Category: Compgeeky

Posted on

OS Gymnastics?

Nah, just some light calisthenics. Not even breathing hard(ly). *heh*

So, I started testing out Win10 on some old hardware about seven months ago on a box that had had WinXP, then Win7. *meh* Apart from all the “phone home” junk, as long as Classic Shell’s installed, not too bad compared to Win7/8/8.1, so when I got a new playcompy (the lil notebook I’m writing this on), I went ahead and installed Classic Shell to make its Win 8.1 more usable, then “upgraded” to Win10 and locked it down.

It works OK, for a Windows box.

So, my Wonder Woman kept asking me when she should upgrade her Win8.1 notebook (a sibling to this lil playcompy). This last weekend I said, “OK, if you want it, fine.” *heh*

So, clicked on the Win10 upgrade icon in her system tray and. . . Windows Update. Search. . . search. . . search. . . No updates found and. . . no Win10 upgrade, either. #gagamaggot.

So, downloaded the M$ Media Creation Tool and am now installing Win10 on her computer with that. Probably should just have downloaded the ISO, but just don’t really care all that much. Maybe later.

Even though the M$ Media Creation Tool works, this upgrade was no faster than any other Win10 upgrade I’ve done, clocking in at around 2.5 hours from start to mostly finished. Another hour locking it down, uninstalling crap apps my Wonder Woman will NOT use, configuring Windows Update to NOT update w/o a user request, etc., will take another hour or so, counting double-checking to make sure the configuration actually takes. (Win10’s kinda sneaky about changing configs behind the user’s back, sometimes. No, really.)

Posted on

Oh, Well

After about six years, my lil “family room” notebook that I use while sitting with my Wonder Woman in the evening (she on hers, me on mine–unless we’re reading or on occasion watching TV or a video or have someone over) finally bit the dust. Onboard video system died. Really not worth the effort and cost to replace the Mobo, so. . .

Amazon’s delivering a new lappy toy tomorrow. It is NOT a top-end notebook, not even close. That’s just not needed for this lappy’s use. But it does at least have a full sized notebook keyboard with a numeric keypad, a reasonable processor and video subsystem, a reasonable display for a notebook (15.6”–just right for my viewing and much better than the lil 10” netbook I’ve used as a backup for the last couple of weeks), and the memory’s easily–and inexpensively–upgraded (the 4GB that comes with it is not enough for even casual my computing).

I’ve made a break from my past lappy purchases. This one’s not an Asus but a Toshiba. *shrugs* Six of one. . . for this class of computer? Not a lot of difference.

Yeh, yeh, comes with Win8.1, but I can fix that any number of ways (Classic Start, other things, or–likely–Linux Mint in a VM. Gets around a few issues and has essentially the same usability as running it natively, etc.), maybe even accept the “free” sorta upgrade to Win10 ( and fix the everlivin’ HECK out of it–the phoning home’s its worst part, IMO, followed by the “push” “updates:–Classic start, of course, etc.).

First task: Classic start. Next: PC Decrapifier. Then locking the thing down, getting it working well with ALL the resources on our lil LAN, installing my personal choices of software, etc. Typical computer setup fun.

But now, off to see if I can get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight. Could be. It’d be nice.

Posted on

When Simplified Techi-Toys. . . Ain’t, Really

Interfaces on computing devices have been simplified to the point that most folks expect things to just work–almost magically. But it ain’t necessarily so, of course. Case in point: my Kindles (both the original Fire and the Fire HD) seem, most of the time, to just work. But. Not always.

Case in point (of more than a few): today, my Fire HD was handiest when I needed to take a picture of a couple of mugs (ordered trough Amazon, of course) out of a dozen that came broken. Pics were fine–perfect for my need sending documentation to the seller. But the pics just would not upload to my cloud drive, no matter how many times the device said it was uploading them.

*gak*

So. . . connected the device to a laptop via USB. *sigh* Finally located the pics and offloaded copies to the lappy. THEN the device decided to actually upload ’em to my cloud drive.

OK, not pushbutton simple.

Book I bought listed by Amazon as delivered to the Fire HD. Yeh, could see it, but not open it. Rebooted the device. Nope. Back to Amazon to re-deliver it. Nope. Rebooted. Now it loads.

Simplified isn’t always simple.

Posted on

Pleasant Surprise

Playing with one of the lil netbooks mentioned in the Playtoys post, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how nimble it is with Linux Mint 17.2 Xfce. It’s actually much more responsive than any of the other distros I’ve played with on the thing, so responsive in fact that I might just leave this distro on it for use. Heck, it works so smoothly even without the planned memory upgrade that I’m almost tempted to cancel the memory upgrade for this one. Almost. More memory is almost always better (especially since I found a source for the same memory modules that is less than 2/3 the cost of buying them from the manufacturer–Amazon, of course).

