Vista - Choose When to Change

As I began reading this month's PC World Magazine, I noticed some letters and forum posts about businesses complaining about how proprietary systems were not working with Vista...in fact, one letter even said that Microsft should be slapped with a class-action...Please stop. Seriously, these are the same people who stayed with the Dos, green-screens even after XP was out..Does anyone remember the chaos that went around for Y2K? Windows 95, 98 and 2000 still run today because Microsoft fixed their issues...And, companies spent millions fixing older "proprietary" programs that didn't think past 1999...OK, this is a bit extreme, but there is a point in there somewhere...Should companies shell out the money to buy new software? Should companies be forced to use Vista?

No one is forcing either...Microsoft is just trying to move things along for those that do want a change. They are not saying that you need to buy Vista...In fact, if your company is buying machines from a reputable computer company, they can offer you a downgrade, even after June 30th to Windows 2000 if you would like. The downgrade program has been a part of the deals Microsoft makes with businesses who build computers for some time now. They still buy a "Vista" license number. Really, though, they are just purchasing a license for Windows.

My question to these companies not looking to move forward any time soon is, "When will be the right time to move forward?" Many "proprietary" systems are well overdue for a change. Your users/employees are getting frustrated with learning programs that greatly differ from the rest of their computer usage. Your training teams could use a little more than a Windows 98 interface to liven up the discussion. Your customers could benefit from a system that they can tap into as well.

I may not understand the ins and outs of your program and how it functions with any version of Windows, but programs that can not grow and adapt limit the growth of your company; limit the usability of your users; and may limit your market share due to frustration by your consumers...

For those that would disagree, I ask for you to think about the advancements first and not the resistance to change. Change really is inevitable...but, choose WHEN you make the move not IF you make the move...

Amazon MP3 Downloads

So, you say that you want an alternative to iTunes...Well, the Amazon MP3 store is a good choice...scratch that...it is a great choice. They have agreements with the major labels that bring you what you like. In fact, every Friday this May, check out the site for special $5 offers on select albums...Listen to some selection below, or check it out for yourself...

XP SP3

OK, so I debated whether to post this or not since I do not have complete specifics or have figured out why XP SP3 would actually slow down our machine...We recently reinstalled everything from the original install disks and went through the painstaking process of updating to SP2 and the various updates over the last 2-3 years or so...It would boot up very quickly...In fact, it was so quick, I thought we did something wrong in the installation and it would crash at any time...It has been running strong for a few months now...that is until we updated it to SP3...

The install took about 10 minutes and it rebooted. The first boot took longer than our newer Vista Machine which has enough extras on it to choke a rather small whale...After logging in completely, we shut down, waited a few moments, and rebooted again. Boot time still three times as long, and the start-up programs like Windows Live OneCare, LogMeIn, and Orb took at least double the previous time to load. The machine is even slow starting IE...

Now, I know that this 6-year old, P4 1.80GHz with 768 MB of RAM, running XP Home is not the fastest or the best machine out there...this is why we use it as the media server and backup machine...but, it was quick and clean before XP SP3...I have deactivated some items in the startup, but annoying would be a kind word to use for this update...I just hope it is more secure or has other features we are missing...

I will post more as we find out more. Good luck with the update...Enjoy...

Up, Up, and Hopefully Not Away...Full Cloud Computing - Are We Ready for It?

With the recent news of Microsoft Mesh and Albany, I have been wondering if we, as users are ready for cloud computing. In fact, when I first read and looked into the details, I began thinking about what would happen if there was an internet tornado and the little people that push the data around to the emerald city got caught in the mesh...wait, that could have been because I just watched Tin Man ...nice adpatation by the way...

However, really...are we ready to have: all of our devices work together?...all our data and applications available from anywhere?...the people we need to connect with just a few clicks away for sharing and collaborating?...our the information to stay up-to-date and always be available?...You bet you we are...Where has this been?

We have a home and a business network, but have to add on multiple applications and even more security measures to be able access things on the road. We have to purchase as many variations of software as we have computers. This can get costly and time consuming...not to mention crazy when everything needs to be updated all at once. We would like to purchase the newest version of Office for our business and home, but the economics don't always work out...so, we have re-installed an older version and accepted the short comings. We are looking forward to more of this cloud computing.

While some of you may say that you prefer to have programs and documents locally, that is fine...hopefully, the options will remain. However, considering how expensive the upgrade or new install of MS Office is and how time-demanding other options can be, I would enjoy spreading out the time and expense elsewhere. Please Microsoft, hurry, but make sure it works well...it can be difficult explaining another cunning data-sharing plan to our parents and grandparents...again...

