Great Technology Review

VMWare player 4.0.1 review

2012-01-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

I just started playing with VMWare player 4.0.1, which was released in Nov 2011. It's pretty slick, and based on some lightweight benchmarks, computational performance loss turns out to be minimal. GUI performance is also quite good, and I conclude that using a VM to try out software or otherwise firewall your main machine from risky activities is a great idea with little downside.

Program installation was easy. VMWare requests that you create an account and give them an email before you can download. I found, however, that they do not check if the email is valid before letting you download the install image. Installation does leave a few VMware services running all the time, even if you are not running the player at all, but it's only about 15MB of overhead, so all in all it's tolerable, though I don't see why they can't just run those apps as needed.

OS installation was even easier. For supported OSes (I used winxp sp3) it knows how to automatically install the OS without any interaction from you. Just enter your license key, specify a few parameters (disk size, etc), and the rest of the install is completely unattended. Very nice for getting a good clean install of Windows for testing purposes, etc.

Overall performance seems very good. I tried a synthetic cpu benchmark (Google's v8 javascript benchmark, version 6, on chrome 16.0.912.75 m), and found that the performance was somewhat variable, ranging from 83% to 90% of the benchmark result when run outside of the VM (that is, a 10-17% slowdown). This was on an AMD 255 CPU (X2, 3.1ghz). I doubt I'll ever notice. Visually, performance also seemed snappy for GUI interactions. I tried bubblemark, a simple javascript/dhtml benchmark, and found unbelievably good performance (http://bubblemark.com/dhtml.htm): both inside and outside the VM, performance was the same, at 200-210FPS. Finally, I tried futuremark's peacekeeper browser benchmark. Visual performance was also good, with HTML canvas being only 1fps slower on the VM, at 28fps, however the rendersuite (dynamic updates of table colors) was slower, at 45fps (vs 75). No info on why these would be so different, but I'm guessing that table updates are for no good reason more CPU taxing. Or something.

So to conclude, performance is very good - more than enough to use for all types of web browsing, and even compute-bound tasks. Though I did not test outside of Chome, I see little reason to think native apps would be distinctly different, though it is reasonable to wonder if GUI acceleration might be better outside the VM when using native (win32/.net) apps. Another test worth running would be 3d performance, should you want to run games in the VM. And, of course, it would be worth comparing all this to OpenBox, the other free VM out there. But with performance so good in VMware Player, I can't work up the motivation!

Finally, what are the resources consumed? Disk space is roughly one-to-one with the VM, since the disk image itself expands as you use more of the allocated space. There is also overhead for RAM hibernation, etc, but nothing very surprising. A bare install of XP + chrome took just under 4gb. RAM use is about 256MB above what you allocate to the VM (ie about 768MB on the host OS for 512MB given over to the VM).

Postscript: I did not try out the VM 2 HOST connectivity (shared files, clipboard, etc). It sounds like these are well supported, from what little I've read though.

Games for Netbooks: FreeCiv

2010-12-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

Netbooks are great for trips, but too limited to play most modern games. Lots of great games are playable, however, if you are willing to look a little further back in time. Today I discuss FreeCiv, an open source Civilization II+ clone, which is perfect for Netbook play.

FreeCiv is a turn-based strategy game that plays a bit like a cross between Sim City and a wargame. Starting from a single city, you build up a large empire, while researching the necessary technology for fast expansion or powerful armies, or whatever suits you strategy. Towards the middle and end of the game empire building takes a back seat to fighting your opponents, trying to find the right combination of units and terrain to take their cities by force.

The game seems very hard when you first start: in my first 3 games I couldn't win against the novice AI in the tutorial mode, even after 10+ hours of trying! This highlights one big issue with the game: it's pretty easy to pick up and mess around with the empire building, but really hard to master anything beyond that. The in-game tutorial get's you started, but leaves way to much unstated for any hope of being able to win against even a most novice computer AI. More detailed web-based tutorials fill in the gaps, but even then mysteries remain, such as how to take over even moderately defended cities.

As it turns out, this is because there are a couple rather arbitrary game features which are critical to success, but are rather non-intuitive. One is to switch your mode of government to a republic as soon as possible, (perhaps researching ships first), and second is to incite 'celebration/rapture' once you have size 3+ cities, because this causes them to grow every two turns, independent of the amount of stored grain. That will grow your empire in a hurry, faster than anything else you can possibly do. Two unit types are also very important to military success: ironsides, because they allow you to rule the seas, and marines, combined with transports because marines can attack from a transport, making them very effective against coastal cities. Being first to get to these unit types seems to decide the game, more or less. Finally, although the tutorial suggests that you start building a military fairly early, in my experience (at least against the AI) it's better to focus on expansion until you first meet the other players. Figuring all this out takes a lot of reading of the manual, as it's rather non-obvious what's going on, in game.

Once I mastered these techniques the AIs in the game are all quite easy to beat, though it still takes quite a while to finish a game (3-5 hours). So it seems like the game doesn't have that much long-term appeal, at least against the AI, though there are lots of game rule tweaks you could try out if you like variety. More promissing is the large online community (including play by email) which means you could play against much more challenging opponents where deeper strategy would come into play. Plus, since it's open source, new versions are coming along all the time. So if you are into turn based play, and like playing online, this might well be worth your time.

What is the best web browser for Notebooks?

2010-11-07T14:10:00.000-08:00

Lots of ink (bits?) have been spilled over the question of what web browser is best. I'd hazard that in most cases it's personal taste. For Netbooks, however, with their extremely limited screen size, I think there is an objective case to be made that Chrome is the best. Consider the side-by-size screenshots of FireFox, Opera, and Chrome, below (maximize this window in order to be able to see the full width of the picture).

Assuming you use Tabs, Firefox shows the smallest amount of the page. Opera is a significant step forward, but Chrome is the clear winner. Note at right, I've marked the lines where the other browsers cut off with FF and O, respectively. This is assuming that you do something with the start menu (auto hide, or locate it on the side of your screen) so that all 600 vertical pixels are available for the browser. If not, Chrome's relative advantage will be even bigger. On the flip side, I've adjusted WinXP's title bars to be smaller than normal, which increases the usable area in FireFox and Opera, but has no influence on Chrome's custom title bar.

Note that I didn't include IE 8. It shows about 4 vertical pixels more than Firefox. That is, it's not a contender. To be fair to Firefox, you can hide the status bar, at the cost of knowing where your links are taking you, and other useful information, and you can always work in non-tabbed mode, thus making it competitive with Opera. Opera and Chrome have no such modes. Chrome, at least, however, puts the tabs where other browsers have the title bar and menus, which are mostly dead space.

It's worth noting that all 3 browsers have a full-screen mode, which is worth using if you are spending a lot of time on a single web page, but I find myself switching pages too often for that to be very user-friendly.

One other factor to consider is that Opera has a "turbo" mode, which connects to the web via a proxy server that compresses webpages by about half. If you tend to frequent locations with limited or slow connectivity, this feature may well tip the advantage over to Opera.

How to install Windows XP on a Netbook (use a flash drive) - a method that actually works!

2010-11-07T08:29:00.000-08:00

Summary: simple, industry standard tools can install WinXP onto a Netbook without a CD.

WinXP was designed to be installed off of a CD, but Netbooks, more or less by definition, do not have a CD drive. The solution is to put the install files on a thumb drive, but it's much more complex than it sounds. There is a wealth of info on the internet with various suggestions of how to do this, and I've tried them all. Almost all fail. Shameful! In particular, don't be tempted by unetbootin (only works with Linux!), Microsoft's ISO to USB/DVD tool (only works with Win7), or trying to install from a DOS boot disk. In addition, there are various scripts around which patch your current WinXP CD in various ways to make it bootable off of a flash drive. I can't say I'm super comfortable with that (just how well tested are these scripts, anyway?), plus at least one script included a tool that was marked as having a Trojan in it. Surely there must a be a way using well-known, well-trusted tools? Yes. The major tools used here are BartPE, and the Windows install program itself, winnt32.exe. The whole process is pretty simple, assuming that you don't need to partition. No links to the software you need are included, since it's usually easier to find the most up to date website for each tool with google.

