Vista Part 2!

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Well I broke against my own best practices when I installed Vista as an upgrade over XP Pro earlier this week. I have always been a big believer in installing a clean version of an OS instead of doing an upgrade, but I figured since this was a fairly clean install of XP I was safe. I had no real problems other than the sound issues I complained about and fixed after my original install, until today. I was trying to install Creative Labs software (supposedly Vista compatible) for my Zen Vision:M 30 GB (a great device I will write about one day), and the installation kept failing. I went back to the CD an dwas able to install the older softer with no issues, but then still couldn’t update it to the Vista version. Again I hit the web and found a thread on Creative’s forum where someone was having the same problems so they did a clean install.

I had nothing to lose as I just was starting to get the PC ready to where I wanted so I had nothing to lose. If you read my earlier post you may know that I have an upgrade Windows Vista Business Disk and purchased the Windowsanytimeupgrade to Vista Ultimate. One thing about the Vista upgrade DVD is that it is designed to run as an upgrade from the previous OS and not for clean installs. There is away that has been widely published on the net so I am not going to describe it here but it is a little cumbersum, but in the end it works just fine. Anyway my suspicions were confirmed and my creative software installed cleanly and is no longer an issue. In short some of the files from XP were interfering with the installation of the Creative software.

 For my clients, I strongly recommend doing a clean install over doing an upgrade to help reduce the possibilities of future problems. Please feel free to contact me if you want to attempt this on your own and I can provide you with instructions, or if you prefer I can handle the upgrade for you!

Stephen

Virtual PC 2007

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Microsoft has released Virtual PC 2007. It will run on Vista as a Host OS and will run Vista as a guest OS. The product is a free download and is available at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc. However you do need a licensed copy of every OS you run as a guest.

What is Virtual PC? It is an application that runs on one OS and allows other OS’s to run as Guest OS’ in a virtual machine, sharing the hardware with the host. It is a great tool for support or backward compatibilty for some applications. For example, although not officially supported, you could install a Linux system as a guest OS. This way you can run Linux and some of it’s applications on a Vista machine. This is a great tool for support people as well as you can have several virtual machines of different OS and start them up as you need them. You do need a fair bit of memory as each guest OS uses memory from the host to run. Here is a great use of VPC. LEt’s say you have an application that you absolutley must have but it does not run on XP or Vista but only Windows 98. You create a Windows 98 Virtual Machine, install the application on there and wehn you need it you just run the VM as Windows 98. This would eliminate the need to have a Windows 98 machie running but you could still use the software you need.

How to start
After you have installed Virtual machine, you create a virtual hard drive for the guest OS you wnat and set up the support you need, for example, DVDROM access or Netwrok access. Save the virtual HD and then start it up. It will look like a brand new PC starting. Next install your operating system, the same way you do on a PC and once it is done you can run the OS at the same time.

Sound confusing.. well really it is not and newer hardware is being built that supports Virtualization right into it (new Intel Processors). My suggestion is to try Virtual PC for yourself and see if it could help you. I have used it for demos in the past and have virtualized servers and workstations to demonstrate how a proposed netwrok will operate for a client. The biggest restriction is the hardware support and ensuring that you have enough Ram to run the guests.

Contact Sysguy if you require any information or want some help in setting up Virtual PC on your systems

Moving to Vista

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Well after suggesting to clients that if their hardware supports it they should upgrade to Vista in the next little while… I actually made the move myself last night! I have been using Vista Ulitmate on my new Asus laptop now since the end of December and other than a few issues have been ok. I finally put together my new PC based on an Intel Core 2 Duo to use as my primary PC. When I built the machine the plan was to install XP Pro, install applications then move data. Eventually I was going to go to Vista. Last night I had a thought that this was going to require probably a second imaging of the machine so I decided to upgrade the fairly new XP to Vista Business. The new machine was spec’d with Vista in mind so I knew running it wouldn’t be a problem and the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor confirmed that for almost everything. One piece of bundled software was not supported and may cause a problem but that was about it.

The Upgrade Process
I popped in my Windows Vista Bsiness upgrade disk and indicated that I wanted to upgrade. After answering a few questions, it was ready so I let it go on. About an hour later Vista Business was installed. Hmmm after the first log in I noticed that I had no sound and that there was no sound card installed. This is a fairly new Intel motherboard with the 965 chipset so I knew it wasn’t old legacy hardware. I checked Intels site and there was a Vista Driver for my integrated sound card. Download it and install, no problems yet, reboot…. Still no sound device. Try Windows Update and nothing.