To read a more thourough review of Mesh, Albany, and other Cloud Computing...please use the more versed resources:
Paul Thurott's Supersite for Windows
Paul's Albany Information
Microsoft's Mesh Screenshots
Microsoft's Mesh Blog

Twitter - Introverts becoming extroverts by proxy

It was inevitable that this topic would appear on this page...Twitter is either a great way to stay in touch and communicate, or just another addictive addition to society...Or, something in between and not mentioned here...which is plentiful...

If you stumbled upon this page, you may be saying who cares...but if you searched or followed a link, you may already have the addiction. Right now, I am following 10 people who I do not know personally...I may have listened to their podcast or read their writings...but really, is there a reason why I need to know when these people go to a party...? I don't remember where my sister and brother-in-law went on vacation last week...However, maybe if they posted online and told the world, life would be easier...

In the morning, when I walk around the track at my local gym, I listen to my iPod and send updates to Twitter. I nod to the people I past, but have never asked them which they prefer, Apple or PC...Being an introvert, I am beginning to think that Twitter just helps introverts become extroverts by proxy. Scary, but it may just be true...where else can "talk" and listen to the advice of strangers without feeling the anxiety of the interaction...

Whether you dislike or enjoy Twitter, each new 140-character, limited-line tells a story. You get to choose the meaning...good luck, but remember everything in moderation...

Follow me on Twitter for random nonsense and updates from Story Institute...

follow RamblingVerser at http://twitter.com

Story Institute Expansion

There comes a time when the material piles up and you have to do something with it...so...we will be incorporating under Story Institute and adding a site and expanding our vision...check out our mission and these locations...For those of you looking for tech items, they will still be here...afterall, technology does provide a dollop of ingenuity for any storytelling...just look at the MacBook Air and their stories around the web...Enjoy...

Story Institute Vision
We will inspire you to imagine, enhance, and grow your stories personally and professionally while helping you share your successes in print, online, and in person.

Story Institute Mission

Though Integrity, Ingenuity, Inspiration, Influence, Impact, and Excellence,
We will:
* Evoke emotion within our customers that make connections to our communities.
* Engage our customers, their families, and clients in active tales that connect their emotions to past knowledge and experiences.
* Empower our partners to use their new knowledge while growing their families, organizations, and stories into a world of their own.

Story Institute Entities
Story Institute - Imagine your Stories Again - Story, Poetry, and Contests for the writer in most of us.

Timeless Tales - Enhance Your Stories Now - Candy Wrappers, Family topics, home décor, kid fun for the now.

MySkillCenter - Grow Your Stories for the Future - Personal and Professional Enrichment within HR, People Skills, Manager/Leader, Career Pathing, Measurement.

MacBook Air Wrap-Up...For Now

OK, so I have had some great opportunities to use the Air as a standard and daily machine. Instead of separating out items, I decided to wrap up individual topics on the Air at least for now with this post...

* I attended a conference recently where I got tired of taking notes and transcribing them later...So, since the MacBook Air fit into my portfolio, I brought it with me. I used this wonderful tool the entire conference, from 8 AM to 5 PM two days in a row...I turned off wireless and bluetooth for the majority of the day and used mostly MS Word 2004. I only turned on Bluetooth and used Safari during 2 segments of about 10 minutes each on both days. I entered the notes into Word and closed the cover when I was not taking notes. The battery lasted the entire day and all sessions on each day. There were no outlets close, so plugging in was not an option. The battery can last, it just needs limited usage and manual power management of closing the cover when not using it.

* There have been many periods where when logging in or opening an application, especially Microsoft Office 2004 applications, the spinning beach ball lasted for a while. I am still trying to figure out what is causing the beach ball. I am still learning about Leopard, so there may be something in the logs that I am missing.

* For BootCamp, I noticed that when I changed our AirPort Extreme router to N only, I was not able to acquire an IP address. So, I have to use the slower G part of the network. Not too bad, but a pain. I will be playing with the settings further to make sure it is not a simple user error, but for some reason it is not connecting at N speeds...The ironic thing is that when I mixed the network, XP indicated that it was connecting at 130 mbps...interesting...

* A couple of harddrive clicks when shutting down have caused some worry, but all seems to be OK. I have run the diagnostics, checked disk permissions, and Onyx to make sure the drive was working OK. So, far, so good, but the sounds have been few and far in between.