Summary: Make a thumb drive that can boot a stripped-down windows (with BartPE) and then use that to start the WindowsXP install program, instructing it to copy all of the necessary files to your hard drive, which are then automatically fashioned into a working WinXP installation on your next reboot.

does your drive need to be re-partitioned? I had Linux on my drive, so the answer was yes, unfortunately. This was a pain. If you are just wiping an old Windows install, you can skip this step. I used the HPUSBDisk.exe program to write Win98 DOS bootdisk to a thumb drive, and updated the FDISK.exe to use freedos's FDISK.exe (in order to be able to work with >128GB partitions). If you don't have a 3.5" floppy drive on your desktop, you can use vfd (virtual floppy driver) to mount the disk image. Boot your netbook off the flash drive, type fdisk, and follow the prompts. You just need one giant partition. NOTE: In theory you could do this with BartPE, but for some reason it's not possible to start diskpart when BartPE is running from flash.
Build a BartPE image. BartPE is a tool that makes a bootable CD that runs a very light-weight WindowsXP, created from your WinXP install CD. Just run the PE Builder and use all the defaults, except instead of burning a CD or an ISO, just have it output to a directory on your computer.
Write BartPE to your flash drive with PEtoUSB. The program is pretty self-explanatory. Make sure you check "enable file copy".
Copy the I386 folder from your Windows install CD to the thumb drive.
Boot BartPE on your netbook.
Format the netbook's hard drive. Start a command prompt, and type format c: /fs:ntfs /q (the /q makes it faster, if you don't need to verify your HD for errors, leave it off).
"Install" a complete Windows Install onto your hard drive. Rather than installing windows directly we tell the installation to copy itself to the hard drive. Start a cmd prompt, and type:
cd\i386
winnt32.exe /syspart:C: /tempdrive:C: /makelocalsource (note: there are spaces before each slash).
Reboot without the flash drive. Installation will start automatically.
Unless it doesn't. For some reason winnt32 didn't write a new MBR to my hard drive, so it tried to boot my now non-existent Linux install. Fix this using the free MBRWizard, which you can copy to your BartPE drive, and then run from the cmd prompt. You want the /repair=1 option.

That's it. It might seem like a lot of steps, but really it's all quite simple and doesn't take much fussing around. Certainly, it's simpler than many of the other approaches I've seen online. Plus, it actually works. I have a WinXP SP3 install on my Lenovo S10-3 to prove it.

MSI 770-C45 AM3 motherboard review summary

2010-04-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

A good AMD motherboard should have at least the following features: 4 DIMM slots and an AM3 socket. This MSI 770-C45 motherboard meets those requirements. Other notable specs:

6 SATA, 0 eSATA.

2 PS/2 port

1 COM port

6 USB

No onboard video.

6-core CPU support.

NO Core unlocking.
No floppy connector.

There aren't any mainstream reviews of this board.

This blogger has a short post for the PRO version which doesn't say much more than you can learn from reading the specs.Note: I'm discussing the non-PRO version here, which has 1 more SATA, one less eSATA, and no crossfire support.

Trusted Reviews - doesn't say much more than reading the specs will tell you.

Newegg has 102 customer reviews. The following negative comments were noted:

12 DOA
7 people had stability problems
4 failed fail in the first couple months
2 people said the manual was unreadable/useless.
1 person said the on-board audio quality was "terrible"

The NewEgg reviews are quite negative. I would avoid this board, as it doesn't seem to offer much over more highly rated boards that cost only $10 more.

ASUS M4A77TD AM3 770 ATX AMD Motherboard review summary

2010-04-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

A good AMD motherboard should have at least the following features: 4 DIMM slots and an AM3 socket. This ASUS M4A77TD motherboard meets those requirements. Other notable specs:

6 SATA, 0 eSATA.
1 PS/2 port
1 COM port
6 USB
No onboard video.
Express Gate - Instant on Linux distro.
Turbo Key (a blast from the past!) use the power button to cycle over-clocking features on or off.
6-core CPU support.
Core unlocking.

There aren't any mainstream reviews of this board.

This blogger has a short post for the PRO version which doesn't say much more than you can learn from reading the specs.Note: I'm discussing the non-PRO version here, which has 1 more SATA, one less eSATA, and no crossfire support.

Newegg has 103 customer reviews.

3 people flat out couldn't get it to work at all;
1 had problems getting windows installed
1 had stability problems
1 had a failure within first week of use.
3 people complained about the sound card, but didn't explain why (not Linux users). 2 more said Linux support for the sound card was difficult - they had to make sure they used the latest ALSA drivers.
several people marked their reviews down an 'egg' because it supports legacy ports (COM/PS2, parallel). What idiots. This highlights the problem with trusting newegg reviews.

Postscript: I decided to buy the m4a77TD, and have set up the m4a77td blog, with a full review and discussion of various issues, etc.

ASRock M3A770DE Motherboard - AM3 socket notes

2010-04-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

A good AMD motherboard should have at least the following features: 4 DIMM slots and an AM3 socket. This ASRock M3A770DE motherboard meets those requirements. Other notable specs:

4 SATA, 2 eSATA.
2 PS/2 ports
0 COM ports
No onboard video.
3 PCI - but one is blocked by Floppy connector and CDROM analog audio in port.
Instant boot - software addon that speeds up WinXp/Vista boot time.
Core unlocking support.

Price (4-25-10): $60 from newegg.

ASRock is a spinoff of ASUS, so they should be relatively trustworthy.

The big plus of this board is the price. The minus: 2 less SATA ports than most, and no COM port (most don't have these anymore, though).

Tweaktown has a review. It doesn't really say much you couldn't tell from reading the specs.

Newegg customer reviews are mostly positive. Out of 74 reviews, the only negatives that showed up were

The raid support is not very stable
One person had lots of stability problems that sounded like a bad MB
One person had a heat-sink pop off.
3 people had the board fail within a few hours of first use (I wonder if it is heatsink problems?).
One person found that a CPU which could be core-unlocked on another MB would not unlock and run without crashing on this one (plenty of other people comment that core-unlocking did work for them).

Sounds like a reasonably high quality board, especially given the price. On the other hand, $25 more buys you an ASUS MB of similar specs + 2 more SATA ports.

Selecting an AMD motherboard for 2010

2010-04-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of cheap motherboards in the $60 range, and a lot in the $100 range. Going cheap, however, may be more expensive once you factor in the cost of other components.

For instance, DDR3 2GB ram is $60/piece. DDR 4GB ram is $250 (prices crucial.com). So if you get a cheap MB with just two ram slots, you are pretty much limited to 4GB of ram, at least at economical prices. 4GB might be enough for anybody (today) but for how long? Ram usage seems to go up a lot quicker than CPU usage.

Selecting a CPU for 2010

2010-04-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

According to Tom's CPU charts, there is a measurable difference between the fastest and slowest CPUs they tested in 2009. This is not surprising. But the difference is not that huge, either. For now, I'm considering AMD chips only, due to Intel's offensive use of patents and lawsuits over the years.

For instance, 3DS Max rendering can be sped up by a factor of 2.2 by upgrading from a AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz ($53) to a AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz ($186). Not all benchmarks benefit as much, though. MP3 encoding with LAME is only 1.2x faster. Adobe Premiere is 2.5x faster, and FarCry has 1.4x the FPS. The difference between scores has to due with whether the application is multi-threaded. Content creation, therefore, has the best chance of significant speed-up, but it's certainly less than linear, with respect to cost. Modern video games benefit as well, but will tend to depend much more on your video card.

This suggests that the cheap-ass approach would be to buy a good MB with a cheap CPU now, and then upgrade later. Unfortunately, the latest AM3 sockets don't support AM2 CPUs. So you'll have to buy the cheapest AM3 CPU you can find ($53, as quoted above), if you want the longest upgrade path (AM3 was released in Feb 2009, so it should be around for a while). AM3 supports DDR3, whereas AM2 only supports DDR2.

DDR3 costs $120 for 4GB (crucial.com). DDR2 costs $116-$134 (depending on speed) for the same GB. So it looks like the price has mostly equalized. Meanwhile DDR1 is $300 for 4GB, which goes to show: don't get stuck on an old technology - it's not going to be cheaper forever.

