How to keep your XP for another 7 years

I came across of an interesting articles: "How to make Windows XP last for the next seven years (Vista, schmista. Follow our tips for keeping your XP setup humming happily for a long, long time)" by ComputerWorld (full article here). I do recommend using Windows XP over Vista, although Vista looks great, it's really a resource hunger and eat on your wallet, alive. Think about that, nowadays you pay for an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 2GB of ram, and only got some performance like an Intel P4 with same Mhz and 512MB ram. And don't forget that, you already close to or reach the upgrade limitation, esp if it's a laptop. Usually, I need a lot of memory to run a lot of application at same time. Therefore, I do not wish the OS took too much of that from my machine.

Anyway, let's keep our Windows XP SP2 (or SP3) for at least another five years.

De Hotdog

Piece of information picked up by client and forwarded to my boss:

http://darlamack.blogs.com/darlamack/2007/07/mobile-hotdog--.html

Buffalo DriveStation broke down

My Buffalo DriveStation (HD-HB250U2) was not working. My iMac did not recognize it nor show anything on the hardware list. My Buffalo LinkStation could recognize a USB drive but could not show the details of it. I said to myself, may be I need to buy a replacement because the DriveStation is the primary backup of my iMac. And it was close to full capacity. Therefore, a replacement has to have 400 or 500 GB, which cost HK$1400.

But I need to figure out which part is broken, whether the hard disk is broken or the main board of the USB drive. I borrowed a USB-to-IDE cable from office, remove the hard disk from the DriveStation iron frame. The hard disk is a Western Digital one (WD2500BB, 250 GB, ATA-100, 2 MB cache). If the WD failed, I may purchase another ATA HD, instead of buying another DriveStation.

The WD start up noise seems very okay. But it still not recognized by iMac. I changed the jumper settings from "Master alone" to "Master with Slave present" and try again. After a while, it appears on the desktop. All content were there and looked just fine. So, the WD is okay. I undo the jumper settings and try the DriveStation again. Nothing happens. I changed the jumper to "Master with Slave present" and try again. It took a while but finally appears on my Mac.

Isn't that strange?

p.s. seems that Buffalo's quality was... sigh (see user reviews)

Remove MSN ads

Finding MSN ads troublesome? Kill it without installing software. Simple!

Source (Thanks Luzi82 for googling):
http://eg-land.com/viewthread.php?tid=2463 (Chinese site)
http://briian.com/?p=642 (Chinese site)

In short:

Press Windows key + R. Type notepad [enter]. Press CTRL + O. Type %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts [enter]. Press CTRL + END. Type 127.0.0.1 rad.msn.com [enter]. Type 127.0.0.1 rad.live.com. Press CTRL + S. Press ALT + F4. Right click on MSN Messenger icon on task bar. Right click on Exit. Restart MSN Messenger from Start menu.

No more ads. Fresh air!

PCP

Recently I've been addicting into an PSP game - Daisenryaku Portable 2. It's the 26th release of the series. Besides PSP version, I also get me two copies for Windows. But I don't have time to play PC games. I just had a thought, if PC can be operate like PSP, PC Portable...

Oh... that's Sony's VAIO UX ($13980).

Nothing much. Just a piece of a-little-bit-more-expensive toy, equvilant to ten PSP's, three PS3's, two N95's, one iMac or one MacBook Pro...

It's not working

Hotmail, Live and Outlook Express are all Microsoft product. The great M$ has made them different and incompatiable. I wonder if there is a war inside M$... Anyway, users can no longer access Hotmail using OE. What's a great improvment!?

Anyway, those using Hotmail in OE would like to try this out:

http://www.freepops.org/en/

Glad someone made this up. Glad someone made this free. Thanks!

Why not working? (part 2)

First of all, may you have a look at "First Impressions of Thunderbird 2.0" by the houstonmacbro. Recently I found a HTTP mail plug-in for Mail (the e-mail client come with Mac OS). After couple of hours playing with it, the Mail get wierd. It no longer able to download e-mail. So I've removed it.

One day, my boss asked me to help him on "a urgent matter" - his Mail is not working. He know there is some new messages from server but the Mail just stay in the "downloading" status. Unlike Outlook or Outlook Express, it does not have a pop-up window when downloading e-mails. There is nothing an end-user would able to do when it is not working. Since all his business e-mails are there, he is very frustrated. Since I've read something about the Thunderbird 2.0, I recommended him NOT to upgrade to Thunderbird. After couple of tries, quits and restarts, we believe the problem was the plugin and so we disabled it. Da-da, it's working again!

