I just got the new hardware I ordered from Newegg a few days back. I got 2GB of Corsair RAM and an ASUS EAH3450/DI/256M Radeon HD 3450 video card. Both were on sale for $20 each, after rebates.

The RAM brings me up to 4GB total, of which only 3GB is usable, but that's still better than 2GB. There's a thread at Channel 9 about the whole 4GB thing that's pretty useful, if you can slog through it. I notice that the memory score in my Windows Experience Index went down, from 5.3 to 4.8, after I installed the new RAM. The original 2GB that I had in my machine was Corsair XMS, while the new memory is Corsair Value Select. I guess the cheap new stuff is a little slower than the fancy old stuff.

The new video card gets a 3.5 on the Aero score, and 3.9 on the gaming score. The old card got 4.1 for Aero and 3.7 for gaming. I'm a little confused on how this card can score lower than the old one on Aero, but I guess there's a reason. I'm going to update the drivers and see if that changes anything.

Overall, I don't really see any difference in the way the machine's running now compared to how it was before the new memory and video card. I'm assuming that the extra RAM will help me out in Virtual PC, but I haven't tried that yet. Ditto for SQL Server. I haven't really tried anything fancy with SQL on this machine yet, but it's always good to throw RAM at SQL Server.

Labels: hardware, Vista

I'm still slowly working on switching over to Vista on my home desktop machine. I just ordered a cheap new video card that should be a bit more Vista-compatible than my old one. I also ordered 2 gigs of RAM, so I can bring my machine up to 4 GB. (And, yes, I know 32-bit Vista won't be able to use all of it.) I think this will leave me with a reasonably fast machine, capable of handling anything I'm likely to do with it.

Labels: hardware, Vista, Windows

I went ahead and installed DD-WRT on my router today. I want to give it a few days before I say this for certain, but I think it's solved all the problems I had with the Apple TV. I tried streaming stuff wirelessly from my MacBook to the Apple TV, and that worked. I watched a podcast and a couple of YouTube videos over the Internet, no problem. And I synced a few TV shows from my desktop PC down to the Apple TV without the sync getting interrupted and restarting every few minutes.

The install was fairly straightforward. For a v8 WRT54G like mine, it's detailed here. It turns out that the v8 WRT54G isn't the best router to user for DD-WRT (that would probably be a WRT54GL, as explained here), but it works with with the "micro" distribution of DD-WRT, which is all I really need.

The installation write-up doesn't bother to mention the default user name and password for DD-WRT. You can find them in the FAQ, but if you haven't looked that up and written it down before installing, you might have to do what I did, which was to call a friend and have him look it up for me.

Aside from the usual setup, I didn't have to mess with any of the parameters in DD-WRT to get things working well, except to turn off "filter multicast", which I had to do under the original firmware also. (That setting is under security / firewall in the DD-WRT config.)

Overall, DD-WRT is pretty cool. You can see a lot of stuff in the status screens that you can't see under the default firmware. And there's lot of stuff you can tweak, though I doubt I'll mess with it much, assuming it keeps working OK.

Labels: Apple, hardware

I'm still struggling with my Apple TV. I got an initial sync (with my desktop PC) done only by hooking up the Apple TV to my network with an Ethernet cable. I couldn't get it to work over wireless, no matter what I tried. I came across a good article on the way Apple TV tends to behave more like a computer (with all the usual problems) rather than a consumer electronics device. Good quote: "Whereas most CE A/V products just sit there and work, Apple TV is high-maintenance, demanding too much attention, updating, troubleshooting and overall spoon-feeding."

After the initial sync, I switched back to wireless, and I have been able to sync a few things down to it, though it hasn't been trouble-free. I've also been experimenting with streaming stuff from my MacBook to the Apple TV. I managed to watch an hour-long video podcast with no problems, but then I started experiencing problems with much smaller files. Weird. I played around today some more, and I've discovered that I can stream stuff from the MacBook fine, if it's connected to my network via Ethernet cable. (The Apple TV doesn't need to be wired, just the MacBook.) Again, kind of weird.

On the Apple discussion boards, I've seen three solutions to the Apple TV wireless problems that would probably work:
(1) Leave it hooked up via an Ethernet cable, and forget about using it wirelessly.
(2) Throw your WRT54G router away and get a new one.
(3) Load an alternate firmware on your router, such as DD-WRT.