Make Windows remote login more secure without using a longer password: set a login lockout

2009-11-13T08:02:00.000-08:00

This page has some useful info for making your WinXp remote desktop more secure. I wouldn't follow all the advice, but some of it is certainly useful. I'm a fan of changing the account lockout policy, in particular, since it makes it very hard to remotely connect and guess the password by trying a large dictionary of possible passwords. In short, it sets a limit on the number of failed attempts (per user), after which the account is locked for a specified amount of time (no login allowed, even if the password is right). They suggest a lockout rate of 3/3/3 (attempts/lockout time/reset failure count time), which would limit you to 1 password test a minute. This is the right idea, but for butterfingers here it could potentially lock me out, which I don't like. A better setting is 10/10/10, which would also limit the throughput to 1 guess/min, but would allow me to make up to 10 mistakes before any limit is encountered.

Note: this applies to everything, not just remote desktop. So you can use this to secure other remote login options, like SSHD (I use Cygwin's implementation).

Review: Bit Defender Free Edition - On demand Virus Scan

2009-11-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

Many people say you *need* a real-time anti-virus program on your computer that constantly checks for virus infections every time you launch a program or load a document. I say: real time virus scan software can cause almost as much slowdown and crashes as the virus/malware you are trying to protect against. Better to run the scanner just once (on demand) - when you first download a new program. You save on computer resources, and avoid compatibility issues.

Bit Defender offers a free version of their anti-virus/malware scanner that only runs on demand - the big 'feature' they are offering in the non-free version is real-time protection. The download link is here. Note that they give you the hard sell - you have to repeatedly confirm that you really want the free version. A bad sign.

The installation is pretty invasive. Several programs are loaded into memory even when you aren't running a scan - the whole point of on-demand scanning is to avoid this kind of bloat! Also, an item is added to your context menu in explorer, with no clear way to turn it off.

When you start the program it also takes the opportunity to remind you that it's only the free version, and that you should upgrade. Well, that's fair game for any shareware app, but it is annoying, given that other free scanners don't do that. To top it off - the free program expires (in about 100 days, in my case), after which you must reinstall again. I don't think hassling users is a good way to get them to upgrade to the full version.

All in all, it seems that Bit Defender Free Edition is a reasonable choice for cleaning out a known infection, but is too annoying to regularly use as a on-demand scanner. The context menu does make it very easy to scan a file on demand, but at the cost of making your menu all that much more bloated. Give me a "send to" option, or let me drag and drop the file I want to scan. Within the main program have an option where you can select a particular folder for scanning (say, your download folder), and save that as a pre-defined 'task' you can activate with one click next time you start the program. That would be a fine option if didn't insist on nagging you about registering and loading needless programs into memory even when not scanning.

On the whole, I'm unimpressed. HouseCall seems to be a better option; it has fewer options, but works more or less how you want right out of the box, and isn't so annoying.

Review: Trend Micro "House Call" - free On demand Virus Scan

2009-11-09T16:35:00.000-08:00

Today I consider a free On Demand anti-virus program: Trend Micro HouseCall (7.1 beta). This program will scan for spyware and viruses on the folder or disk drive of your choice, and each time you run it, it automatically checks for new updates. Since it's from a major Anti-Virus vendor, it's likely to be updated very frequently. And the interface, as you can see, is very simple. To install, you download HousecallLauncher.exe, which is deceptively small, and actually creates an installation in your Windows Temp dir, and downloads the latest anti-virus signatures. This installation seems to persist after you close the program (nothing stays resident in RAM, however).

Scanning is very fast if you select the default option, but this doesn't check all of your installed programs, so it's a bit misleading. A full scan checks every single file on your computer (independent of file time), and takes a really long time. For on-demand use, select the custom option, and then the directory where the newly downloaded file lives. The program can search inside ZIP files; I don't know about other archive types.

As an on-demand scanner, it's very reasonable, but not 100% optimal, for two reasons. First, it takes a while to load, and second, you have to navigate through the gui to select the target folder to scan (no drag-and-drop or command line options).

How to pause animation in PowerPoint

2009-10-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

If you have a long animation looping animation that you want to be able to pause and then resume, there's an easy way to do so with the keyboard. Press the 1 key, which puts you in the mode where you can type in a slide number to jump to. In this mode, all animation is paused. To get out of this mode without jumping to another slide press the ~ key.

There are lots of keyboard shortcuts in Powerpoint; press F1 to get a list. Note that one of them is listed as "pause" (S key or + key) but this doesn't actually seem to work in all the situations that the trick described above does.

Tested an known to work in PPT 2003.

Add 960x600 resolution (16x10 aspect ratio) to ATI Radeon display drivers

2009-07-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

ATI doesn't offer a lot of different resolutions built into their drivers. If you have a wide aspect monitor (16x10, for instance) and you want to run at a lower resolution that preserves the aspect ratio, you'll need this hack (I do it to make full-screen flash videos play smoothly 0n my 1920x1200 LCD). All it takes is regedit and a bit of attention to detail.

First, you need to determine the registry key you need to edit. This will vary by computer, but can be looked up in the catalyst control panel (see first pic). Note the "2D driver file path". Now open regedit (start>run>regedit), and navigate to that key, which will be something like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video\{random numbers here which you just looked up}\0000]

Next you want to edit DALNonStandardModesBCD1; just follow the format of the binary data, and add the resolution (+ refresh rate) to the end of the key.

See second pic for example that adds 960x600 at 60hz. Note the leading zeros, required if the resolution is less than 1000. The order of the lines does not matter, but those leading zeros (and the zeros between the resolution and the refresh rate) must be preserved.

Finally, reboot. Tested and known to work with the 6.9 drivers. Thanks where it's due: I first figured this out from this forum post.

Convert PDF to PNGs for free using ghostscript

2009-06-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

Ghostscript is PDF and PS rendering program for Unix ported to pretty much all OSes, modern ones included (AKA Windows). With this free, GNU program, you can make high resolution PNG files from PDFs, which you can then edit with any regular drawing program, such as PhotoShop or the Gimp.

Just open the PDF in GSview, and select convert from the file menu. The dialog box will let you select the output file type (I suggest PNG16m if you want color, otherwise PNG256 is fine if you just plan to print the file). Use 600DPI (aka resolution) if you plan to print the files and want sharp text (lower DPI is fine for screen use). After you hit OK ghostscript will ask you for the output filename. The non-obvious but important trick is that the file name should include the following text: %03d this will cause ghost script to output a separate PNG file for each page in the PDF. For instance, you can use the output filename output%03d.png. Otherwise you just get the first page.

Google Chrome now supports spell-check in blogger posts

2009-05-21T16:36:00.000-07:00

I've been using Google Chrome for a while, and on the whole it's a nice web browser. Given that the main job of a web browser is just to render webpages, how much value added can there really be? In truth, not that much, but Chrome does a very nice job of handling tabs, wastes less screen space than any other browser, and is quite fast. It also uses less RAM than IE and Firefox, if you run it in single process mode, though that does eliminate one of its nicest features: if the browser crashes, it only kills the current tab, and all others remain running.

There was just one nagging little problem, up to version 2.0.172.28. Though chrome has a built-in spell checker (not the very best, but it does a good enough job at making suggestions for most people), it only works on a subset of web forms. Most notably, it never worked properly in Blogger. Now, however, it does. Just right click in the form, and select Spellchecker options to enable it.

If you do come across a misspelling that Chrome cannot correct, you might try FreeSpell, which adds a very high quality spelling suggestions to all windows programs.

Remap keys under windows without TSR!

2009-03-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

SharpKey is a simple, free program that uses the built-in keyboard map (via the windows registry) to change the meaning of keys on your keyboard. The classic use for this is to remap the left caps lock key to be a control key. On older Thinkpads it can also be used to give yourself a Windows key (I like to remap the useless browser keys for this purpose). Since it just changes the underlying keyboard map there is no possibility of macros, or fancy things like that. But that also means that you don't have to have the program resident in memory in order for the remapping to work (hence the old DOS joke in the title of this post). Highly recommended.

