Recent Posts

2726

General Software Discussion / Re: Suggestions for switching from Vista (64-bit) to XP (32-bit)?

« Last post by Shades on October 25, 2008, 12:17 AM »

If possible, download all patches and updates from every piece of software you would use in your XP machine. Then find out exactly which hardware is in your system (for example, harddisk, video, sound, wifi etc.) and download the latest (but foremost greatest) XP drivers for your equipment.

Download now a tool called: nLite
With this software you create a new installation cd, containing all the updates, patches and drivers you have downloaded. The wizard from nLite does a very good job of guiding you through the necessary steps.

As a result you have created a fine-tuned installation cd that is ideal for your laptop. You should also automatize the installation process (again, nLite's wizard will guide you) so you can do an unsupervised re-installation whenever you deem it necessary. Shaves easily 10 to 15 minutes of a re-installation.

You could even create an installation DVD that includes all installation/setup files from every piece of software you find essential. That way you have all important software in one place and again saves you a lot of time recreating your ideal Windows environment using a fresh Windows installation.

For the true tweak-animals amongst us, find a freeware version from the tool: xq-setup
Not only can you make every tweak known to man/woman, this software can also store all these tweaks in a file. If this file is also stored on your installation DVD, you have in a flash your super tweaked system back as well.

As long as your hardware will be useful to you, that disk will prove a lifesaver and a serious alternative for imaging software, because a total re-installation will take some two hours at most. Why spend money on such software when a total re-installation only takes such a (relativity) short time.

The disadvantage from this method is that it will take quite some time to create such a DVD.

However, I did this once for an elderly client of mine (when I was doing PC repairs). That client was so happy with that DVD, it didn't take long for the word of mouth to spread, increasing my client base in a major way (he had a big family ;-))

2727

General Software Discussion / Re: Voice thru Modem port to landline?

« Last post by Shades on October 21, 2008, 03:18 PM »

Maybe a bit of overkill....

...but you might want to take a look at 3CX: they offer a free PBX (up to 10 users iirc) that should be able to convert the signals from your headset to a useable format for landlines. Check the modem support to see if the modem from the Vaio is in the list.

Have fun playing :-)

2728

Living Room / Re: Things your kids will never know - old school tech!

« Last post by Shades on October 21, 2008, 10:53 AM »

You would get something 'interesting' to read on the table when you use the IBM printhead in a ping-pong game...

2729

General Software Discussion / Re: New tools?

« Last post by Shades on October 18, 2008, 10:34 PM »

SourceEdit sure has it's similarities (functionality-wise) with HTML-Kit...which happens to be my all-time favorite editor. However, on a search for tidying up Word html, I encountered an editor that could be a real contender for that position!

Taken from the author's page:

tsWebEditor is an editor for HTML, PHP, Perl, JavaScript, CSS and many other languages. It displays the source code colored (syntax highlight), code hint for functions, code completion (PHP, JavaScript, ASP, HTML), code browser, PHP debugger and syntax validation, help, CSS wizard, HTML tag editor, HTML syntax validation, and an easy to use SQL Designer.

The organization behind the SVN project are also behind this editor, which makes it more than OK in my book! 

2730

General Software Discussion / Re: 55 free online tools

« Last post by Shades on October 18, 2008, 10:02 PM »

Yep, I was lead to the error page...which resulted in me looking for other stuff on her blog (drop dead beautiful lady, I might add as well). Very interesting in what she writes. She also has a list with 55 MMORPG's (free an otherwise).

Thanks Ms. Alvarez and (of course!) 40Hz for bringing her to my attention. 

2731

General Software Discussion / Re: Kingsoft Office

« Last post by Shades on October 18, 2008, 02:19 PM »

And I second that!  (having a key as well).

Until now I could do everything I wanted to do with a document using Kingsoft 2007.

Granted, my requirements are not that extensive, but MS office manages to screw them up anyway (especially between different versions!).

To be honest,with all the troubles I experienced during a required upgrade to MSO2003 I am afraid of the dreadful upgrade to MSO2007 (I already know from personal experience that Excel has had some serious changes under the hood regarding the opening and saving of files).

Normally  there was Open Office, but that is becoming bloat as well, although in version 3.0 you have the option to write Wiki pages directly in Writer (including formatting!), which is very handy for me.

2732

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« Last post by Shades on October 14, 2008, 10:07 PM »

The one(s) who invented the utterly useless and loathesome UI from WMP9 and higher should be shot, quartered and then burned! That is how much I hate WMP.

Recently the existence of Songbird was brought to my attention. As far as I know it uses the Mozilla codebase (and licensing) to play music and it does that beautifully (it even has tabs  ). The interface will not be everybody's cup of tea, I presume...but I love it as much as I hate WMP.

