Dumpy Tips

My CRM Survey...

2012-01-04T23:05:00.004+03:00

I'm currently working on my Master's dissertation, and thats why I dont have much time to maintain this blog.

I would request anyone who is currently here by any chance to help me with this project by actually answering my short survey on CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and its effects on employees in organizations. The whole survey shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to complete. Appreciate your efforts and thanks in advance.

Here is the URL to the survey: http://edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/741205/Customer-Relationship-Management-Software-CRM-Effect-on-Employees

The survey is Android/iPhone friendly and will close on Feb 29, 2012.

Enable Google Market on your Galaxy Tab

2010-11-18T23:43:00.005+03:00

Well I have got my Galaxy Tab (P1000), I bought it from Dubai and it wasn't cheap. But I assure you that its worth it. Someone well known said a few weeks back that 7" tablets are DOA (which means dead on arrival), this someone doesn't know what he's talking about. After using my Tab I can tell you that his words are totally worthless.

The device is simply amazing, its lightweight and feels good in the hand. The screen size is great for gaming, reading and browsing. Though the device has its problems, it needs a lot of tweaking still to get it perfect. Maybe with the release of Gingerbread (Android v2.3 supposedly designed for tablets), things will be much more smoother. One major problem was the absence of the Google Market, but I guess that this should be attributed to Samsung rather than Google's Android. Without the Market the device is not usable properly. I looked and looked and found out the below procedure that solved the problem.

WARNING: This procedure will erase all your installed apps and data as it will perform a factory reset

In the phone app dial *#06# and note down the IMEI number. Note the first 15 digits and disregard the / and the digits after that. Alternatively you can find the IMEI in Settings/About phone/Status
Dial *#272*IMEI#
From the resulting menu, choose the second option labelled "XSG" and click install
The tab will reboot and market will be installed with a shortcut on the desktop

The market might crash initially but should work fine after that. Try clearing data and rebooting if you have problems at first. Also make sure you are logged into gTalk.

I'm not sure why Samsung chose not to install the Market on the UAE (or the Middle East?) version, I believe its probably a bug from the Froyo 2.2 update, but I can be mistaken.

One more thing, it might be a good idea to initially insert a SIM card and update the Samsung Apps.

Note: I have rooted my Tab but I don't think its a must to try the above procedure.

Improved battery with new ERE27 update? Hint for an extended battery life...

2010-02-06T14:01:00.007+03:00

Google came out with a recent update to the Nexus One, named ERE27. Along with this update came multi-touch to 3 stock applications: Maps, Gallery and Browser. Now that is really nothing special (at least for me). I always had multi-touch in 2 of these applications since day one. But what is the killer update?

After installation of the ERE27, I noticed an increase in battery performance. My battery started to last longer. I was worried that this might be a placebo effect, but I did test for 3 days before talking about. I can say there is an increase in battery life of 20%-25%. I checked multiple forums and I was glad to see posts from people noticing that their batteries are getting better...so I wasn't the only one.

I think that this effect on the battery is probably from the fact that Google fixed a 3G issue that was there, while I didn't notice this problem on my N1, I think it probably enhanced the battery life. I also noticed that the phone uses less power now when its in standby.

I also enabled the 'WCDMA Only' option in the phone (which I had on as well before the update), so coupled with the update, this should really work, or not?

To enable the 'CMDA Only':

Dial *#*#4634#*#*
Choose Phone information
Under 'Set preferred network type', choose 'WCDMA Only'
Go back to home

I'm currently very happy with the phone after the update, because the battery was my main problem. I will test further and let you know, but so far so good :)

I would love to hear from people if the above really increased their phones battery life as well, please leave a comment if you can.

Half solution for the N1 again!

2010-02-04T01:39:00.003+03:00

If you have updated to the recent update from Google entitled ERE27, then the update file for fixing the Arabic issues will not work anymore. Your phone will freeze at boot at the Nexus logo screen.

The only solution for now is the half solution which I wrote about a while back. Its only about replacing the font and getting the Arabic letters unconnected in the Browser, SMS, and Gmail.

Please visit this link: http://dumpytips.blogspot.com/2009/09/easier-fix-for-half-solution.html

There are instructions in there on how to install the font via an update file, or through the adb commands if you wish.

If you want to keep the Arabic, then you have to go back to the stock image for the Nexus One prior to the ERE27. So its either full Arabic or the new features from Google...you have to choose :)

Waiting for the new updated Arabic files. I decided to stick with the half solution. I like the new update!

Arabic on the Nexus One? Almost a complete workaround...

2010-01-12T23:45:00.042+03:00

Update 8, Feb 4: PLEASE DON'T INSTALL THIS UPDATE IF YOU HAVE INSTALLED THE RECENT UPDATE FROM GOOGLE ERE27! GO HERE FOR AN ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION!

Update 7, Jan 22: There is an even newer update file!

Update 6: For Motorola Milestone, I believe you can in the mean time enter the commands to get Arabic working. Check the comments in this post, and please let me know if works for you so that we can report this to other users.

Update 5, Jan 22: Updated image file.

Update 4, Jan 21: A new modified update image with full support for Arabic in SMS, Gmail and Browser.

Update 3: It will actually not work on Motorola Milestone yet, since there is no custom recovery image yet. Though It should work on the Motorola Droid since there is a custom recovery image for that.

Update 2: This solution will also work on the Motorola Droid or any device using Android 2.0 and above.

Update 1: Arabic will also be displayed correctly in the Gmail client app.

OK here we go again.

Building on the same image file which I created last September in this post for the easy installation of the Arabic language font on the G1 at the time, I have added the libwebcore.so for Android 2.0from here: http://code.google.com/p/arabicandroid/downloads/list This addition will allow for perfect viewing of Arabic websites. For SMS, you can either view it with unconnected Arabic letters, or just download the excellent 'Mirsal' application from the android market to view them correctly.

You have to unlock the bootloader, root and install the recovery image on your Nexus One or N1 before being able to flash this image.

If you are accustomed to constantly updating you phone with custom firmwares (like I), then this will come in great handy, because you can flash the custom firmware and then immediately flash this image (before rebooting the phone) and you are all set with a new firmware that is Arabic enabled.

Big thanks goes to Dr.Dev from xda-developers (or Ayman the Arabic Android Project Leader - arabicandroid) for developing the webcore library. He has done a great job. Please check his site for latest updates.

Update Jan 22: New image file.

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible if you damage your phone while doing the above. If you don't know what you are doing, please seek a professional or don't do it. Its also advisable that you create a nandroid backup before installing the above file, or any other customer firmware for that matter, if you care about the existing data on your phone.

The Nexus 'Superphone' One...I finally got it!

2010-01-11T23:46:00.014+03:00

And rightly so, after 13 months of T-Mobile G1 (Dream) use, I have upgraded to the next big thing, the Google Nexus One, or the N1. Got my phone on Jan 11.

I have to tell you I was very excited when I saw that this website: http://google.com/phone was up and running and it took me 3 minutes to make up my mind and complete my purchase (yep its a very speedy purchasing process). I chose not to engrave because I couldn't wait for another 72 hours expected wait time. I don't live in any of the countries the phone is available in for purchase, which are: US, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. Nevertheless that didn't stop me from going ahead with the purchase. I will not reinvent the wheel and tell you how to do that, just visit this post which talks about purchasing the phone from outside the US: http://mobilesyrup.com/2010/01/11/how-to-order-a-nexus-one-if-you-live-outside-canada/

Well I'm not going to give a review, there are plenty of reviews already available on many websites, also since I'm a big android fan, I will probably be very biased. I will just leave my impressions of the phone in general. I can only tell you that this phone is amazing. Performance is unbelievable, its blazing fast. A very sexy device that feels very good in the hand. I won't compare with other phones, but I think you can figure out where I stand on this one.

1) There is no longer a 'dial' hard button (nor a soft button) update: As compared to the G1. This will get a little accustomed to.

2) There is no 'end call' hard button (nor a soft button) update: as compared to the G1. This button was also used to lock the phone and turn it off. Now there is a power off button at the top left of the mobile. Which to be honest, I find a little cumbersome, I would have preferred to keep the button below. Update: a good solution here would be to use the trackball press to turn on the screen. I hope this can come in the next OS update or in some cooked firmware.

3) No camera button, but that's not important at all I guess, at least for me.

4) The battery is 1400 mAH. So far I think the battery life is less than average, which is probably my main concern with the phone (so far). I have 3G always on, and bluetooth always on (but only connected while in the car, to the car's bluetooth speakers). WiFi is always off. No music playing at all. Automatic brightness. Roughly lasted for 8 hours. Update: probably even less, like 6 or 7 hours! I will try to use EDGE and see if this would make a noticeable difference.

5) The phone's proximity sensor is very practical and accurate. The sensor is implemented in the dialer, so when I bring the phone to my ear the screen goes off, hence no more accidental clicks, and when I bring the phone down, the screen turns on so that you can use the dial pad to enter an extension for example.

6) The AMOLED screen is amazing, very vibrant and bright. I tried it in the sunlight, its OK when its set to the maximum brightness. If its not on max, you will suffer update: but still usable. It appears to be very reflective.

7) All the text fields are voice enabled. So I can just write an email or a SMS with my voice. Please note that so far this feature is experimental and it actually uses data to work. It seems it sends your voice information to Google servers to turn them into text.

8) The search soft button is practical, though I need to get used to it. It will open the Google search text field while you are in any application, or will open the URL field while in the browser. Update: I'm beginning to like this feature a lot. The soft search button is very very practical, again as compared to my G1 which lacked a search button.

9) The live wallpaper is fantastic. The phone comes with plenty of them and I'm sure soon many theme developers will come with their own. Its a very exciting feature. Will drain your battery? Maybe, but its worth it.

10) One of the killer features of the phone is the ability to backup most of the information on Google servers update: a term used to describe this feature is 'cloud' or the Google cloud. Contacts information is all stored in your gmail account, calendar information is there as well and downloaded applications from the market are all restored automatically to your phone after a reset. I was surprised to see my images on Picasa show automatically (Picasa is owned by Google and uses your gmail username and password for access) in the 'Gallery' stock application for viewing images. Update: you basically need to login once, and I mean once when you start the phone the first time, and you will have access to all of the phone's Google online features.

11) The stock 'Gallery' application for viewing images is fabulous. The display of albums in 3D is great, and it reacts to tilting of the phone adding a nice touch.

12) I have unlocked and rooted my phone. Now when the phone is booted there is an open padlock icon at the bottom.

13) The phone boot time is 53 seconds.

14) 3G is working fine with me, there are no issues.

15) The phone speaker during a call is average, nothing spectacular here. If listening to music its fine, I think its better if the phone was lying on the screen side.

16) I have timed the download of the Engadget website on the phone's Dolphon Browser and it took 47 seconds on WiFi connection to fully complete update: it will still be usable and readable by the 20th-30th second though. While on the Engadget review of the stock browser, it showed that it took 71 seconds for the Engadget website to complete. I made sure the cache was empty.

17) Flash 10.1 is coming soon to the android 2.1 platform.

18) Built-in integration with Facebook. The phone will attempt to Sync all your contacts or only the ones that are already on the phone, so that it will update their information or images from Facebook. This feature works really well. Update: It also syncs the contacts' Facebook status, which is also viewable in the messaging app.

19) Dolphin Browser is a free android market application that supports multitouch and pinch & zoom. Its excellent. I personally love it.

20) The camera works very well. It shoots decent pictures as well as nice videos.

21) Unlocking the phone involves sliding your finger right to left. You can slide from left to right to toggle the phone's silent mode.

22) Contrary to many reports, I didn't feel that the soft buttons were mispositioned. I had no problem clicking them. You actually just have to click them right on the icon. Maybe while working with a single hand it might be very slightly noticeable. But if you are using one hand to hold the phone and the other to touch, there shouldn't be a problem at all. In any case with constant use, it wont be a problem.

23) The keyboard works well. I can also say that single handed texting is probably possible with practice. Using the phone word prediction feature is a must for speedy typing.
Update: 24) The new 'Power Control' widget available on the 4th screen by default, is excellent for quickly toggling the following on or off: WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync'ing, and Brightness. You don't have to go into the settings to change these and you don't have to download any extra app from the market. Sweet.

That's all for now, let me go back and enjoy my phone :)

Reinstalling Activated Winodws 7 Upgrade?

2009-11-29T00:13:00.026+03:00

I have lately upgraded from Vista to Windows 7, I have written about this experience in this post.

Now I because I have upgraded my original Windows 7 Professional over the RC release, things were not very promising for me. Windows 7 was not acting as it is supposed to be and Microsoft clearly had a reason for not allowing upgrade from RC. So I decided to reinstall. I was worried for 2 reasons:

1) I have already used and activated my original Windows 7 Professional key.

2) I have to upgrade from Windows Vista since the version I bought was the upgrade version of Windows 7.

In any case, I had no choice and I went ahead with the reinstall.

Step 1 - Installing Windows Vista first:

1) I completely formatted my C drive where Windows used to be installed on. Of course I made sure I backup all of my data first

2) Then I installed my Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium. As soon as I completed the installation, I disabled the network so that it wont unnecessarily run Windows update

3) I used my original Vista key throughout the installation but made sure I didn't activate Windows Vista when asked to, again because I felt it was not necessary

Step 2 - Installing Windows 7:

1) Without doing any further tasks I popped in my Windows 7 64-bit Professional Upgrade DVD and started the upgrade process

2) I tried the option to upgrade over existing Vista but this gave me an error that I cannot upgrade from Vista Home to Windows 7 Professional. Anyway that was good, because I can actually just install a clean Windows 7 Professional from scratch, so its not really an upgrade anymore. The only catch is that Mr Gates wants to make sure I already have Vista and that's why he was very generous to sell me Windows 7 for US$100

3) The installation went smoothly. And when it started to ask me for my user name and my computer name, I made sure to use the exact ones I had used when I installed Windows the first time after activating it.

