in a different OS.

First thing you need to do is go here and create an online account so you can sync your passwords. This is the same account you would make if you want to sync your passwords to your iPhone/iPod Touch (which I have also done).

With the account created sync your passwords.

Back on that same Roboform page, drag the Roboform link on the right to your toolbar.

Now, whenever you need to log in, click the Roboform button on your toolbar and your list of synced passwords will appear.

Pretty easy and very handy.

But wait! There’s more!

Roboform is having a Valentine’s Day sale. You cam get Roboform for 20% off which makes the price $23.95. Not a bad savings for this incredibly handy app! Plus you can get it working cross-platform no problem.

Get the full instructions on the Roboform Bookmarklet page

Over the next couple of years the importance of Windows will decline rapidly as more users and more products switch over to become browser based. The browser will play the dominant role and the OS will go behind the scenes. We’re clearly seeing this change now with more people wanting to use Netbooks and handheld devices. They simply need to connect to the "cloud"; it makes little difference in how they get there.

Right now we’re already seeing a huge increase in browser functionality. You upload pictures to sites like Webshots, Flickr and Facebook through the browser, create blog entries with plugins like Scribefire, transfer files with FireFTP, check email at Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and others, watch movies at Hulu and Netflix and if Flash and HTML 5 continue their development even games like Quake and dozens of titles from Popcap can be played inside a browser.

An extensible browser will have more value than an OS that takes 13GB of space just to get running. Currently, Firefox supports the best model with the proliferation of extensions that can be loaded. And, those same plugins will work regardless of whether you’re on Windows or Linux. The number of plugins available for Firefox dwarfs what’s available for IE. Even Chrome has more plugins available. As we move to a more web centric mentality there will be little need for a preposterously large base operating system. Do you really want to wait for a minute or two while you machine boots up or comes out of sleep mode and reloads everything into memory?

I fully expect that within the next year or so we’ll see full applications running inside of the browser using Flash, Silverlight, HTML 5 and plugins. Developers are making utilities right now that extend the power of Firefox and that will continue as the browser exposes more features. And as Flash and Silverlight develop we won’t be limited to simple games, but more full fledged applications.

Windows will also continue to lose dominance and importance and more games switch over to console platforms. Case in point, even Microsoft is no longer a game publisher for PC games and has even shuttered some of the biggest titles they had – Flight Simulator, Age of Empires and Rise of Nations just to name a few.

DirectX 10 didn’t do much to keep games on the PC either. There’s only a handful of games that are written specifically for it and most game developers have stated they plan to keep writing for DirectX 9.

Microsoft itself is pulling users away from Windows with Xbox 360. They are betting the ranch on Project Natal, which if successful will move even more users off Windows. Further, with the addition of streaming media, Twitter updates and other social media integration the need for a PC and thus Windows will continue to erode.

The other cash cow for Microsoft has been Office which I believe peaked in feature set in 2003 and now offers little reason for continual upgrades. Blog tools, social network apps, and online editors have all chipped away at the need for Office, certainly for Word which is the major reason people buy Office. Even those online comment forms highlight your spelling mistakes.

Word contains thousands of features no one will ever see, let alone use. Excel probably still has features to offer to niche groups, but overall it has exceeded the capacity of most users. In the grand scheme of things, why upgrade? What do these new versions of Office offer? And if they don’t offer new features, the need and want to upgrade to a new OS to support them diminishes quickly. Remember the launch of Windows 95 with Office 95 and again with Windows 2000 and Office 2000? WinXP and Office XP? Funny, it didn’t happen with the ill-fated Vista or the follow up cousin, Win 7.

Sure there is a surge in lemmings upgrading to Windows 7, but considering just how bad Vista was and the low expectations people have it’s really not that surprising. Plus, how many people actually went out and bought it off the shelves versus buying a new machine? Yes, they had a lot of pre-orders and the sales have been steady, but will most users be so quick to upgrade to Windows 8? I don’t believe they will. The hype and excitement over the Apple tablet more than proves people are looking for smaller, faster devices that get them on the web. It also says the functionality is the most important factor, not the OS.

The timing of Windows 7 was probably right, but with so many alternatives coming out and the push to do more on the web, the next version of Windows will probably have a hard time gaining acceptance. I’ve been using Windows 7 for a couple of months now and dislike it immensely. It’s not the upgrade I was hoping for and I have no intention of spending money for the same old crap next time around.

Not to just be content with having Ubuntu on an older machine I went ahead and installed Virtualbox so I could run Ubuntu side by side with Windows. Again, the install took about 20 minutes and it was up and running. It had no problem installing in the virtual environment and came up with video and network drivers. I was on the web, checking email and looking at sites without having to configure a thing.

This also proves to me that I need to ditch Virtual PC for Windows 7 for Virtualbox. VPC for Win 7 is junk and is just too much of a hassle. Virtualbox was so much easier to configure and actually works like the old VPC used to.

Going back to Ubuntu, there is no denying that installing apps in Windows is a far easier task than installing apps for Unix. There’s still tons of command line scripting going on in the Unix world and that alone is going to be an interesting learning curve. I had no problem getting system updates, but getting something like Thunderbird 3 on there was not just a simple double-click. And even when I did get Thunderbird working and downloading my email, the app is sitting on my desktop not in a "Program Files" type of location, so clearly not ideal.

Windows is usually really good for its ease of use, but as far as getting an OS installed which has a browser, word processing, image editing and network functionality, Ubuntu has proven itself to be just as easy and effective. It does come down to the apps, but if MS keeps pushing cloud computing the OS will lose its relevance since everything will be running out there.

While they aren’t the same, I really like what I see so far.

Wow, that worked out nicely! In about 20 minutes I got Ubuntu fully installed with video and network support. It also has OpenOffice, IM and Email client, a BitTorrent client, and system utilities which look very similar to the ones you get with Windows, and full support for USB. Ok, so far I’m impressed with the Karmic Koala.

The hardware I’m using is my old Dell Dimension 515 with a Pentium 4 Hyperthreaded single core chip and 4GB of ram. The drive is the 640GB one that came with my new system (which I removed and replaced with a 1.5TB drive).

I started the install at 1:52pm and I was looking at my desktop at 2:19pm. This also includes the time it took to completely format the drive since it had Windows 7 64bit on it. I figure that took at least a few minutes so the actual install took about 20 minutes.

I even got it to play AVI, WMV and MP3 files right off the bat. It’s a simple download to get the codecs.

I forgot that I could use Virtualbox to install a virtual copy of Windows or use WINE to try and run some apps for those times when I would need them. I’m not quite ready to make the switch, but if this test bed works out Windows may be off this machine sooner rather than later.