Bart's Impressive PE

I'm quite impressed with BartPE (Bart Preinstalled Environment). Having a bootable Windows XP recovery CD is pretty neat.

Yahoo Bulk Mail increase

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that since Yahoo increased the email account storage space, there has been an increase in spam in their Bulk Mail folder?

Just this week...

This last week or so I have been evaluating WinZip 9.0 (seriously, with a view to buying it). This is after I gave up on PKZip for Windows version 8.0 after it crashed on me twice, on two successive days. It appears that if a PKZip window is already open it won't reuse it, but open a new window. When a second or third window is opened, PKZip crashes when you try to close the window. (This was with large zip files). WinZip gave none of these problems.

Sometime ago I reviewed a whole bunch of mainly freeware compression utilities (last year!). Among them were 7-Zip and ZipGenius. Just recently I came upon a website which has reviews of free WinZip alternatives. I agree fully with the review of ZipGenius.

IMHO a lot of freeware compression utilities have unusual and sometimes unusable User Interfaces. Power Archiver's look and feel was an exact clone of WinZip, and now it's no longer freeware.

Another interesting website with info and links to Compression Utilities is DonaldBecker.com,
which looks a lot like dmoz.org 's page in disguise.

Linux on Windows

Okay, no big deal I admit, but it was a snap to get Xandros Desktop OS Open Circulation Edition installed into MS Virtual PC 2004.

Here's a screenshot.

A Bit different

Downloaded Xandros Desktop OS Open Circulation Edition using BitTorrent - my first experience using this unusual way of downloading.

After checking the MD5 sum of the Xandros BitTorrent download discovered that it was wrong, which means the file was somehow corrupted during download. I'd really be upset if I had a dial-up connection, as the file needs to be re-downloaded - all 500+ Mb..

Virtual...OS

Now that Windows XP Professional is working (and continues to work I hope), I've installed Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. That was the whole reason I upgraded to XP Professional - it's a reauirement for MS Virtual PC 2004. I had read somewhere that it would work on Windows XP Home, but figured I'd do it properly.

Why? I hear someone ask. Well, I love fiddling about with new Operating Systems. It gets tiresome creating partitions and having to boot into the latest OS I'm experimenting with. MS's Virtual PC lets me run some of them right on top of Windows XP. Linux is of course not officially supported, but the original Virtual PC from Connectix ran Linux.

So far I've got Windows 98SE and MSDos 6 running - next up is Open BEOS...

Tech support says 'phone Microsoft'

Since it was still during my eMachines warranty period, I first tried to email Tech Support (and got an ASP error message on their website) then I phoned them.

The wait wasn't long, but I was informed that since I had upgraded the Operating System, I needed to phone Microsoft technical support for Windows XP Professional. I did get it out of the Tech Support person that my desktop should run with Windows XP Professional.

After fiddling with USB Devices, and noticing that one of them did not have a driver, I got the 8-in-1 Media Reader and the USB ports working again.

That non-syncing feeling

My Sony NX60 handheld is not HotSyncing with Windows XP after Pro upgrade. The 8-in-1 Media Reader is not working either...

Home to Professional

This Saturday afternoon I finally got down to upgrading my eMachines Desktop from Windows XP Home to Windows XP Professional. Here's some extracts from my Palm DayNotez Journal

4:10 PM
Started Windows XP Professional upgrade of Windows XP Home OS on eMachines T2865

4:23 PM
Win XP Pro Setup estimating another 39 minutes

4:28 PM
Win XP Pro Setup halted while I look for NVIDIA audio driver.
Fortunately the driver is in a folder on the C Drive

4:45 PM
Bleeping error ".. Program Entry point in ... MSDART.DLL" during upgrade setup - Error Message with an OK button - press OK and it just keeps coming back (that's the normal thing with looping error messages) - the last thing I want to see during an Operating System upgrade.
Used old machine to search the internet for the error. There were plenty of references to it. One with a solution to Click the OK button 80+ times - I tried it and of course it didn't work . The solution was to shutdown the machine & let it restart, then continue with the installation.

5:51 PM
Even though I only upgraded from Windows XP Home to Windows XP Professional, it appears that the XP versions are so different I have to redo all of the "Critical Updates". I guess some of them may be different. What a pain!

6:06 PM
After half an hour or more of downloading & installing the "Critical Updates", there is one more important one I almost missed - XP Service Pack 1. This one looks like it will take a long time...

V600 Update

Well, I've been almost too embarrassed to post this.

I'd blogged on June 12 that my Motorola V600 cellphone had gone silent. My wireless carrier tech support had suggested I return the phone to Amazon for a replacement. Amazon were very good about it, and I received a new replacement phone within a week.

Before returning the non-working Motorola V600 I decided to clear it by doing a Master Clear. Then I did something I really wish I had not - I checked the old phone to confirm that its RingTones still weren't working. To my astonishment and dismay they were now working! Now I had two Motorola V600 cellphones, and had to return one of them. I really could not return the older one with a clear conscience, since now there was nothing wrong with it.