I'm not real keen on any of those, though I wouldn't mind having an excuse to try out DD-WRT. I'm a little worried that I might brick my router if I do that, but it's only a $50 router, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if it happened. Maybe I'll be doing that later this week.

Labels: Apple, hardware

At work, I generally get a new desktop machine every two years. We lease computers from Dell, so it doesn't really cost anything to return my machine at the end of each two-year lease and trade it in for a new one. My lease is up at the end of this month, so I just got a new machine in. Usually, when I get a new machine, there are a few big differences from the last one. This time, not so much. I've got more hard drive space, but that's really the only major difference. The processor is about the same speed. I've got twice the RAM (from 2GB to 4GB), but I don't think the difference there will be especially noticeable. And I'm sticking with Windows XP, so there's no OS update to worry about and/or enjoy. When I configured this machine at Dell's site, Windows XP was still the default OS choice in the drop-down. The machine does ship with Vista Business on a DVD in the box, but it's got XP installed. I'm not sticking with XP purely out of laziness or anything like that. We're using a number of applications that aren't supported under Vista. And I just can't see any real advantage to moving over to Vista yet.

On another front, I tried installing Lotus Notes 8 on the new machine. It worked, but it was pretty slow. It's got a few interesting new features, and I'd really love to be able to move everyone from Notes 7 to 8, but if I can't get it running well on a machine with 4 GB of RAM, it's going to be intolerable on some of our lower-end machines. I uninstalled it and went back to Notes 7.

The point of this story is basically that I'm somewhat disappointed with the progress we've made in the computer industry over the last couple of years. Major new software releases, such as Vista, Notes 8, Office 2007, and so on, are interesting but not compelling. And they're usually bloated and slow on even high-end hardware. And the hardware itself doesn't seem to have progressed much, expect in a few areas. Processor technology in particular doesn't seem to have changed much over the last two years.

Well, that's my two cents. I'm still glad I'm getting a new machine!

Labels: hardware, Windows

I've got two hard drives in my main desktop computer: a 250 GB drive that I've got all my stuff on, and an old 100 GB drive that I occasionally use for backups, or experimenting with Linux, or what have you. I turned the computer on last night, and heard an ominous clicking sound coming from one of the drives. Luckily, it was the 100 GB drive, which didn't currently contain anything important. I could really just throw that drive away and be done with it, but I decided that this was a good opportunity to do some upgrading. I just bought a new 500 GB drive from Newegg for $70. I'm going to use that as my main drive, move the 250 GB drive over to secondary use, and toss the bad 100 GB drive.

I think I'll probably use this opportunity to do a fresh Vista install on the new drive, and just reinstall all my apps. I'm still running XP on the machine, largely because I've been afraid to try an in-place upgrade to Vista, and there was no obvious quick and safe way to do a clean install without having another big drive handy.

I'm still a little worried about putting Vista on this machine. The Vista upgrade advisor indicates that it'll be OK, and I actually did a test install of Vista on the 100 GB drive a while back, and it did work. My motherboard and video card predate Vista, though, and there were a couple of slightly questionable things that came up when I did that test install. I really don't want to go out and buy a new mobo and processor right now, if I can avoid it. I might upgrade the RAM in the machine from 2GB to 3GB, though. And a newer video card wouldn't be out of the question, though I'm not sure that would help much.

Labels: hardware, Windows

Here's an interesting little article on the idea of reading e-books on a cellphone, in this case, a BlackBerry. The newer BlackBerries have pretty decent screens, but I still don't think I'd want to read a book on one. I'll stick with the Kindle!

read more | digg story

Labels: books, hardware

I'm still loading my Kindle up with free stuff. I haven't bought a single ebook from Amazon yet. I just re-discovered the 2007 Nebula page at Fictionwise, which lists a bunch of Nebula-nominated stories from last year that are available from them for free.
And I also just noticed that Fictionwise has a number of magazines available in Kindle-compatible formats, including Analog and a few other SF and mystery magazines. I've been somewhat disappointed in Amazon's selection of magazines for the Kindle; they've only got 11 magazines available, and none of them are primarily fiction magazines. I may decide to try out a couple of magazines from Fictionwise and see if they work well on the Kindle.

Labels: books, hardware, Kindle

Right after the Kindle was released, there was a lot of talk about the DRM/licensing model it used. The subject seems to have come up again this weekend, starting with a post on Gizmodo that got referenced on Slashdot and Boing Boing. If you look through the comments on all three of these sites, you'll see some well though out opinions, plus of course some less (perhaps) cogent ones.