So, seems that plug-ins for Mail does not work at all. That's it.

Why not working?

Using Mac should be enjoyable and relaxing. The OS has take care of quite a lot of troublesome things which needs a lot of care for a Windows user. So, Mac users should always take-it-for-granted for anything. This is what I believed, until the day has come.

With the green envelope I visited the IRD website. Oh, it's not working! Firefox doesn't work, Safari doesn't work, even Netscape does not too. Netscape for Mac was the one on the support list from the site. But it doesn't help at all. The FAQ just said "yes, it doesn't work always" and then nothing else. It seems that the ESDLife doesn't have any intention to fix this problem. Why? Why would a government website limiting visitors to use Windows? Does it get commission for every Windows access? Can I sue the website owner for against anti-monopoly?

Luckily or not, I still own an Windows-based laptop (and several Windows licneses) and a virtual desktop. But I would be happier to file my tax return on a Mac.

BumpTop, Rethink your Desktop

"BumpTop is a fresh and engaging new way to interact with your computer desktop. You can pile and toss documents like on a real desk. Break free from the rigid and mechanical style of standard point-and-click desktops. Interact by pushing, pulling and piling documents with elegant, self revealing gestures. BumpTop's stunning interface makes clever use of 3D presentation and smooth physics-based animations for an engaging, vivid user experience."

- bumptop.com


When it's available on Mac or PC, and/or available to both platforms by one license payment, I would seriously consider paying for it, given that it's below US$100.

Alarm Clock 2

http://www.robbiehanson.com/alarmclock/index.html

A very great and free-of-charget alarm clock on Mac.

XP vs. Vista

Tom's硬體指南的「Windows XP vs. Vista：評比大對決」，拿XP和Vista來比較，又一力證Vista廢（至少，今年來最廢的OS依然會是Vista）。

『Vista之所以是較好的Windows，是因為它的性能、外觀、感覺比較好；然而，它的表現並無法超越Windows XP。』
又是一些花巧而騙錢的技倆

『如果你真的很需要...用電腦來完成大量的編碼...工作，那麼答案是...別換了，先留著你的XP吧。』
我是很需要極速的處理能力。

『現在到處都有更快的CPU了！...現今的硬體已經大幅超越過去，而未來處理器的表現也絕對會更上一層樓。』
這只是用錢來養Vista而已。

『從來沒有一款Windows在新發表時就可以超越它的前身。』
這個怎麼好像在MacOS上不能成立的呢？

手提電腦的禁買期

最近公司入手了一部Thinkpad T60，索價萬四，Core2Duo 1.66G, 512MB, 100GB SATA, BT, Fingerprint, Multi-burner, 以及 Vista Business!　嘩，慢到媽都唔認得。雖然說512MB係唔夠用，但跟據Task Manager的數據，其時使用記憶只是三四百，應該不構成記憶不足問題。但Vista勁load個硬盤，似乎連SATA都唔夠快。唉，如果同一部機運行ＸＰ的話，多好呢。

2007年將會是一年禁止買Vista手提電腦的一年，直至Core2Duo 2.5G和一條1GB RAM成為standard configure，而且要買比這個更快的CPU和最好有2GB以上的記憶體。

如果這種電腦用來行2000或XP，多好呢。快過火箭耶！

deskktop tower defence

http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/

Naming My Devices (2)

As previously posted, I use animal species as name of my hardware. My Nokia N70 is called Phoenix, after replacing mainboard. My virutal XP on Mac is called Kestrel (a type of small falcon). And for virtual Ubuntu, it will be called Shoveler. I might change the name of iMac to Egret (and reserved the name "Heron" for my Mac Book Pro... if I have one).

So, there are falcon, dolphin, penguin, hawk, egret, phoenix, kestrel and shoveler all on my desk.

GParted 0.2.5 - free partition tool

Reading the document from Parallels I found a free partitioning tool: GParted. (click here to download, 27MB). It can create, resize and copy partitions, and it is free of charge. I'm testing it inside the Parallels and see if it is possible to copy the original 8GB HDD to another 10GB HDD. Later on, I will try to boot from the 10GB HDD. If it works, then I can migrate my office PC's 40GB HDD to a 80GB HDD (why should I provide HDD to office computer? Anyway...)