Entries for YearOfTheLinuxDesktop

where is the vista drivers loading times data stored? [where is the vista drivers loading times data stored?]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:42:34 GMT

I noticed that Vista tells you if any driver takes too much to load during boot, standby or hibernation but only if the driver takes way too much, like 1 minute. anybody knows where those loading times are stored? without bootvis it's hard to figure out what slows the boot down and having a list of the driver loading times could help detecting the source of slow boots and hardware to avoid buying to maintain a fast boot

in reply to where is the vista drivers loading times data stored?

MSI wind specs almost definitive and confirmed june release date [MSI wind specs almost definitive and confirmed june release date]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:30:17 GMT

finally the MSI wind release date has been announced however the models, prices (between 471$ and 1100$), specs and operating system will be different for each country :(

intel atom 1.0-1.6ghz CPU (only the 1.6ghz CPU is faster than the eee PC's 600mhz celeron)
1gb of ram
10'' 1024x600 led-backlit display
a full-size keyboard
80gb sata hard drive (that depending on the RPMs could be better than the eee's SSD) big enough to install vista or an optional SSD on more expensive models
wi-fi, lan, webcam, memory card reader
and last a rumored 7-hours battery life thanks to atom and the led-backlit display

with HP screwing up their 2133 UMPC the only contenders are now the eee 900 and the MSI wind. it's all a matter of prices now :|

in reply to MSI wind specs almost definitive and confirmed june release date

vista/ws2008 remote desktop corrupts some files on XP clients [vista/ws2008 remote desktop corrupts some files on XP clients]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:29:03 GMT

when I cut&paste any file with .ANI extention from a remote vista or server 2008 to a local XP using remote desktop about 3k of data is appended at the end of the file making it unreadable. did anybody else experience the same issue? I thought it was just a network problem while it was happening when I was using rdp through internet but now I verified it also happens on a local LAN. I've put the ANI files inside my application resources but this issue is still rather annoying.

in reply to vista/ws2008 remote desktop corrupts some files on XP clients

"86% of vista users would recommend it to a friend" ["86% of vista users would recommend it to a friend"]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Sat, 03 May 2008 01:46:17 GMT

either somebody missed april fools by a full month or the study was sampling vegetative patients :s

does anybody seriously believes those words? the bad things I hear about vista are almost exclusively coming from people who actually tried to use it and got rid of it after months of tribulation. most of the issues are caused by applications and drivers that are "vista compatible" only by name, like for instance the touted as vista compatible pinnacle studio 11 I bought a week ago that broke vista experience index updating (luckily the values were all 5.9s so I'm not missing anything for now :O), but you can't blame just the ecosystem when the cause of this mess is microsoft itself allowing vendors to put vista-compatible logos on all sorts of hardware and software without the proper testing.

in reply to "86% of vista users would recommend it to a friend"

there's no IE 7 on windows update for xp sp3 [there's no IE 7 on windows update for xp sp3]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:36:58 GMT

I installed XP SP3 a few days ago and despite now it has been released on MSDN and there are only 3 days missing to the public release when I go on windows update I can't see the internet explorer 7 update. is internet explorer 7 going to be re -released for windows XP SP3 or can I still install the older IE 7 for XP sp2?

in reply to there's no IE 7 on windows update for xp sp3

softpedia has the windows xp service pack 3 scoop! [softpedia has the windows xp service pack 3 scoop!]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:12:22 GMT

download it while it's still hot or wait 4 more days for the official release :O

in reply to softpedia has the windows xp service pack 3 scoop!

I think I've found the best multifunction inkjet printer and it's cheap, too [I think I've found the best multifunction inkjet printer and it's cheap, too]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:40:01 GMT

this post is a follow-up of honey, I shrunk the printer

after days of web searches, after several gallons of ink thrown against epson, canon and hp support employees I think I've found it.

flatbed scanner with ADF (can load up to 50 sheets of paper all by itself) and both twain and WIA drivers
35ppm black print speed
34ppm color print speed
duplex printing accessory included
memory card reader
ethernet, usb2, pictbridge connections
replaceable printer heads
fast color/bw fax with distinctive ring detection that can store up to 125 pages in memory
big officejet cartridges that can print up to 850 pages (10$ each) and supports xl cartridges (20$ each) that can print up to 2500 pages in bw and 1600 in color. the producer claims that the cost per page is 50% less than a laser printer.
can print photos directly from your camera and memory cards and fix them too

its price is 300$ but you can find it for 150-200$ after rebates

it's the.....

fantastic.....