I've loaded my Kindle up with a fair number of free (and legal) non-DRM'd ebooks from various sources. I do intend on buying some stuff from the Amazon store at some point, but just haven't gotten around to it yet. Yes, I do know that I won't really be *buying* these books, but rather just buying a license to read them on a particular device under specific conditions. I'm OK with that. I usually only read a given book once or twice, and I don't feel the need to keep a copy of every book I've ever read, so I really won't mind it if my Kindle ebook "library" disappears if I ever decide to just get rid of my Kindle. If I buy an ebook that's really great, and I really want to keep a copy around, I'll probably go out and buy a hard copy too.

One of the arguments that I see come up frequently is the idea that if DRM'd ebooks *completely* replace hard copy books, then various really good things about the current book economy will go away -- lending books to friends, buying cheap used books, borrowing books from the library and so on. I really don't think we need to worry about this happening any time in the near future. I think the ebook reader market is going to remain a niche market for quite a while. Even if the price comes down, it's just not a model that's going to appeal to most people. There are a lot of people who just don't read enough to warrant buying any kind of dedicated device for reading. Just picking up an occasional paperback at Border's, or the library, or the airport bookstore, is more than enough for them.

And I don't think that the iPhone, or smartphones in general, and going to be used as ebook readers by too many people. That's also an opinion I've seen tossed around a bit. I think the iPhone (or iPod Touch in my case) is great for browsing through the NY Times site and checking out a few articles, but I wouldn't want to try and read a novel on it.

So I guess that's my (more than) two cents on the Kindle DRM thing. I don't know if anyone will find this post particularly useful or interesting, but I just had to get all that off my chest.

Labels: books, hardware, Kindle

I got a Kindle today. I ordered it back in early February, so it took about a month for Amazon to get it out the door. It's pretty much what I expected. The screen is very readable, in any (reasonable) light. As many others have pointed out, the button layout makes it a little awkward to figure out a good way to hold the thing without pressing either the next page or previous page button. I think I'll get used to it though.

The built-in web browser is interesting, and might be somewhat useful. Gmail seems to be usable on it. Lotus Notes webmail is out of the question, though. Mobile-friendly sites like http://nytimesriver.com/ ought to be useable.

I haven't bought any books for it yet. For now, I've just got some free books on it that I downloaded from ManyBooks and Tor.

For the most part, I'm liking it. I have so many hard copy books sitting around that I won't be using it for most of my reading any time soon, but I'll start reading something on it soon, just to start using it. I'll likely blog more about it after I've played around with it some more.

Labels: books, hardware, Kindle

My Airport Express started flaking out earlier this week, so I decided to hook up a WRT54G that I had originally bought for my father, but never got around to installing for him. That went pretty smooth, and seems to be working fine. One nice plus to this is that I now have one box acting as my router and WAP, instead of the separate Linksys Router and Apple Airport Express that I used to have.

I decided to take the plunge and switch from WEP to WPA now too. Everything I have works with WPA+TKIP, except for my TiVo. I'm going to have to order a new USB network adapter to get that to work. It's only $40 though, so I might as well. It looks like I can't do WPA2, though, since my Sony PSP doesn't do WPA2. Oh, and I realized that I now have six devices hooked up wirelessly: a MacBook, a Dell Inspiron, an iPod Touch, a TiVo, a PSP, and a Wii.

One more funny thing: I can now pick up 22 different wireless access points in my apartment. The airspace in here is getting mighty crowded! When I first hooked up my original Airport base station several years ago, there were no other WAPs broadcasting around here at all.

Labels: hardware

I blogged about the Sony Reader a couple of months back. The Amazon Kindle is out now too. One of the things I didn't like about the Sony Reader was the lack of technical books. I did a little searching on Amazon, and they definitely seem to have a better supply of programming books available than Sony. The pricing on them isn't great though. For instance, ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed is $36 on Amazon for the dead tree version, and $32 for the Kindle version. That book is almost 2000 pages, and weighs 6 pounds, so I can understand why the physical version costs so much, but I think they should really be able to deliver the electronic version at a significantly lower price. Leaving that aside for now, it's still pretty compelling to switch from having a big pile of 2000 page, 6 pound books to having a single device weighing less than one pound holding multiple books. And I still think the idea of a partnership with Safari would be great, but I guess that's too much to ask for at this point.

There have been some interesting reactions to the Kindle, from people like Scoble and Mossberg. One thing that concerns me is that both of those guys have pointed out some interface problems that make the device a little frustrating to use.