4) Then towards the end it asked me for the key. I just skipped the whole step.

5) Once the installation was fully over, I went into "Windows Activation" (right click "My Computer" and then choose "Properties"), and inserted my key and activated.

6) It was activated correctly, no problems at all. I was worried it would fail and I have to start contacting Microsoft, but luckily I was spared the trouble.
7) The existing Windows Vista installation was copied over into a directory called "Windows.old". As I had absolutely no use for that folder or my old Vista installation for that matter (remember it was just to tell Windows 7 I own Vista!!), I completely removed this folder and claimed back the precious space. There is a method to remove this folder according to Microsoft (Link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933212). I just prefer the simple way!

Step 3 - Creating a system image (optional step):

1) I decided to use the backup option in Windows 7 to create a system image of the clean initial install. Later on if I need to reinstall for any reason I don't have to install Vista again

2) Go into Control Panel and choose "Backup and Restore" or if you are in the category view choose "Back up your computer" under "System and Security"

3) In the left side panel choose "Create a system image"

4) Then choose where you want to save this backup. You can choose a network location, a DVD (it might use more than one DVD depending on the size of the image), or a location on the local hard drive

4) From there on its a straightforward procedure, you just need to wait for it to complete the backup. I believe your computer wont be usable while doing the backup, so just wait for a few minutes until its complete.

I made sure I took a backup as soon as I finished installing Windows 7 to make it as clean a backup as possible. Then on the next day I made another system image backup after installing my most used utilities and all the latest updates to Windows 7.

Windows 7 & Mapped Drives Crednetials!

2009-11-28T19:57:00.005+03:00

Don't you just hate it when you map a network drive that requires a username and password and after your restart your Windows 7 you have to re-enter these credentials again! Especially that you made sure to tick the "Remember my credentials" option while mapping the first time and every time thereafter!!!

After struggling for a while I found the solution:

1) a) Open Control Panel and click on "User Accounts". Then on the left side panel choose "Manage your credentials"
1) b) If you are in the category view then choose "User Accounts and Family Safety" and in the next screen choose "Credential Manager"
2) You should now be in "Credential Manager". Next to the first item "Windows Credentials" choose "Add a Windows credential"
3) In the first field "Internet or network address" add the name or the IP of the server in which the network drive or share resides on. In the 2nd and 3rd field add the username and password (the same username and password that you used while mapping the drive). Then click "OK"
4) That's it. You should now never be prompted again for the username and password

Upgrade from Windows 7 Utimate RC to Winodws 7 Professional RTM!

2009-11-06T23:16:00.001+03:00

When I pre-ordered my Winodws 7 Professional upgrade copy from Amazon more than 4 months ago, I had no idea that I won't be able to upgrade my existing Windows 7 Ultimate release candidate (ironically Microsoft only offered the Ultimate edition for a release candidate). Back in June Amazon and Microsoft ran a short promotion to pre-order the upgrade version of Windows 7 and I went with the Professional upgrade version for US$100. Last week when I finally got my original copy of Windows 7 I was very disappointed to learn that Microsoft doesn't officially support upgrade from RC to RTM. While I understand their reasoning, I just couldn't accept it. I had so many apps installed and I don't want to go through installing them again. Not to mention that this is an upgrade version, so it means I have to first install my original copy of Vista 64-bit and then install the Windows 7 upgrade (I received the 32-bit and 64-bit version DVDs in the same package which I think is a nice move by Microsoft). In any case I was willing to take the risk of moving from RC to RTM without a clean install.

After struggling for a while I managed to find the best tutorial to date on the net that offers a complete solution to the problem: http://icrontic.com/articles/upgrade-the-windows-7-rc-to-retail.

A simple note for people who are upgrading to Professional edition such as I, in the registry change, use the values that are shown in the screen shot. The text talks about the Home Premium edition. Of course if your upgrade is to the Ultimate edition then you can skip the registry change and just do the first step about modifying the cversion.ini file.

PS3 not reading your disc???

2009-09-14T04:12:00.005+03:00

Wow, I thought the PS3 was not as vulnerable as the XBOX 360 and its red lights, but luckily (or unluckily for that matter) I found a problem with this big box. I say that since I'm a 360 fan, I use my PS3 as a media player mainly, and to play such games which are exclusive like MGS4 and Little Big Planet. Of course its a great console, but I just like to play hardcore games on the 360.

OK here is the problem, whenever I put in a disc in the bluray drive, nothing is happening! Its as if the PS3 didn't realize that there was a disc inserted. I tried everything, put in a DVD, a VCD, formatting (I wish I didn't I lost my MGS4 saved games and my Linux patition), etc. Nothing was working. I honestly think this issue is very weird in my case, since I rarely use my PS3 to play games (I only own around 10 titles or less), and its been with me for about 14 months only. When I googled this problem I found many users who are having the same problem, some of them have a slightly different symptoms when they put in the disc. Then I read somewhere that someone tried to put the PS3 on its side. I did that, putting it on its side, with the bluray drive facing up (this is the way it should be if you like your PS3 in the vertical position), then put in a game disc, and nothing happened as well. Finally I tried the other side with the drive facing down, and suddenly all hell broke loose! The fan noise, started getting louder, and louder and LOUDER until there was like white smoke going out of the console, I panicked and I removed the electricity cable from the back a quickly as I could. I thought I had fried my PS3!

When I was out of my shock, I restored the cable, turned the PS3 back to its horizontal position and decided to turn it on. And believe it or not, it was working again, the game disc was loading!! I realized later that the white smoke, was actually dust, so nothing in the interior hopefully got damaged. But I have to say that the DVD drive was getting a little noisy after that stunt when it was being read or spinning. I think it might be really the case of a drive that is nearing its end. But its working now, and I will just keep on using it till it fully dies on me. Maybe then I will just grab myself a slimmer PS3 :)

Remark: Please do note that if you do perform the above you might lose your warranty or destroy you PS3, so do it at your own risk.

Myanmar fonts on the G1

2009-09-06T02:33:00.013+03:00

Update Oct 9: New file with zawgyi font.

If you own the Google T-Mobile G1 phone (or HTC Dream) and you are from Myanmar, then here is a quick update file that is completely harmless to add the Myanmar fonts to your device without hassle. Follow the instructions in this recent post of mine.

Don't worry its exactly the same procedure you only need the correct update file from RapidShare or MediaFire.

Thanks to thihaz from xda-developers.

One day I'm gonna visit Myanmar :)

Easier fix for the half-solution...

2009-09-02T03:22:00.020+03:00

Note: Please offer feedback when possible, let me know if it works.

This solution would also apply to Farsi, Hebrew, Urdu, etc.

This is an update to my second post about trying to solve the problem with displaying Arabic on the Android-based HTC G1 (Google) phone. My original solution which I posted about back in January of 2009, involved some manual steps which I think some of you weren't happy with. I got many comments and emails regarding this issue. So today I'm telling you about a very small update file that I created which contains the main DejaVu font (unaltered) that is required to be placed in your G1 to be able to display the disconnected Arabic words. The main condition is that your phone should be rooted!

Here are the steps:

Download the update file from RapidShare or MedaiFire, then rename the file to 'update.zip'. If you have the new & latest version of CM Recovery Image, you probably don't need to do that because you can select which update file you want to execute once you are in the recovery mode.
Copy the downloaded update file to the root of your SD card.
Hold down the power button and the home button on your G1 to enter recovery mode.
Once there, press Alt+S to start the update. Again if you have the CM Recovery Image you don't have to do that.
Restart and have fun (OK little fun, since the letters are still not connected)!

Please note that you don't have to wipe your phone for this to work, this only replaces the FallBack font on your G1 with the main DejaVu font (just like the steps in this post).

I have tested this on CM 4.0.2 & CM 4.0.4 mods and it works flawlessly. I'm sure it will work on other mods as well. If you are worried, you can take a nand backup first to be safe.

Best super zoom lens...hands down!

2009-08-30T03:19:00.005+03:00

I recently purchased the Sigma 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM IF Lens for my Nikon D90 DSLR. It took me a while before finally deciding on this one. If you want an all around lens that produces amazing pictures with auto focus and image stabilization, then look no further, you wont be disappointed.

I have written a full review on Amazon where I purchased it from, please click here. You will find my review at the top as the most helpful review.

Here you can find some pics that I took a while back. I think I need to add more & newer photos :)

HP Photosmart All-In-One 4500 Series & Windows 7

2009-08-29T01:51:00.004+03:00

This is a quick tip for installing the driver on Windows 7 of this HP printer: C4583 or C4580. If you try to install via the accompanying CD then after like 3% or 4% of the installation you will get an error saying that your operating system isn't supported (even though the driver should work on Vista it will not work straight away on Windows 7). So I went into my DVD drive, and right clicked on setup.exe found on the root of the CD and in the resulting context menu, I chose "Troubleshoot compatibility". I just followed the onscreen instructions (they are pretty simple) and I think Windows 7 managed to find that XP SP2 is a good fit to run the setup.exe file. So I ran the file again with this information and it went ahead smoothly.

I found earlier a nice way to get this printer to work under Windows 7 from this link:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/ada26e31-cb46-49ea-b853-ac0565ec851d

But this wont work in my case since the printer was still not defined on my network (doesn't have an IP). After the first installation you can connect the printer to your network via its built-in wireless adapter (wifi). So the solution in the above link can then work.

Norton Antivirus 2009: Dumped!

2009-08-15T22:28:00.008+03:00

My Norton Antivirus was bugging for more than a month that my subscription is about to expire, and being the lazy boy that I'm, I ignored it until a few days before it actually expired. When I tried to renew my subscription I found out that it costs US$ 40! I thought that was a bit on the high side for only renewing a subscription! I decided to wait. Eventually my subscription expired and guess what?? The whole defense system goes to sleep, NAV refused to start claiming that my subscription expired! That was totally unexpected! What has the subscription got to do with running the software! I thought that my Antivirus software will continue to operate and I will only be stopped from accessing the new virus definitions updates. But I was wrong and I believe that this is totally unaccepted.

Being an IBM employee I know that when IBM sells a software the customer owns the software and he has the right after 1 year to renew the support or the subscription or not to renew and if he chooses not to renew then support will stop but he is the legitimate owner of the product. Its not leasing! This is how IBM deals with businesses who are rich compared to us consumers! I have a network of 5 PCs/laptops at home so imagine paying US$200 on a yearly basis only for antivirus software. Now that is insane!

So that was it for me with Norton, I uninstalled it and googled for a couple of days for the alternative and decided to go with Webroot Antivirus and AntiSpyware. I had a sweet deal for 3 PCs and 2 years of subscription only for US$ 70. BitDefender Antivirus was my initial choice and for the same quantity and period the price was US$ 50. But I read some negative remarks from users on forums and I opted out. I will be testing Webroot for now and if it goes well I will purchase a license for the other 2 PCs that I have left at home. So far its working great with no problems at all even on my main PC which is running Windows 7 64-bit (Build 7229).

I have to let you know that Norton Antivirus was working perfectly and I had no problems with it, but I believe that Norton's way of treating the consumer is a disgrace and even if they do mention it in their license agreement. So Norton you have lost me as a customer.

I don't know if Webroot will stop or not when the subscription ends, but I have 2 years to find out :)

PS3 Media Server and SopCast

2009-04-29T23:50:00.015+03:00

And I finally decided that my PS3 would be the best option to be used as a media player. After trying several options like iStarHD, WD TV HD and Showcenter, I can honestly say that the PS3 is the best. But that would not be possible without the great work of the developer who came up with the PS3 Media Server: http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com. Its an amazing free media server for the PS3 that really outperformed the likes of TVersity, TwonkyMedia (which I actually bought 2 times, once for version 4 and then when version 5 came out) and Windows Media Player. That is of course my opinion after trying for more than 3 years to reach the optimum solution. Showcenter 200 was the second best choice if you ask me.

Also just to note that the ability to use a bluetooth remote control really enhances your entertainment experience, with responsive clicks no matter where your remote is. Another thing I like about the PS3 is that it is able to stretch most of the videos it is playing to match your screen size with several scaling options. Something I couldn't achieve with other media players. PS3 Media Server on the hand gives you a nice navigation menu (making use of the PS3 XMB) with a small thumbnail of the video next to the file name and its quite fast if you are scrolling through a big list of files.

Now to the point of this post. Lately I have been using SopCast to watch some foreign channels, and I though that it would be a great idea to stream that to my PS3 and be able to watch it on my 40 inch Sony Bravia LCD. Of course I realize that the outcome wont be great but its still better than looking at a laptop screen. And was I happy to know that I could do that with the PS3 Media Server! Here is how simple it is:

1) Start SopCast, login and and open a channel
2) The channel would open in a windows media container. Right click anywhere in this container and choose 'properties'
3) In the properties dialogue box take note of the stream URL. It would be something like "http://127.0.0.1:8902" If there is a "/stream" at the end of the URL ignore that
4) Stop the PS3 Media Server if its already running then open the file WEB.conf in Notepad. This file resides wherever you have installed the PS3 Media Server
5) Once in Notepad modify one of the "internet tvs" videostreams entries, or add one of your own, here is an example of mine: "videostream.Web,TVs=GusCast,http://127.0.0.1:8902,http://www.any-site-you-want.com/image-name.jpg" When you are finished save and close Notepad
6) Start your PS3 Media Server, and navigate in your PS3 to 'Web-TVs-GusCast' (as in my example) and enjoy the stream. Make sure that SopCast remains open throughout the stream.

Note 1: This method might work with other other P2P TV streaming clients such as TVAnts but I haven't tried it.
Note 2: I have to say this, I'm using SopCast for testing purposes and I don't necessarily agree or disagree with its purposes.