HP officejet L7590!

it was reviewed by trusted reviews and the review seems quite positive

all we need now is somebody to buy that printer and tell us if it's good or not :P

who wants to sacrifice for the sake of printing science?:s

in reply to I think I've found the best multifunction inkjet printer and it's cheap, too

ubuntu 8.04 is coming! [ubuntu 8.04 is coming!]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:08:54 GMT

just one day left... did you all made some space on your hard drives for it already? :s

in reply to ubuntu 8.04 is coming!

vista sp1 victims count [vista sp1 victims count]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:54:15 GMT

it's already 6 :(

victim 1: pavilion dv6129 laptop, after installing SP1 the network card stopped working and the drivers, no matter what version I tried to install, wouldn't work anymore

victim 2: packard bell x51 laptop, after installing SP1 the sound card stopped working (solved) but the battery is not recognized anymore

victim 3: unknown brand pentium 4, after installing SP1 after every reboot the default printer is set to XPS printer, I deleted all the printers but the real one and then the reboot after there was no default printer and that in the default selected printer in print dialogs was empty

victim 4: an olidata with an athlon x2 4800+, after installing SP1 at each reboot the system was losing for keyboard and mouse drivers (hid input device) but couldn't find them, no matter ho many times I copied the input.inf file in another folder and pointing the driver wizard to that

victim 5: an asus pro57sn laptop, while installing SP1 it became stuck at the 2nd install stage, left it for an entire day and it didn't finish then I shut it down and now it BSODs while booting

victim 6: acer gemstone 2920z, after installing SP1 it randomly tosses out error messages saying applications are not a valid win32 applications.

somebody help me, it's real massacre [C]

luckily I now have a clean vista sp1 install disc so I can format without having to wait all those the endless reboots to install sp1 again

update:

victim 7: a "dialogue technology" (it fights against olidata for the most unknown brand title) flybook, after installing SP1 the display shows vista booting but then it just stays black however you can hear the startup sound (video card driver issue?)

in reply to vista sp1 victims count

is fast memory really worth it? tom's hardware (and I) say no [is fast memory really worth it? tom's hardware (and I) say no]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:00:32 GMT

thanks to tom's hardware for proving what I have been saying for ages and that nobody believed with a good amount of benchmarks: on modern PCs better ram speed makes almost no difference.

I hope that now people will stop wasting hundred dollars on way too expensive fast ram: more ram, a better CPU and a faster HDD are far more worthy upgrades :s

in reply to is fast memory really worth it? tom's hardware (and I) say no

make your own Vista SP1 dvd with applications and drivers inside [make your own Vista SP1 dvd with applications and drivers inside]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:43:08 GMT

anybody wants to know? I'm making it right now to be ready to face the sp1 upgrade crisis. I could write a short tutorial with screenshots if somebody's interested. it would be also valid if you want just to install SP1 before creating your user :s

in reply to make your own Vista SP1 dvd with applications and drivers inside

HP 2133 UMPC on sale [HP 2133 UMPC on sale]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:30:53 GMT

so, who still hasn't bought one? ;)

the new asus EEE 900 is being released in the next few days but the CPU won't be an intel atom [C]

in reply to HP 2133 UMPC on sale

eee pc: easy to learn, work, play and to make you cry [eee pc: easy to learn, work, play and to make you cry]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:40:08 GMT

today I bought another eee PC, this time for my GF, unboxed it and turned it on for the first time. I insert the SD where I copied her music and documents and an error appears on screen:

"You do not have enough permissions to read /media/MMC-SD"

and the file manager doesn't show the memory card content until I select "show all filesystems". I investigated and found out the /media directory did not exist and after a few minutes of google-ing I found out that error was pretty common and was fixed by creating the directory so I just sudo-ed a mkdir to create the directory.

then I read that asus released an update, "desktop update", to address that problem along with some other improvements so I try to install it, wait a few minutes and another error appears:

"Unmet dependencies. Try ‘apt-get -f install’ with no packages (or specify a solution)."

so I open another terminal, do a sudo apt-get -f install and the package installs fine.

so I applied that and tried some of the other available updates: "media player update" and "open office update": the desktop update screwed up the the desktop icons (some disappeared, some are now black) and firefox stopped working (reboot didn't fix this, it fixed only the black icons), the media player update didn't complete (Couldn't find package asus-media-player-update-1), the open office update made open office disappear ("KDEInit could not launch ‘ooffice’.: Could not find ‘ooffice’ executable."). applying every update also wasted significant disk space that couldn't be recovered with apt-get clean.