Cory Doctorow pointed out a few negatives on a post on BoingBoing, and talked about it a bit during an episode of TWiT from a few weeks back. His big problem is basically the DRM and TOS stuff. I don't necessarily mind DRM, if it's done well, and if I can trust that the company behind it will be supporting the system for a while. In other words, I don't have a big problem with iTunes DRM, but I don't really trust that anyone else's DRM is going to be around long enough to make it worth my while to invest any money in it. Of course, I'd rather just not have *any* DRM, but that just doesn't seem feasible right now. I know we're getting there on music, but it doesn't look like we're anywhere near there on books yet.

I really like the wireless purchase and delivery system on the Kindle. That seems much better than the Sony system. I think that if they can get some of the interface kinks ironed out in the next iteration of the hardware, bring down book prices a bit, and maybe bring the price of the device itself down, then I'll be ready to take the plunge and get one.

Labels: books, hardware, Kindle

I didn't do much today, aside from watching football. I'm not making any major resolutions this year either. I did make all the arrangements to go to WonderCon today though. As usual, I wasn't really sure I wanted to go this year, but a few things convinced me to go again. Basically, a good guest lineup, plus a general desire to get out of New Jersey for a few days. And a chance to see the Chinese New Year Parade again!

I haven't really done much reflection on 2007. Normally, I would get kind of reflective on New Year's Day, but I haven't really been in that frame of mind. Well, just for the heck of it, here are some things I've done in 2007:

Books and comics I've read and liked:

• Absolute Watchmen
  
• Nextwave
  
• David Allen's Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything (though I haven't finished RFA yet)
  
• the first two Jasper Fforde "Thursday Next" novels
  
• a couple of Jim Butcher "Harry Dresden" novels
  

Movies & TV shows I've enjoyed:

• Paprika (my favorite movie of the year, for whatever that's worth)
  
• Once
  
• Ratatouille
  
• The Simpsons Movie
  
• Rise: Blood Hunter (okay, not exactly high-brow, but fun)
  
• Torchwood
  
• Life on Mars
  
• Heroes
  

Music I've liked:

• Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
  
• Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
  
• Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
  
• Pizzicato Five - Made in USA (from 1994, but I'd never heard it until this year)
  
• Derek and the Dominoes - Layla (I only just got around to buying this CD in 2007)
  

Pointless stuff I've spent money on:

• new couch
  
• iPod Touch
  
• TomTom One LE GPS
  
• Dell Inspiron laptop
  
• MacBook
  
• Microsoft Office 2007
  
• Motorola SLVR
  
• 19" widescreen LG monitor
  
• Toshiba HD-DVD player
  

Things I didn't get around to doing:

• buying a new car (the old one's still working, but maybe not for much longer)
  
• checking out the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Met
  
• visiting the new Morimoto restaurant in NYC
  

Well, that's just a bunch of random lists off the top of my head. I guess the two big things that happened in 2007 for me were the office move my company did (from Edison to Somerset), and my mostly successful implementation of GTD.

Labels: books, comics, hardware, movies, music

I haven't gotten around to blogging in the last couple of weeks. Things have been pretty hectic. I'm trying to relax right now, so I thought I'd just write up a few random bits.

I picked up a TomTom One LE GPS unit at Best Buy last week. I don't really need a GPS often. Most of my driving is just back and forth to work. But, it will definitely come in handy once in a while. I used it today to help me find my way to my friend Paul's house in New York. I've been there before, but not recently. The GPS was definitely a help. In particular, there's one point where I need to make a turn onto a side street that's pretty well hidden, until you're right on top of it. The GPS takes care of that nicely by announcing the turn in advance, then again when you're right there. It really makes things easier.

I've been working my way through the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde. I'm on the third book now, Well of Lost Plots. It's starting out quite nicely. I'm really enjoying these books. Lots of fun, weird, stuff.

I installed the trial version of VMware Fusion on my MacBook yesterday, and installed Windows XP into a virtual machine. It works pretty well. It's a little slow, but a lot better than previous virtual machine products that I've used on the Mac. (Of course, this is the first time I've used an Intel Mac, so right there you've got a major advantage.) Oh, and I've got to say, I think it's time for Windows XP SP3. I installed XP with SP2, and had 90 patches to install from Windows Update. Hey Microsoft, isn't that enough patches to warrant a service pack? That's one of the nice things about Apple that we maybe take for granted. OS X 10.4 went from 10.4.0 to 10.4.10, and each of those point releases is cumulative, so you never have too many individual patches to install on a Mac.