At about this time I also decided that I wanted to try the Vista anytime upgrade process. I was planning on putting Vista Ultimate on this PC anyway. This is a new feature with Vista. Since the OS upgrade is distributed on a DVD, every version is on the disk. Installation is controlled by your product key. I visited the web site from my other PC (http://windowsanytimeupgrade.com) selected my upgrade (Business to Ulitmate), input my credit card information and was sent to a link to download a file to my PC to start the upgrade. Since I had an anytime upgrade disk, I copied the file to my Vista PC and ran it. I got prompted to put my disk in and about an hour later, Vista Ultimate was now on my machine. But still I had no sound! BTW anytime upgrade is only available if you are running a version if Vista on your PC, you can not use it to upgrade XP to Vista.

After Googling my sound problems. I finally found a post that had a solution. It had to unistall my sound card from device manager, reinstall the Vista Drivers, reboot, then from device manager update the drivers and indicate to install them from my pc. I tried it and sound was back!

I still have some devices that will not work with Vista but not many. All of my printers (except my Canon CP220 photo printer) had Vista drivers available to some degree. HP has still not come up with netwrk drivers for my networked 7210 all in one so the scanning functionality only works via the web interface. My Quicken XG 2006 needed a couple of tweaks (run as admin and XP SP 2 compatibilty, shame on you Intuit Canada). I am disappointed with Microtek as they currently do not have drivers for my Scanmaker 4800 scanner and don’t plan support,  in fact they will not have drivers for their current products till June of 07. Not good! I haven’t yet tried hooking up some of these devices but I will and then try to figure out if there is some sort of workaround.

For applications that just don’t behave under Vista, I will be using MS Virtual PC 2007 (see my next post). I will be setting up an XP SP2 VM and installing those applications on there. There is limited hardware support but at least thiey will be able to run.

For the most part after a day I have been happy. I like the new Aero interface and wnat to go with the security features of Vista. Stay tuned as I will post more problems and solutions as I come upon them.

Stephen

 

KDS 7″ Widescreen Digital Media Frame Review

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In mid February, one of my sales reps at a distributor who knows I like cool gadgets, sent me a special on KDS 7″ Widescreen digital picture frames. I ordered a few for us and some family members and had a couple left over. I emailed some clients and offered a bundled special to sell the last two with a 1 GB Kingston SD card and the frame. Well the response was overwhelming and I ended up selling about 12 additional units. These are really great devices! Here is a quick review, and I still have one or two available from my last order.

KDS is a global LCD and Monitor companing and has been selling panels for years. These digital frames started to become a hot item around christmas time and were hard to come by. In a nutshell they are LCD panels mounted in a picture frame of sorts. They usually have digital media slots, internal memory or USB ports to plug media into. Once media (pictures) are loaded the frames can be set up to cycle through the pictures and display them on the screen. This solves the one complaint I have heard most often from Digital Camera owners that they never get to see their pictures.

These little KDS frames are great as they can display more than just pictures. They are a 7″ Wide Screen (16X9) display, much like on most portable DVD players. In the box you will find the frame, the AC Adaptor, a remote control, the stand and a video/audio out cable, Of course a basic (chinese written manual is included). The frame is self is about 8″ by 5″ with a clear lexan outer and a white bezel around the lcd about 1″ wide. There is a noticeable IR port for the remote on the bottom of the frame, but at least to me it is not a big deal. The frame has a slot for SD cards (MMC and Memory Stick also supported), a USB port, controls, the attachment for the stand and mounting holes to attach it to a wall.

Simply load in a card turn it on select pictures and they start to display on the screen. A couple of really nice things about the frame is that you can have it play music (stereo speakers built in) at the same time. The frame also supports several video formats so if your digital camera can take movies these can also be displayed! There are 13 different transition settings you can have between images (1 is random), as well you can pause your slideshow and zoom in and pan around the picture. The display is a matt finish to reduce reflections and is bright enough although brightness can be adjusted. You can have music from the card playing while viewing slides at the same time so you can create your own slideshows.

Want to see the pictures larger. The frame easily plugs in to a standard TV or VCR using the supplied video out cables so that you can show your photos off to guests.

The USB port is a great idea as you can install pictures on a flash drive and plug it in or transfer directly from your digital camera to the media card via the frame. Pretty slick and no need for a computer.

The day my first shipment arrived I quickly opened the package, loaded up an SD card with images from pour Hawaii trip in January, inserted it, plugged in the frame and started it. There they were scrolling through the all the pictures that I took. It was mesmorizing to everyone as all you end up doing is watching the first run of pictures.