I didn't experience any of these problems on the first eee I bought because I formatted it immediately but if that's what asus calls "easy" they sure have a long time to go.

now I deleted that crap and installed eeeXubuntu: much, much better!

in reply to eee pc: easy to learn, work, play and to make you cry

multifunction printer with ADF/duplex printing: is there one that doesn't suck? [multifunction printer with ADF/duplex printing: is there one that doesn't suck?]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:46:39 GMT

I'm looking for a multifunction printer with ADF, duplex printing, fax and ethernet connection (better if wi-fi) under 500$ but I can't find any good one.

I read reviews about some HP models (c7280, c6280, l7780, l7680, l7650, m2727nf) and they all seem to have problems with the printer/scanner document feeders, have awful networking and bloated drivers that often stop seeing the printer and have to be reinstalled.

I also read reviews of the Canon PIXMA MP830, and I read it drinks ink like it was water and when you use duplex printing it prints a "composite black" using the color cartridges wasting even more ink. the fax is unusable unless you have a dedicated line because it answers all the times and if the call is not a fax it gets dropped.

then I went on Epson and Brother website but I didn't find any model with the specs I needed

any recommendation?

in reply to multifunction printer with ADF/duplex printing: is there one that doesn't suck?

standards mode on IE8 by default [standards mode on IE8 by default]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:13:50 GMT

it looks like the IE team finally changed their minds: the evil standards-mode META tag requirement has been lifted!

here
2) run the setup, select Custom Installation, disable the "Resident Shield", "E-mail scanner" components and leave only the Office plugin checked (Plugin for Microsoft Office 2000/XP)
3) save the following text in a .REG file and run it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Attachments]
"ScanWithAntiVirus"=dword:00000002

4) close all IE windows
5) open this address in a new IE window: http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm
6) download one of the eicar.com at the bottom of the page, if everything went well AVG should warn you that the file is infected

now you can have AVG scan all the files downloaded from IE, including ActiveX components before they get installed, without having to keep any resident/network scanner. since e-mail attachments and office documents are also scanned you can avoid keeping bloated antivirus engines running thus saving a lot of system resources :O

I chose AVG because it's the only common free antivirus that has an office plugin but if you have norton, mcafee, kaspersky they all have one

with this "trick" my eee PC is now a lot faster because I got rid of resident AV bloatware running in background

thanks to Bruce Morgan for letting me know of this windows policy (the one set with the .reg file) I never heard about :O

in reply to useful tutorial: have IE call the AV on downloaded files

QT framework now supports Windows CE/Mobile [QT framework now supports Windows CE/Mobile]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:03:06 GMT

Trolltech has started shipping a preview version of Qt that supports Windows CE as a build target. The Qt toolkit allows desktop applications built on Qt to be recompiled for Windows CE with minimal changes, according to the company.

I hope that some QT-based stuff like KDE applications will be ported to WM :O

with this and all the other improvements QT windows support is having it's becoming a very good MFC alternative

in reply to QT framework now supports Windows CE/Mobile

who bought an EEE PC? [who bought an EEE PC?]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:13:25 GMT

I was thinking about making a res-changer tool since the only ways to change the eee PC resolution using the virtual scaling of the intel drivers are two: an hacked intel driver that breaks standby and a tool that was reported as a trojan and isn't automated

I'm considering making a tool that changes resolution with an hotkey, restores the resolution before standby/hibernation avoiding the standby bug, resets the resolution after resume and saves the actual resolution before shutdown and restores it at the next boot

anybody interested? text at 1024x768 is almost unreadable however 800x600 is pretty good and allows usage of all the windows dialogs and most of the third party applications' without issues.

in reply to who bought an EEE PC?

being able to delete your own posts and threads [being able to delete your own posts and threads]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:47:32 GMT

could we please have that feature? due to server errors (server too busy,internal server error,et.) sometimes it happens that people post twice and it also happens that when you answer to somebody else's post in the meanwhile it could been changed making your answer become no longer valid. being able to delete your post would be much more elegant than just having to replacing your post with empty text

also being able to delete your own threads could be useful when you post something about a news that has been already posted by someone else, which happens quite often here on c9, or when you realize you posted a question of which you already found the answer.

in reply to being able to delete your own posts and threads

getting rid of the Vista SP1 backup files: is that possible? [getting rid of the Vista SP1 backup files: is that possible?]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:33:05 GMT

I installed SP1 and as I expected like the previous builds it still leaves all the older files behind. is there a way to get rid of the backup files like you could on XP by launching the service pack installer using the /NOBACKUP switch?

in reply to getting rid of the Vista SP1 backup files: is that possible?