No sound in Firefox?!

2009-03-09T22:49:00.012+03:00

Update, May 1: It seems this problem was solved in 3.0.9 or 3.0.10, based on my own testing :)

And I thought Firefox was invincible! :p

Just kidding, but its really an annoying problem. Any video I was watching in Firefox had no sound. Especially when I was watching a youtube video, dead silence! I thought my speakers or my sound card was at fault, but sound was playing perfectly from Vista. Then the surprise came when I had to pull IE out of the ashes to test a youtube video...there was actually sound! Ah well, at least IE is good for something!

Luckily I quickly found this nice article which guided me to the solution.

In my situation I found 2 keys with 'firefox.exe' as part of its string value so I just deleted them both, restarted Firefox, and then all went back to normal!

Image used from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevincollins/3393601288/

A quick solution to boot into DOS

2009-03-02T01:41:00.011+03:00

Update: I was not able to access my internal hard drives because they are on NTFS. But there is a Microsoft article talking about creating a bootable disk for NTFS and FAT partitions. This is the link to the article.

I knew I would require it someday, and it happened.

I needed to run some utilites in DOS mode, and I was having a difficult time trying to achieve that. Ofcourse the easiest way was to boot from a Windows 98 bootdisk, but I needed to have these utilities on the 1.4MB floppy disk and there was barely any space left. So I tried creating a bootable USB memory stick by copying over the system files from the Windows 98 bootdisk, but that didn't work. I also tried to format the USB stick in Windows Vista format utility, but I wasn't able to tick the option to "Create an MS-DOD startup disk".

So in the end I just inserted the USB stick (with my utilities on there) in the PC, and I restarted it with the Windows 98 bootdisk in the floppy drive, and that did the trick for me. My motherboard was able to recognize my USB stick and after the startup is complete, DOS assigned a drive letter for my USB stick and I was able to run some files from there.

I hope the above can be helpful for people who need that type of access, of course you should have a floppy drive to continue, otherwise you have to get that USB stick bootable.

You can find Winodws 98 boot disk here.

Arabic Keyboard on your G1?

2009-03-01T01:04:00.015+03:00

Update 3, March 9: The final version from the developer, v1.0.0b, seems to have gone a long way and is really very capable now in writing correct Arabic with properly connected letters, also you can directly SMS contacts from within the keyboard application itself without copying and pasting text. So all we need now is a solution that will enable proper Arabic display in the browser, mail and SMS applications :)

Update 2: It seems that you can actually copy and paste into another application like SMS, either by clicking the 'copy' button on the keyboard or clicking and holding on the text box then choosing copy from the context menu. You cannot select what you copy but its still great. Also all the Arabic characters are now on the keyboard. Version 0.3.0b is out anyway but no major changes.

Update: Abdullah released a new update (v0.2.0b) to his G1 Arabic keyboard application, he has fixed the landscape problem, and incorporated an internal Arabic font for people without root. Good work Abdullah and pretty fast indeed.

We are going there, rather slowly, but we are.

A plausible new effort from one developer who is dedicating his free time to solve a major problem with our beloved G1, Arabic!

Abdullah has developed what is believed to be the first Arabic keyboard for the G1 thus far. And I think its the best Arabic effort to date to show for the G1 on the Market.

So far its only a keyboard that works only in portrait mode (while your G1 keyboard is closed), the letters are not connected, its not linked to any G1 application, the buttons are small, you cannot copy what you type, by default its opening in English mode (I think it should open in Arabic by default), and one character is missing (dal). Nevertheless, Abdullah is aware of most of these issues (as per his blog) and is working towards solving them in a future update.

Its important to note that you should have your phone rooted to be able to use this keyboard, because you have to replace a font on your G1 with a font capable of displaying Arabic characters. I have written about that a few weeks back in this post and this recent update. If you don't do that then you will not see the Arabic characters and you might only see boxes.

Please visit Abdullah's blog for more info.

Update: Arabic on T-Mobile G1...Half a Solution!

2009-02-28T23:41:00.010+03:00

Important Update: Please visit this post for the new and easier method, you don't have to follow the steps in here.

This is an update to this post.

After testing for a while I have to agree that changing 'DroidSansFallback.ttf' would serve the purpose of having Arabic characters in your G1 better than replacing 'DroidSans.ttf' because the latter can cause some words to word wrap in some tabs. Anyway here are the steps again to replace 'DroidSansFallback.ttf' on your G1 with another font that has Arabic characters preferably from the DejaVu fonts set. You can check the old post for more details.

Modified steps:

1) Download DejaVu fonts then copy 'DejaVuSans.ttf' to c:\ and rename it to 'DroidSansFallback.ttf'
2) Connect your G1 to your PC
3) Open command prompt and type: adb remount
4) Then type: adb push c:\DroidSansFallback.ttf /system/fonts
5) Restart your G1

Install XP on a Vista PC

2009-02-07T22:13:00.006+03:00

And finally I had the need to use Windows XP again. I have been using Vista Home Premium 64-Bit for more than six months and I think I'm cool using it now. But I needed to do some testing and I want to have XP installed. Because I have Vista installed first, I was able to find this very useful tutorial on doing exactly that.

I followed the tutorial to the letter, unfortunately I was hit with 2 problems:

Note: I used the 'shrink' feature in Vista to create a small partition on the C drive.

Problem 1:
I received an error similar to what the writer's warned about on page 3: "IMPORTANT NOTE – after the initial file copy, Windows XP reboots and loads up the GUI-based component of the install. You may get the following error: “A disk read error occurred – press Ctrl-Alt-Del to continue”. This is caused by a corrupt bootloader – click here to see how to fix this problem."
What I got was "error loading operating system". So I did as the writer said and jumped ahead to page 6 where he talks about the solution. That solution sadly, didn't work for me.
But here is how I solved it: After using the Vista DVD to go into recovery options, I chose command prompt. In there I typed: "bootrec /fixmbr" then I typed "bootrec /fixboot". That fixed my problem and I was able to go into Vista again. Note: I think that you might probably need to do the 2 things, the commands and the 'System Repair' option. I had several attempts at installing, and in one instance I tried the 'System Repair' and that didn't work so I ran the commands. In another attempt I ran the commands first, but when I rebooted the PC was freezing with the blinking cursor with no error message at all, I ran 'System Repair' and that solved the problem. So you probably need to expiremint.

Problem 2:
Now according to the same article the writer is asking us to work with EasyBCD to add an entry for Windows XP and reboot then the install of XP will continue from where it stopped. Thats all good but I was having a problem with that. When I choose Windows XP from the Vista menu at boot, I was getting this error: "NTLDR Is Missing". After some research, I realised that Vista uses a different boot loader. And it seems that XP writes boot information on the C drive in a file called boot.ini, whereas I was actualy installing XP on the G drive. The boot.ini file was pointing XP correctly to the G drive. So as an opposite to what the writer is saying on page 4, to to specify the drive where XP is installed on as the drive for the Windows XP entry (in EasyBCD), I just left that drive to be C (not G). And that actually did the trick. When I rebooted, Windows XP continued the installation and now its working perfectly. I was very worried that I might damage my Vista installation but thankfully nothing happened.

Arabic on the G1...Take 2!

2009-01-28T23:03:00.008+03:00

I have just checked the new cupcake video and it seems that Google has added some sort of support for Arabic. In the video the presenter goes into settings, clicks 'Locale and text' then he clicks 'Select locale', and the resulting menu will display 'Arabic' at the top as the very first entry. Now I'm not sure if this will provide an Arabic keyboard for texting, but if it can get to display Arabic correctly in messaging and websites with connected letters, I'm sold! I have never actually used Arabic anyway for typing on any mobile phone I have ever used, so I have a much lower expectations from the next version of the firmware when it comes to supported languages! :)

You can check the video from the post in Android Community. You can move to 3:10 in the clip to see that option if you don't want to watch the whole thing.

On another note I was given this link of a developer who is spending time on writing an application that will get Arabic properly on the G1. Check the link in here. Thanks to the anonymous reader.

How I sync'd my Lotus Notes with my G1

2009-01-27T23:53:00.013+03:00

Its a hot topic I know...I looked in many articles and threads, every G1 owner had a sync requirement one way or another. Mine was simple, sync my T-Mobile G1 with my Lotus Notes client at work. I needed to get my emails and my calendar entries on my phone. I didn't have a requirement for synchronizing my contacts in the Lotus Notes address book, because I'm absolutely delighted and satisfied with sync'ing my phone contacts with my gmail contacts so that's one less headache for me. The solution is split into 2 parts:

1) Lotus Notes emails:
This might be easy if you can just use the mail app in G1 (or the K9 app from the Market) with the pop3/imap server in Domino (Lotus email server), but the problem is my company have a security policy in place and these services are disabled. Then it struck me to just forward a copy of my Notes emails to my gmail account and enable the push service in my G1 to run automatically (Data Synchronization), and that worked like an absolute charm. All I needed to do was to create a mail rule (that is possible if you are using Notes R7 and above, otherwise you have to use an agent) in my local mail file replica to forward all incoming emails to my gmail account, then that rule was replicated to the server replica of my mail file. If you need help in creating the client side rule leave me a comment.
Now that solution is excellent for 2 reasons: First, via the mail rule I would receive an exact copy of the email in my gmail account while leaving another copy in my notes mail file for my records. Second, I'm receiving emails faster because now the emails are being forwarded from my server copy immediately before it even replicates to my local copy! So I'm actually getting the emails on my G1 before I receive them on my Notes mail on my laptop. And that can hold true in the opposite direction, that is; I receive emails on my G1 before they even appear on my gmail web account!!! Yes, this is true, I tested it myself! The push service from Google to the G1 by itself is worth every penny spent on that phone.
For replying back to emails received from Notes via my G1, I have registered my Notes email account with Google and I set it as the default 'From' address (My priority is to reply to work related emails right now, so that took precedence over my gmail email address and my Yahoo email address which is also being collected in my gmail account). The gmail application in the G1 though still doesn't allow you to change that 'From' address while sending emails, even if you try to browse to your gmail account, it will direct you to the mobile version of gmail and that too doesn't allow you to change on the fly (you can go into settings and change the default 'From' address if its urgent). But maybe in the next [cupcake] release that would be solved.
Remember to CC yourself when you reply to a work related email so that you can have a record of that communication in your notes email for future reference.
I would like to tell you that I didn't have a gmail account in the past and I just created it for the sake of activating my G1 at first. My main email is my Yahoo email created 11 years ago and everything is registered with it, so it will be a complete headache to move to gmail, so for that reason I subscribed to Yahoo Prime Mail and I have my gmail checking my Yahoo via pop3 at regular intervals.

2) Lotus Notes calendar entries:
The calendar entries were a bit harder and that's why I had to resort to a 3rd party solution from a company called CompanionLink and the product is called 'CompanionLink for Google 3.0'. I tried it out at first and then I was fully convinced so I bought it for USD30, believe me its worth it.
CompanionLink for Google is a small application that I installed on my work Laptop (which is always at my desk at work, switched on and connected to the internet) and configured so that it syncs my Lotus Notes calendar with my Google calendar. Then I enabled the automatic synchronization of my G1 calendar with my Google calendar (via Data synchronization on my G1)...and there you have it, a synchronized G1 calendar with my Lotus Notes calendar, while my Google calendar acts as a gateway :)
I scheduled CompanionLink for Google to run every 15 mins so that it will check if I have added anything on my gmail calendar (via the sync with my G1 calendar) then it will add that to my Notes calendar and vice versa.

So far so good.

I hope this is wasn't a long read, but I can tell you that I'm very satisfied with this workaround and I'm very happy with the straight forward approach of the Google push mail/calendar service, its just excellent.

Update 2: OCZ and MSI...almost a solution?!...NO! but ASUS Rocks!

2009-01-24T11:01:00.015+03:00

Update: A friend of mine confirmed to me after reading this post that he would never buy MSI motherboards because he tried them 2 times with 2 boards and on both occasions had a terrible experience.

Please see the main post and update 1 for details.

All I want to say in this post is what a disastrous motherboard the MSI X48 Platinum is. I'm not sure if it really had problems and if I should have RMA'd it long ago. But it sure looked OK. I tried all I possibly can to get that MB to work for months on end (almost 6 months), but nothing would get my highly expensive PC stable, it was very irritating since I have assembled it out of the best components out there at the time.

In my desperate attempts to get the MSI board to function, I went ahead and bought the Patriot DDR3 1333 MHz, and that was a USD150 down the drain. The Patriot RAM was even more unstable than the OCZ RAM with this board, the PC would restart and crash at the lowest of MHz rates. Also changing the FSB to more than 360 MHz would crash Vista on startup!

I'm saying that because I have bought the Asus P5E3 Premium motherboard and I can't be more happy with it, from the moment I installed it in my case it just...worked, plain and simple! And I even got my OCZ to run at 1600 MHz with 7-7-7-24 timings (something that is impossible with the MSI board as confirmed in the several forum threads out there!) and an overclocked QX9650 to 3.8 GHz. Now that's plain awesome, and believe me when I tell you that it probably took me only 3 hours to reach that stable OC (then I had to run some tests to confirm!)

I also must add that the OCZ DDR3 1600 MHz Platinum is a great RAM with great potential, and its highly recommended.

One of the features I liked about the Asus board is the express gate, where I can get to the Internet within 5 seconds of starting the PC, and the ability to install BIOS updates from USB memory sticks. The BIOS in the Asus board is highly advanced with greater control as compared to the MSI BIOS, so I guess the ASUS is more suited for overclocking needs. Also the positioning of the CPU socket on the Asus board is fantastic, I had no problem with installing the Zalman heat sink, while I was suffering on the MSI board to get the stock Intel fan to be installed due to the heat pipes going around the CPU socket and then I had to buy the Thermaltake i1 to work around this problem.

