A while ago, I thougt that I had contracted a virus on my Windows laptop from work. Unfortunately, there's no chance that I can migrate to a Mac there :-(.
The strangest things were happening on my laptop. Suddenly there appeared strange pieces of text in Word documents, and in e-mails I was writing. My first reaction was that someone was typing along with me.
After scanning my laptop with three virus scanners and using several anti-spyware software suites, it turned out that there was nothing wrong. After that the uninvited pieces of text were gone..... Until yesterday. But this time I had a clue what had happened.
I use the keyboard a lot for copy, and pasting (CTRL-C and CTRL-V). It seems that WINDOWS-V starts voice recognition. I must have pressed the wrong key combination. This key combo starts with a dialog box explaining that the mic needs tuning. I canceled that dialog, but somehow the voice recognition is still being enabled. There's no visual indication that it's running.
It seems that Windows doesn't recognize the Dutch language, and therefor it starts
guessing what you say and displays that in the focussed window.
Lame ass Windows functionality if you ask me.......
The upgrade versions of Windows Vista are less expensive than the normal retails versions. If you want to install the upgrade it should be done from within (a legitimate copy of) Windows XP. There is however a
workaround which doesn't need the presence of a Windows XP installment, or even the original Windows XP CD.
- Boot with the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD.
- Click "Install Now."
- Do not enter a Product Key When prompted.
- When prompted, select the Vista product edition that you do have.
- Install Vista normally.
- Once the install is complete, restart the DVD-based Setup from within Windows Vista. Perform an in-place upgrade.
- Enter your Product Key when prompted.
That saves some money on the purchase of Windows Vista. It also saves you from installing a 'lesser' OS (which I personally doubt) first with all of its own problems etc.. I personally think that upgrading is always bad. Better start a new, and fresh installment of any OS (even Mac OSX).
Arstechnica has an article explaining OEM (mainly the difference between the Microsoft Vista OEM and retail versions)
Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts
It seems that anyone who can install software is eligible to purchase a Vista OEM copy, without extra hardware.
Can I buy OEM?
Yes, you can. Microsoft licenses OEM software to "system builders," which the license defines as "an original equipment manufacturer, or an assembler, reassembler, or installer of software on computer systems" (emphasis added). You can install software on computers, right?
When asked, Microsoft says that OEM software is not intended to be installed by end users. Off the record, Microsoft spokespeople have told me that the big concern in Redmond is for Joe Newbie. They don't want inexperienced users buying OEM software, but the fact of the matter is that anyone can buy OEM versions of Windows.
Truth be told, Microsoft is not opposed to the practice. Rather, the company says that people who purchase OEM software will simply be expected to abide by the terms of the licensing agreements.
Today is the official launch of the newest operating system (OS) from Microsoft, and it's called Windows Vista.
All over the world shops opened early (even at midnight) to give the public the change to buy this new OS. Tons of people (at least that's what they had hoped) would be gathering in front of these shops to be the first.....
Well, that didn't work out that well.
It seems that only a hand full of nerds were standing in the cold to be the first. There were no lines, or riots as we have seen with the launch of the PlayStation 3 or the Nintendo Wii.
Here in Holland, there was a computer shop which opened at midnight and served about 90 customers.... 90 on a total of over 14 million people.
I guess pricing, and lack of available drivers is to blame. It's by far the most expensive workstation/desktop OS released by Microsoft (the most expensive retail version is over 500 euros). Most of the people will be getting Vista when buying a new PC, and the rest will probably be using a pirated version of the OS (or switch to Mac or Linux).
No Vista for me anyway.
Last year, I bought a
HP iPaq hx2790. Partly because I'd been without a PDA for a couple of years, but mostly because I don't want to boot up my laptop to see my mail or calendar.
The hx2790 comes with Windows Mobile 5 (WM5), wireless, bluetooth, fingerprint scanner, and built-in encryption. All very very nice.... Well, there is a downside to this nirvana;
- Wireless broke down after a couple of weeks (also see an old post on my old blog). The first time they fixed it... they didn't fix it at all. So it had to go back for repairs again.
- On the weirdest occasions all my synced e-mail bodies were complete gibberish or they were just empty. The only way to solve this was break the pairing with ActiveSync remove everything from the PDA, and sync it again.