After a couple of hours I finally got to paly with it a little more and adjusted the between picture transitions and played with the zoom and rotate features on the remote a little.

This leads me too a few of the minor little nitpicky things I don’t like about the frame:
1) While the screen is 7″ Widescreen, the problem is that pictures in a slideshow look better at 4:3 aspect ratio. Landscape pictures look fine when stretched but portrait pictures become distorted. If you only have portrait pictures or only landscape pictures this would be fine, bit most people will have a mixture of both.
2) Documentation. This is a chinese written manual and some of the translations are not perfect so it gets a little confusining to try and understand it at times. I had to read it a couple of times to figure out some of the features.
3) Remote functions… Basic functionality is simple, but this is a DVD player remote and learning what some of the controls do can take time. The manual does not go into great detail.
4) Probably my biggest beef. I really, really wish this had a random picture selection setting instead of being linear. Currently you select a folder and it plays those in order then moves on to the next folder, all the way through the card, then starts over. It means that if you want random photos, you wouyld have to rename them all (in the order you want) and stick in one folder.
5) No colour control, brightness and contrast only. No biggie the frame looks good as it is.

The frame can handle JPG files from cameras of 8MP or smaller. In the future this may be a problem as camera’s get larger and larger chips. Personally I resized all of my pictures before I put them on the memory card any ways. The best resolution for this frame is 1024 x 768. So why have a picture that is 3000X2200 on the card? This is just taking up space and will slow down the frame to. I use a batch photo resizer that I downloaded via the www.snapfiles.com freeware section and get my pictures down to 1000x (aspect locked resize). So instead of taking up 3 MB from my Rebel XT for each image, it takes les than 200K. I figure doing this on a 1 Gigabyte card I can load more than 10000 pictures! I use an external card reader on my PC for all media card work anyway.

Here is a link to the manufacturer’s web site http://www.kdsusa.com/MF-2007-1.asp

All in all I love this frame. Soon the prices will be down further and the 8 and 10″ frames will also come down in price (currently at about 300.00). At that point I wil surely get one of those.

If you are interested I have one or two left that I can sell and soon I will be able to get more. Current price for the frame with a 1 GB Kingston SD card is 160.00 + GST. Please email me at sysguy at sysguy dot com if you are interested.

 

Want A Media Center without the PC by the TV. A sneak peak at the Zio Eureka Hard Drive Enclosure

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I am just about to start testing a new product available through one of my distributors. A new Korean company Zio, has brought to Canada the Eureka Player. The device is basically an external hard drive enclusure with a couple of interface enhancements.

It runs a Linux OS and gives you the ability of connecting it to a PC and loading up content on it, then connecting to to a TV or stereo and playing it back on that device. It sells for about 150.00 with no hard drive. You can add any IDE hard drive you want to the device (a 320 GB sells for approximately 122.00) and install it. The unit comes with a remote control, batteries, the enclosure itself, AC adaptor and cord, USB cable and Video Cable. The unit is capable of outputting 1080i HD signals as well as composite or S Video and Digital OPtical Audio out.

It plays back a wide vairety of media types, jpg, wma, mp3, ogg, DivX,  Mpeg 1,2,4. It can work as a DVD jukebox, video player, external storage and more.

Some people do not want to put a PC near their TVs to set up a Media Center so this little device may fit the bill. Load your Media from your PC. Carry the device to the TV, plug it in and away you go. They feature this as a good car theatre device which is what I was thinking of for a primary use. Plug it into a monitor and away you go.

To learn more watch this blog as I will give a more through review soon or visit Zio’s website at http://www.ziocanada.ca

I will shortly be installing a 320 GB Seagate drive in the device and wil update my testing.

 

Stephen

What Telus High Speed Internet Ads don’t tell you!

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Telus is at it again. There new high speed ads or going back on the old argument that their service is faster because it is not shared. For comparisions sake, I won’t touch their extreme offerings.

A side note. I do not work for Telus or Shaw. I get paid nothing by either company. I have been a Shaw High Speed Customer since 1995, and a year ago got rid of my final Telus phone line. My experience comes with dealing with people’s PCs in their homes and Offices and I even at one point did some testing with both services in my house and identical PCs.

Telus is claiming that since cable shares the connection around a neighborhood that it slows down when loads of people get on. This can be true but is not likely and here are a couple of reasons.