* I believe I will be giving up on the virtual software for now as well. BootCamp will have to do even with the incredibly lower battery life...

* Lastly, the size of the hard drive is still a point of concern...While I am far from running out of space, it decreases everyday with podcasts, pictures, as well as personal and professional documents. About 15 GB remain even after splitting out pictures, movies, and most music files to an external drive.

Still excellent machine that I carry all over the house at ease. We'll see how an upcoming flight works out soon as well.

FM Transmitter

So, you bought that iPod, or even, perhaps, the Zune...but the longest time that you have to listen to your hours and hours of endless music, or in my case, podcasts, is in your car. You did not buy that fancy new car with the built-in audio jack out...or, you simply have an older stereo. I have tried a few FM transmitters that plug right into the audio jack of my iPod. There are only a couple that I actually enjoy that have functionality and flexibility.

The VR3 is good for those vehicles that may have a place to put your music player as you make those sharp turns.



I have also used the Maxwell iPod transmitter and charger. It is good for those vehicles that do not have a place close to safely store their device while driving.

There are many varieties of this beast, so look what you can afford and test them out. If they don't work like you anticipated, return or exchange them. Don't keep something that just costs money. Enjoy the tunes, not the cost...

MacBook Air BootCamp, XP Continued

Having limited space on the XP partition, thought I keep thinking it is enough (12 GB), I was running into challenges when playing simple strategy games such as Civilization and Railroad Tycoon. I got a blue screen which indicated that I should turn off shadowing. After looking this up online, I made sure that the system restore points were turned off. While this may not be a good idea at all when running Windows XP regularly, it does make sense with limited space and a sparse image backup. I figured that if I need to reinstall, I will just copy the image instead of attempting restore. There are very few needed files on this partition, but, it works and the random crashes seemed to have ceased.

One additional item learned during this process is that Windows will go through a chkdsk when it restarts from this crash. Even though the screen indicates that you can bypass this option by pressing a button, the keyboard does not seem to be active. When I plugged in a USB keyboard, I was able to bypass the chdsk. This may appear to be a limitation at times given the one USB port, but a simple USB hub came through again. I am not sure why the laptop keyboard didn't work, but it seems to be one of those things that loads from the Bootcamp items that Apple installs.

Security Now...and Later

When you think about security for your computer, the first thing that ay ome to your mind may be anti-virus software, firewalls, or perhaps infected...when I think about security on a pc, Mac, or Linux, I think about Security Now with Steve Gibson and Leo LaPorte.

Security Now is a weekly podcast that you can download directly from the iTunes podcast store or directly through Leo's website at Twit.tv or a lower bandwidth version at Steve's site GRC. They not only talk about the items you normally think about with computer security, they also use the techniques and tools themselves. The conversation within the podcast goes into more details than you will mostly ever need whether you are a tech youngin' or a codger tech.

I have tried multiple times to jusr stop listening, but the conversation touches that logical side of my brain, and I am lured back in. Secuirty Now recently went through encrypting your data so that those with less than good intentions could not do anything with it. This was a great and timely topic as I prepare to travel for my day job again and my usb key dangles from my keychain.

Listen, learn, and enjoy...

Orb.com

So, you want to be able to listen to your music when you are on the road...or, perhaps, you are on a business trip for weeks on end and wanted to watch that video of the kids you took last summer...well, Orb 2.0 to the rescue...OK, the rescue piece is a bit of an exaggeration, but, Orb is a great little tool that allows you to access your media from just about any device and location with a internet connection. You can watch videos, listen to music, and setup a security webcam from you home pc and check it on the road.

The setup was rather easy...in fact, it was a download and install. You complete a registration piece with very limited amount of information so that you have a login and a password. You navigate to http://mycast.orb.com, enter your information and away you go...

I know, I know, I am over-simplifying things, but is really was that easy. We have one computer acting as a server. This computer is on pretty consistently and almost always connected to the internet. Orb does the rest. We have used Orb for the following situations:

* Checking the house while we were out. The webcam functionality is a great little tool. We have it setup facing the door of the room. While we can see the mess we left behind, we can also check if there is any damage from storms or unexpected guests.