At the end, I saw the light!

Update: Buffalo Wireless Adapter WLI-U2-KG125S & Vista 64-Bit...and now on Windows 7!!!

2009-01-23T11:20:00.006+03:00

It seems that the driver I collected in this post works with the latest release of Windows.

According to one reader, Jeff Miller, the adapter worked on Windows 7 (still in beta) after following the instructions in the post. But I didn't try it myself though because I didn't play with Windows 7 yet! Thanks Jeff.

"Sync is currently experiencing problems"

2009-01-18T21:10:00.006+03:00

Having struggled for weeks with this silly problem on my T-Mobile G1, I finally found the solution thanks to 'danguyf' from Android Community.

The solution is found in this post.

I had the same problem as in the linked post, getting "delete limit exceeded" or the more common "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly". How irritating that was! But I have only myself to blame because I used MyBackup to backup my contacts, and then for a restore I had to restore from MyBackup and *boom* Sync is no longer in sync! MyBackup seems to be aware of that problem because they warn you about that when you start the application.

Here is the solution in case the link doesn't work:
Go into Settings > Applications > Manage applications, select MyFaves, then click on 'Clear data' button.

I suggest everyone tries the above before attempting drastical steps, it will have no effect on your gmail contacts and will only delete your phone contacts. Mind you I also don't care about MyFaves so I was least worried about it. I also think that you should try this solution even if you are having the same error message in Sync and you haven't used MyBackup before, but please make a copy of your contacts in some way before proceeding.

Arabic on T-Mobile G1...Half a Solution!

2009-01-17T12:56:00.032+03:00

The numbered solution steps (below in blue) has been updated, please click here.

Remark: As of the time of this post, this is the first and only post on the web that will discuss a workaround solution for Arabic on the G1.

Updated with images upon request.

Update Jan 25, 2009: If you are getting boxes in some websites (but not in sms or messaging) then try replacing DroidSansFallback.ttf with an Arabic alternative. Thanks Rashed2020.
Note: A fallback font (if I'm not mistaken) is a font the OS would use in case a font requested (eg. by a website) is not installed in the OS.

This post would also apply to Farsi, Hebrew, Urdu, etc.

Ever since I bought an unlocked T-Mobile G1, and I'm looking everywhere to see any hint of support for Arabic. It's not really a big problem because I mainly use English, but from time to time I receive an SMS in Arabic or I would have a need to check a site in Arabic and things are not nice.

After doing a small research, I tried replacing the main system font in the G1 'DroidSans.ttf', with another font that has Arabic characters and the result was a very acceptable alternative. I can now see Arabic in the Messaging section, but Arabic letters are disconnected! I'm able, though, to understand the message and reply accordingly in English If I want. Last Christmas, for example, I got an SMS from a colleague wishing me a Merry Christmas, but I didn't know that because all I got on my screen were empty boxes!

And while browsing its also working with disconnected letters again. If you want right-to-left support then you can download Opera Mini from the market, it does support the flip. Its a good eye training reading all these disconnected letters:)

Interestingly in the Messaging application, you will notice that Arabic is displayed correctly from right to left in list mode and in message mode. I think Google thought about it already but it just needs some tweaking in their Android platform to support multilanguage.

I tried many different fonts that are freely available on the web, and I finally sticked with DejaVu fonts, they have a good balance between English characters and Arabic characters. You can download them from here. Go for the first one on the list (v2.28 as of the time of this posting).

The procedure is fairly simple, but you must have a rooted G1 before proceeding, if its not, then check the links towards the end of my post about Pac Man apk on how to root (or jailbreak) you G1. Here goes:

1) Download fonts then copy 'DejaVuSans.ttf' to c:\ and rename it to 'DroidSans.ttf'
2) Connect your G1 to PC
3) Open command prompt and type: adb remount
4) Then type this command: adb push c:\DroidSans.ttf /system/fonts
5) Restart your G1

That's it. If you want you can also replace the bold fonts from DejaVu set to the G1 bold Sans font.

Important: Please be extra cautious while doing the above because you are working with system files. I'm not responsible for any damage you might do to your phone. If you don't know what you are doing, please don't do it.

iSkoot or Skype for T-Mobile G1?

2009-01-16T01:45:00.007+03:00

Update Jan 24, 2009: This isn't true VOIP calling, the software will dial a US based number before it connects you!

Ok here is iSkoot for the people who like using Skype for calls on their G1. I know that its no longer available on the market, so if anyone thinks that it should not be here, plz let me know.

Here is the link to download the apk. You can check my Pac Man post below if you need installation instructions, it should be identical though (ofcourse with different file names!)

Pac Man on Android?

2009-01-11T00:06:00.021+03:00

This post has been updated on Jan 15, 2009. The downloadable file has also been replaced.

If you have been struggling like me trying to download Pac Man on your T-mobile G1 from the market (or trying to locate a pacman.apk file), then you will be happy to know that I have finally found it and I'm sharing it here with you.

I know that its supposed to be free so far and that's why I'm sharing it. If the developers think this not appropriate I would remove the link.

Anyway I really see no reason for asking for money for this, its just the same old Pac Man, nevertheless its fun to be holding it in your pocket again :)

I would like to thank 'beartard' from xda-developers for sending me the rar file. You can download the apk from here.

A simple method to install the app is by copying pacman.apk over to your sd card (through a card reader or G1 usb to PC connection) and then installing via one of the app installers available in the market. I use 'Apps Installer'.

If you have a rooted G1 then you may also use the below method.

~~You must have a rooted G1 to be able to put this on your phone (I'm not so sure though). And because~~
Because there are many noobs out there (actually including moi!), here are the steps to install it on your phone:

1) ~~Unrar~~
Download the ~~file~~
apk into your c:\ (for example)
2) Connect your G1 to your PC via USB
3) Open command prompt and type: adb remount
~~4) Type this command: adb push c:/pacman/com.NamcoNetworks.PacMan.zip /data/app~~

4) Type this command: adb push c:\pacman.apk /data/app
~~5) Then type this: adb push c:/pacman/com.NamcoNetworks.PacMan.apk /data/app-p~~

~~rivate~~

5) You should now see the Pac Man icon in your G1 apps

Please pay atttention to use forward slashes '/' when you refer to folders in your G1.

Please note that for the above to work, you should have the SDK installed, which should be there if you have rooted your G1. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, to root your G1 visit this link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=443797
If you have the official RC30 then you have to downgrade to the official RC29 first (my phone was on the official RC30, and I had to downgrade it, so I can say that it works flawlessly), here is the link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=466455

By the way if you don't already know about xda-developers, its a great helpful forum for all sorts of phones with tweaks, hacks and development. I used to lurk there when I had my O2 Atom :)

Sharing a printer on Vista 64 and XP

2008-11-30T21:14:00.005+03:00

I think this is a very worthy tip that I thought I should post about as I struggled myself for a while to find a fix, and thanks to this user, glob, in this thread:
http://www.vistax64.com/network-internet/117945-printer-sharing-vista-x64-xp-x86.html
I was able to solve my problem.

Well the problem is about sharing a printer connected to a Vista 64-bit system with other PCs or laptops with Windows 32-bit systems. I was getting strange errors whenever I tried to install the driver on the 32-bit systems or the 32-bit driver on the 64-bit system, confused ?:)

Anyway, here is the solution as I copy it straight from the link above:

"1) On the x64 box get the printer working using x64 drivers and ensure the printer is shared. Don't worry about adding x86 drivers or anything.
2) On the x86 box. Download and install the printer driver for your printer (ie, the one attached to the x64 box). Only when it asks you to find the printer or select the connection use "FILE:" (ie, output to a file)
3) On the x86 box. Go back in to the printer properties and click on the "Ports" tab. Then click "Add Port ...". Then select "Local Port". In the pop up box type in the machine name and printer share (eg, \\x64box\printer).
4) Make sure the new local port is ticked and not "FILE:"
5) Bob's your uncle. It should now work without asking for drivers - as you already have the x86 diver installed."

Terastation NAS, Vista security & restricted shares!

2008-11-13T21:00:00.009+03:00

If you are the owner of a Terastation HS NAS (or any of the old models of the Terastation/Linkstation NAS), you will notice that if you move to Windows Vista (from XP for example), your established user logins to the restricted network shares will no longer work. You are sure that you have typed the username/password correctly, and you try to connect to the IP address, but still nothing works.

On the Buffalo site they ask you to:
Try connecting to "IPAddress" instead of "NASName" Also, try using "WorkgroupNameUserName", "NASNameUserName", or "NASIPAddressUserName".

Which obviously didn't work for me. Further searching in the Buffalo site revealed an article about "Making Windows Vista PC's compatible with older Buffalo NAS products", yes my TS HS is now actually 'older' :) This is what they aks you to try (for me its the second method because I'm on Vista Home Premium), and it did work:

Open the control panel, make sure you're using the classic view, double click on "Administrative Tools" There is an item "Local Security Policy"- open it.

Alternativ click the start button and type secpol.msc in the search function.

Browse to "Local Policies" -> "Security Options". Now look for the entry "Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level" and open it. Click on the dropdown menu and select "Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated". Apply the settings.

On Vista Home or Home Premium there is only the way of changing the registry entry. Open the registry editor. (Start- type regedit)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlLsa]

"LmCompatibilityLevel"

Set the value to 2 and if you have further problems to 1. Restart the PC after changing the registry. Otherwise all changes you made are not valid.

The reason according to Buffalo is that: Vista is trying to force a more secure authentication method for the LAN manager by using NTLMv2 to log on to the remote SMB share. But NTLMv2 isn't available for the current SMB implementations on all NAS devices using an older version of the Samba server. The connection will be rejected and the user will be asked again and again for user name and password.

Buffalo also asks you to note that: NTLM has security problems.

Update: fmsxDS 0.08...new version 0.09

2008-11-12T23:38:00.008+03:00

Update June 13, 2009: I got this from a user called Peppermint: "I've put some effort to some kind of translation, see message #19 at: http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=104927&highlight=fmsx&page=2" Thanks Peppermint

This is only an update to my post about fmsxDS last year. It seems that there is a new version released, version 0.09.

I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here, so just go through this thread where someone in there was pointing to my post for instructions on starting version 0.08, and in the same thread version 0.09 was out. So now I'm returning the favor by pointing you back to his very own instructions on running version 0.09. Go to post #6.
If for any reason the thread is deleted or removed, leave me a comment and I will get back to you with instructions.

An MSX emu for Nintendo Wii...for real!

2008-11-10T12:05:00.002+03:00

OK, if you might have gone through my posts, you would certainly know by now that I'm an avid MSX fan, back from the wild:) I wouldn't spare an opportunity to try any MSX emulator on any device I might have, from handhelds, to PCs and to consoles. You can check my post on the MSX emu on the NDS, which was a very decent effort. I also tried installing the MSX emu for Linux, on the PS3 (which I also installed Yellow Dog Linux on). But I can tell you, its really more fun on the Wii.

Last week I discovered that someone spent his valuable time to port an MSX emulator to the Nintendo Wii. I then realized that homebrew was now (or maybe a while back!) possible on the Wii through a hack using The Legend of Zelda game. Please remember that I don't condone piracy and I already own tens of original games for my Wii, XBOX 360 and PS3 that are worth more than USD 2000, not bragging just making a point :) Anyway all I want to do is be able to run homebrew on my lovely Wii and specifically the MSX emu.

Here are the steps that I followed to get the Homebrew channel on my Wii (I own the PAL or EURO version). There are several tutorials out there if you want to read more. Please note that this hack is for the unmodded Wiis. I'm not sure how it will behave on a modded Wii with a chip.

1) You need an SD card, 1GB would do fine. Make sure its empty. You would also need a card reader if you don't have one already. A digital camera that uses SD cards can be used for that purpose if you want.
2) An original copy of Zelda Twilight Princess. I bought this game a year ago and never even played it beyond 30 mins. It got rave reviews, but I'm really not into these sort of games. But boy, did it come in handy when I most needed it, worth every cent at the moment.
3) Go to hbc.hackmii.com/download/ and download this file: twilight-hack-v0.1-beta1.zip
4) Unzip that file somewhere on your PC.
5) Copy the 'private' folder to the root of your SD card.
6) Download the_homebrew_channel-beta_9.tar.gz, and uncompress with winrar (or any other tool that can handle tar archives)
7) Copy the 'wiiload' folder and 'boot.dol' to the root of you SD card.
8) Start you Wii, and go into 'Data Management'. Go into your saved games data and delete any Zelda file (you can back them up if you want).
9) Go into the SD card section (or tab on top of the screen) and you will find 3 files with different regions, select the file matching your console's region then select copy. In my case I chose the EUR file.
10) Now here is the fun part, start your Zelda game and then after you click 'A' + 'B' you will be met with the save game selection, choose the Twilight Hack and hit start.
11) Zelda will start in some area where you are facing a man, press back on the nunchuck and amazingly the Wii goes into text mode to start installing the Homebrew channel.
12) Just follow the on screen instructions. Use the reset button on your Wii as the 'Accept' button. You will need to press it several times.
13) When your Wii restarts, you will find the Homebrew channel in there with the rest of your channels.

That's it, its that simple :) Now its became possible for you to try the several homebrew apps for the Wii that are out there. You can find plenty in here: wiibrew.org/wiki/Main_Page.

And back to my MSX emu, you can download the early version from this link: wiibrew.org/wiki/UMSX The emulator is still in its infancy, but it works great. Unfortunately sound is still not working.

By the way to get all these homebrew on your Wii, you have to use your SD card. You should have an 'apps' folder on the root and copy any homebrew apps in there. Any folders that these apps might use, you should keep them on the root for most of the homebrew apps I tried. And in case you are still wondering you can delete all the files that you have used above before you fill your SD with homebrew apps. Also these application will have to be accessed from the Homebrew channel.

