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Last night I decided to wipe my PC completely and reinstall Windows XP. It’s an old PC with an AMD 1800 processor. I’ve hardly used it the last year or two. My PowerBook does most everything I need, except play Halflife 2. And it’s good to stay abreast of what Microsoft is doing, so I wanted to get my PC back in shape so I could play with some of the new “Express” developer packages Microsoft is offering now.

I wiped the drives clean and fired up the XP install disc (this is using an original XP disc). I recorded the process to go from here to a complete installation with all available patches and updates applied.

Continue reading "HOWTO: Installing Windows XP from scratch" »

Posted at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

A diminishing list, but a list nonetheless:

1. TopStyle Pro
2. Adobe Photoshop (Win/Mac only)
3. Trillian Pro
4. TortoiseCVS
5. Listen.com Rhapsody

And… I think that’s it. No, no games. The great ones are cross platform. And most other good Windows games are at least available on the Xbox. And note the absence of Microsoft Office and Microsoft DevStudio. Everything else I use today is available on other platforms: Mozilla for browsing, jEdit or XEmacs for editing code, ssh and VNC for remote access, OpenOffice for officeware, Perl and Java for development. I could easily switch to the Mac, but then I’d be losing Trillian. Now that would be a real sacrifice. iChat? Please, no bubbles, thank you.

Also note that of the list above, TortoiseCVS is the only open source application.

As for Linux, there have been significant strides in making the whole user experience better, but I’m just not sold yet. For a server, I wouldn’t use anything else, but not for my workstation.

One thing that may have to happen before I switch to Linux for my workstation/laptop: demoting X off the Linux desktop. I don’t think X will ever go away (nor should it), but it shouldn’t power the desktop for Linux. It’s just not able to compete with the overhead that the X-protocol adds to things. A wise thing to do is to do what Apple did: create a solid desktop shell and provide X support for legacy apps. There’s a big opportunity here. Linux is winning the war on the embedded and server-side fronts. A solid desktop would make all difference for the rest of us.

Oh, did I mention that the Trillian 2.0 beta is available for us “Pro” users?

Posted at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (37) | TrackBacks (4)

I got a good laugh today from this article from Newsbytes reporting the cause of random words that are inserted into documents when using Windows XP or Office XP.

It turns out that some computers ship Windows XP/Office XP with the built-in speech recognition software enabled (unbeknownst to the user) and if you have a microphone attached, it tries to take dictation. So the side effect is that you're humming your favorite tune as you write an email and as you're typing, the computer is trying to decipher what you're 'saying' and interjects 'baw em bop be duh do' or something to that effect.

Here's the Microsoft support document about the problem.

Posted at 10:31 PM | Permalink

Got a webcam? You should try Eyeball Chat. A friend just told me about it (thanks Donald) and after trying it out, it's pretty spiffy. Beats NetMeeting hands-down. And hey, even if you don't have a webcam, you can still send and receive live audio. I can't say whether or not it is efficient over a dial-up line (prolly not), but it worked great with my cable modem connection. You can even record video messages, save them and send them to other Eyeball Chat users.

The software is free and it's got a refreshingly small installation foot-print (less than 4 MB). No ads, and it doesn't take over your other instant message tools. You can use it to communicate on the AIM, Yahoo and MSN networks as well, but I think I'll stick to Trillian for now for that.

Posted at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nutshell Toolbar v1.0 is a handy-dandy Internet Explorer toolbar thingy that lets you search Google, Dictionary.com, IMDB, Amazon and Daypop right from your toolbar. A future release makes the list editable so you can invent your own URLs to query. The best things in life are free ya know (although the author has disclosed that his Amazon referrer ID is used for the Amazon searches-- clever!). (via Jason Kottke)

Posted at 4:05 PM | Permalink

future.Tree Software has some cool software tools including a neat log file browser for Trillian. (via random($foo))

Posted at 11:10 AM | Permalink

OsioniusX's demos will make you want to turn off Internet Explorer's ActiveScripting features or switch to another browser altogether. Cookie grabbing, site spoofing (showing the URL in the browser for a legitimate site but different content entirely), page alteration (showing the content of a legitimate site but altering the page content-- perhaps adding or changing crucial information). I hope that this hiatus Microsoft is taking to refocus on security issues is fruitful. In the meantime, I may just have to use Mozilla.

Update: Microsoft has released a patch to address the majority of these issues. I suggest you click here and apply it if you use Internet Explorer.

Posted at 4:55 PM | Permalink

Weeell... I've not done the XP upgrade yet, but I'm thinking more about it now. I upgraded my brother's computer from Windows '98 to the XP Home Edtion and it's running pretty nicely. It's cool that it supports CDRW drives out of the box. I also really like the ClearType feature. It actually does make text easier and cleaner to read.

The fact that multiple users can be logged in at the same time is also impressive and I can't believe it took them this long to make that happen.

I did have a couple of glitches during the install-- a few files couldn't be found on the CD without me having to point the installer back to the "\i386" directory for some reason. Also, when I tried to "Activate Windows" (register my CD's product key as 'used' for this particular machine), it generated 8 digits less than it was supposed to for the identity key. After cancelling the activation process and running it later, it said it was already activated. So I'm not sure if it really completed or not... oh well.

The interface is different... I guess I like it, but some of the features are a little annoying and can be turned off if necessary. For the average user, I'd say XP is probably the best thing since sliced bread. Makes me wonder why they didn't call it "Windows AVG".

It did seem to migrate all of the Windows 98 settings and programs pretty well. During a subsequent program installation XP caught the installer overwriting system files with an 'unrecognized version' (older version). Fortunately, it gave me the chance to put in the XP CD-ROM and restore the proper system files.

My hope is that this will give my brother the most stable computer he's ever used. At the very least, the OS should crash less than Windows 98 did. I guess we'll wait and see.

Posted at 9:56 PM | Permalink

Windows 2000 Security Roll-up Package, January, 2002. Run Windows 2000? You need this. Trust me.

I just installed it and at the end, I got this dialog and nearly fell out of my chair. Microsoft is actually giving me the option to not restart my computer after installing Microsoft software??? I'm so confused.

Posted at 12:22 AM | Permalink

ZTreeWin. Some people hang on to the past with a vengeance.

Posted at 12:36 PM | Permalink