2nd to last straw

This was my second to last straw from McAfee Internet Security suite:

The McAfee anti-virus service has had a few hiccups updating itself in the past week. Then I got this message:



I tried to re-install it from the original CD. This hung-up Windows XP so bad I couldn't reboot or shutdown. So I had to press and hold the power button down until the PC shutdown. When I got it up again, McAfee Internet Security was fine.

My update subscription runs out early next year, but if this McAfee product carries on like this I might be buying the Norton Security Suite before then.

Email account bigger

MyWay.com have finally increased their free email account size from 6MB to 125MB. Although this is not as big as G(oogle) Mail's 1Gb, it is bigger than Yahoo's 100MB for free accounts.

New Moto Phone

I recently read about the upcoming Motorola A630 cellphone in Laptop Magazine .

This clamshell phone opens to reveal a QWERTY keypad, with a landscape mode screen.

Closed, with a standard phone keypad:


Opened to reveal the QWERTY keypad:


More in PhoneScoop

Free!

Just a quick link (depending on your connection speed of course) to my favorite Windows freeware site Pricelessware.

Hi-tech Stalker

Police arrested a man they said tracked his ex-girlfriend's whereabouts by attaching a global positioning system to her car.

See this Associated Press article.

Bite the bullet

Well, I finally bit the update bullet, and upgraded my home PC to Windows XP Service Pack 2.

For a while I got the new Windows Security Center:



But then McAfee overrode it with its own:



Oh, well...

Longhorn gets shorter

The next version of Windows is now due sooner due to Microsoft's dropping of features like WinFS, according to eWeek

Spyware Could Bug Windows XP SP2

From My Way News - existing spyware on your computer could mess with the installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2. It won't fix what's already broken...

Another McAfee mistake

McAfee Internet Security is so secure it won't allow itself to connect to the Internet to update itself:



This happens quite often...

One man's Spam...

..is another companies advertising.

McAfee SpamKiller Update:


and Unwanted advertising:

Windows XP SP2

eWEEK.com's Special Report on Windows XP Evolution

And from Microsoft, a list of programs which need to be "tweaked" to work with Windows XP Service Pack 2

Installing Windows 98

Windows XP Service Pack 2 is out, and here I am installing Windows 98 again. I'm still keeping Windows XP Pro on my old Compaq Presario - in another partition. It's been a while since I did this, so I was a bit unprepared, and had to hunt around for Device Drivers. The Windows 98 install seems quite antiquated compared to that of Windows 2000 or XP.
Then I had to install all the security updates. What a drag...

Once Windows 98 is configured, I'm intending to try Windows 98 Lite - a program which slims down an existing Windows 98 installation.

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...