Labels: Apple, books, hardware, software

I didn't get the extended warranty from Best Buy when I bought my new MacBook. I generally don't see much point in Best Buy warranties. I'm considering AppleCare though. I don't think I've ever bothered with it before, and I've never really needed it on any of my previous Apple laptops. I might actually keep this laptop for three years, though, so that might make it worthwhile. I just figured out that you can get AppleCare at Amazon for $200 rather that the $250 that you'd have to pay if you bought it from Apple. That makes it a little more likely that I'll get it.

Labels: Apple, hardware

I bought a new MacBook today. I got the white 2.2 GHz / 120 GB HD model. This is my first Intel mac, so that's the major difference for me between the new machine and my old G4 iBook. I'm liking it so far. The keyboard is taking a while to get used to, but it's working fine, and I don't think I'll have any long-term problems with it. The screen is smaller than the iBook, but it's a little higher resolution (1280 x 800). That leaves me with slightly smaller type on screen for some things, but that hasn't been a problem (yet) either.

I was going to buy a custom MacBook from the Apple web site, and go for 2 GB of RAM and a 250 GB drive, but then I saw that I could get 2GB of RAM for about $50 from Crucial, vs. paying Apple $150. And I can probably get a 250 GB drive for less than what Apple is charging, if I decide I really need it at some point.

I bought the machine from Best Buy, online, for store pickup. That worked out pretty well. I actually got $10 off, since they didn't have the machine ready for me when I came to pick it up.

I have a few apps that haven't been upgraded in a while; while they all work on the Intel Mac, they're probably not working as well as they could. FolderShare was a little flaky even on the old iBook, and hasn't been updated for Intel, but I think it's working OK now, since I turned off encryption and compression, per some advice on the FolderShare message boards. I've been using Juice to download podcasts for a long time. It doesn't seem like they've got a Universal Binary out either. The PowerPC version works fine, but it's a bit slow. And I've switched over from an old organizer program called iOrganize to DevonThink, which is definitely up-to-date. I also had to apply a patch to KeePassX to get it to work on Leopard.

Overall, not that much grief, considering I'm switching to a new machine, a new processor, and a new OS version.

Labels: Apple, hardware

I decided to update the firmware on my HD-DVD player tonight. I don't have the thing anywhere near my home network, so I figured it would be easier to do the firmware update via CD-R rather than trying to do it over the Internet. Lesson one: the Toshiba HD-A3 doesn't like CDs burned with Nero. It seems to like CDs burned with ISO Recorder, at 2x speed. I picked up that tidbit from AVS Forum, which is a great source of information on various audio/video stuff. So now I've got the HD-A3 at firmware version 1.1. I'm not sure that'll make any difference for anything I'm doing, but I feel like I've accomplished something.

I also ran over to the local Apple Store and picked up a new battery for my iBook G4 today. I'm pretty sure I want to get rid of the iBook and get a new MacBook soon, but the old battery had almost completely died over the last few days, and I really didn't want to pick up the new MacBook right away. So the new battery seems to be charging as it should right now. Hopefully, it's a good battery and will get me through until whenever I get the MacBook.

Labels: Apple, hardware

I got an HD-DVD player today, the Toshiba HD-A3. It was on sale at Best Buy last weekend for $200, with 10 free HD-DVDs (2 in the box, 3 at the checkout, and 5 by mail). I still have an old-fashioned CRT TV, so the actual HD stuff isn't really going to come through just yet. I'll probably buy a new TV early next year.
To make room for the HD-DVD player, I had to do a bunch of rearranging in my living room. I finally got rid of my old casette tape deck, which apparently wasn't even hooked up to my receiver. (I'm not sure how long it's been disconnected, but I don't think I've used it at any time in the last five years, at least.) And I put my old laser disc player aside, since I haven't used that in the last few years, either. My VCR is still plugged in, but I don't actually have any cables from it running to the TV anymore.
I'm keeping my old DVD player (also a Toshiba; picked up from Woot for $40), since I think it supports a few formats that the HD-DVD player doesn't, such as DivX.
So, that leaves me with a receiver, DVD player, HD-DVD player, Sony PS2, Wii, and Tivo. The Tivo output goes into one video input on the TV, while the other four items go into a four-port switch box that goes into another video input on the TV. Complicated, but I guess not as complicated as it would be if I tried to keep the laser disc player and VCR in the loop.
I haven't had a chance to actually do much with the HD-DVD player yet, but it seems to work OK. It takes about a minute to boot, and about 30 seconds to load a disc. That seems kind of excessive, but I guess it's still typical for an HD-DVD player. I think I may continue using the old DVD player for regular DVDs, just due to the quicker load time.
Meanwhile, I think I still have about 50 DVDs I haven't watched yet. (Most of them are anime DVDs I got during a big sale at Right Stuf. Still, that's a lot of DVDs.)