If for any reason you feel that you need to downgrade your Wii, you can follow this guide: www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=170132
It seems system version 3.2E (for PAL Wiis) is more stable for some homebrews. It looks like Nintendo are not happy with this hack.

Tip: I saw several people getting this error message "this is not a valid wii application", according to the FAQ at hbc.hackmii.com its got to do with the new version of the hbc (beta 9), which doesn't support ELFs anymore (mostly old homebrew application are still on ELF) and supporting DOLs files. You can google these terms to know more.

Tip2: You also install some homebrew apps as channels in your Wii for easier access. Look for the WAD Manager which will install WAD files (files that will make an app into a channel).

Update: OCZ and MSI...almost a solution?!

2008-11-09T23:46:00.015+03:00

Please see update 2 for important information!

This is to let you know, that after 6 days, my PC restarted on its own again.

I tried several other changes to memory timings, but the best option so far is still 7-7-7-20 at 1.88V, 333 FSB and 1:2 ratio. If any one has a better recommendation I will be glad to hear it. Details in main post.

OCZ and MSI...almost a solution?!

2008-11-02T23:49:00.019+03:00

Please see update 2 for important information!

This post has been updated (update 1). Click here.

Back in July 2008, I decided that I needed a new laptop to handle all my HD video editing requirements, having spent several days into finding the proper laptop, I couldn't find a suitable one, and then I really considered buying a PC. But not any PC as I was really looking for a power horse.

I instantly fell in love with the new penryn processor from Intel the QX9650 Core 2 Extreme Quad Core. I opted for that instead of the QX9750 (code named Yorkfield), because I felt that the QX9750 didn't justify a USD 500 difference at that time.

Of course after carefully researching all other parts required to assemble my PC, I ended up purchasing the below from Amazon:
1) Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Quad-Core Processor, 3 GHz, 12M L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB, LGA775
2) MSI X48 Platinum Intel Core 2 Quad/Core 2 Extreme/Core 2 Duo/Pentium Socket 775 1600 MHz PC3-10600 DDR3-1333 ATX
3) OCZ OCZ3P16004GK PC3-12800 CL 7-7-7-24 DDR3 Gold Series 1600MHz Dual Channel 4GB Kit
4) Thermaltake CL-P0370 TMG i1 CPU Cooler for Intel LGA775
5) Western Digital 500GB Caviar Sata 7200 Rpm 16MB Cache SATA Hard Drive (2 of them)
6) Western Digital WD1500AHFDRTL Raptor X 150GB SATA/150 Hard Drive (for OS)
7) VisionTek Radeon HD4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express Graphics Card
8) CaseBuy PSU 850 Watts (not from Amazon)
9) High Perf Thermal Compound
10) LG DVD Writer (Super Multi with SecurDisc, not from Amazon)
11) Samsung SyncMaster 22inch (not from Amazon)

The above was more than USD 3000 in total, a huge investment on my part but I was really looking forward to assembling and working with this monster. I couldn't wait to benchmark it and see how long it will take to render my videos in Full HD mode.

Note that this was the 3rd time I will be assembling a PC, and I really needed to brush up a little on all the new technologies I have missed on during the last few years where I only used a laptop.

It took me several hours to put things together, and my PC started without a glitch, then I installed Vista 64 bit and things were looking great until....IT STARTED CRASHING & FREEZING ON ME WITH NO BSOD!!!

I was totally upset and disappointed, because I knew that these type of errors can be a nightmare to troubleshoot.

I tried everything you might think of, tested the RAM, updated the Graphic card driver, updated all needed drivers for Vista compatibility, using one RAM module, using dual channel and single channel memory setup, placing the memory closest to the CPU (slot 1 & 3), tested several timings, multipliers, removed the Hard disks and tested them out one by one and even removed the processor and reapplied the thermal compound...nothing seemed to work.

The situation was very bad, it stayed like that for almost 3 months, with intermittent freezes and restarts, sometimes the PC lasts for a few minutes to a couple of days but it was bound to happen. It was actually doing that even when the PC was idle.

I was really zooming in on the problem and I just couldnt think of anything else but the memory & the MB as being the culprit here. I checked many forum posts in OCZ & MSI websites. I tried the Vista memory test 3 times, and in one time it gave me an error that there was a hardware problem. Memtest was not reporting any problems, but maybe I was not patient with its tests as they tend to go on for a very long time.

Finally only last week I tried lowering the tRAS to 20 (a memory timing in BIOS), and that seemed to be it!!! I'm currently running my PC non stop for the last 3 days...what a relief!

OK I'm not really an expert on memory timings and all that overclocking stuff nor did I claim to be one, I just did some research and here is what I did in case you have the same MSI board X48 Platinum and the OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600MHz. Please note that I'm still not able to run my memory at 1600MHz, only at 1333MHz.

1) I set my memory timings in BIOS to 7-7-7-20
2) FSB:DRAM Ratio to 1:2
3) FSB to 333MHz
4) I overclocked the CPU to 3.33 MHz (used 10 as a multiplier)
5) Vcore to 1.32
6) Memory voltage to 1.88
7) Northbridge voltage to 1.46

I hope the above can help someone with a similar issue.

And if there is anyone out there who can suggest a better solution I'm all ears, especially that I'm still not able to get the 1600MHz on my memory, but I'm still trying and will post an update if I find it.

'Battery-based crash'...!

2008-09-23T13:50:00.010+03:00

It happened to me a couple of times already, draining my laptop's battery to the max. Well it seems my Toshiba Satellite's battery is dying and the percentage reading in Windows is not accurate anymore, so I tend to keep on using it, even when it says that 0% remaining.

Anyway, on these 2 occasions when my Satellite abruptly shut down, problems occurred upon restart. After fully charging again and starting Windows, very strange things start to happen. Network is not working, system properties not showing; I couldn't get to Device Manager as a result, not able to install new drivers, and other abnormalities.

Anyway here is what I did to overcome this annoying problem, I restarted Windows (by the way my Satellite is still on XP SP2) in Safe mode, went into device manager, removed the wifi network adapter and the LAN network adapter, then I restarted in normal mode. XP started installing the drivers for the newly found network adapters, and things started working again.

Please note if a laptop battery-based crash ever happenned to you, network adapters might not be the same cause of the problem, but will never hurt to try out the above.

Tip 1: If you try ipconfig in cmd mode, it will not work, this will tell you its a network related problem.
Tip 2: You can try opening device manager from the run command, in case system properties was not appearing, by typing the following: devmgmt.msc

Remark: The term 'battery-based crash' is something I coined, so I'm not to blame if you use it in a scientific journal article :)

The Magic Winsock Fix...

2008-08-13T22:22:00.013+03:00

Here is a quick tip for those who are not familiar with this great tool, winsock fix. I can't tell you how helpful this small tool is in solving network and Internet problems in Windows. How many times have you faced this: You are able to connect to the network but still unable to browse the Internet? You make sure that your IP is correct, your DNS IP is correct, your Gateway IP is correct still nothing is happening in IE. What else can you do?

Just hours ago I was installing a new router in my home network, and I was switching between 2 wireless networks that I have running at the same time (for different subnets), when suddenly I couldn't open any website, verified that everything was OK, but still I was not able to browse the net. I tried another PC and it was working fine, so that eliminated the chance of a problem in my routers. Then it hit me to try the winsock fix, which can be downloaded from here:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html
It took one reboot and things went back to normal. Kudos to its developer.

Note: I was having the problem on my Laptop which is running XP SP2, and that download above is for XP.
Note2: The winsock fix might not always fix your problem, it might be something else which have near-similar symptoms like the ones I mentioned above. For example, check my post on the Cryptographic services problem.

Buffalo Wireless Adapter WLI-U2-KG125S & Vista 64-Bit

2008-08-11T00:25:00.021+03:00

Update Jan 23, 2009: It seems that the instructions below will also work on Windows 7, thanks to a comment by Jeff Miller.

A month ago I have put together my 3rd Desktop PC in my life span, and that was a very enriching experience for me, because it was more than 5 years ago that I assembled my last computer, and boy have things changed since then...Anyway I will tell you all about that in a different post.

So for that new PC I needed a wireless adapter, and since I'm fond with Buffalo products I didn't hesitate to buy the Buffalo WLI-U2-KG125S Wireless USB adapter. Supposedly it supports higher speed and better coverage. Sadly and to my surprise it refused to work on my Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit. OK, I know I said I wont use Vista but I'm forced to with my current hardware set. I'm still not happy but trying to live with it and trying to see the positives :)
So now what to do about that USB thing? I looked on Buffalo's website but didn't find a thing. There was a disk image saying it contained Vista drivers, but when I downloaded that image, the driver for my product was still the same as the driver that was on the stock CD that came along in the box.
Until I found this old thread:
http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?showtopic=19228
A user called Morgano posted a solution for his Belkin F5D7051 to work on XP 64-Bit, and then at the end of the thread there was a comment by a user called Steamy (who owns the WLI-U2-KG125S) to add this in the .inf file:
%BCM43GU_DeviceDesc% = RNDIS, USB\VID_0411&PID_00BC
And by the above he got that hacked (or modified!) driver by Morgano to work on his XP 64-Bit.
So I was very eager to try that on my Vista 64-Bit. I downloaded the driver from the thread, then modified the .inf file with the above statement, and finally I added one more line in the .inf to give my driver a meaningful name when its found:
BCM43GU_DeviceDesc = "Buffalo High-Speed Wireless G USB Network Adapter WLI-U2-KG125S"
I'm not sure about that name I just guessed it might look like the above, feel free to use any name you want.
I installed that driver, and bingo...it was found.
For convenience I have made all the above changes and made it ready for usage with the Buffalo USB device. Download it from my FTP site here.
Many thanks to Morgano and Steamy.

Note1: Just install it normally from Device Manager if its already there under 'Others' category, or when Vista starts to look for it, go through the procedure to search for the driver manually. If you receive a warning that the driver is not certified or verified, just accept. If you need help leave me a comment.

Note2: I have emailed Buffalo asking for a Vista 64-Bit driver, yet to hear from them. I'm still hoping their actual driver might be able to further tweak the USB device to work as advertised. If I ever receive anything from them I post it here. Update: These guys replied back saying that so far Vista 64-bit is not supported.

Cryptographic Services Problem...

2008-02-23T17:19:00.018+03:00

Now here's a common problem that seems to be floating around, at least around me :) Its about the "Cryptographic Services" in Windows XP. That service "Provides three management services: Catalog Database Service, which confirms the signatures of Windows files; Protected Root Service, which adds and removes Trusted Root Certification Authority certificates from this computer; and Key Service, which helps enroll this computer for certificates. If this service is stopped, these management services will not function properly. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start." from theeldergeek.com

So if you were having some of these symptoms: not able to open SSL (https) secured websites, not being able to open Windows Live Messenger, not being able to install IE7, etc. Then I have the solution for you.
You will hear people telling you to stop Windows Firewall or ZA (Zone Alarm), you will hear people telling you to start the "Cryptographic Services" (well it is started, right? :) ), they will tell you install AVG or spybot (free and nice software)....but lo and behold that will not solve it! The service is already started, I tried restarting, it didn't help. I ran spybot, deleted all adware and malicious files, still the same. And I also tried stopping all firewalls, nothing!

Just try these in the same order:
1) Run the winsock fix, you might have a broken TCP stack due to these adware files. You can download this file from: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html
2) Follow the steps given in that technote: http://www.the-pc-guru.com/Cryptographic_Service_erro.php
3) And finally if all of the above fails, try everything else in this nice article: http://www.duxcw.com/faq/win/xp/secure.htm

I Hope these steps will solve your problem...it sure is a very annoying one.

Transcend USB flash memory...a thing to avoid!

2007-11-07T01:24:00.004+03:00

A few months ago I needed a new USB Flash Memory with a bigger size. My current SanDisk 1GB is no longer enough for me (that thing went through some rough times of hardcore usage for almost 2 years and still ticking). After some look through a few retail shops, I chose the Transcend JetFlash 185 4GB USB flash memory. It came in a nice box and it looked cool with a silver and reflective design (an alloy zinc body). But that's as far as the beauty goes.

I think I made the mistake of choosing based on looks (and not doing enough reasearch). That USB was more expensive than others on display, and it was branded. Transcend! Supposedly a well known manufacturer in that field. WRONG! Less than 4 months after I purchased it, it died on me. Ok I'm not the type of guy who would follow the 'remove you hardware safely' icon in Windows, but I can assure you that my SanDisk USB went through the same exercise and is still alive. Also during the last 4 months I was still relying on my SanDisk for the day to day file sharing activities at work, so I didn't use the Transcend USB flash memory much.

I looked on the web for a fix, and guess what I saw (or read), many people with the same problem, and many of them with Transcend. I found a funny comment by one person suggesting to go for branded material next time the you go on a spree!!

Ok here is the whole story for people who might have the same issue:

Windows XP recognizes the USB memory and assigns the drive letter correctly.

When I double click the drive, I get this error: "Please insert disk..." If I try to format nothing happens .

Downloaded a file off of Transcend's website to do some low level formatting, didn't work as the utility itself failed giving an error as it attempted to connect my USB (the utility is specifically for my JF 185).

Contacted Transcend's support, they suggested I do the above, which I already did before. Finally someone else writes back telling me that it should be replaced. But they don't have a support center where I live. They suggested I find a close retailer who might charge me or even worse, might not deal with me because I didn't buy from him originally!!!

That's my story, well I can tell you that now I'm going back to SanDisk...proven to work!
Ironically, Transcend say that they offer 'Lifetime warranty' on USB flash memory. How convenient!
Note: If you think I should go back to the store where I picked it up originally, then it won't work either. At the time the store said that it was under warranty for 6 months. But I thought who cares about that warranty, because I know that these things should last easily far longer than 6 months. And I also lost the receipt :) But still I feel that Transcend should do something about it by at least offering to replace mine themselves!

