Category: technology-and-computing

Yes shock horror, I am selling my TabletPC in the hope of getting a Apple PowerBook. For everyone who knows me well, this is a very difficult thing to admit. I somewhat like Windows but cant deal with all the crazyness of Windows XP (specially Tablet edition which has this crazy bug), so I'm moving sideways and changing to a Mac. I would move to Linux but the Mac will do for now. Apple have done some good things in the laptop world and I could deal with changing to Apple for my general laptop computing. So who will take my tablet off my hands? I mean no disrespect but at somepoint Microsoft are going to dump the TabletPC (in my own eyes) and then where we all be?

However this move to Apple does not mean I will turn into one of these nerdy apple boys! Dusting and polishing there apple laptops while the playing with there Sony Ericsson Phones! Oh no, I'll use the laptop but it doesnt mean I'm part of the cult of Apple! I pledge I WILL NOT GET A IPOD, IPOD Mini or IPODSHUFFLE ever!

Anyway has anyone got a clue of where I can actually just swap the tabletPC for a Mac laptop? Ebay does not seem to have the greatest range of TabletPC's which could be a good thing or a bad thing. And no matter how tempting, I'm not going to sell it abroad through ebay.com. I've also been thinking I must beable to get a educational or some kind of discount, as I should just buy the Mac new from Apple. I mean 1100 for the G4 powerbook, I'm sure the price wont go down much 2nd hand. I'm really hoping I will get about 1000+ for the TabletPC which is a little less than half of the street price.

So after a super humorous conversation with Harry on the phone where I almost laughed to death of hysterical choking. Why have I made the change? Well let me explain a little more.

1. I never or hardly ever use the Tablet features of the TabletPC. I never got use writing on the screen and adopted style simular to my ipaq of tapping on the screen instead of writing.
2. The same reason as I tried switching to Linux a while ago, all the applications I actually use on the PC are opensource, free as in beer or free as in freedom. From Firefox, Thunderbird and itunes to PSI, OpenOffice and VLC. All of them fit into one of the three categories. All of these Applications will run on the Mac no problem. So I will only loose Windows, oh what a shame…
3. I've had it with the viruses, spyware, adware and crazy updates. Damm I had to install 8 patches the other weekend. I dont mind doing this for my computer and server but not for my laptop too. I'm an advanced computer user (hate that word) but when I pick up my laptop I dont expect to download patches, update and restart the computer before I can use it. I treat my laptop a bit like my ipaq, I just want to use it and do an update once in a while.
4. The web is the platform, it doesnt matter what operating system I'm using on my machine as long as its secure and realiable. Windows Tablet edition isnt either
5. I'm not one for looks and actually I think the Apple powerbooks are not all that but its consistent unlike my tablet which has bits all over the place and dont get me started on the construction of my tablet…
6. Having no optical drive is great when your at home or somewhere with lots of networking but take it anywhere else and having no optical drive is a pain to say the least. In time no optical drive will make sense but Apple have fit an optical drive into the same space as my TabletPC.
7. I look at whats going into OSX 10.4 (I refuse to call it by its stupid animal name) and I'm thinking what on earth is Microsoft doing? Longhorn (or as I'm now calling it Longyawn) is years off now and wont catch up with OSX 10.4. Microsoft would need to do something very radical like build on Linux, the hybrid strategy. To catch up with OSX for someone like me. For example, lets look at some of the highlights of OSX 10.4. Spotlight, a lucene/google for the desktop. Not that special but good to have, specially when compared to the built in search in Windows XP. Yeah yeah I'm sure Longyawn will have it and more but OSX will have it this year, when I need it. And I cant get over smartfolders which acts like smartplaylists in iTunes. I've been dieing for this for years and now my mail client (thunderbird) has it I want it on the desktop too. Automator, I wont be learning applescript any time soon but you know what this is just what I need now and then. Yes you can use VB on Windows but screw that when this builds it for you.
8. The technologies of the Mac are pretty damm good. I love the fact Mpeg4 H.264 is built in now, Windows has never taken advantage of mDns (rendezvous or zeroconf) and still makes a pigs ear of bluetooth while the mac just does the job. OSX is just the gui, so I can skip to a Unix shell when ever I like which makes the cmd shell in windows look like a 486 processor in 2005. I actually really hate using the windows shell and look forward to getting rid of it on my laptop. The mixture of Open and propitery in OSX is much more balanced than Windows will ever be. I dont rule out Linux but right now the gui's are not as easy to use day in day out like OSX.

I will buy a Apple Mac, but it doesnt mean I will love or like it *smile*. Now who will take this TabletPC off my hands?

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I was talking to Ben on instant messenger tonight and he sent me a link to the Demon 1meg and 2meg broadband services. I couldnt believe it. Just at the point when I was considering getting NTL cable 750k on top of my Demon ADSL Ben comes along and saves the day. Will miss having 2 xboxes but damm I cant believe Demon never informed there customers of the new 5 pound upgrade for double the speed. However the upload is still only 250k (usually get up to 300k with demon). I will happly pay 30 pounds a month for 1 meg but not 78 pounds a month for 2meg! Come on Demon sort it out! Thanks Ben….