Free or low cost tax 2008 prep online - 2009 pricelist

2009-02-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

The IRS has a website listing the free online tax preparation websites for your 2008 taxes for the 2009 April 15th deadline. All the sites offer free Federal filing, but most charge you for state filing. Turbo tax does both for free if you make less than $30K and live a select set of states. I live in California, so that doesn't help me. Tax slayer has free prep for both fed and state if you are below 25, or make less than $10 k.

California also has a website that lists free state tax prep. I've never heard of most of those companies, so I'm a little hesitant to use them. The also have a state-developed "calfile" site that is free to most all Californians (here's a less then ecstatic review from 2005). The ultimate cheap option is to use one free site for your fed taxes and one for your state taxes, but as you will see below that only saves you $10, vs. the cheapest reputable pay sites. Doing both taxes on one site is nice because you don't have to double-enter anything.

If you can't do it for free, how much does it cost from the major providers to do both if you make less than $55k (unless otherwise noted)? (prices as of 2-5-09)

Tax$imple $10

H & R block: $30

TaxAct $14

Turbo Tax Freedom Edition (if you make less than $30k) $10

Tax slayer $10

Complete Tax: $15 (if you make less than $31k).

(note to get these prices you may have to follow the link from the IRS website).

I've used all of these, over the years, and they are all OK. I've been most please with Turbo Tax and H&R block over the years, interface wise. But none of them stand out as being all that different, really.

Some somewhat out of date reviews

Netbooks compared on price and features

2009-01-28T10:04:00.000-08:00

I made a matrix of Netbooks, split by OS (Linux or Windows) and Hard disk (SSD or HHD):

OS / HD	Linux OS	Windows OS
SSD	Asus Eee PC4g 512MB/4GB/4cell $250 Acer Aspire One 1GM/8GB/3cell $280 Acer Aspire One 512MB/8GB/3cell $329 Acer Aspire One 512MB/16GB/3cell $350
mechanical		ASUS EeePC 900HA1GB/160/4cell $329 ASUS EeePC 904HA 1GB/160/4cell $340 Acer Aspire One 1GB/160GB/6cell $380 MSI Wind U100 1GB/120GB/3cell $350 Lenovo IdeaPad S10 512MB/80GB/3cell $350

Notice anything interesting? Netbooks only appear along the diagonal of the matrix. It seems you can't get a Windows netbook with a solid state disk, or a Linux netbook with a mechanical hard drive. A strange set of optimizations, if you ask me. Given how much excitement there is about this category, you'd think that there would be at least some examples in the other two cells of the matrix. True, not every netbook is listed here, but this is a representative sample of what I could find on Amazon and Newegg. I'd welcome reader comments on netbooks I missed.

Reducing Chrome memory footprint & comparison to Firefox

2009-01-24T08:30:00.000-08:00

Google's Chrome is the newest web browser to challenge IE's dominance. One of it's claims to fame is that each Tab (or now, each website) runs in its own process. This means that if a Tab crashes it doesn't effect the rest of the open Tabs.

While great in theory, in practice this turns out to be relatively useless. Chrome is actually about as stable as Firefox, so crashes really are not a problem. Using a separate process for each Tab does use more memory, however. All of the program code is shared between processes, but data is not, and this means that each new Tab has some overhead that would not be consumed in a single process browser. My limited testing, to be described below suggests that each tab takes about 10MB extra RAM, which won't be a big deal of you have Gigs of RAM installed on your machine, but could be quite a problem on lower-end machines.

The good news is that Chrome can be run in a single process mode - which is incidentally how I estimated the amount of overhead for each tab.

To switch Chrome to a single process mode, you need to change the command line arguments to Chrome.exe. I use an icon/shortcut on the desktop to start Chrome, so I just right clicked to get the properties of that shortcut, and then added --single-process to the end of the Target edit field.

I did a really quick before and after test to see how much of a change this made, by loading three websites: gmail, comics.com, and phdcomics.com. These websites are relatively graphic, javascript, and flash rich, which should actually minimize the relative contribution of multi-process overhead to the total memory usage.

The memory usage for these websites, immediately after loading all 3:

Chromium 1.0.154.43
multi-process: 120MB
single-process: 90MB

Firefox 3.0.5: 135MB (no extensions or addons)

As you can see, the single process mode does make a difference. More surprisingly, it looks like Chrome is actually a lot more memory efficient than Firefox. More comprehensive testing would be a good idea here, but at the least, it appears that Chrome is no worse than Firefox.

So for now, I strongly recommend you check out Chrome, and run your own tests. It also has a nice interface, and doesn't waste screen space with lots of "chrome" :-). The only big downside I have seen so far is that it's built in spell-checking facility is really weak. It often doesn't have any good suggestions for more phonetically based spellings, and even typos can sometimes stymie its suggestions. Furthermore, the spell-checking facility doesn't even load on some websites (notably, blogspot). In the mean time, I use FreeSpell, which makes excellent suggestions and works with all websites (and applications) [Disclaimer: I wrote FreeSpell].

Turn off Windows Update service to save RAM and avoid error 0x8DDD0018

2008-12-14T07:39:00.000-08:00

The Windows update service takes about 10MB of RAM, but is used about once every month.
What a waste, espcially if running on a Netbook or low-end laptop where RAM is at a premium.

It's easy to turn off the service using the Services.msc tool, but then for some reason the Windows Updates website doesn't know how to turn it back on as needed. Instead, you need a batch file which starts up the service and then shuts it down as soon as the update is over. Likewise, the BITS service is only used by Windows Update, so it too can be enabled just as needed. The problem I ran into, however, is that even when Windows Update service is running Windows update may not be able to detect it, and will return an erronous 0x8DDD0018 error. This is solved by running regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll.

The final batch file is as follows:

net start wuauserv
regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll /s
net start BITS

start /wait iexplore update.microsoft.com

net stop wuauserv
net stop BITS

How to import registery settings from a previous Windows install using RegEdit and NTUSER.dat

2008-11-22T16:20:00.000-08:00

If you want to import the settings from an application you had installed on a previous copy of Windows you probably will have to mess around with the registry. If you are lucky, however, the settings are just saved in a .ini file in the program's directory. Be sure to check for that first. In the case that there is no .ini file, however, here is how you can load the settings without having to boot into your older Windows install first.

Start regedit (winkey+r, "regedit", enter)

Select HKEY_USER registry key.

From the File menu, select Load Hive (will be grayed out if you don't select HKEY_USER first).

Find your old install's documents and settings folder, navigate to your old user's folder, and then open their NTUSER.dat file (note it's hidden, so you'll have to make sure that explore is set to reveal hidden files).

It will ask you for a key name - choose something unique, because you'll want to do a search and replace later. I used xyztemp.

Now click on HKEY_USER, and then on xyztemp. You now have your old copy of HKEY_CURRENT_USER loaded. Find the program's settings (typically under Software), and export that folder/key to disk.

Supposedly it's a good idea to select the xyztemp key, and select unload hive from the File menu before quiting regedit.

Next open that exported .reg file with a text editor. Do a search and replace, replacing each instance ofHKEY_USERS\xyztemp with HKEY_CURRENT_USER (no spaces).

Now save and close the file. Finally, right click on the .reg file, and select Merge.

What do slashdot readers think is the best low-end laptop OS?

2008-10-26T10:28:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update: less than a month after my two posts on the topic of the best OS for low end machines, somebody posted an Ask Slashdot on the same question. A quick glance thru the comments suggests that Linux is the most popular option, which isn't surprising given the audience.

The real value of the Ask Slashdot article, however, is that people are suggesting actual Distros. So far xubuntu doesn't get a lot of hits, suggesting that perhaps I didn't select the very best option for my own head-to-head tests. If you do decide to install Linux on your low end laptop, you should check it out:

Ask Slashdot: Best OS For Netbooks and Underpowered Tablets?

Best free calandar for 2009

2008-10-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

You can pay $10 for a colorful calendar for 2009, or 50 cents you can print out your own. I decided to print out my own. I spent ~20 minutes trying to find a good free PDF calendar for 2009 online, but they all featured advertisements, or poor use of page space (ie really large margins, etc). So I made my own. Download my 2009 calendar here. It's free, has no ads, and makes very good use of the space on the 8.5 by 11 page. No fancy clip-art included, but maybe you prefer that?