Some stuff you would expect to be in any basic player is not there yet but it improves with each build. Last week I was invited to participate in a questionnaire about new/missing features and which of those items the programmers should work on first.

Beat that, MS!!!

2733

Living Room / Re: My computer is older than YOUR computer!

« Last post by Shades on October 14, 2008, 02:02 AM »

In the place where I was living in the Netherlands I know I have some fully functional 286's, each with 4 Mb RAM and 40 Mb harddrive. 

2734

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Self Distruct

« Last post by Shades on October 14, 2008, 01:38 AM »

About the delete option as suggested by f0dder, I have to disagree. you would be amazed what a program Testdisk retrieves.I was at the time. after running that piece of freeware, there was a boatload of files retrieved and there was stuff in between those files that was over a year old. The only problem from this boatload was that the original filenames were not retrieved.

In my "defense" that could have been a setting that I missed (lack of GUI).
However, information that I thought was overwritten at least three times (I download a lot) was right there.

Let's just say that you don't lose that pr0n collection that easily ;-)

2735

Living Room / Re: Should Microsoft become an OEM (PC manufacturer)?

« Last post by Shades on October 12, 2008, 11:42 PM »

We all have seen how well this idea/concept went with IBM.

Any company that 'designs by commission' (like M$ and IBM) more often than not fail or fail miserably. Being ruled by a dictator (like Apple) is either success or failure.

South-America is Playstation, I can tell you. More or less the only XBoxes you will find here, are owned by US embassy or US military personnel. Getting anything for the Nintendo Wii is already hard enough and even more expensive than in the US and/or Asia (XBox is also not that popular in the Eurozone as M$ would have expected).

My comment is not intended to label the XBox as a bad gaming rig, it is just not popular at all here in South America. Honestly, I have never touched one in my whole life, so I cannot tell anything about it.

The fact that the XBox division is separate from the main M$ company would be a reason for it's success. The main company would likely be responsible for the design of this machine...and the commission would think that the name of this machine should be 'Windows Computer'.

They however didn't envision that this name would be abbreviated to 'WC'...and the natural association of crap with that abbreviation   

2736

General Software Discussion / Re: Iobit smart defrag vs o&o defrag pro

« Last post by Shades on October 11, 2008, 04:04 PM »

The last freeware version from disktrix is what I use. the GUI is not one of the nicest...but I let it do its work at night when I go to sleep anyway.

What I like from this one is that it first defrags files and moves them afterwards to the inner or outer part of the harddisk c.q. partition depending on the setting that you prefer. In my case the files I used most are put on the outer part, improving the access speed.

Since I tried this one, I dropped all the others.

Oh yeah...what I also like a lot from this is that it doesn't keep b.tching about lack of space on the harddisk/partition, while others start complaining that 10%-15% has to be free on the harddisk/partition before commencing or don't start at all before this 'requirement' is met.   

[rant]
What is that about anyway? (that there is a need to have free room is logical to me, but why put the percentage behind the number? To me the fact that 10 Gbyte of free space should be more than enough on a 500 Gbyte harddisk....but no, it has to be 50 Gbyte? What can be so big?
[/rant]

2737

Coding Snacks / Re: Docs and Settings Deletion Warning

« Last post by Shades on October 06, 2008, 09:29 AM »

Found these for you:

• WatchDirectory - site is in Dutch...but hey, you live in SA, so it should not be a huge problem ;-)
• DirectIT Directory Monitor - TechRepublic hosts the file. You have to login though (free registration)
• File Alert Monitor - again TechRepublic
• DirectoryMonitor - guess...again TechRepublic!

You can find a lot more in the treasure trove that is called Techrepublic... :-)

2738

Living Room / Re: Drive by malware ... ouch

« Last post by Shades on September 26, 2008, 07:03 PM »

Cookies are small text files as far as I know, so it shouldn't take too much effort to read their content. What I would do is boot from a linux live CD (or when you feel adventurous, create a Bart's PE bootdisk using your Windows installation CD) and access the websites you need for changing the passwords.

Just to be on the safe (and/or paranoid) side...

2739

DC Gamer Club / Re: [FIXED TOPIC] TrackMania Nations Forever - Free, fun, and totally awesome!

« Last post by Shades on September 26, 2008, 06:04 PM »

After your recommendation I did download it and find it a more than enjoyable racing experience. You sure as h.ll can lose a lot(!) of time over racing a track that should take not more than a minute to finish...at least the computer is able to do so ;-)

It truly is something different to have to race a curvy track with a 90 degree angle.....

@wreckedcarzz:
Where can I find your tracks?