To cut a long story short, I returned the new replacement cellphone...

Why the cellphone started working:
My only guess is this was because I took out the battery and left it out for a period of time, then put it back in and switched on the phone. This seems to do some sort of reset. Tech support had taken me through this step, but had not asked me to leave the battery out for long enough.

Microsoft follows Yahoo

Microsoft is going to increase Hotmail Storage from 2 megabytes to 250 megabytes according to this article on MyWay

I wondered how long it would take for them to decide this, and of course it's two and a half times Yahoo's new storage. Hopefully there are not as many glitches as Yahoo is having...

Smaller Nokias

eWeek reports Flip Phones Among Nokia's Five New Models

In my recent cellphone hunt, I ruled out the Nokia models because of their size - their new Flip Phones can only be smaller.

Yahoo Accounts up to 100Mb

My Way News: "Yahoo! Upgrades E-Mail Capacity to 100 MB"

But that doesn't explain why I'm struggling to login to my Yahoo account now. Maybe this does:
From a news article this morning "Big Sites Slowed by Attack on Akamai" on Editor and Publisher.

Sounds of silence

Well, my Motorola V600 lasted a week (and what a week it was!).

Up until yesterday my V600 was working perfectly. Then I transferred a couple of MIDI and MP3 files to it. I noticed that some of the MIDI files did not play, no problem, I just deleted them. Then while I tried to play one MIDI or MP3 ringtone, I got a message - "File corrupt - delete?" - to which I said yes. I little later I realized that none of the ringtones, not even the built-in ones which came with the phone, were working. When you scroll through the list of ringtones and stop on one, it normally plays - none of them play. Not in the menu to choose Ring Detail, or from the MultiMedia/Sounds menu. I also made sure that all the volumes were set to the highest. Also, the startup and shutdown sounds work fine, and I'd assume they use the some speaker...

Another weird thing - if I set the phone to Ring & Vibrate, it doesn't even Vibrate, but if I set it to Vibrate, that works.

After a call to support, a Power off and wait, and a Master Reset of the phone, it's still the same. They suggested I return the phone.

Treo 600 sans camera

Yesterday I read about a camera-less version of the Treo 600, which costs the same as the Treo 600, and (according to eWeek) is not available to consumers. There is also an article about it on Phonescoop.

Got the V600!

Well, I finally got the Motorola V600 (after a long enough wait), and activated it this morning. The reception is much better than my old V60 (shown on the right in the picture). 

Cellphone twilight zone

I'm a-waiting and a-waiting my new cellphone.
The waiting IS the hardest part.
That still didn't stop me looking at another interesting cellphone, the Nokia 6620 (Review on Phonescoop)
This is a weird, squat looking phone.
Some of Nokia's cellphones really look weird...

Warning - too cheap!

When a version of a well-known brand software goes on sale for $10 or less after mail-in rebates, beware!
I bought version 8.0 of MusicMatch JukeBox Deluxe for $10 after mail-in rebates. What a bargain I thought! But I forgot the old axiom "You get what you pay for".

The install went great. The program even updated itself to version 8.2 without much of a problem. Then I looked for something in Windows Explorer, and my DVD writer drive letter was not showing. No problem, this is Windows, so when in doubt, reboot. The CDROM drive was showing, but the DVD drive still wasn't showing. I went into Control Panel and found the entry for the DVD drive. It was disabled, and I could not enable it. I uninstalled MusicMatch. It didn't undo the mess it had made. Fortunately I had created a System Restore Point before installing MusicMatch (One of the best features of Windows XP). After a System Restore the DVD writer was back and working
Then I contacted MusicMatch support, and did a search for MusicMatch problems on the Web.
There was a whole lot of info at gadget girl
Version 8 is regarded as the worst version of MusicMatch ever. It seems things steadily got worse starting with version 7. The only suggestion seems to be to download and use version 7.5

Sometimes software is just too cheap...

Small Clie thoughts

There are numerous articles and responses to the "Sony to Halt Sales of Clie PDAs in U.S." news like My Way News, Brighthand and PDABuzz

After my initial surprise, I've come to similar conclusions to those in the PDABuzz article. PalmOne had indicated that it would be moving from handhelds to smartphones earlier this year. This is apparently due to saturation of the (U.S.) market for standalone PDAs. I must admit, the combination of a PDA and a phone into a smartphone makes sense, and the Treo 600 is close to being the ideal smartphone. I had wondered why Sony had not brought out a Palm OS based smartphone - all their Sony Ericsson smartphones are Symbian OS based. With smartphones being "the next big (or little) thing", Sony had to choose between creating a Palm OS based smartphone from scratch, or enhancing their current smartphones...

Sony to exit key handheld arenas - News - ZDNet

Sony to exit key handheld arenas - News from ZDNet

Say what????
Oh no...
argh!

Anyone want to buy a used but well looked-after Clie NX60?