What OS is best for a low-end laptop? Evaluating Win2k on a 800mhz ThinkPad

2008-10-08T18:59:00.001-07:00

An 8 year old laptop can still be pretty useful for surfing the web, writing emails and papers, and other sorts of basic tasks. In fact, low-end laptops have become quite the rage with the $350 "NetBook", as personified by machines like the Acer Aspire One, or the Dell Inspiron Mini. But for many of us it's possible to get your hands on a old Low-end machine for much less than $350. And, unlike the Netbooks, you'll get a full-sized keyboard and screen.

The question this post focuses on is what OS provides the best sort of performance for this kind of low-end machine.

I recently completed a post where I tried installing Xubuntu Linux on a 800 mhz Thinkpad with 384MB of RAM. I was impressed with my Linux experience on the whole, but found that bootup and shutdown (as well as hibernate and resume) time was much longer than I would like. Judging from my experience with my Windows desktops, I suspected that an appropriately selected Windows OS would do better. Vista obviously wouldn't, and even XP might be too much, but what about Windows 2000 (Win2k)? Win2k was one of the first really stable Window OSes, and still has good driver support. Win98 might have lower hardware requirements, but wasn't nearly as stable. I elected, therefore to install Win2k.

Coming fresh from my Xubuntu experience I was surprised at how much more work it was to install Win2k. You always hear about how much pain it is to install Linux, but I think that's largely historical. Today, installing Linux is actually easier than installing Windows - especially older copies of Windows which don't come pre-equipped with all the drivers you'll need, current security updates, or all the good opensource/free software that you'll want, like Firefox and Open Office. Not that it's actually 'hard' to install Windows - all the steps are easy; it's just time consuming to download the right service pack, gather drivers together, and install each one in turn. With Linux a fully functional install took all of 20 clicks. I'd estimate Windows took more than 10-20 times as many. And with all the rebooting required, I'd guess it took 3-4 times as long to get a fully functioning OS, before I even started installing applications.

Of course you only have to install the OS once (every few years). So what really matters is performance after it's all set up.

Websurfing was just fine, just as in Linux. Firefox could handle multiple websites at once, with no jumpiness or lag. Flash was also better, with no more than 1 dropped frame a minute. Also, it was possible to multi-task without making Flash drop audio and video, unlike with Linux. That was almost certainly an issue with Flash being poorly implemented under Linux, as my Linux tests showed that the same machine could play back DVDs just fine. Nonetheless, I'm more likely to use Flash on a machine like this than watch a DVD...

For doing real work, I tried coldstarting AbiWord and Open Office. AbiWord started in 5 seconds. Open Office writer started in 33 seconds. For comparison, AbiWord started 2 seconds faster than under Linux, but Open office actually took 9 seconds longer. Note that I did not have the quick-start program installed under Windows, since that just hides Open-Office start time in the bootup time, and wastes RAM too. As far as I know, no such quick-start program was running under Linux, so it's rather impressive that the same version of Open Office loads quicker under Linux. Not that 24 seconds is really 'quick'. Open office is a real pig, actually. Note that once started, both AbiWord and Open Office were perfectly snappy, with no typing lag or any problems like that. With both programs loaded, plus Firefox, I found that performance continued to remain snappy, with switches between applications taking less than 1/2 a second.

So what about the bootup time, which was so disappointing under Linux? Bootup time from power on to a usable desktop was 110 seconds, only 10 seconds faster than Linux . Clearly, this was still too slow, so I experimented with using Hibernation, where the contents of RAM of an already booted machine is written to disk. Assuming a fast enough disk, it's going to be quicker to load that RAM image back from the disk than going all the way through bootup again. Hibernating to disk took 34 seconds. Resuming from hibernation took 44 seconds, still longer than I would like, but a significant improvement over Xubunutu, which took 80 seconds! So, in conclusion, I was right: Windows (2k) is faster to start up than Xubuntu was, though only significantly so when you use hibernation. And Windows is still slower than I would like.

So, in conclusion, which is better for a low end laptop (as personified by my 800mhz Thinkpad)? Linux/Xubuntu was much easier and quicker to set up, and comes with lots of good opensource software "right out of the box" (fresh off the download?). Booting, however, was painfully slow, as was Flash performance. On the other hand, Windows took forever to install and setup, but once configured it was fast(er) to boot (or at least, to resume from hibernation). Though I only tested two applications, it does appear that Linux starts applications slightly faster than Windows does, at least with the monolithic Open Office. In retrospect I wish I had benchmarked a few more apps, but I hadn't expected there to be much difference. Oh well, I'm sure somebody else will do it eventually.

So it's kind of a draw, if you ask me. Other factors, such as what kind of software you want to use probably makes a bigger difference than the differences in performance. I'd go with Windows myself, since I prefer MS Office (esp. Office 2000, which is very fast to load, and lacks all the bloat of Office 2007). But if you prefer Open Office, or other Linux only apps, then clearly Linux wins. It's nice when the choice of what OS to use depends mostly on taste; after all it would be sad if I had to report that Linux fans should use Windows because it's so much faster, or vice-versa.

Evaluating Linux for a Low-End laptop: my experience with xUbuntu and a 800mhz Thinkpad

2008-10-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

If you have an older laptop it makes no sense to run a modern Windows OS on it. Older MS OSes, such as Win2k, or even Win98 run great on machines with less than 1Ghz processors. W98, however, isn't the most stable OS, and neither of those OSes are supported. In this post I examine how well Linux works on older hardware, with an old T21 Thinkpad laptop with an 800Mhz processor and 384MB of RAM.

With Linux the first question is which Distro to install. For regular desktop use, I'd hazard it doesn't matter much anymore: Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, etc: all the big players have pretty good package management, installation routines, etc., and all have more or less the same set of pre-installed software.

Linux, however, has gotten pretty flashy as of late, and a regular desktop Distro is likely to heavily overload an older laptop. There many distros that target older hardware, notably Damn small Linux, Vector Linux, and the one I chose: X bunutu. I pretty much chose at random, guided partly by the high opinions I've heard of the mainstream Ubuntu distribution.

Getting Xubuntu is easy; it's free, and can be downloaded via FTP, or even faster via Bit Torrent. The installation fits on 1 CDR, and also includes both a live mode where you can try out Xubuntu without installing it on your disk. I bypassed the live mode and went straight to installing Linux. Installation was super-easy, in part because there are almost no options to set at all. Xubuntu installs a somewhat minimal set of software, and expects you to add apps as you need them. The add/remove application is very easy to use, and has a search able list of all the applications pre-configured for easy installation under ubuntu. This approach is actually pretty smart: you don't wast a lot of disk space on pre-installed apps you don't even know you have, and will probably never use. Even so, my 20gig hard drive was down to just 15gigs free once the install was finished.

Xubuntu did a great job of detecting my hardware. The video card, the sound card, even the battery were all detected automatically. Since the point of this review is to focus on using Linux on a low-end laptop, however, I'll skip reviewing xubuntu/linux in general, other than to say it's quite slick, full featured, and once you get used to slightly different conventions, easy to use.

So, how does it perform on my low-end laptop? Pretty well, once it boots up! Web browsing is snappy using Firefox, with windows loading quickly and scrolling without being jumpy or choppy. Flash performance, however, was not so great. Youtube videos would play ok, and were certainly watchable, but you could definitely see frames dropping once in a while, and when multitasking (such as installing open office in the background) the audio would occasionally drop out, and the video would freeze. This may be due to the poor Flash implementation under linux - watching a DVD was no problem at all, with perfect video and audio, even when full screen.

How about doing real work? Xubuntu installs abiword as the default word processor. It cold-starts in about 7 seconds, and once loaded is perfectly snappy. Abiword is probably equivalent to Word 95 - not the most powerful tool around, but more than enough for most of us. I also installed Open Office, to see how that would perform. Open office writer cold-started in 24 seconds. While that's much slower than for abiword, interestingly it's not that bad. My desktop Athlon 3100+ running Win2k3 takes about 30 seconds to load the same program. Both apps worked great once loaded, with no typing lag, or any other signs of slow-down. I was also able to multitask just fine, with copy of FireFox, Open Office writer, Thunderbird, and the Gimp open at the same time. I don't know how well 384MB would support more apps than that, but with those four I was able to switch between apps with less than 1/2 a second lag.