* Grabbing documents left behind. While on a business trip, I forgot to copy some stories that I was writing onto my thumb drive. Fortunately, I did copy them to the server and into the shared document folder. I was able to pick up where I left off. I have also used LogMeIn to copy the documents to the folder so I would not have to send them..for more on LogMeIn, see this post: LogMeIn Review

* LIstening to music...yes, your music. Orb, searches the directory that you specify and lists the music. Even though we have music on our laptop or iPod, not everything goes with us...This even worked with the AT&T Tilt. We were able to stream music using the 3G connection of the phone. You can sort by artist, album, playlist, and your favorites. The search feature works just like you were at your computer.

* Watching local and internet tv shows. Sometimes, we wish we put in a tv tuner into this pc. If we did, we wouldn't need the Slingbox. However, with the TV options in Orb, we have been able to watch tv stations from other states. This is good whether we are home or on the road. We watched local weather for Florida before a trip and while we stopped at a hotel on our way. No storms, but it worked well.

* Reminiscing with family. If you do not want to upload your pictures to Flickr or some other photo sharing site, you can share them on your public orb site or have your family member create an Orb account and give them access to your pictures and videos. We used this to show some pictures and video after a recent holiday concert from our little ones. Save time and space since they could not be there.

More to come, but so far, Orb is worth the FREE price tag. Enjoy...

MacBook Air, Parallels

OK, OK, I know there are many other people out there who have had great success with Parallels and the MacBook Air...I, however, was not one of them. I installed the trail download and received a 14-day activation key. I already installed BootCamp as shared in a previous storyline, so I was hoping that I would not have to reinstall for Parallels. I held out for this one simple thing for two reasons...one, the drive is only 74 GB formated (80 GB advertised), and 12 GB were spent on the BootCamp partition; two, the time it would take to install the slipstreamed version of XP SP2 and update it in Parallels. I ended up spending more time trying to get the BootCamp partition to work well than I would have trying to install another version. Here were some things that just went too far south...

* The mouse did not work within Parallels the first or second time I launched Parallels.

* The first time I ran Parallels, it actually gave me the mac "blue screen of death"...you know the one that says press and hold down the power button to restart. Not good...not good at all...

* Parallels ended up corrupting my BootCamp partition even after I uninstalled the program from the partition. In fact, when I booted into XP after removing everything, chkdsk ran and found three pages of files that were corrupt and attempted to repair them.

* When I deleted the files on the partition in an attempt to reinstall them from a back-up, there were many locked files. This was probably not a direct Parallels issue. However, the files that remain in my Trash were files that chkdsk left behind from the Parallels install and uninstall. I was able to get the files out of the trash, but they remain on the drive until I can get XP to remove them somehow.

Since I have read so much around the internet about how great the product is, I hesitate to say that Parallels is an terrible product. I would, however, say that it is not for me and I will not be purchasing it. There were things that I may have done incorrectly with the XP install...however, since it is working incredibly well in BootCamp, I am going to go with not so much...If you have this product and it works well, I am happy for you. If you don't have the time to create things properly and use Parallels as a true virtual machine, I would urge you to pause and reconsider. Good luck...enjoy...

MacBook Air BootCamp, XP

I had read some very interesting stories around the internet about installing windows on a Mac...some good...others not so good...However, the reports were pretty consistent in that the Macs were the best hardware on which to run Windows. I needed the functionality for work...given some unique working requirements. So, I took the plunge and installed. Now, on day 3, I can honestly say things are stable...I think...

OK, so here are some lessons I learned during the install:
1) Make sure you have enough room on your BootCamp partition because you can not resize it. I started out with 5 GB. After installing Windows XP SP2 (which was an adventure itself, slipstreaming from a previously purchased CD) and adding the 130+ updates, I was left with only about 1 GB. I had not even installed Office applications or other utilities...Resizing was in my future...However, this is not as simple as resizing an Apple partition, even thought it was formated FAT32...This is what I had to do to resize:

* I had to use Disk Utility to make an image of the exisiting XP drive...this was easy since I chose to format it in FAT32.
* I opened Disk Utility, selected the XP drive, and selected "New Image"...
* I saved the file to an external USB drive.
* Using the BootCamp Assistant, I made the drive one again...this deleted the Windows partition.
* I went back into BootCamp and started over, chosing a little bit larger 12 GB size this time...this seemed about right given the MacBook Air's drive is only 74 GB and was getting quite few.
* Since Apple does not make its partition bootable, you still have to use the SuperDrive to format the drive and copy over the install files.
* When the machine reboots after the formating and before the official install starts, make sure you hold down the "Option" key and launch into the OSX partition.
* After logging in, I deleted everything on the new XP partition.
* I then was able to open the image from the USB drive and copy over everything. I could have used Disk Utility to restore, but this seemed OK.
* I rebooted again, held down the "Option" key and selected the XP partition this time. It worked well. I proceeded to install Office 2003, Windows Live Components, Windows LiveOne Care, Bonjour, iTunes, QuickTime, Java, Acrobat, Flash, and Firefox.