[SOLUTION: disable the HP Encryption Tools crap]
- 9 out of 10 times I had to reset the device when I powered it on. So most of the times it would be more time efficient to boot up my laptop.
[SOLUTION: don't use the HP Encryption tools for securing your device. Just use the simple standard PIN code for logging on to the PDA]
- Applications would crash easily. Result: more resets.
[SOLUTIONS: do not install third-party software]
As long as I stick to this everything works just fine.
This makes me wonder why would I buy an PDA with a gazillion megabytes of free space, and lot's of SD/MMC/CF slots for adding even more bytes. Every program I add makes the device more unstable.
During these periods of complete misery I also tried a PDA encryption suite of Utimaco. I just wanted some sort of encryption to protect the data on the device. Their latest software version includes support for the hx2790 fingerprint scanner, but after installing the software everything went berserk (again). Uninstalling didn't work, so the only solution to get back in control again was to reset the damn thing to factory defaults.....
One more thing; why is it that EVERY older Windows Mobile version has an iPaq backup program for backing up SETTINGS, and the WM5 OS doesn't have this. Every time when I needed to reset the thing to factory defaults (about 8 to 10 times so far), I had to setup my mail accounts, etc manually. This feature isn't even available on ActiveSync for WM5.
No more Windows Mobile devices for me in the future. I just hope that this crappy piece of software holds on till the end of the year when the iPhone is being released.
Microsoft released the MSDN versions of Windows Vista, and Office 2007. Since I have (legitimate) access to the MSDN downloads, I downloaded both ISO files.
Unfortunately, I don't have any spare hardware available for testing Windows Vista, so I decided to install it in a Virtual Machine.
First I installed it in
Parallels on my Mac Book Pro (
see earlier post), but I needed something more portable for work, so I installed it in
VMWare Workstation.
The installation was a piece of cake, but the VMWare Tools seem to be as buggy as the Parallel tools. You install these tools to enhance the user performance (seamless mouse), and add drivers for network adapter, etc. Both virtualisation software packages fail to shutdown the Vista OS properly. Probably has something to do with the ACPI drivers included in the tools.
Anyway, that will most likely be solved with an update for both pieces of software in the next weeks. For now, I've got a proper Virtual Machine running Windows Vista Ultimate with Office 2007 Professional.
Let the evaluation begin.
B.t.w. I just hate the shutdown button on Vista. There's no confirmation on if you actually want to shut the system down. The old XP interface was better, but perhaps it's behavior is configurable.
Microsoft released the RTM (Ready To Manufacture) of Windows Vista. This new operating system (which was delayed numerous times, and stripped of intended innovations like
WinFS, and
Windows PowerShell) is supposed to be the next best thing that could happen to you. Well, I have to see that for myself first. I played around with some beta's in the last couple of months, and I can't say that I'm impressed. But maybe, the RTM will surprise me.
Today I stumbled onto a
leaked RTM iso file on the Internet which holds all versions of Vista (both 32bit and 64bit versions). This means that I could test all versions of the OS. With no valid license key it's possible to evaluate Vista for 30 (or 60) days, so I will start to evaluate within the next couple of days, and see for myself if there's any need in upgrading my Windows XP Professional PC to Vista.
I'll keep you posted on the evaluation.
UPDATE: I installed Vista in Parallels on my Mac Book Pro. The installation took about 30 minutes, which surprised me a little. I choose the Ultimate Edition of Vista, which is supposed to be the most expensive version of Windows Vista.
Within Parallels, you have the possibility of installing the Parallels tools. They enhance the user experience of the virtual machine, and install the appropriate drivers for video and the network adapter. After installing the tools Vista isn't able to shut the OS down properly. After selecting 'Shutdown', the virtual machine crashed. Same thing happened on earlier beta versions of Vista. This means that an Parallels update for this 'Vista' issue is imminent. Apart from that it seems to work fine. Perhaps, I should try VMWare as well as a testing environment. Too bad that VMWare doesn't work on my Mac Book Pro :(
If all goes well, I'm able to get an official MSDN-key for Vista later next week. Let's see if this version will accept the key, so that I'm able to experiment a little longer than the initial 30 days.