The real problem, in my view, is how long it takes to boot up. From pushing the power button to the point where the desktop was fully loaded it took 2 minutes, with only about 5 seconds of that devoted to entering my usename and password. One way to potentially reduce that is to use hibernation, where the fully loaded OS is written out to disk, so that next time you can skip most of the boot and just read the disk image. Under xubuntu, however, this isn't much of a time-savings. First, it takes 42 seconds to hibernate the machine to disk, and then it takes 1 min, 20s, to resume from hibernation. Yes, it's faster than doing a fresh boot, and it has the advantage of keeping all of your current applications open, but it's still too slow.

On a side note, I was a bit disappointed by the stability of the xfce desktop. Upon my 3rd bootup, the menubar (equivalent to a combination of window's taskbar and the MAC's menubar), stopped loading, leaving me wiht just a desktop full of icons. I poked around a bit, but could never find out how to load it again. I'm guessing it somehow got messed up during the application update phase, but I don't really know.

One other notable advantage to using Linux for a low-end laptop is that a single CD and a couple of clicks gives you a completely functional machine. I didn't have to hunt around for drivers. Mainstream apps, like Firefox were already installed, and programs like Open Office could be installed by just clicking a checkbox. In contrast installing an older MS OS like Win2k would have taken much longer, what with locating drivers, and then having to install additional apps piece by piece. Funny, I wouldn't have thought linux would win that comparison, but that's just a measure of how far Linux installation has come in the last few years.

In the end, however, the slow bootup is a bit of a downer. I'm tempted to install Win2k just to get a comparison. I'm pretty sure it would be faster, but perhaps I'm extrapolating from my experience with more modern machines where Win2k and WinXP boot quite quickly. In any case, Linux is certainly a reasonable option for a 800Mhz laptop. It may come down to taste in the end - if you like Windows, then use an older Windows OS, but if you want Linux, go for that instead.

Follow-up: After giving Linux a try I decided to do a head-to-head comparison between Linux and Windows 2k on the same machine.

A nice monospace font for CMD.exe

2008-07-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

The default raster font for CMD.exe is pretty familiar - it's the same font used in DOS for the last 20 years. It's possible to use a monotype font which looks a lot nicer. Check out this link for details:

http://www.msblog.org/2008/04/23/treat-your-eyes-to-some-consolas/

Are you getting the bandwidth you paid for?

2008-07-26T10:38:00.001-07:00

Often your broadband provider offers several different deals, depending on what upload and download speed you want. If you just want to read email and look at the occasional website then it hardly maters, but for many of us, the speed of our connection is important (I care a lot, since I often work remotely from home using VNC or MS Remote Desktop, and also run a distributed backup system).

So do you get the speed advertised? Probably not; the question is how much less you get than the maximum speed advertised. Speakeasy speedtest makes it quick and easy to find out, and they print it in both the needlessly inflated bits per second, and the more meaningful kilobytes per second. Very handy!

Editing MSI files to allow installation under Win2k3

2008-07-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

Have an .MSI that won't install under Win2k3? It's probably easy to fix. Here's how:

I wanted to install the Firefox WMP plug in from port25 but it turns out that MS decided that this plugin should not support server OSes. Actually, they just decided that the MicroSoft Installation (MSI) file wouldn't support server OSes. Luckily, it's easy to edit MSI files to fix this.

First, you need an MSI editor. Microsoft makes the one you want, called ORCA, but expects you to download it as part of a 300MB SDK. Luckily, it's easy to find online. I got mine from softpedia. Download and install this tool before proceeding.

Next you need the MSI file; Microsoft distributes it inside an EXE, downloadable from the port25 website. To get at the MSI file, double click the EXE, and continue thru the prompts until it tells you that you cannot install the program on a server OS. Before closing the dialog, look in your windows temp folder. There should be an MSI file there. It may be hard to find, as the file's mod date may be from 2007, but if you keep your temp folder clean it should be easy to find (if not, clean out your temp folder, and then run the installer again).

Make a copy of this MSI file, and then right click on it to select Edit with Orca. Now you need to find the rule that prevents the file from being installed. About halfway down the Table list you will find LaunchCondition. Click on this. You will see two rules, and a description of each. Select the rule that is preventing the install, and delete it. Now save the MSI, and then double click on it to restart the installation. Or, if there is only one rule, you can set it to to Privileged, which means that you have to be adminstrator in order to install the program, but it doesn't matter what OS you are using.

And that's all it takes to Install the Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin

Dos Here/Cmd prompt here for Win2k3

2008-03-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

If you search for Command prompt here, you get Microsoft's page for WinXP; don't bother downloading this, as it won't install under Win2k3. The solution is a third party version, found here:
http://bork.hampshire.edu/~alan/code/winplusplus/; but be warned that something funny happened when I installed it - DosHere became my default folder action. It's not clear what caused this, as after I fixed it, reinstalling DosHere did not cause it again. But in any case, here's the fix:

make sure that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell is equal to the string none

see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;321186 if you find this hard to believe. Their page leads me to think this could happen under WinXP as well, though I've installed DosHere on many WinXP machines and never seen this before.

Using Real Rhapsody under Win2k3

2008-03-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

Real has a poorly written OS-check that does not detect that Win2k3 is a superset of WinXP; the result is that the in-browser player will not load. The solution is rather easy, however. Just change the user agent:

type about:config in the address bar, and add a new string titled general.useragent.override; set it to:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12 Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

The key part here is Windows NT 5.1; this maps onto Windows XP. If you want to correctly report the version of your FireFox browser, you can get the non-overridden version by typing about: in the address bar.

The wrong way to do this is to launch Firefox in Windows XP compatibility mode. This breaks Quicktime.

Another list of programs (in)compatible with Win2k3

2008-03-23T14:17:00.001-07:00

I found this rather short list of program compatibility with Win2k3. Short though it may be, it's still much longer than my list :-). I will continue to update my list...

Make your Canon Powershot camera work under Win2k3

2008-03-22T09:36:00.001-07:00

Out of the box, the Canon Powershot software is not not compatible with Windows 2003 Server. But with some tweaking, you can make it work.

First, you need to install SSDP and UPnP services for Win2k3.

Next, make sure that the old Canon software is uninstalled.

Then, set the startup.exe install program on your Canon driver CD to load in WindowsXP compatibility mode. Run setup, and install ZoomBrowser ex, and photo stitch. I've found that version 5.8 does not run well under Win2k3, but that 6.x works fine, so at this point you may need to download and install an updater from Canon's website.

After rebooting, plug your camera in. The Canon software may load automatically. I found that I had to first open the Windows Control Panel for Cameras and Scanners and set Camera Window as the default action when my camera was plugged in.

After doing this the Canon software would load when I connected the camera, but clicking on the download images button did not work. A final step that I had to complete was to open the E:\Program Files\Canon\CameraWindow\CameraWindowDVC6 folder, and set all the EXE files to WindowsXP compatibility mode. I'm not sure this is necessary, since I discovered that some of the files had been set into Win2k compatibility mode from when I had been trying other methods to get the CameraWindow software to work. Win2k mode definitely doesn't work.

After those steps the Canon software works flawlessly. I can download pictures just fine, and all the Canon photo tools work just fine. In the MS event viewer tool, I do see the following, rather ugly message a lot, but I've never seen any actual malfunction:

Generate Activation Context failed for c:\Program Files\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX\Program\MFC80U.DLL. Reference error message: The referenced assembly is not installed on your system.

Installing SSDP and UPNP services under Windows 2k3

2008-03-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Windows 2003 Server does not come with either the Universal Plug and Play service or the SSDP Discovery Service. These services are useful for poking holes in your firewall and supporting image downloading from Canon cameras, among other things.

As it turns out, it is possible to install these services under Win2k3, if you have access to a WinXP machine or install CD. See the last post at this link, or in the case that the link dies, follow the instructions below.