Labels: hardware

I'm selling my old Toshiba E310 Pocket PC on eBay, if anyone out there is even vaguely interested.

I bought it back in 2002 mostly because my company was doing some stuff with Pocket PCs at the time, so I just wanted to familiarize myself with the platform, and also see if was any better than my Palm. Well, it never wound up replacing my old Palm i705 for day-to-day use, even though it was technically a better machine. (The i705 doesn't even have a color screen.) I did have some fun playing games on it, and I also read a few eBooks on it. It was pretty good for that kind of thing. But I could never talk myself into using it as an organizer.

It does look a lot like the non-phone PDA is just about dead now. There's really nothing new in that category coming out from either Palm or any Pocket PC vendor, except for some vertical market stuff.

Labels: hardware

I was wandering around Costco today, and saw that they had the Sony Reader PRS-500 on sale for $250. I almost picked one up, but thought better of it. I'm glad I did, since a little research reveals that the new model, the PRS-505 came out last week. It's available for $300 direct from Sony. I've been mighty tempted to pick one of these things up since they were first announced about a year ago, but I figured I should wait for the second gen, at least, assuming there would be one. Well, I guess now there is.

It's still not altogether that compelling. It does 8 shades of grey (vs. 4 on the old one). Supposedly the screen refresh is faster. The interface seems to have been improved a bit. It appears that it still doesn't support full-text search within a book, though. I really think that a decent search interface, along with the availability of a large number of technical reference books, would make this a killler device for programmers and other tech folks. And a partnership with Safari would be great too. Imagine being able to sync all the books on your Safari bookshelf down to this device. Safari's nice, but you can't really just sit back in a recliner and read a book off the Safari web site; it's basically just good for reference. (I guess you *could* read a book off Safari, but I'm not comfortable doing it, even with my iBook. Notebook screens just aren't good enough for extended reading sessions. At least for my tired old eyes.)

It's still an interesting device, even if it's only good for stuff that you're going to read in a linear fashion -- novels, mostly, and maybe some non-fiction. I like the idea of carrying a nice small device around, rather than carrying, say, the 1250-page Essential Ellison. Of course, they don't have much Ellison available at the Sony ebook store. Heck, they don't have any Tolkien, or any of the Harry Potter books either.

Maybe I'll wait for the third generation!

Labels: books, hardware

I'm getting over a cold right now, so I've stayed in all day, watching college football, and working on various things around the house. Once again, I found myself about 6 months behind in entering my Merrill Lynch statements into Quicken, so I took care of that. And, I did another round of going through old papers, shredding old receipts and filing some stuff I wanted to keep. I found a bunch of stuff from my fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, including my "plausible deniability award" (don't ask).

I also found receipts from the first two PC-compatible machines I owned. The first was an Amstrad PPC-640. (Check that web link. I'd forgotten that I could power it with ten D cells! Try that with your MacBook Pro! And, yes, it was a 22 lb portable!) The second was a fairly vanilla 286 Wang. (Alas, I can't find a picture of that one on the internet.)

And I found some receipts related to my Amiga 500, though I didn't find the receipt for the machine itself.

Labels: hardware

My company is setting up a new (small) office in Pennsylvania, and I'm thinking about using some Linux stuff down there. I'm planning on using IPCop for the firewall, and maybe Openfiler for a NAS.

I've been using IPCop in our main office for the last few years, so I've got no doubts about that, and I'm quite familiar with it. I've never used Openfiler though, or any other open source NAS package. I considered putting an old Dell PowerEdge box running Windows 2000 Server down there, but I'm not really enthusiastic about that; it's an old box, and an old OS, and I don't really need all the overhead of a full Windows server. Nor do I want to pop for a Windows 2003 Server. I just need a place to put shared files for a small workgroup. I'm hoping Openfiler works well for that, and is easy to access from a Windows XP client. I've been looking at the Openfiler forums, and I think this thread may prove helpful. I haven't actually gotten around to installing OF on a box yet. I downloaded it Friday afternoon, but I mistakenly downloaded the 64-bit version, and I didn't realize that until after 5pm on Friday, so I left my machine downloading the 32-bit ISO and went home. I'll give it a try on Monday.

