Category: Compgeeky

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Vista SP1 Available *yawn*

Vista’s not exactly Micro$oft Bob, but it’s vying for position to edge Windows Muppet Edition and DOS 4 out of top spots for Micro$oft’s worst OS offerings.

Oh, yeh, it’s got some nice eye candy and some neat features, but it’s measurably slower than XP and has been plagued by driver issues that have “bricked” more than a few computers. (Which is why many have “upgraded” their Vista machines to XP… even though that is not, IMO, the best of Micro$oft’s operating system offerings. YYMV, of course.)

And here comes Vista SP1 (lately the credo of savvy computer users has evolved from “Microsoft early buyers: shrink-wrap beta testers” to “NEVER buy a Me$$y$oft product before the first service pack!” *heh*)… which some tests show is slower in file copy operartions than pre-SP1 Vista and which “fixes” the driver issues by… making them worse?

*heh*

Still, if you’re a glutton for punishment, Windows Vista SP1 can be officially downloaded NOW – but don’t do it! outlines how to download the 1.13GB update (only available at this time as a pack including both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions, along with some “fixes” for the installation process–read for “fixes,” “new processes that may well break something else” *heh*)… if you dare.

Oh, what the heck. Here’s the direct download link, but let me repeat, “Don’t Do It!” 😉

You have been warned.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, A Newt One, Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Macs are sooooo easy! (Not)

Page on down on this post at Chaos Manor (View) for the rest of the comments excerpted below:

I am beginning to hate Macs. I cannot empty the trash. I get a message saying that “Send to” is blocked. To empty everything in the trash including locked items press the option key while selecting Empty Trash. Needless to say I have pressed the option key until I am blue in the face. It won’t empty the trash…

…NOW I CANNOT MOVE SOME OF THE ITEMS from the trash to the foo folder. I do not have sufficient privileges!!! The MAC is protecting me from deleting old Windows backup files. I don’t have sufficient privileges. This may be the stupidest operating system yet with the possible exception of Vista.

Ye gods!!!

After consulting with 6 Unix gurus, active Mac users, he finally ended up with…

Plugging back in the external hard drive I was informed that it is unreadable, and disk utility opened. It offers to reformat…

…Macs are great if you’re me, with access to lots of advisors. I am not so sure about Aunt Minnie.

Macs are “intuitive” and “easy to use” if you already think like an Apple programmer (and sometimes that’s not even sufficient *heh*). If not, they can be terribly frustrating machines, largely because with a Mac it’s “The Apple way or the highway, bud,” and that’s that.

Once again, may I offer PCBSD, which has essentially the same (BSD) Unix underpinnings as Mac OSX without the quirky Mac straightjacket?

At least it’s not Mac OSX…

*heh*

Trackposted to The Midnight Sun, The Random Yak, A Blog For All, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, Wake Up America, A Newt One, Dumb Ox Daily News, Adeline and Hazel, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Compgeeky (not-so-tough) Puzzle… and Weekend Linkfest

For those of y’all who find computer puzzles off-putting, scroll on down to another post… 🙂

I need to get back to simulating work in a bit, but meanwhile… As computer puzzles go, this one wasn’t all that enigmatic or difficult (pretty easy, in fact), but it came at a time when I was caffeine deprived and preoccupied with other things.

Between one CLICK and the next (well, almost :-)), every web page I tried to access came up with a not found error. Email client (Opera) started reporting network errors attempting to check or send email.

Check another coupla comps on the network. No internet/network problems there.

OK, the obvious things: try pinging other comps on the network from the problem comp. No joy. Definitely the problem comp is the problem, but where?

Rebooted the router and released/renewed network connection on the problem comp, anyway. Renewed all right. Tried some pages. Hmmm… same error. Clear cache, reload. Loaded… partway, then stopped.

Well, there were other things I could have tried, but I decided to update/change my NIC driver and… bob’s your uncle. Smoothe sailing, now.

How did the NIC driver become corrupted? Your guess is as good as mine. Could have been any number of things–including the fact that all these problems started when I uninstalled Network Magic!

Aha! Yeh, I try these kindsa apps out so I can either recommend them to folks who can’t afford an onsite network admin person or recommend they stay away from this app or that.

And I have to say Network Magic was a mixed bag. I had a well-oiled machine going on my network before I installed it, and, for a while, Network Magic seemed to be OK. But then the little things started bugging me.

It couldn’t see or talk to the Linux/BSD machines. Dumb. Real dumb. That was enough to put me off it, but not enough to kill it for folks who have a Windows-only network, so I kept it around for testing a bit longer.

Hmmm… network printers dropped in and out of availability for no discernable reason. Strange. Lotsa griping and complaining from the app about Windows computers with automatic updates turned OFF (the only reasonable way to fly with Windows, IMO, given the number of “updates” from Me$$y$oft that have fragged folks’ computers). Nag, nag, nag.

Killer? Every time it needed web access, it ignored the system default browser and invoked Internet Exploder, the world’s crappiest browser.

Nope, couldn’t recommend it. So, uninstalled.

Now, I recognize that unless I can nail down a definitive cause, associating the NIC driver corruption with the uninstall of Network Magic that occurred immediately before the network problem occurred is potentially a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but…

I just ran a Registry scan using two different registry scanners I have come to rely on as safe and…

Over 6,000 errors noted by one in a Registry that scanned as OK the day before.

With only the Network Magic uninstall and the NIC driver change as any difference.

I think I’ll recommend folks avoid Network Magic. You think?

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Trackposted to Pirate’s Cove, Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, , and Jo’s Cafe, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.