Run Leopard on your PC!

2007-11-04T23:50:00.001+03:00

If you haven't found out already, the most recent version of the MacOS, Leopard, is all over the internet. I'm not really a Mac fan, but what is interesting about this is that quickly upon release, the Leopard version was hacked to work on Windows PCs and laptops. Here is a link to the best tutorial I found on the net to help you do that:

http://www.digitmemo.com/articles/658/howto-the-complete-mac-leopard-installation-and-windows-multi-boot-setup-guide

I have actually tried that, and I can say that its working. Please note that I did that for fun, curiosity and expirement. I love my XP :)

Important thing to watch for:

Make a backup of you data, and be very clear on what you are going to do and be doing. Failure to do so might have drastic effects.

I suggest you use an external drive, or use a second hard drive if you own a PC, or create a 'Primary' partition like I did. I made a mistake at one point and I lost my partition, then I had to go through a whole lot of trouble to retrieve my data (Ok I though I was invicible, but there you go...)

The process is very lengthy, I suggest you watch a DVD as you are going through!

My Laptop specs for reference:
Toshiba Satellite M100, 2.0GHz Centrino Duo with 2GB RAM and 100GB HDD

Note: Work at your own risk!

Note2: The writer of the article at digitmemo.com did a great job in simplifying the process based on his expirement and experience, but you have to give credit to the actual developer, BrazilMAC. Please visit his official thread: http://forum.osx86scene.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2008
Note3: If you want to know more on why BrazilMAC did that, see this article:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/why_run_leopard.html

Note4: I don't condone piracy, but as I said the whole procedure is experimental. Also I don't think the installation is really useful. Leopard will not recognize all your hardware. In my case, I'm not able to browse the net as my wireless network adaptor is not recognized.

Harmony 890 and X10 Light Control

2007-10-19T01:39:00.001+03:00

Last month and after a long research I decided to buy the Logitech Harmony 890 universal remote. Let me tell you, that device is a dream. Its more than what I expected in a universal remote and an idea well executed. So as I said I had to research and I had to choose from a couple of other choices, but I decided to go with the Logitech remote for the huge database of devices that can be mapped instantly to the remote and its excellent value for money.

In brief, the remote can control anything in your home that can accept IR signals, it can even work through rooms and walls by using the included RF Extender, a US$100 device that comes bundled in the 890 package for free. I believe the 890 model is the first in the Logitech line of universal remotes that support RF, but I guess it works only with the RF extender so that in return the RF extender will transform that signal into IR that a device can understand.

The fun though doesn't come for granted. You have to use the Harmony software (which is the only pain really, the software is web based!!!) to do lots of first time configuring. This is true if you are like me, with lots of devices to control. Once you get every device in (you will be amazed how easily the Harmony remote will identify your device if you give it the right model number), then only your imagination will stop you for finding tens of ways to control your devices in a very different way.

The Harmony remote support 'Activities', which can be a collection of signals sent to different devices to start a single event. For example, watching a DVD, will imply that you have to switch on your TV, switch on your DVD player, switch on your Home Theater or sound system, change to the DVD channel on your TV, press play on the DVD player and even turn off the lights!!! Yes that's right, lights! And that is the purpose of my tip today.

Just to tell you that the Harmony 890 remote, is shaped like a normal remote with a nice color LCD screen. It has numerous hard buttons that you can program to control any device in any way, you can also add soft buttons which are accessible through the LCD screen. In Activity Mode the Harmony remote can actually be controlling multiple devices without having to switch between devices. For example, while watching a DVD, I have designated some of the hard buttons on the remote to control some elements of the DVD player, another set of hard buttons to control the TV, and another set to control the sound system, and you can do the same for soft buttons if you run out of hard buttons (you can give the soft buttons nice labels as well). I believe that that is an amazing feature.

OK, where is the tip? The tip is really about controlling your X10 electrical lights and appliances through the Harmony remote. X10 is a protocol used to control lights and electrical appliances wirelessly. I will not go deep into that subject you can easily Google for it. Over the last few months though I was slowly buying X10 lamp modules (for controlling incandescent lights in my living room and my dining) and appliance module just to make sure that things are working nicely. Now I was dreaming of being able to control my lights via the Harmony remote. To my surprise I wasn't able to do so. X10 works by using a transceiver module that receives only RF signals on frequency 433 MHz from specific remotes that use the same frequency (Harmony remote works on a different frequency). So when I tried to use the 890 on the X10 transceiver module, nothing happened and I was very disappointed (see above why RF is there in the Harmony remote). The transceiver module I'm using is from Marmitek and the model is TM13. After days of research I decided to give it one more shot, and so I looked up a device called IRRF7243 from Marmitek as well. That device connects to an electrical socket and can be used to control all your X10 devices. Another nice feature in there is that it accepts IR signals. I ordered the IRRF7243, and in the socket it went. I pressed the 'All lights on' soft button on my Harmony 890 (I was able to find a nice X10 remote in the Logitech database, so I didn't need to do any programming), and there goes, all the lights were on!!!! It actually worked. I was so happy as I felt that my Harmony is now a real monster. Its a strange feeling that with a single button I was able to turn all lights off, and on, or only 1 of them, or 2 or 3...anyway I like, and from my universal remote! So now, 'watch a DVD' activity can really turn off the lights and be ready to set the mood for you.

If you need any help in the Harmony remote or the X10 stuff, drop me a comment I will be happy to help.
Nice website for the Harmony remote:
http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/mboard/rc-harmony/list.cgi

Getting the most of your Buffalo Wireless-N router and adapter!

2007-09-18T21:25:00.001+03:00

Here is a quick tip for you if you are a proud owner of the Buffalo Nfiniti Wireless-N router and notebook adapter card.

A couple of months ago I purchased the Nfiniti Wireless-N router that supports the Draft-N standard of wireless communication, which is supposedly faster with better coverage. Even though the standard is not final yet (the router as of this post supports v1.0 of the standard), I decided to try it because I read an article somewhere on the web saying that the final release of the standard will not affect the current devices on the market because a simple firmware update will enable your device to be fully compliant with the final N standard.

And to complete the acquisition, I also purchased the Wireless-N notebook adapter to benefit of the new speed and the new enhanced coverage. (I also own a 3Com OfficeConnect wireless router which I'm very happy with. Good coverage and bandwidth.)

Marketed at having a speed up to 270 Mbps, I figured that it will not be the full truth, but getting half of that is good enough for me. So I setup the router by connecting it to my main 3Com router, and disabled the wireless radio on the latter. Installation was easy and straight forward. Come the test time, I inserted the card bus adapter in the proper slot on my laptop and installed its software.

Here is the tip, you have to upgrade to the latest update of the notebook adapter, because I felt that the driver that comes with the packaged CD is not working properly. Unfortunately I believe that there is something wrong and a mix up on the Buffalo website as the driver for the adapter is not easily found. After searching through the different regions of the Buffalo website, I found out that the best to use is 'Australia' and then download the driver from there. The item code for the adapter is WLI-CB-G300N and the driver version should be 4.80.17.0 Here is the link: http://www.buffalo-asia.com/cgi-bin/support/download.cgi?country=ar&id=127

Of course you should do the same for the router itself as the latest version for that as the time of this post is 1.46 and the item code is WZR-G300N

Honestly I think Buffalo did a good job with this adapter and router, I'm getting a decent speed ranging from 162 - 243 Mbps (I sometimes hit the max as well with 270 Mbps). And that is more than what I though would be possible. If you notice speed issues, drops or instability, try changing the channel of the wireless router. At the moment I have it on 'Auto'. Please make sure your in an area where you have a good signal, becuase when the signal strength is not high the speed will drop accordingly. On the signal strength and coverage side I didn't notice a big difference from my existing 3Com router (I think it should have been better). But speed is what I really care for, so I'm satisfied.

Note: I did a small test by copying a file over to my laptop from my Terastation NAS, a 70MB file over the new adaptor with speed stable at 243 Mbps, it took 25 seconds. This is a fantastic result as I have to copy large files over my WLAN.

TeraStation HS Emergency Mode problem!

2007-08-13T01:05:00.001+03:00

The TeraStation Home Server (HS) from Buffalo is a fantastic NAS solution that is really cheap and affordable. It comes with PCast a media server that can work with most media players out there (I own the Pinnacle Showcenter 200 and its working magically), can be used as a print server and is a RAID storage that will help protect your precious data. I own the 1TB edition and for its price of US$ 600 I couldn't ask for more.

One real and serious issue that I constantly face with this device is that it is really sensitive. You have to be very careful how you work with it otherwise it will give you a tough time. I now have more than 300GB of family data (home videos and pictures) stored on my TS and that makes every problem seems costly enough for me (I have it already on RAID5, and I have attached to it via USB another external 250GB Maxtor drive for backups). Luckily for me I always end up on top and I manage to breath a big sigh of relief at the end.

One of the most common problems and the scariest that I faced with it, is when the device go into Emergency Mode or EM. When I first faced that problem I didn't know about EM and I thought that my device was bricked! By the way I also updated (flashed) my TS to the telnet enabled firmware (I have version 2.11) which can be found at this great site, Buffalo Extras: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/itimpi/buffalo.htm, the site is run by a dedicated user, itimpi, who has developed the telnet hack. Being able to telnet into the Linux based TeraStation is an important thing as it will help you diagnose problems or do stuff at the Linux level for faster performance, such as moving a directory from one location to another, it takes a second via Linux whereas using it through a Windows share will take forever. Another good point is the fact that I got to learn Linux :)

Anyway here is what you do when you have these symptoms: You can ping the TS, you can't enter into the web admin, you can't open any share in Windows, you can't telnet (if you have the modified firmware), all the lights on the front are green and switching it on/off has no effect whatsoever. So basically you can't do anything except pinging, which is a good sign, eh?:) Oh yea, also when you try to run the client utility it will be able to find the TeraStation named as 'HD-HTGL-EM', notice the EM at the end, it is for Emergency Mode!

Of course obviously the only solution that pops up at this moment is to try and reflash the TS. But wait a second, every time I try to run the firmware update utility I got an error message that it failed (I tried several firmware versions, stock and modified). Only when I tried the original firmware 2.03 (you can find stock or original firmwares in here: http://downloads.linkstationwiki.net/TS_PPC/StockFirmware/), that something began to happen, a progress bar would appear and complete then another one and so on. Don't ask me what was happening because this firmware update is fully in Japanese, but I was able to guess the right buttons to press to proceed with the update. Just to note that my laptop at that stage was connected to the same router which the TS is also connected to. Anyway, the update finished but the TS stayed the in the same state.

Then I tried a different approach:

Downloaded and unziped the modified firmware 2.11 from Buffalo Extras (URL above)

Made sure I had my laptop on external power (you don't want to risk running out of power while flashing, it might have disastrous consequences)

Disabled my firewall

Connected my laptop directly to the TS HS via a network cable

Pressed the 'Init' button at the back of the TS so that it resets the IP to its default 192.168.11.150 (otherwise if that is the actual IP you can skip this step)

Assigned manually my laptop's IP to something like 192.168.11.111

Ran the file 'NASUpdater_English.exe' from the unzipped downloaded firmware

Clicked on 'Firmware Update'

Waited for around 10 minutes

Success!

Note that if you had a power failure early on that led to EM problem the TS will go into scanning mode after it starts as it scans all the drives for errors, and that can take up to 12 hours. During this time though you can work normally with the TS and access the shares. Although copying might be slow.
I read many posts about people having to open their TS, getting out the hard drives, connecting each hard drive separately to a Linux machine and having to delete the system files and so on. I started actually to open the TS but stopped short of removing the drives. I faced this problem 2 times already and on the first time, I was connected directly to the TS with a network cable and flashed the original firmware and it worked. But on the second time I completely forgot that I faced the same problem before (there was a 3 months time period between the 2 incidents) and I didn't connect to the TS directly so all firmware versions were failing to update except for the original firmware which was at least attempting to do something and not giving out an error message like the others. Thats what prompted me to think that I shouldn't really take out the drives, and that there should be a simpler workaround.
One last thing, the first time I faced the problem I switched it off from the main electrical switch in the wall outlet by mistake, so its sort of an abrupt electrical failure and the second time I was trying to turn it on from the button on the front of the TeraStation (after I switched it off in the right way) but my finger slipped as I was pressing the button so it turned on and off quickly for a split second, and that was it. When I pressed firmly on the button the second time it was in EM! Srange though!
If you have a similar problem please give the above a chance before attempting drastic steps, it might just click! If not then by all means...
For a good resource on the Terastation and its brothers please visit the TeraStation wiki: http://www.terastation.org/wiki/Main_Page

fmsxDS 0.08

2007-08-11T12:11:00.004+03:00

This post has been updated. Click here!

Today I will write about one of my favorite computers or games machine of the mid eighties, the MSX. As an owner of the Nintedo DS (NDS, the original not the Lite), I found out last year that I was able to run emulation on that great small dual screen handheld game console. I saw there were efforts out there to emulate the MSX, and I was very excited about that prospect because more than 20 years after I first purchased my MSX machine I will be able to carry it with me in my pocket with almost all of its games (the image above, courtesy of http://www.homecomputer.de/, is of the exact Yamaha based MSX 1 that I bought in May 1985, I still have it and is still working!!!) Now how exciting is that for an old gamer like me. I owe it big time to the MSX as it was the machine that got me hooked up on computers and made me learn my first programming language with its Microsoft BASIC, a very nice language indeed at that time.