Labels: hardware, Linux, software

My old Planar LCD monitor died this week, so I went out to Best Buy and bought a new LG monitor, a 19" widescreen. This new monitor doesn't have any more screen real estate than the old one, but the widescreen thing is interesting. I'm not sure I like it better than the standard aspect ratio on the old monitor.

I'm also thinking that I may not have got the color calibration quite right; I went through the whole process of setting it up, using the LG software, but it still looks a bit too pink. Maybe I'll have to try it again. And maybe I need to look at the video card driver too, and see if anything there needs to be adjusted.

I dropped off the old monitor at the Somerset County Recycling facility today. Conveniently, it died just a few days before the monthly drop-off day. I'd never been down there to drop anything off before. It went relatively smoothly; I just had to wait in line behind a few other cars for a few minutes, then they just took the monitor out of my car and off I went. (On my way out, the line had gotten much longer, so I think I need to remember to get there before 10am, if I ever have to go back.) I was surprised at how many computers they had piled up there. I saw an old first-gen iMac, a blue & white G3 tower, and a big pile of beige/grey/black boxes of various models. I'm hope they're doing something responsible with them, and not just burying them in a hole somewhere.

Labels: hardware

Right now, I'm running a full backup of my desktop PC to my new 500 GB external drive. I'm also working on wiping my old Gateway and reinstalling Windows XP on it, so I can hand it off to a friend who has some use for it. And I'm also installing various things on my new Vista laptop. So I'm jumping around from machine to machine, checking on stuff, pressing "OK" a lot, and stuff like that.

On the Vista laptop, I've spent several hours trying to get Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server Express set up. Everything seems to be working now, but it sure takes a long time to get that all set up. First, you have to install the original VS 2005 package from DVD. That takes a while. Then, you have to install SP 1. That can take quite a while: several hours. There's a good explanation for this lengthy install here, and apparently Vista adds even more of a complication to this, so it takes even longer under Vista vs. XP.

After SP1, you need to install the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta. I'm a little alarmed that this is still a beta; you'd think that one of Microsoft's first priorities would be getting a good solid development environment running on Vista.

And, if you want to bring SQL Express up to date, you need to install SQL 2005 Service Pack 2. I'm not 100% if I had to do both of these, but I installed "SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Services" and "SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit". Then, I went back and installed the latest Books Online files.

So, all that took about four hours. Call me crazy, but that really seems like too long just to set up your development environment. Back in the old days, it'd take maybe 5 minutes to install, say, Clipper 5.2 or Turbo Pascal. I guess this is progress, but it doesn't feel like it!

Labels: hardware, programming, Windows

I hooked up my new 500 GB external drive to my desktop computer today, so I'll be ready to try a full backup tomorrow. I'm probably going to take my old 100 GB drive and use it to do full backups on the new Vista laptop and my old iBook. I'm not sure if I really want to keep that drive though; I don't really have any place to keep it. (I'm just running out of room in my apartment!)

I also figured out that the DVDs I used to backup my Vista laptop at work yesterday were probably DVD+R (rather than DVD-R), which may explain why they worked while my DVD-R media wouldn't. Maybe the drive just doesn't work well with DVD-R? I've seen reference to the idea that DVD+R is more reliable, but that was on Wikipedia, so who knows it that's accurate.

If I can manage to get my full backup(s) done tomorrow, then I can finally get around to installing Office 2007 on both my desktop and laptop. Maybe I can get some of the other installs I need to do on the laptop done too. Of course, I'd really like to get out of the apartment for a little while this weekend!

Labels: hardware, Windows

Everything's complicated. I wanted to do a complete hard drive backup on my desktop PC before upgrading to Office 2007. I've got a 250 GB hard drive in that machine, and I'm using about 200 GB on it. I've got an extra internal 100 GB HD, and an external 120 GB HD, so I should be able to get the backup done across those two devices without too much grief. But no. I burned up a bunch of time yesterday getting about halfway through the backup, then watching it blow up when it ran out of room on the internal drive. I've done this backup before with Retrospect, but it just isn't working now. After tweaking a few things, I think I've got it right, and I start another backup. I'm puttering around doing other stuff in the apartment while this is going on; at some point, I decide to turn on the TV and check the weather. Boom. Turning on the TV causes a momentary surge (or sag, or something) that causes the computer to reboot. End of backup.