This lil thing is actually useful for more than just web browsing, now. Pretty amazing.

Posted on

I Don’t Know Why More People Don’t Do This

N.B. Casual computing notes. Almost NONE of this is for a business setting, although securely accessing remote desktops can be a big help there. But that’s not something I’d push the Windows Remote Desktop Connection app for. Maybe that’s just me. . .

My lil “living room lappy” doesn’t have much horsepower, but it doesn’t need much to log onto the media computer connected to the TV, and a lil rdp file semi-automates even that. Just using it as a semi-dumb client works really well in that situation. Heck, it even saves steps if I’m too lazy (and you can bet I frequently am) to walk back to my “real” computer back in my office. *shrugs*

I really don’t know why more folks don’t use remote desktop access for everyday stuff. It is a wee tad less convenient accessing other computers from my Kindle Fire. Sadly, the best tool for it seems to be TeamViewer. *scratches head* That doesn’t really make sense to me, but at least it works when I need it to, for values of “work” that are a bit kludgy.

*heh* The first time–years ago–I accessed my Wonder Woman’s computer and took control of her mouse, it freaked her out. Of course, that was back in the day when I had to set quite a few things up well in advance for her computer to accept my access. I don’t remotely access as many computers nowadays–especially WAN computers–as I used to do (all the time, it seemed for some years), but I’d just not ever want to do with NOT being able to access–and use just as if sitting at it any computer (of mine) on our LAN, any time, from any of them.

Yeh, yeh, I access files and folders more than I actually do remote computing on different computers scattered around the house, but not a day goes by I don’t fire up an application on Z-I from Z-II that just works better on Z-I than on Z-II, or whatever (yeh, not the computer names). (My music transcription software is an example. I might want to jot a few notes *heh* or make some edits while on the lil living room lappy, but the office machine is better for that. So. . . rdp, baby.)

Yes, it does sometimes mean files are scattered around at different machines, but regular justifications of archives on NASes, etc., help keep everything pretty well organized. (And then there are the “families” of files that have specific homes “in the cloud” as well, and synch up on all registered machines. . . which are then synched/justified on NASes. For the few terabytes of data I want to protect, it works all right.

Oh, look. The voices in my head wander’d afield. Who’d-a thunk it? 😉

(Yes, I know there are some approximations of full desktop access available for various Android and even *meh* iPad situations–see my comments about Kindle remote desktop access–but really? Notsomuch.)

Posted on

Computer Security: the Value of Resident Anti-Malware

So, how important is having a resident, up-to-date anti-malware product for Windows users?

Middlin’. No, seriously.

Here’s a wee experiment I recently did:

  • Windows 7 box, mostly updated (I did not accept some problematic M$Office 2010 updates, but then I rarely fire up M$Office).
  • Removed all resident anti-malware products.
  • Surfed normally for a month.
  • Scanned with offline standalone scanners and online scanners from reputable anti-malware companies.

Result? No malware.

A properly-configured modern(ish) browser (Opera 12.17), decent firewalling and simple safe computing practices were all that was needed for me to avoid infections/infestations with malware.

Posted on

I Still Haven’t Found a Better Browser Than Opera 12.x

bookmark-mgmt

Just one (but very important to me) reason why I have yet to find a browser as useful to me as Opera 12.x: bookmark management. I have 118 first level folders in my bookmarks, with many levels nested under them. And I USE this filing system daily. It’s a reference library compiled over years of browsing. (And yes, I weed it regularly as well.)

(Yes, I obscured folders and links.)

Some browsers offer to import my bookmarks. Some of them that offer to do so actually do (the new “Chopera”–an Opera skinned Chrome browser–offers to but doesn’t do it), but those that actually do present a jumbled mess that isn’t really even searchable and none of them have any real ability to sort, organize, and arrange bookmarks. Useless. ANd this is just one (very important to me) among many failings of every browser offering I have searched out as an alternative to the venerable and no longer developed Opera 12.x. Sad that so very much functionality and usefulness has been sacrificed.

And here is just one of three–the middle-of-the-road way–ways to tweak Opera 12.x in what seems to be (almost) infinitely variable ways. I know of no other browser that offers so many ways to customize its behavior. While I don’t often avail myself of the easy manual editing of actual config files (text files saved as ini files) for Opera 12.x, because I’ve just about got them where I want them, sometimes I make a less granular change using opera:config typed in the address bar. Just one–of, still, many more–reasons why pretenders to the browser throne on my devices have yet to dethrone Opera 12.x.

opera-config

I keep trying to find a replacement, but every “new” browser–and new iterations of old ones–that comes along just seems like crap by comparison to “Ole Faithful.” *sigh*