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...