Make a file called XtraServices.inf and save it in c:\windows\inf using notepad, with the following text:

[version]
signature="$WINDOWS NT$"
ClassGUID={00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
LayoutFile=layout.inf
[DestinationDirs]
UPNP.SysFiles=11
UPNP.XMLFiles=11,icsxml
[Optional Components]
UPNPSvc
[UPNPSvc]
OptionDesc=%UPNP_DESC%
Tip=%UPNP_TIP%
IconIndex=93
CopyFiles=UPNP.SysFiles,UPNP.XMLFiles
Uninstall=UPNP.Remove
RegisterDlls=UPNP.RegisterDlls
AddService=upnphost, 0x410,UPNP_upnphost_Svc
AddService=SSDPSRV, 0x410,UPNP_SSDP_svc, UPNP_Evt
SizeApproximation=678976
[UPNP.Remove]
UnregisterDlls=UPNP.UnRegisterDlls
DelFiles=UPNP.SysFiles,UPNP.XMLFiles
DelService=upnphost
DelService=SSDPSRV
[UPNP.RegisterDlls]
11,, upnp.dll, 1
11,, upnphost.dll, 1
11,, upnpcont.exe,,,"/regserver"
[UPNP.UnRegisterDlls]
24,%lite_path%,%lite_prog%,,,"stop upnphost"
24,%lite_path%,%lite_prog%,,,"stop SSDPSRV"
11,, upnp.dll, 1
11,, upnphost.dll, 1
11,, upnpcont.exe,,,"/unregserver"
[UPNP.SysFiles]
ssdpsrv.dll,,,1
ssdpapi.dll,,,1
upnp.dll,,,1
upnphost.dll,,,1
upnpcont.exe,,,1
udhisapi.dll,,,1
upnpui.dll,,,1
[UPNP.XMLFiles]
cmnicfg.xml
ipcfg.xml
osinfo.xml
potscfg.xml
pppcfg.xml
[UPNP.SysFiles.Security]
"D:P(A;;GRGX;;;BU)(A;;GA;;;BA)(A;;GA;;;SY)(A;;GRGX;;;WD)"
[UPNP_upnphost_Svc]
Description=%UPNPHOST_Desc%
DisplayName=%UPNPHOST_Display%
ServiceType=0x20
StartType=3
ErrorControl=1
StartName="NT AUTHORITY"\LocalService
ServiceBinary=%11%\svchost.exe -k LocalService
AddReg=upnphost.AddReg.Secure, upnphost.AddReg
Dependencies=SSDPSRV
Security="D:(A;;GA;;;SY)(A;;GA;;;BA)(A;;GA;;;AU)(A;;GA;;;PU)(A;;CCDCLCSWLOCRRC;;;LS)"
[upnphost.AddReg]
HKR, Parameters, ServiceDll, 0x20000, "%%SystemRoot%%\System32\upnphost.dll"
HKLM, "Software\Microsoft\UPnP Device Host\HTTP Server", "MaxConnections", 0x00010001, 0x00000050
HKLM, "Software\Microsoft\UPnP Device Host\HTTP Server\VROOTS",,0x0010
[upnphost.AddReg.Secure]
HKLM, "Software\Microsoft\UPnP Device Host",,0x10
[upnphost.AddReg.Secure.Security]
"D:PAR(A;CI;KA;;;BA)(A;CIIO;KA;;;CO)(A;CI;KA;;;LS)(A;CI;KA;;;SY)(A;CI;KR;;;BU)"
[UPNP_SSDP_svc]
Description=%UPNP_Desc%
DisplayName=%UPNP_Display%
ServiceType=0x20
StartType=3
StartName="NT AUTHORITY"\LocalService
ErrorControl=1
ServiceBinary=%11%\svchost.exe -k LocalService
Security="D:(A;;GA;;;SY)(A;;GA;;;BA)(A;;GA;;;AU)(A;;GA;;;PU)(A;;RPWPDTRC;;;LS)"
AddReg=UPNP.AddReg
[UPNP.AddReg]
HKR, Parameters, ServiceDll, 0x20000, "%%SystemRoot%%\System32\ssdpsrv.dll"
[SourceDisksNames]
1=,,,i386
[SourceDisksFiles]
sp1.cab=1,,
sp2.cab=1,,
[StringHunt]
shl_img.inf
msagent.inf
pchealth.inf
wordpad.inf
msinfo32.inf
syssetup.inf
netupnph.inf
[Strings]
KEY_RUN="Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run"
KEY_RUNONCE="Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce"
KEY_APPPATHS="Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths"
KEY_UNINSTALL="Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall"
KEY_SAFEBOOT="System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot"
KEY_PFPROFILE="Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\PCHealth"
KEY_SVCHOST="Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost"
KEY_LAME="SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PCHealth\Clients\Dialog Comments"
KEY_COMMENT_LINK="Control Panel\Desktop"
______LitePC_Local_Strings______=""
UPNP_DESC="Universal Plug and Play"
UPNP_TIP="Support to host Universal Plug and Play devices and to discover UPnP devices on your network."
UPNPHOST_Display="Universal Plug and Play Device Host"
UPNPHOST_Desc="Provides support to host Universal Plug and Play devices."
UPNP_Display="SSDP Discovery Service"
UPNP_Desc="Enables discovery of UPnP devices on your home network."
LCID="0409"
UILanguageID=1033
MsSHARED="Microsoft Shared"
OLDDB="Ole DB"
ADO="ado"
MSADC="msadc"
DAO="DAO"
MSSOAPBIN="MSSoap\Binaries"
MSSOAPBINRES="MSSoap\Binaries\Resources\1033"
MSInfo32_DESC="System Information"
MSInfo32_INFOTIP="Displays current system information."
SystemTools_GROUP="Accessories\System Tools"
MSINFOPATHL="Microsoft Shared\MSInfo"

Next, make a file called c:\main.inf using notepad, with the following text:

[Version]
Signature="$Windows NT$"
[Global]
WindowTitle="Onemancan"
WindowTitle_Standalone="Onemancan"
[Components]
UPSSvc=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,"XtraServices.inf",,7

Now, you'll need the driver files that this will install. If you have an XP SP2 install CD, you are good to go. Otherwise, you can copy them from your current XP SP2 install. The files you need are listed below; in general just search in your windows folder for upnp, ssd, udhisapi, and copy all those files to a USB drive, and then search for cmnicfg, and copy all the files in that directory to the drive as well.

dpnhupnp.dll
upnp.dll
upnpcont.exe
upnphost.dll
upnpui.dll
ssdpsrv.dll
ssdpapi.dll
udhisapi.dll
cmnicfg.xml
ipcfg.xml
osinfo.xml
potscfg.xml
pppcfg.xml

Now, run this: sysocmgr.exe /i:c:\main.inf

Then launch regedit
Find: hklm\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\svchost
Edit: 'LocalService' Key and add upnphost and SSDPSRV, each on their own line, at the end. Include an empty line afterwards.

Reboot, and finally, open up the Services window (run services.msc), and set Universal PnP and SSDP discovery service to automatic.

Desktop programs that do not work under Win2k3

2008-03-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of the Desktop programs (games, productivity, multimedia, end-user hardware, etc) that I've found problems running under Windows 2003 server (Win2k3), and my solution, if any. A typical solution is to right click on the EXE file, and tell windows to run it in computability mode, selecting WinXP as the OS to emulate. Most likely this just changes what OS version number Win2k3 reports...

3DMark®2001 SE Free Version - it just won't run, no matter what.
Rhapsody music service - change your user-agent.
Canon Powershot software (Camera Window) to download photos from your camera. But, there is a workaround.
Samsung ML-1710 Series Laser Printer - the GDI drivers installed fine, but when you plug in the printer it reports an unspecified error. It's easy to fix, however; the driver defaulted to the LPT port (ie the parallel port), all you have to do is switch it to the USB port.

Canon camera (SD850is) and Win2k3 do not work together

2008-03-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

It would appear that Canon Powershot cameras, at least out of the box, do not support Win2k3 (but see this post).