2) Do not use Firefox...OK, kidding here, but it surely caused many problems. I use Firefox on OSX and thoroughly enjoy it. In fact, I was hoping to use my bookmarks interchangeably with the add-ins. However, Firefox decided to crash numerous times and shut down the system. Every time the system shut down, and I launched into XP, it went through chkdsk...this was time-consuming and a pain.

3) Change what happens when Windows crashes. Make sure you prevent Windows from restarting after an error. From what I can tell, besides this latest build of Firefox, this is what caused some errors on the install and chkdsk. To change this:
* I right-clicked on "My Computer"
* Chose the "Advance" tab
* Under, "Startup and Recovery," I chose the "Settings" button
* In the "System Failure" area, I deselected "Automatic Restart"
* Clicked "Apply" and "OK"
Things seem to be well...

4) Tapping on the trackpad does not work to select items. You need to use the click button on the mouse. You can still scroll down web pages with two fingers on the trackpad which is cool, but having grown accustomed to selecting answers with a simple tap, this will take some getting used to...

5) Speaking of getting used to...right clicking without an external mouse is interesting as always, but not too bad...you can put two fingers on the pad and tap the button...which is never the same...

6) The battery life is not as good...well, I can be honest, I did not play with any energy-saving settings. However, I was only getting about 2 hours 30 minutes to 2 hours 45 minutes of battery life using XP...a far cry from the 4 hours + I was getting recently with OSX.

7) Parallels using the BootCamp partiion...well, that is for another post...originally, it crashed my machine and corrupted my partition...I will cover that soon...

I will continue to update progress and usage as I encounter it. I am writing this right now in the XP BootCamp partition of my MacBook Air, so all is good and things are playing nicely...

MacBook Air Battery Life

It happened...yes, you guessed it, over 5 hours of battery life on the MacBook Air...Yes, you read that correctly OVER 5 hours...with Bluetooth off, iTunes open and no activity for over an hour...with display set to sleep at 3 minutes, and computer set to sleep after 15 minutes, the battery meter was at 75% after 2 hours...Upon returning to it, browsing the internet, checking email, downloading podcasts, and writing this posting...I hit the over 5 hour mark...

I know, I know, I cheated...it fell asleep a number of times and had very little activity during the first few hours. It has been able to last about 4 hours on standard usage...about 3.5 hours with some video (Joost, mostly)...and about 2.5 hours with "heavy" video (this was a 2 hour iTunes movie and a 30 minute Joost video)...Hey, guess what through, that is better than our older iBook and about the same as our MacBook Pro. The 2.5 hours of "heavy" video with wifi on and going strong with Joost, is also about the same as we get with a portable DVD player...However, we can not check email or edit a Word document on the DVD player while watching the movies.

We have never carried a second battery when traveling...when the battery is running low, we turn it off and recharge it. So, this is acceptable battery life in a smaller package.

I am going to digress a little here...who are these people who feel the need to carry an extra battery? What do they do with their laptops that requires them to need another battery? Do they really use up both batteries? Or, is it that they forget to plug in the device that needs electricity and it becomes an extension of a lazier excuse? There are probably good reasons to have a second battery...however, since my first laptop in the early 90s, I have not bought an extra battery for any laptop. There are some who will say that I am not a power user and would not understand...well, let them say it...I will say they are forgetful and lazy...See, name calling is not becoming, is it...?

The battery life is not a tradeoff with a MacBook Air. It is acceptable and comparable with the other portable computers I have and have used. Enjoy...

MacBook Air Ethernet Adapter

OK, so you have heard stories about the one USB port on the MacBook Air...really, I have been using this great device for close to 2 weeks now and have not found any of the challenges others complained about in the first reviews. As mentioned in a previous post, using a simple $12 USB hub without power, I have been able to connect many other devices...As I type this, I am connected through a non-powered, MI USB, 4 port hub with the ethernet adapter, a jump drive, a Wacom Tablet, and an iPod. All working well. Oh, did I mention that I am transferring a 2 GB file and watching Joost...

Again, the only thing that I have found not to work with the non-powered hub has been the SuperDrive. While the MacBook Air is not for everyone, it is still on outstanding product and an even better pleasure to use daily.