Telus’ High Speed offering is slower to begin with. Shaw’s rated download speed is 5.0 MB per Second. Telus’ is 3 Mb per second. Upload speeds – Shaw up to 512KBPS, Telsu up to 640 KBPS. What dows this mean? Shaw has more bandwidth coming down to your computer but Telus’ upload speed is higher meaning the mouse click on the link is sent slightly faster to the server.

These rated speeds for both companies though are for a perfect world. Line noise can affect both and Telus’ DSL speeds are also based on how far you are away form the Central Office (CO) or switch. The further away, the weaker the signal and the slower the speed.

There are also many other factors that can affect this. If you use a router the processor in there can affect the speed of how fast it processes the requests. more machines on your network also affect perfromance. Cat 5 cable quality, your network card and even your CPU also affect performance. For example I run a Gigabit switch running to an old Nexland router (but with a higher end processor built in). My nic cards on my main PCs are all Gigabit, but I also run Media Center Extenders (gets used a lot), game consoles (Xbox 360 and Wii) and several printers and a VOIP phone on my network.  On my latest PC ( ac ore 2 Duo Machine) the speeds are much faster than my other machine because of the architecture of the processor and integrated NIC. I have seen download speeds of up to 7 MBS on my Shaw Extreme Connection and just under 6 on my older AMD PC. So there are too many factors that affect performance to back Telus’ claim.

As well at some point there has to be a junction between all their clients and the Internet, it may be further up the line, but yes there will be congestion.

The site you are visiting and what you are doing also plays a role. Some web servers are faster than others or have more hits against them than others. This performance affects your perceived speeds as well. Time zoes play another role. At 4:00 PM in Calgary it is 6:00 PM in eastern North America and more people are hitting hte Internet after coming home from work. Later for Central and all the way to Pacific times.

Several years ago I brought in a Telus DSL connection as well as my Shaw one (this was before I opted for Shaw Extreme). I set up two virtually identical PCs (all components) and the one that had a slight processor performace edge (AMD vs Intell) I put on my home network to handicap it. I tested both PCs at identical times to identical test sites all through out the day for two months. The final result was that the Shaw connection was always faster!

Looking at the fastest ISP’s results at www.dslreports.com although it is difficult to tell what kind of account it is, Shaw is higher in the rankings than Telus in almost all cases. This should be taken with a grain of salt however because you can’t tell what the account is (Extreme or regular).

In the end my personal experience however is that I have found Shaw connections to be consistently faster, with better support overall. There are also other reasons in an earlier blog post on why I recommend Shaw.

Stephen

Too add to my last Mac vs PC Post

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It’s been a while since I posted and I just wanted to add a little to my PC vs Mac post. The newest Apple commercials featuring PC (a guy that looks like Bill Gates) and Mac (a hip young guy) focus on Windows Vista. While these commercials are humerous again they stretch the truth abit. My favorite so far is directly pointed at Vista’s UAC (User Access Control). It’s features PC with a Secret Service looking guy guy behind him dressed in a black suit. Mac walks up and starts to talk but the SS dude intercepts and asks “Mac is trying to talk to you, do you want to allow or cancel.” The whole commercial goes on tlike this with UAC (the guy in black) intercepting and prompting to allow or cancel for the entire spot. It is funny but a little stretched.

To understand a little better let me explain about UAC in Vista. This is a new security feature that Microsoft implemented. In the XP days, most user accounts ran on the PC as the Local System Administrator. This means that those accounts could do virtually anything to the system at any time (Install Programs and Hardware, delete files, change settings). This is one of the primary reasons that Spyware and Viruses can get installed on a system without the person knowing. With Windows Vista even the computer administrator account runs as a standard user all the time, and if a program requests elevated access to do something the user is prompted to allow or cancel it. At first this can come up often but for some programs you can have Vista remeber the settings and allow the program to elevate privledges as it needs it. Furthermore as programs get written for Vista this will start to go away (except for stuff written by lazy coders) as they write for the security features in Vista. I have now been running an RTM of Vista Ultimate on my laptop since late December and I now rarely get UAC prompts. Apple makes this sound like it is a huge problem when it is fact not. In fact UAC and IE7 protected mode (IE Browser runs in a sandbox) protects the user from getting infected even if they get to a malicious site.

What they also don’t tell you is that Mac OS X does the same thing! If you download file updates for your Mac you get prompted to insert an ID and password to install them. Yes you can turn off UAC in Vista (I would not recommend it) but I have yet to find a way of turning this off on my Mac!