2740

Living Room / Re: Introduction To Public Key Cryptography

« Last post by Shades on September 25, 2008, 10:27 AM »

For the interested...download the (Windows version of) OpenVPN software. It contains all software to make your own complete PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) based on RSA. All for free.

Truly interested should also download: abylon READER (Windows only). This is an excellent tool which amongst other things will give you a clear insight into the way certificates are used in your system.

2741

General Software Discussion / Re: Reading Administrator account files from USB

« Last post by Shades on September 24, 2008, 07:34 PM »

If it is looking that you want, a method that will work is booting from a Linux Live CD (or their USB version). Linux does not know/care about Windows policies/ownership etc.

Likely you can even strip all that kind NTFS info from a file when storing it on a non-NTFS filesystem and copy the copy to your new system.

2742

Developer's Corner / Re: Universe Project

« Last post by Shades on September 24, 2008, 06:46 PM »

Sins of a Solar Empire is what I play lately...excellent strategy game with epic battles in space!

@f0dder:
Those battles turn into nice light shows (if you zoom in into the action ), but the game is otherwise also very nice graphically. Besides that it scales very well to the capabilities from the hardware it runs on.

2743

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a good freeware program to backup/restore installed drivers (Win XP)

« Last post by Shades on September 22, 2008, 06:47 PM »

@gexecuter:

Depends. Those files can be useful if you add hardware through the Windows Device Manager. This is not the way common users would want to take when installing their hardware after (re-)installing...but if you are a power user (a bonafide registered one instead of thinking so!  ) this method can prove quite useful.

Then again, the freeware that is suggested earlier in this tread makes life easier. Personally the Management Console charms me a lot more than the interfaces those backup-software forces on me.

2744

General Software Discussion / Re: Gbridge

« Last post by Shades on September 20, 2008, 12:40 PM »

Is google talk popular?
I don't know anyone using it.

-cmpm (September 19, 2008, 11:18 PM)

Me and a whole lot of people here in the South Americas use it. The net is not that stable and fast here but when you experience a lot of outages and/or other flukes with the MSN messenger, GoogleTalk doesn't experience any problem.

This made the switch to use a multi-messenger tool like Pidgin a necessity for me.

2745

General Software Discussion / ASUS mobo dead

« Last post by Shades on September 20, 2008, 12:10 PM »

With IDE, was it not that the slowest device dictates the speed of all devices connected to the same cable?

Anyway, when I was in the PC repair business this was a golden rule. IDE harddisks are already slow enough as they are, why cripple them even more?

2746

Living Room / Re: News Article: Microsoft & Cray Release $25,000 Supercomputer

« Last post by Shades on September 18, 2008, 10:34 PM »

"No, not tonight Brain. I have other engagements tonight!"

(It's Pinky....Pinky and the Brain...Brain...Brain...Brain...)
Ah thanks, now that stupid intro music is playing again in my head

EDIT:
Then again...with that super thingy it should not be so hard to store each episode from that cartoon.

More EDIT:
At least we now know the (minimal?) requirements for Microsoft's Windows Home Server product.....

2747

Living Room / Re: You might want to skip the whole Blu-Ray generation

« Last post by Shades on September 18, 2008, 09:16 AM »

How do the VM companies setup their common denominator(s) for their virtual hardware and how long are these viable?

Good questions and not easy to answer. Personally I have seen a lot of companies (employing more than 5000 people) that only recently have made a switch to XP for their offices. In one extreme case I know of an IT department that is still looking for old IBM clones (with those cases made from forged iron) for use on the workfloor.

This situation not uncommon in the Netherlands, so I think it is safe to assume that this is common practice in more countries globally (the current global economic environment does not help either).

Would it not be that the common denominator the VM's support is based on the update scheme's companies use? At least it is my assumption that virtualization is most used in companies and not on personal PC's.

My guess is that it could easily be 2015 before ATA support is fased out of VM's, let alone the follow-up standards like SATA.

2748

Living Room / Re: You might want to skip the whole Blu-Ray generation

« Last post by Shades on September 17, 2008, 08:24 PM »

@f0dder:

It is very likely that you heard of and/or maybe even tried this one, but is Bacula not the right solution for you?

Using it here and although it is a b*tch to setup, but after that it's as reliable as the Linux distro you are using to run it (CentOS 4.x in my case). 

2749

Site/Forum Features / Re: New Member Map Mod for the Forum -- Configure Your Profile Location!

« Last post by Shades on September 17, 2008, 07:57 PM »

Hmmmm, I was actually more interested in that Japanese Pin-Up Model Serena Kozakura 

(but that could be me ofcourse)

2750

Living Room / Re: The Office of the Future: Can you exercise and work at the same time?

« Last post by Shades on September 15, 2008, 09:31 PM »

It would have (at least) one bright light....