For the NDS to run these type of homebrew applications, you will need a device that will allow the NDS to accept that, in other words, to hack the NDS. I bought the M3 DS Simply (M3 DSS), which is the fastest and easiest way to run homebrew on the NDS, google for it to know more. My main reason behind the M3 is really the emulation and most specifically the MSX emulation, I don't condone the use of the M3 for other purposes.

I looked around for a proper emulator and I found 2 decent ones (maybe the only ones), PenkoDS and fmsxDS. PenkoDS 0.2a is a fine emulator but the sound emulation is still poor, performance wise it really delivers. I think it was developed by a french developer or team. I was excited about the fmsxDS though because it is supposed be a port of the famous fmsx emulator for the PC, atleast that is what the name suggests. Unfortunately I couldn't run any of its early versions on my M3 DSS and up to version 0.07. But I was very excited to know that there is a new version released a few days back by its Japanese developer (here is the news about that release on the best MSX website: http://www.msx.org/fmsxDS-0.08.newspost4378.html) after a very long time and more than a year after the last update. Many sites are saying that it is version 0.08, while I think it is actually version 0.08b (that's the name of the file you download!), so it is still in beta, and I believe its obvious because it still requires a lot of work. This is the URL of the new page for the emulator: http://www.imasy.or.jp/~ngs/fsw/wiki.cgi?page=fmsxDS

I got that version to work on my NDS and my M3 DSS at last. I was excited thinking this would perform just like its PC counterpart. But unfortunately my excitement didn't last long as I discovered that PenkoDS is still much better. In any case I will post here how I got it to work maybe you will have better luck in getting it to perform better. I noticed that all the resources around that emulator are in Japanese and very few posts here and there are in English that weren't very helpful for me in the past. Here goes:

Download the emulator. You will find the emulator in the link above

Unzip the downloaded file

Copy all the contents of the unzipped file to the root of your microSD card except for the .txt file

Copy the MSX bios roms to the root as well (MSX2.ROM might be enough). You can find bios roms in here: http://fms.komkon.org/fMSX/

Create a folder called 'ROMS' and copy in that any roms you may have. Here I noticed that if you put too many roms (don't ask me how many is too many!) in that directory fmsxDS will hang or crash! Also try and limit the file name lengths I know these roms tend to have long names

Start the emulator by starting the file fmsxDS.nds

If you have followed everything exactly as I wrote so far you should get a small menu on the bottom screen (or the touch screen) of your NDS in Japanese

Choose the 2nd item on the menu

Browse to the folder where you stored your roms, and select a game. WARNING: Use the d-pad and button A to select or button B to cancel. If you use the touch screen fmsxDS will crash, even with a simple single touch. Actually DON'T use the touch screen at all during any time in fmsxDS 0.08b because the emulator will crash or stop responding. Maybe that's why it is still in beta :)

After you select the game, the control will return to the menu. Choose the first item on the menu

Wait for a second then press button A

You should now see your game started, if not then fmsxDS is not able to execute it

During emulation press the Start button to get to the menu mode again

To change the loaded game, select the 2nd item on the menu and browse for a game like what is described above

Then choose the item before last on the menu and fmsxDS will restart with the newly selected game

Here is my own translation of the menu items:

Item #1: Start emulation

Item #2: Load cartridge 1

Item #3: Load cartridge 2

Item #4: Load disk 1

Item #5: Load disk 2

Item #6: Load cassette

Item #7: Options (see below)

Item #8: Save State. First item in the sub menu will exit that menu. Then the next 3 items will save state 1, 2 or 3. Next and last 3 items will load state 1,2 or 3.

Item #9: Hard reset (not sure)

Item #10: Soft reset (not sure)

Note: the last 2 items are only visible while you are in game emulation mode
For the options menu:

Item #1: Back to previous menu

Item #2: Opens up the clipping menu. Also inside you can select pre-configured screen clippings or sizes, or the last item will allow you to set the screen to your desire

Item #3: Opens up the control menu. You select whether you want to control Keyboard, Joystick 1 or Joystick 2

I hope the above can get you started to use the emulator, although with my testing so far I found out that many games are not working with fmsxDS while they work in PenkoDS. Also performance and sound are not much different than PenkoDS (maybe even PenkoDS is better). So no real advantage so far. But it is really a good welcome that the developer has found sometime to work on a new version of fmsxDS, hoping the actual release will remove some bugs such as the crashing touch keyboard.

Good bye Vista...waiting for Windows 'Vienna'

2007-08-10T11:28:00.001+03:00

And after almost 35 days I decided to completely remove Vista and go back to my beloved Windows XP SP2. One big mistake that I should have avoided is that I didn't take a backup or an image of my previous XP installation because once you install Vista, there is no way back at all. Nevertheless I just went ahead with a complete format and install (I had to use the Toshiba recovery CD), and the next step was to install all the applications all over again.

Yes, for me it was worth all the effort. Even though I actually bought this OEM Vista Home Premium Edition, I wasn't reluctant.

Don't get me wrong, Vista is a great new OS, but the slow adoption by Hardware and Software vendors is very annoying. Many drivers for the different hardware components that I own were not fully updated for Vista and I had several crashes. Although as time is going by I feel that within this year many drivers and applications would be updated for Vista.

A nice new feature in Vista which I liked was its Aero technology. The new look and feel is a great and welcome addition. But really on the ease of use and intuitiveness, many other things were annoying. For example, I like to look at my network status from time to time, so in XP I just double click on my network icon in the tray and there I have my status. In Vista that's not the case! I have to do several clicks to reach that same status dialog. If anyone knows a shorter way please let me know. Another thing is the display properties. A simple right click on the desktop and then 'Properties' in XP, would get you to your destination. In Vista you would get a big new window with many choices, rather confusing for a beginner. Generallu you feel that many things that you usually will access in XP by a click or 2, in Vista you need atleast 2 and more!!

On the performance side, I felt there was some annoying things as well. For example, when I double click on 'my computer' sometimes I have to wait for 1 or 2 minutes to get the drives to display, you will see a progress bar on the top, and it sometimes move very slowly. And when I try to delete some files, I now feel it takes longer to do that! I think Vista is wasting time trying to render the new delete dialog!

I gave Vista a shot and I guess I'm still not ready for it. I don't see any real reason for me to adopt it right now. I think it will be a couple more years before people really change their XPs or maybe even their Windows 2000! Maybe then we will have the new Windows 'Vienna' out or as the new code name goes, Windows 7.

The greatest camcorder around!

2007-07-29T20:56:00.002+03:00

For a change I will be writing a review of my lovely new Sony HDR-SR7 Hard disk & Full HD camcorder. You will have to excuse me if you feel that I'm biased but I have no choice :)

What prompted me to write this review is the fact that I don't see many reviews around that cam and all I see are previews. Quick Update: I think right now more and more reviews are showing up on the web.

Inside the box

When I first got the box I opened it eagerly to quickly reach out and remove this stylish looking camcorder. The black glossy finish on the right side and on the top of the camera adds real style and gives it an expensive and sophisticated look. Also in the box you will get 2 CDs (1 will show you a movie about how to take good videos and the other contain all the software, drivers and documentation), a docking station, a small manual, a universal AC adaptor (100V-240V), AV cable, a component cable and a small remote control. OK there are 2 problems here: NO MINI HDMI CABLE! Yes it uses a mini HDMI cable which is already a cable that is not found in abundance and whats worse you have to buy that! For a camcorder that is almost $1200 I feel it was rather very stingy from Sony not to wrap this in the box. I had to buy this for around $25 (a 5 feet or 1.5m cable that is originaly priced at $50). The second problem is the fact that it lacks a printed full manual. Again relying on the PDF file on the CD to deliver the manual. I like to read my manuals while in bed or on the couch, this is really cheap from Sony that I had to print my own manual!

First look

The camcorder uses the famous Carl Zeiss lens which gives you up to 20x digital zoom (10x optical zoom) and a very clear picture quality. I have gotten used to that lens as I was also a proud owner of the bulky DSC-F707 digital 5 mega pixel camera from Sony. The SR7 is equipped with an LCD screen which is 2.7 inch (16:9 format) in width. There isn't a lot of buttons on the SR7 which i think is another unfortunate thing. It seems that you have to use the touch LCD screen for most of the settings. I felt that to be a not-so-user-friendly approach because you have to use both of your hands to operate it (one hand to hold the cam and another to operate the touch screen), also given the fact that the LCD is actually on the left you have to use your left hand for the touch, which is surely tiresome for me as I'm a right handed person, but after a while you will get used to it (nothing against left handed people, really :) As normal you can attach the strap to the right of the camera and I think it looks neat and can be resized easily to fit any hand comfortably. The dock which comes with the SR7 is a new thing for me as I'm not used to have that with a camcorder (a mobile phone or a PDA maybe :), its a good idea to solve the issues of connecting too many cables to the cam, but get this, its the only way to connect your SR7 with your computer!! Yep there is no USB port on the cam itself which is ABSOLUTELY annoying. What will really annoy you is the fact that all possible cables that can be connected to the SR7 are there on the dock and on the cam itself EXCEPT for the USB port (OK there is also a Disc Burn button on the dock which is not there on the cam, but how important is that?!). If I think about it, it seems that Sony gave the place of the USB port to the the actual port under the SR7 where you connect it to the dock.

There is a nice view finder which works in color also in 16:9 format. The new SD1 from Panasonic by the way doesn't have a view finder, which means its really a plus on the SR7. The view finder can be moved vertically around 45 degrees. The SR7 weighs a little over 500g with the battery. Which is ideal and feels right in the hand, nice ergonomics I guess :)

Test drive

And now for the actual specs. Let me look first at the video performance. The SR7 utilizes a 3.2-mega pixel ClearVid CMOS sensor from Sony which is capable of recording video at 2.3 mega pixel for HD quality and 1.7 mega pixel for SD quality (1080 lines of resolution - HD Mode or 530 lines of horizontal resolution - SD Mode). Now here is another trick from Sony which I feel is deceiving. Sony has their Full HD gold logo on the SR7 in all its glory. So what, you say? Well according to Sony that is supposed to mean 1920x1080 resolution or in other words 1080p resolution. But its not, the actual sampling will take place at 1440x1080 or 1080i. I remember during (and still ongoing) console war with Microsoft, the PS3 vs Xbox 360, Sony at the time claimed that the Xbox 360 is not a true HD experience as it is only capable of producing a resolution of 1080i and not 1080p. Then after a few months Microsoft responded by releasing a new downloadable update to its console which raised the resolution to a true 1080p experience and thus took a swipe back at Sony. The morale of the story is that Sony thinks that 1080p is the true full HD experience, while this camcorder is not!

Anyway after taking a video outdoors in a clear day under the sun, I took that video home and watched it on my nice 40inch Sony LCD Bravia X series connected via the mini HDMI cable and I was stunned. The movie was so crisp, clear and detailed, the subjects in the movie appear so defined as if they can be easily removed from the scene (if I was using Photoshop, it felt like I have the edges so finely defined that I can cut out the subject with ease). I remembered then the movies that they play in Sony showrooms when they demo those big HD LCDs. Now I do have actually a movie of that quality to show on my LCD. Amazing movie quality. Not to mention the colors, as the SR7 uses the new Sony "x.v.Color™ Technology which can capture or display nearly twice as many (1.8x) viewable colors than currently possible. This provides a more accurate and vivid color range, for a more natural, lifelike overall experience."

One problem now is that these movies can only be played in that HD quality via the SR7, a computer or a PS3. Or if you are lucky and have a Bluray disc burner and player then you can use it as well. Another tricky issue is that the video compression that is used in SR7 is the AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) codec which is created by Sony and Panasonic. The AVCHD is based on the H.264 MPEG4 standards. That codec gives great compression on the SR7 for HD quality movies. At the moment more and more video editing software are incorporating that codec into their software, nevertheless with lack of media players around, I find it still difficult to keep the video in that format. I'm transforming to MPEG2 for now and keeping the originals safe. I own the Pinnacle ShowCenter 200, but unfortunately that doesn't support H.264 movies. Not even with a firmware update as it require changing the chipset on that thing. I think D-Link are coming out with a media player capable of playing AVCHD.

The SR7 can record audio at 5.1 channel Dolby Digital quality with the built in mic on the SR7.

Picture quality is fair in still picture mode, I don't think its really getting to 6.1 mega pixels as advertised though (I guess it is 4.6 mega pixels). This is one image on the right that I took in day light. Click here for the full unaltered image. One strange thing is that you can only take 3 pictures (stored on the HDD) if you try to do that while shooting a video scene. Why only 3? I would love to know :)

There is a nice super steady shot feature for camera shakes which I personally believe that it performs better than the Panasonic technology. Removes blurring and works on still pictures as well. Although I still feel that in low light condition it doesnt perform well. Which I think is still normal.

There are scene modes to help you set the SR7 quickly into a specific mode for best results and there is always my favourite setting, Auto :) Also there is a button on the camcorder it self labelled 'EASY' which will turn off all extra settings and make it simple for inexperienced users.

One cool feature is its ability to record short movies at high FPS to later watch them in slow motion for analysis. I tried it and its lots of fun. Here is what it says in the specs sheet about that: "Smooth Slow Record: By increasing the record rate from 60 fields per second (fps) to 240 fps for 3 seconds allowing you to capture 3 seconds of fast motion and play the video back in 12 seconds. This is great for analyzing a golf swing or a viewing a bird in flight. In addition, record an audio track to narrate what is being seen in the video."

Generally I noticed that this camcorder works very well outdoors, and try its best indoors. While I think it could have been better, I believe others don't get close. I have an older JVC and when I tried to compare it with my new SR7 indoors with low light condition the JVC was appalling!