I've got a new UPS on order that should prevent this sort of power thing from happening again. And I picked up a 500 GB external drive at Best Buy today that should allow me to get the whole backup on one drive. (Then, I can maybe use the secondary internal drive for automated backups of key files. Wouldn't that be nice?)

Labels: hardware, Windows

I just ordered myself a new Dell Inspiron E1505. I got a pretty good deal on it through Dell's EPP (employee purchase program) site. (I have access to that through work, since we do a lot of business with Dell.) I got it with Vista Ultimate installed. I still can't say that I'm really enthusiastic about Vista, but I do think that I'll need to learn it, just for the sake of keeping my skills current, if for no other reason.

I need to pick up a book on Vista too, either Brian Livingston's Vista Secrets or David Pogue's Missing Manual, I think. I probably still have Livingston's original Windows Secrets, for Windows 3.1, floating around here somewhere; I remember that being a really good book. And I have a couple of Pogue's Mac OS X Missing Manual books, and those are pretty good too.

I should try and get myself a copy of Office 2007 too, so I can learn that. I might pick up the upgrade package from CostCo, or wherever else I can find it discounted to a semi-reasonable level.

Really, Microsoft is just getting out of hand with pricing. They do have the "Home and Student" version of Office now, and that's relatively affordable, but it doesn't include Access or Outlook, so that's a bit of a deal breaker for me, at least. And Vista pricing is a joke, if you're buying it off the shelf.

Meanwhile, I'm still getting over my cold. I feel a lot better today, but I'm still feeling a bit weird. As long as I'm back to normal by WonderCon, I'm good.

Labels: hardware, Windows

I'm thinking about picking up a new laptop with Vista on it. I've been been looking at some of the oddball ones like the Toshiba Portege R400 or the Asus W5Fe. Those suckers are expensive, though. It's looking like the Toshiba A135-S4499 might be a good choice for me. It's only $1500, and has pretty much everything I need, including two 120 GB hard drives. There's a write-up on it in the NY Times today. I think it goes on sale February 20.

Labels: hardware, Windows

My Asus video card has a feature called "Splendid" which is supposed to enhance video quality. Well, some time recently, I lost the ability to watch most videos in Windows Media Player. It took me awhile to figure it out, but the culprit is apparently Splendid. I disabled it, and all is well now. For the record, I found out how to disable it here.

Here's the instructions:
- Right click on your desktop and select "Properties" to bring up your display properties;
- Select the "Settings" tab and click on "Advanced" on the bottom right;
- Select the "ASUS" tab on the top right and then the "ASUS Splendid" tab;
- Unselect the check box next to "Enable ASUS Splendid".

I'm not sure if this is a problem in the most recent driver set that's going to be corrected at some point. Either way, I never noticed "Splendid" really doing much for me anyway.

Labels: hardware

My Microsoft Ergo 4000 keyboard is working out OK, but still feels a bit weird. I want to get a second one to use at work, but it's looking like I can't use it with my KVM. Bummer. Maybe I can find a way to get myself a nice new USB-compatible KVM.

There's some good stuff on the keyboard over at Coding Horror and a review at CNet that pretty much confirms that the keyboard won't work with a PS/2 adapter.

Labels: hardware

I'm typing this on a new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. I like split keyboards, and this is a pretty good one, though the keys are spaced a little differently from the way they were arranged on my old keyboard. It's got a bunch of extra keys on it for launching applications, zooming in and out, and going back and forward in your web browser. It also comes with an attachment that gives the keyboard a reverse slope. I tried that out, but couldn't get used to it, so I took it off. Apparently, the reverse slope is better for you, and I can see the point there, since it would allow you to avoid bending your wrists at all.
This is a USB keyboard; my old one was a PS/2 keyboard. I was actually using all my USB ports, so I had to pull my Zip drive to free up a port. Now, I have to decide if I want to buy another USB hub so I can plug the Zip drive back in, or if I just want to mothball the Zip drive.

Labels: hardware

I've been thinking about buying a new notebook computer. I don't absolutely need one, but the old one is getting a little dated. I've been thinking that maybe I'm jumping the gun, and the old one ought to hold me for another year, but I just checked, and I bought it in January 2001, so it's more than three years old now. And I bought it refurbished. So, yep, it's about time.

Labels: hardware

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