RAM and HDD usage of different Vista SKUs [RAM and HDD usage of different Vista SKUs]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:09:39 GMT

is anybody curious? all I need now is a Vista SP1 DVD [C]

in reply to RAM and HDD usage of different Vista SKUs

the .NETxperiment (overhead of .NET on a clean XP install) [the .NETxperiment (overhead of .NET on a clean XP install)]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:39:46 GMT

System

VM with a clean XP SP2 install with all available updates (inc. optionals) installed from WU

Updates Installed

IE7, KB873339, KB885836, KB886185, KB888302, KB890830, KB890859, KB891781, KB893756, KB893803, KB896358, KB896423, KB896428, KB898461, KB899587, KB899591, KB900485, KB900725, KB901017, KB901214, KB902400, KB905414, KB905474, KB905749, KB908519, KB908531, KB910437, KB911280, KB911562, KB911564, KB911927, KB913580, KB914388, KB914389, KB916595, KB917537, KB918118, KB918439, KB919007, KB920213, KB920670, KB920683, KB920685, KB920872, KB921503, KB922582, KB922819, KB923191, KB923414, KB923789, KB923980, KB924270, KB924667, KB925398, KB925902, KB926255, KB926436, KB927779, KB927802, KB927891, KB928255, KB929123, KB929399, KB930178, KB930916, KB931261, KB931784, KB932168, KB933729, KB935448, KB935839, KB935840, KB935843, KB936021, KB936357, KB936782, KB937894, KB938127, KB938828, KB938829, KB939373, KB939683, KB941202, KB941568, KB941569, KB941644, KB942615, KB942763, KB943460, KB943485, KB944653

Results

Before (original state)

Boot Time: 36,5secs
RAM Usage: ~87,000Kb
HDD Used Space: 1,384,058,880 bytes

With .NET 1.1 SP1 installed:

Boot Time: 39 secs (Δ = 2,5 secs)
RAM Usage: ~89,000 Kb (Δ = 2,000 Kb)
HDD Used Space: 1,474,994,176 bytes (Δ = 90,935,296 bytes)

With NET 2.0 SP1 installed:

Boot Time: 37 secs (Δ = 0,5 secs)
RAM Usage: ~88,000 Kb (Δ = 1,000 Kb)
HDD Used Space: 1,620,985,344 bytes (Δ = 236,926,464 bytes)

With .NET 3.0 SP1 installed:

Boot Time: 38 secs (Δ = 1,5 secs)
RAM Usage: ~88,000 Kb (Δ = 2,000 Kb)
HDD Used Space: 1,833,014,016 bytes (Δ = 448,955,136 bytes)

With .NET 3.5 installed:

Boot Time: 38 secs (Δ = 1,5 secs)
RAM Usage: ~88,000 Kb (Δ = 2,000 Kb)
HDD Used Space: 1,927,528,488 bytes (Δ = 543,469,608 bytes)

With Windows Desktop Search 3.1 installed:

Boot Time: 41 secs (Δ = 4,5 secs)
RAM Usage: ~140,000 Kb (Δ = 53,000 Kb)
HDD Used Space: 1,467,105,280 bytes (Δ = 81,046,400 bytes)

With Google Desktop Search 5.7 installed:

Boot Time: 38 secs (Δ = 1,5 secs)
RAM Usage: ~101,000 Kb (Δ = 14,000 Kb)
HDD Used Space: 1,437,506,432 bytes (Δ = 53,447,552 bytes)

With Copernic Desktop Search installed:

Boot Time: 38 secs (Δ = 1,5 secs)
RAM Usage: ~111,000 Kb (Δ = 24,000 Kb)
HDD Used Space: 1,437,732,864 bytes (Δ = 53,673,984 bytes)

in reply to the .NETxperiment (overhead of .NET on a clean XP install)

Vista SP1 and XP SP3 RC Refresh 2 are out [Vista SP1 and XP SP3 RC Refresh 2 are out]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:19:34 GMT

both are on on connect. I wonder what the changes are since I can't find any list of the included updates/hotfixes :(

in reply to Vista SP1 and XP SP3 RC Refresh 2 are out

somebody fix C9! [somebody fix C9!]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:08:46 GMT

for hours I've been getting a lot of "Internal Server Error", "Server is too busy" et. errors here on C9 and the site has never been slower before and I can't post anything. somebody fix this :(

in reply to somebody fix C9!

(please no more) windows 7 screenshots [(please no more) windows 7 screenshots]

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:49:38 GMT

all these posts about windows 7 are becoming as sad as this windows 7 screenshot that sums it all up:

please stop before any dwarf gets hurt [C]

in reply to (please no more) windows 7 screenshots