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Ok I didnt give up, I just got a point where I had to make a decision. Yep thats right, I'm back to using Windows on my main workstation. Its dual bootable with Hard drive installed Knoppix ebian) but honestly its pretty messed up and almost unrecoverable. Anyway, I decided that I didnt want to go back to Windows XP Pro just yet so installed a old version of Windows 2000. And spent the next few days installing this huge list… Inspired by Bill de Hora

Zone Alarm
Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
Windows 2000 updates
DirectX 9b
Tons of Hardware Drivers
Java 1.42_06 (was tempted to install 1.5)
AVG
PSI
Firefox
Thunderbird
Wbloggar
BlogMatrix Jager
iTunes
Winrar
Azureus
FFmpeg
VLC
ActiveSync
Audacity
Quicktime
GIMP
DVD Shrink
DVD Decrypter
Mpeg2Schnitt
Windows Mediaplayer
DrDivx
Audioscrobbler plugin for iTunes
Irfanview
Nero
CCXstream
Skype
KeePass
Partition Magic
Acrobat Reader
Xlink Kai Evolution
Ad Aware
Open Office
Xmpeg
Inkscape
XMLSpy
Putty
WinSCP
Resin
Smart FTP

What I'll be installing soon…
Icecast server
Zoe
Textpad or Uedit
Opera
Winamp
Mozilla SVG build
SDP
Matroska Pack
Atomix Mp3 or Virtual DJ
BS player
Blogwave
Spike
VNC
Remote Desktop server/client

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Installed Synergy on my dual screen work pc and development mac. Works so well that one of the designers commeted that …Its like god has come down to earth with this software. What more can I say? I do know I will get a slap down at some point for installing software on a work machine. But seriously theres no douht its worth of the slap because its so damm useful. Just from a ergnomic view, having one keyboard and mouse to control 2 machines is a god sent for sure.

A couple of tips I learn along the way. Use the windows machine as the server, as its quicker, more stable and has a simple gui. And on the mac run the command like this ./synergyc -n MacScreen -f PcScreen. If you try it without the name, synergy will use the rendez-vous name not the mac computer name, and dont forget to run the command on a mac you need to add your ./. Very cool, anyway… Cant wait to add redhat box to the synergy configuration.

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I was browsing around today and found this page for unixness.

This page has been removed because it was being stored on an unliscensed Linux server.

Dont let this happen to you!!

For information on purchasing a SCO liscnese for your Linux server, click here.

For information regarding lower-cost alternatives to Linux, click here.

I'm wondering what the hell? Is this for real or somekind of joke. And if its for real did the ISP upload the page or what? I've never seen this before, anyone else?

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Ok my move to Linux is going better than before. I've actually made a lot of progress, till I decided to try the Gatos ATI drivers again. After a few days I worked out that X wouldnt start because it thought the TV output was the main monitor. So now when I start up Linux I have to unplug my composite out then plug it in again. Luckly I'm not using the TV-out no more because of the Xbox media centre, so I just leave it unplugged.
However since using kxconfig, the display seems to be stuck on 16bit which goes really funky when you load up Mozilla, Firefox or Thunderbird. The screen goes Purple and Green and makes it very difficult to see my email.

On the Samba front, I still cant get other machines (pocketpc, xbox or windows pc's) to connect via samba. But with tests I've also found I cant even connect via samba to while on the exact same machine – hence somethings wrong with my configuration.

By the way I've also started adding parts to my experimental wiki to do with learning unix and linux.

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I found I could Apt-get Bit torrent using the stable Debian packages but never knew how to get it running till I came across this page.

First do a – apt-get install bittorrent
If you get no errors and all goes to plan, you can grab your .torrent file from where ever. if like me your using KDE or Gnome then find the file and open with. Then type bittorrent.
From a shell you can do the same by typing – btdownloadgui /home/yourusername/thefile.torrent.
You may get a error like me about a Python lib not being present you can fix that by – apt-get install libwxgtk2.4-python.

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I come home from Berlin and switch on my workstation to find Windows is pretty messed up. Well actually I have a hardware problem where the memory shown is only 256meg not 1024meg. But I solved that and windows was still messed up. So I decided to make the real move to Linux and not to fix Windows. I mean why bother? I booted up knoppix 3.4 to check if I could see the Hard drives ok, and sure enough I could see them. So I installed Knoppix. I expect I will document alot of experience of trying to get Linux working like windows from now on.

My todo list for linux
Thunderbird/Mozilla Mail.
Gaim.
VLC.
SMB Client sharing.
SMB Server sharing or XBMSP sharing.
Bit torrent.
CD/DVD burning.
SSH access.
External access VNC or/and Remote Desktop Protocal.
Gatos Video Capture and TV view.
FTP client for XBMC.
XMLRPC client for quick blogging.
ActiveSync replacement for PocketPC and Smartphone.

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Yep forget Apple's itunes release, allofmp3 is where its at.

yes all of mp3 is russian and may not be totally legal in other counties besides russia – but boy oh boy, the ability to pay for how much you actual download rather than per song sounds like a great idea. Specially when you consider downloading music for mobile phones, palmtops and other devices. They support the ipod with AAC Mpeg4 and tons of other formats including WMA, MP3, OGG, Flac and MPC. Check out the online encoding for even more flexability by the way there selection of music isnt bad. I found lots of trance on there but I cant test it against itunes music store because I refuse to download itunes.

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Shareaza version 2.0 is now available, the biggest and most important change is that it’s now offered under the GPL license. Slashdot covered it a while ago with comments – but I'm only just downloading it now. Will tell you how it goes over time.

Ok first up, the interface with the default skin is a little heavy but attractive and neat. Its very comparable to Winamp 5's default interface. A nicer skin is needed soon. Anyway how does it work? Well it picks up my Bit torrents nicely, read them from clipboards or when i click the file in windows. Opera should be able to send the torrent if i set it up correctly. Thank someone, because the bit torrent downloader is actually good and comparable with Torrent storm which I use to use. Downloaded something quite big very quickly last night. Not really logged on to G2 yet, but might do tonight see how it compares to the plain gnutella network.

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