I do have to give some credit though. Mac did get it right on the commercial dealing with PCs upgrades. Yes Vista does have some hefty hardware requirements, yes this is for the new eyecandy Aero interface (Flip 3D is still my favorite) but these features can be turned off and you don’t have to run the interface. Windows Vista Home Basic also does not ship with Aero and is suitable for earlier PCs. In my opinion if your PC is relatively new, purchased in the last 8 to 12 months, you should be able to run Vista but double check by downloading the Vista Upgrade Advisor.

Also on another note the commercial featuring the installation of a Video Camera is also false. Many Windows PCs now do feature these options and the buyer can select to get them if they want.  It is much easier for MAC to do this as the only people that can build a Mac system is Apple themselves. They are a monopoly. You can’t get a MAC clone. This leads to higher prices and fewer options and upgrades in the future.

That’s it for now.. I have more Rants and News coming right up!

Don’t believe everything you see on TV – PC vs Mac Commercials

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Apple’s TV ad campaign that makes you think the MAC is so much easier to use than the PC is not entirely true. I remember an ad where Mac and PC are talking and a Japanese girls walks in and Mac talks to her as she is the latest digital camera on the market… Let me tell you about my frustrations.

Back in August I purchased a Dual Core (Intel) Mac Mini PC so that I could see and try what all the fuss was about. Worst case is that my video editing pc has been down for a while (I need to do some upgrades and swap components around) so I figured at least I can use the Mac for that since it is suppposedly so much better.

I have found the Mac a little difficult to navigate around in but I didn’t want that to cloud my judgement as I am a long time PC user. So I muddled my wat through and am trying to learn it.

Today I am as frustrated as ever. I am right now trying to connect my daughter’s Canon ZR500 Vidoe camera up to the Mac to copy some of her tapes to DVD. Shoudl be easy right!. Plug the firewire cable into the camera, start IDvd and do a transfer after inserting a blank disk. Is it nooo. I followed the steps clicked Onestep DVD and nothing happened! OK I’ll try Imovie. Switch to camera capture mode. No camera. With a Mac there is no way (such as Windows XP control panel) to see if the camera is connected. I try shutting the camera on and off a couple of times, check help and still can’t get it to work. Hmmmm let’s try a reboot… Start all over and this time it recognizes the camera and works, finally!

This leads me to another “beef” I have with the system. When creating these OneStep DVDs the system stores everything to a temporary file. Well after creating 3 DVDs I notice I have no hard drive space left. OK i figure this is temporary files so I go to delete them. I can’t find them! From what I have so far determined there is no way other than rebooting the Mac to clear ou thte temporary files. I know I can do this in Windows so if you know how to do it on a Mac please let me know!

Other things are still confusing to me like how to install software etc.

I am trying… I am determined to give this little Mac mini a chance and will even spend a little to upgrade the Ram in it. From conversations I have had with other IT pros is that they find creative peolple (obviously I am not one of these) can figure out that Mac more easily than logical thinkers.

Oh well I will keep trying and if I finally give up you will see an upgraded Mac Mini available for sale here! At the very least I will dual boot it with Windows Vista and run that are a majority of the hard drive!

Stephen

Vista troubles

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For the most part I have been very happy with my Asus laptop with Vista Ultimate loaded on it. It has been stable and basic email, web surfing and my day to day applications have all worked fine (including Office 2007). My kudos to Intel, Adobe and Synaptic for having Vista drivers and software updates ready before the launch date.

 My biggest issue to date is some specialized applications and hardware that I use. I have a couple of applications that I use to control my Canon Digital Rebel XT camera for use when taking astrophotos (through one of my scopes). It appears however that the problem is not woth the application but with the Canon driver. I can’t seem to get the images off the camera to the application for focusing or post processing purposes. Even Canon’s own remote shooting application does not work properly. Canon has at least indicated that an update is being prepared now and to be patient.

Another specialized piece of hardware I have is a modified web cam that is used to take planetary images. At least with other cameras and such I have been able to load the drivers, not so with this camera. A call to the company earlier in December to ask about Windows Vista drivers did not go well. I was asked what was Windows Vista by tech support?

The above problems ave forced me to bring my old HP tablet out if the dust and reinstall the OS so that I could at least use something to take pictures. Hopefully it will be able to RIP again in the near future!

This is just an indication of what can happen if you are an earlier adaptor. If you do have specialized software or hardware make sure that you run the Vista upgrade advisor before going to see if there will be any issues or have a second PC that you can use for XP waiting. Within the next month or two we shuld be seeing releases from vendors updating software and hardware drivers for Windows Vista.

Stephen