After installing the drivers and applications for my Canon camera under Windows 2003 Server, I get the following error on each bootup:

The Canon Camera Access Library 8 service depends on the following nonexistent service: SSDPSRV

Using regedit I searched for SSDPSRV, and removed this dependency (see thread that suggested this) so that the Camera Access Library would load, but apparently it really does depend on SSDPSRV. Turning on the camera does load the Windows Image Acquisition manager (after I enabled that service using the services.msc tool), but does not load the Canon tool for downloading images. Nor does it seem possible to manually load the Canon tool by running the CameraWindow application when the camera is plugged in. I tried various "run in compatibility mode" settings, and none of these helped, either.

I also tried installing the TWAIN driver that is used under Win2k to download pictures from the camera, but on the next boot I got this error message:

szAppName : CameraWindowCompDVC6.exe szAppVer : 6.4.0.9
szModName : CameraWindowCompDVC6.exe szModVer : 6.4.0.9
offset : 00006ee3

I tried the Get Canon! program, and altho it could detect the camera's presence after I turned on WIA, it cannot "connect to camera". The program's author confirmed that GetCanon supports neither Win2k3, nor Vista.

I also contacted Canon. After some run-around they told me that Windows 2003 is not a supported platform, though, when I asked, they told me I could not post their official reply to this blog. I guess they don't want to own up to the lack of support, since their website doesn't say anything about it either. They also said that they have no plans to support Win2k3. Their suggestion was to use a card reader! Clearly, they are clueless about what's going on, as WIA does work under Win2k3, so you can always download the photos using MS's feature-minimal photo download wizard. Pretty disappointing, Canon.

UPDATE:

No thanks to Canon tech support, there is a workaround that allows the Camera Window program to aquire images from your Canon camera.

QuickTime failed to initialize. Error # 0, With Firefox and Win2k3 server

2008-03-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

I recently started getting this message in Firefox:

QuickTime failed to initialize. Error # 0
Please make sure QuickTime is properly installed on this computer.

It seems it's caused by launching Firefox in WinXP compatibility mode, which I did in order to be able to use Rhapsody's music service, since they prevent it from running under Win2k3. Yucko. In any case, I searched over the web and nobody else had figured out why Quicktime was crashing this way. Perhaps there are other causes, but this one fixed it for me. I didn't even have to reinstall Quicktime.

Using two Gmail addresses at once

2008-03-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

If you want to use two Gmail addresses on one computer (say it is a shared computer) then it can be a pain, since you have to sign out of Gmail whenever you want to switch between addresses. The easiest solution is to use two browsers - one person uses Firefox, and one uses IE, for instance. But what if you both really like Firefox? There's a solution - use two profiles. Here's how you do it:

Make a .BAT file that you put on your desktop or in the start menu:

@echo off
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
start "" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p 2nd
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=0

(Note that you may need to revise the 3rd line to refer to the actual location of Firefox).

The first time you double click this file,Mozilla will load the profile manager, at which point you should tell it to create a new profile, called 2nd. Now, quit all copies of Firefox, and start your regular copy of Firefox, and then your second copy from the batch file. Each will have it's own profile, which means it's own bookmarks and cookies. Because the cookies are separate, you can log into Gmail with each browser, at the same time. The only downside to this is that you will use twice the RAM by running two copies of Firefox (potentially a little less, since the EXE image may be shared, but the Cache cannot). On modern computers, losing ~70MB of RAM per instance of FireFox is not a big deal, however.

Note: if you load the 2nd profile first, then starting your regular copy of Firefox will just launch another window using the 2nd profile. You can get around this by modifying your regular Firefox shortcut to say -p default .

graphics and gaming performance for Win2k and Win2k3

2008-03-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

How does Win2k3 compare to Win2k in terms of performance? Ignoring the marketing hype, the general rule is that every new OS is a bit slower than the last. But by how much, if any?

In particular, what if you want to run Windows 2003 Server as a workstation OS? How does its performance compare to Windows 2k as a desktop OS?

I ran a few benchmarks, after installing the latest NVIDA drivers for my Abit NF-7, which has an AMD 3100+ XP processor, and a Geforce2 MX400 video card. Since it's a relatively low-end machine the results should be relatively slow, but the important question is how they compare between OSes.

Quake 2 timedemo(1152x864, map demo1.dm2) was 51FPS, for both OSes, showing that there's no difference in OpenGL performance.

I tried to run 3dMark, but it would work under Win2k3, so I had to find an alternative.

I found a small benchmark (video-card-stability-test) , which tested DirectX performance. Here the average frame rate was 9, for both OSes. So it appears 3d performance appears identical.

Finally, I found another benchmark called CrystalMark. At first it seemed to suggest that the performance was bit slower under Win2k3, but it turns out that the numbers it returns are relatively variable, perhaps by 10%, even when run on the same OS twice in a row. So a best this is only evidence that Win2k3 is slightly slower than Win2k.

Win2k:

Win2k3:

3DMark®2001 SE Free Version and Win2k3

2008-03-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

In my first attempts to benchmark Win2k3, I found out that the old standby, 3dmark 2001, does not run. It says it needs directx 8.1, which it cannot find. Win2k3 has DirectX 9.0c, so clearly there's some sort of bug in 3dMark...

Upgrading Win2k to Win2k3

2008-03-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

I've been using Win2k for many years. But these days some of the newer software released does not support Win2k (such as apple QuickTime). So I decided to upgrade to Win2k3 server (that's Windows 2003 server, in case you were wondering). Because I'm a student I can get Win2k3 for free from Microsoft, legally.

I don't really want to use it as a server tho - just as a replacement workstation OS for Win2k. Why not use XP or Vista (hah, Vista). Seriously, why not XP? Well, I built my own PC, and I didn't want to have to pay for a new OS. Since Win2k3 is free, the question is, can it be used as a desktop OS? There's already a website dedicated to this exact topic: http://win2k3.msfn.org/.

It appears that you can use Win2k3 as a desktop OS, with minimal adjustments to your settings. The above mentioned website is invaluable for that, though at times it suggests changes that are not necessary. For instance: The newest version of DirectX is already installed in Win2k3 SP2, and DirectX is already enabled by default, as is audio acceleration. But on the whole the website makes it very easy to make the conversion.

One question you might have is how hard it is to go back and forth between your new OS and your old OS? Perhaps you'll find that Win2k3 is not to your taste, and you don't want to trash your old OS install. Well, rest assured that like most other MS OSes, Win2k3 knows how to multiboot between OSes just fine. I was able to have Win2k and Win2k3 co-exists on the same computer just fine (though I did install them to separate hard drives).

Free Microsoft software for Students

2008-03-09T08:16:00.001-07:00

If you are a student at a major university or college, you can get Visual Studio Professional (2005 or 2008) Windows Server 2003, and some other less interesting software for free from Microsoft. The website is https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/. It was relatively painless to sign up. Supposedly you can only install each program once before the CDKEY expires, but once is enough for me. The give-away is clearly meant to encourage CS students to learn and later, recommend Microsoft programs. I happen to really like Visual Studio, so I don't mind the bribe at all.

view your photos at full resolution

2007-12-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

If you have a >2 megapixel camera, it's likely that you never view your photos at full resolution, since even a 2mp image is larger than what most monitors can show. While full resolution may be out of reach, it's still possible that you can see more pixels than you do currently. If you have a CRT, it's very likely that you don't push it to the very highest resolution, as Windows just isn't usable (fonts are too small, as are toolbars, etc). And even some LCD users run in less than full resolution mode, for the same reason.

What you'd like to do is temporarily switch to a higher resolution mode while viewing your photos. You can do this by changing your desktop settings, but it's a pain to switch back and forth all the time. Luckily, there's an app that will do the work for you. Reso will change the screen resolution (and/or refresh rate) and then launch an application of your choosing. Once you quit that application it will return your screen to normal.

Use it to start Infranview and you have a high resolution image viewer. You can even place a shortcut on your desktop that does this, and then you can just drag any photo onto it to view the image in full resolution. You'll be amazed how much more your photo's "pop" when viewed at 1600x1200 or higher. This is one of the reasons to hang on to a good 19 or 21in CRT.

There are other uses as well - my fav is running Firefox at 800x600, and watching UTube videos from the couch.