One huge feature which I dearly like about this HD camcorder is its built in internal hard disk. Kiss those writable DVDs (which I really hated) and the DV tapes good bye. The SR7 comes with a 60GB HDD that is capable of recording 22 hours of HD video (High Definition: XP = up to 8 hours HQ = up to 14 hours, SP = up to 17 hours, LP = up to 22 hours Standard Definition: HQ = up to 14 hours, SP = up to 21 hours, LP = up to 41 hours). There is another model with similar features SR8, but it comes with 100GB HDD for greater recording times. Also there is the CX7 which only records video on Memory Stick Pro Duo sticks. This is supposed to be lighter and smaller. But you have to live with 8GB of memory at a time as this is the largest Memory Stick around till now, although Sony are promising to release bigger ones soon.

Battery life with the included battery (InfoLITHIUM® battery with AccuPower™ Meter System (NP-FH60)) is not bad, you can get up to 1 hour of recording time if you close the LCD screen. I actually also bought the FH70 though I feel I should have gone with the FH100. But the nice thing about the FH70 is that it is similar in size and weight to the FH60 and give almost 3 times the performance.

The included software is nice, you can use it to import videos and transform them to MPEG2, although frankly I'm not using it at all (beware no support for Mac). I'm a Ulead Video Studio fan for a very long time so I do all my work from there. I also just open the picture folder directly on the SR7 to access my images and so on. I can tell you though that it doesn't include a video editor. Yep you pay a high amount and they don't treat you to the Sony Vegas video editor (which is capable of handling AVCHD by the way).

I believe you should also buy a decent bag for the SR7 to protect it from damage and dust. I recommend the Sony LCS-VAC, its quite small and fits the SR7 in a vertical position and can also maybe fit another spare battery and few memory sticks, but thats about it. It also comes with a belt strap in addition to the resizable shoulder strap. If you feel that is small opt for the bigger LCS-VA30.

Overall

The SR7 is one great technological advancement that is really captivating with breath taking movie quality. Great colors and great detail makes it a real winner. I had to research for over a month for all possible choices and I decided on that one. Just to be fair my next choice would have been the Panasonic SD1, although its around $400 less (on amazon) you can get a decent feature set with great movie quality as well (I tested it personally). But I didn't like the fact the it lacks the view finder. Also I learnt that Panasonic will soon release the SD2 so I opted out.

Go for the Sony if you are a computer geek like me who prefers to use a PC for his video editing, otherwise it might be difficult and you should stick with the DV option.

Eventually I feel like I have really a professional camera made for the consumer :)

Note: quoted paragraphs were taken from the Sony Style SR7 feature list.

Note2: I purchased everything from Amazon...peace of mind.

Cursor weird movement? Not at all...

2007-07-19T10:17:00.001+03:00

I have always suffered from that awkward movement of my cursor while typing on my laptop keyboard. I would be completing a sentence and suddenly the cursor would move or jump to the middle of that sentence, and before I realize it that whole paragraph looks a mess.

I looked around for a solution, and everyone is talking about a virus. That was not my case, but I went ahead with a virus scan and searched for any spyware or trojan, even rootkits. Everything was clean. I had my doubts really from the beginning. Anyways I fooled around with my touch pad properties and there I found one interesting option which did the trick.
OK I own a Toshiba Satellite M100, but I'm sure that what I'm about to show you can also work on other Toshiba models or other laptops if you just search for a similar option.

Right click on the touch pad icon in the tray (or you can access that from the control panel)

Choose 'Control Panel' from the shortcut menu

Go to the last tab 'Advanced' then click on 'Advanced feature settings...'

Under 'Pointer speed and tapping settings' click on 'Settings...'

Under 'Tapping' click on 'Tapping settings...'

Then under 'Operations during key input' click on 'Disable tapping during key input' to enable it (hopefully it is not already enabled)

Next to it there is a slider which control for how long you want to disable tapping. You can experiment with that, but I kept it in the middle and it is fine

Finally click 'OK' 4 times to activate it

Save desktop state

2007-07-05T03:01:00.001+03:00

How many times did you have to reorganize your desktop shortcut icons after they are suddenly shuffled because of a resolution change, or because you had to connect your laptop to a projector, or simply because your child is playing around on your PC? I have had (all) that happening to me on several occasions and it is pretty annoying.

Thankfully there is a neat little utility (written in Visual Basic) which I found on PC World website that will remember your last good icon organization. Best part of it, is that it is a freeware.

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,22891-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html

I tried it and it works a treat. You might want to press 'Restore Icons' a couple of times to get it right.

Strangely though, on the author's page he doesn't say that it is a freeware. Nevertheless, from the screenshot in there, it seems that there should be a 'Register Program' menu item which is not there in the PC World download. Also the program size seems to be different.

Giveaway of the day

2007-07-04T23:23:00.001+03:00

I came across this neat website where it actually offers fully commercial software products for free! Yes for free...

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

The site is called 'Giveaway of the Day' and it actually gives away legal software. Here is an excerpt from their about page:

"Basically, every day we nominate one software title that will be a Giveaway title of that day. The software will be available for download for 24 hours (or more, if agreed by software publisher) and that software will be absolutely free. That means - not a trial, not a limited version - but a registered and legal version of the software will be free for our visitors*."

I also later noticed that there is a deal where I can get my blog on their website if I talk about their website. However, I thought about writing about them before I even took note of that offer. Anyway, I didn't register for that offer. But I might later :)

Vista icon size

2007-07-03T22:17:00.001+03:00

Annoying isn't it? After you have just finished installing Vista, or starting Vista, you will be presented with these weirdly-large desktop icons. I was looking for a way to change that. Within a second I managed to find a simple way to work around this issue.

Right click on an empty spot on your desktop
From the resulting shortcut menu choose 'View'
Select either: Classic Icons , Medium Icons, or Large Icons

Frankly, this was not very satisfying, so I made a search and found many tips talking about this (make sure the desktop has the focus, just click anywhere on the desktop before starting this process):

Press & hold 'Ctrl' on the keyboard
Scroll with the mouse wheel up or down to get the desired size

That was better, actually much better. You can have variety of sizes and one for sure will suit you.
But what if you don't have a mouse wheel? Better yet, what if you use the touchpad or those IBM (Lenovo) laptops with the stick? Simple: Buy a new mouse with a wheel :) Joking aside, the closest I could find is to do this:

Right click on an empty spot on your desktop
Choose 'Personalize'
Choose the first item on the list 'Windows Color and Appearance'
Choose the last link 'Open classic appearance properties for more color options'
You will get the Windows XP sort of dialog. Click on 'Advanced'
Under 'Item' choose 'Icon'
Set the size to your liking. Range from 16-72
Click on 'OK' & 'OK' again for the second dialog

If you like to tweak around the registry (like I do), then that can be set under that key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Using the first method it will instantly update the icon size on your desktop and you will see the changes, while working through the registry I couldn't get it to refresh without logging off first. I tried F5 on the desktop and choosing 'Refresh' from the shortcut menu on the desktop, but it had no effect. Note that changing the icons with the registry key manually will also reflect on the Windows XP dialog and vice-versa.
An interesting observation is that the mouse wheel trick and the above don't seem to be linked. Because you can actually go beyond the normal range of 16-72 with the mouse wheel. Also it was not changing the registry key while changing the icon size with the mouse wheel. So it must be using another key or another method. I will be glad to know if someone out there have an idea. I will continue looking myself and will post any updates.

Rapidshare download limit

2007-07-02T22:16:00.001+03:00

If you use rapidshare you will notice that they impose a 5GB download limit. People with fast connection speeds will surely consider this minimal, but then what are they downloading? ;)
Anyway since this might be a little in-adequate, you dont want to lose valuable download limits unnecessarily. But that is whats happenning when you use a download manager such as 'FlashGet'. I had to invistigate my friends issue and I discovered that whatever he is actually downloading, it is being logged in Rapidshare at almost 3 times the size of the actual download. I emailed Rapidshare and they confirmed that they are having issues with download managers, and thet they are coming out with their own download manager soon (you better watch their news page). My friend was using FlashGet and in there I couldn't find a way to really configure the way it downloads. The fact that FlashGet is attempting to connect several times to the download server is causing Rapidshare to record that as multiple downloads and hence doubling or tripling MBs downloaded. I tried several others and found out that Free Download Manager, FDM: http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/ can actually work with no issues. Here is how to set it up (version 2.1):

Go to Options>Traffic usage mode...

Choose one: Light mode, Medium mode or Heavy mode

Typically you will choose 'Light mode' which is like optimized for Rapidshare already

Shortcut icons already exist on the toolbar. 3 adjacent icons represents the modes above, with the icon with 1 red arrow on it represeting the 'Light mode'

What I'm essentially doing with the above is that I'm limiting FDM to do one connection with the download server. You can actually further customize the modes if you go to Options>Download Options then choosing the 'Network' tab. You might want to expirement.
I honestly believe that FDM is a great download manager and can match FlashGet feature by feature, and it is absolutely free. Check it out!
Note: Rapidshare seems to have changed the way they limit registered users as they check on the last 5 days of activity and it shouldn't be more than 25GB

Forcing refresh of web pages!

2007-07-01T22:34:00.001+03:00

This is a neat little tip that I learnt recently! OK I admit it might not be new to all, but it was a great tip for me.

For years whenever I had to edit my webpage or edit my blog I sometimes stumble upon the fact that I cannot see the changes I make immediately in my browser. From the several reasons I got from people were: check with your ISP he is probably caching the pages using a proxy, or add a HTML meta tag to force the browser to always download the page and not to resort to cache, or wait for a few minutes and try again, or delete the history, or delete the temporary internet files, or WHATEVER!
A very nice and quick solution is to press:
Ctrl + F5
Of course as most of you would know, F5 is to refresh the page, but it wont always show the recent changes for several factors. The above though will force IE to download the page again from the server. In any case, that neat simple keyboard click is something that is within my reach, and I don't have to rely on an ISP or a meta tag.

My O2 Atom and its battery

2007-06-30T23:08:00.001+03:00

My O2 Atom is one of the best Windows Mobile phones I have ever owned/used. One thing I hated for sure in that PDA is its battery life. If I can pass the day with one single charge it will be a miracle. I was never able to match the times mentioned in its specs. I wonder where do they come up with these times?

However I'm not really interested in keeping this PDA phone any longer because I just want to use it for a couple of months more until the highly anticipated model I'm waiting for is out (will talk about that in another post soon!). Anyway, checking the price tag on the battery, it was almost US$80 for the original one. That was surely 'out of scope' for me. It will not really justify paying that amount for 2 months more (then after that I will just hand it over to my child for his pleasure), so I tried that stunt of putting the Lithium battery into the freezer. I heard that from one of my relatives a while back and I thought whats to lose, its already almost dead. Anyway after 3 hours of freezing I got it out and into the PDA. I can say that I got maybe 5 minutes more on the battery! Yep, its really true. Then again I was skeptical until I did a small search and found another article on the web saying the same thing (its even about laptop batteries):

http://laptops.hackaday.com/2005/08/26/how-to-laptop-resurrection-and-upgrade/

I'm trying that for now and will let you know the outcome in an update to this post. However I have managed to find myself an old Siemens mobile (S65) just to get me through that trial cycle of freezing and draining, or who knows I might just keep on using it for the next couple of months :)

Here are the steps from the blogger (in the above url), all credit to him:

Discharge the battery as much as you can.

Place in a sealed plastic bag.

Place the bag in your freezer for at least 24hours. Overnight is sometimes enough, but I leave it about a week.

Take the bag out of the freezer and leave the battery to return to room temperature.

Make sure you wipe off any condensation from the battery contacts before you use it. I just leave them in the sun for a few hours.

Fully charge the battery, then run it down again, as low as you can get it. Repeat this charge-discharge cycle a few times, and see if you get a longer life.

A small disclaimer though: I'm not responsible for any damages to your battery or device or whatever. Please try this on an old or dead battery like I did for testing purposes.

July 4 Update: I managed to find myself a new battery at an attractive price. I stopped the experiment. But honestly it was not going well, that battery was even getting worse. Can't say it was getting worse because of the freezing process as it was actually near its last days anyway. But I'm sure you can try this tip with weak laptop batteries if you wish.

Windows Aero, not enabled!

2007-06-29T02:51:00.001+03:00

Funny! The best part of Vista is not on by default. Windows Aero. A slick new design from Microsoft that will give your windows experience a different depth. OK, in all honesty I have seen other OS's do something similar with maybe less resources. (for example, on Linux you can have virtual desktops with rotating 3d effects, Ubuntu with Beryl, ring a bell ?)

But I'm enjoying the effects, really cool! I especially like the 3d Flip among open windows, you can activate it by holding down the Start key (the key with the windows logo) on your keyboard + the Tab key.
More info: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/experiences/aero.mspx

Here is how to enable the Aero Effect:

Right click anywhere on your desktop

Click on personalize

Choose Window Color and Appearance

Under Color Scheme choose Windows Aero

Click Apply & then OK

Windows Vista upgrade

2007-06-29T01:57:00.001+03:00

Wow my first post. I will dedicate it to Vista as it is whats keeping me busy at the moment.
Just upgraded from XP SP2 to Windows Vista Home Premium.
Unfortunately for me I wanted to do an in-place upgrade, but I was never asked during the installation about that and I went ahead with it without suspecting that it is actually going ahead with a clean install.
Luckily though it was not the destructive clean install where it wipes clean (formats) your hard drive to install Vista. However, it created a folder called 'Windows.old' where it moved the previous XP Windows folder, Documents & Settings folder and Program Files folder into. All my other files were left untouched on my C drive. For saving diskspace though, I'm going to delete this folder within a couple of weeks if things remain stable.
I had XP Home Edition that was preinstalled on my Satellite. And I bought Windows Vista Home Premium retail. According to MS this should support an in-place upgrade!

Note: Windows Vista doesn't allow in-place upgrades from any previous Windows versions, except select XP editions. Sort of a rip-and-replace scenario if you ask me :)