Rob’s Blog

For some time I haven’t been able to click to play flash videos in Firefox under Ubuntu 9.10. The shortcut for me has been to press the space bar to activate the player.

I’m happy to say I have located a fix online for this bug. It’s an easy fix:

• Hit ALT+F2  or use terminal and type in the following:
  gksudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer
• add the following line BEFORE the last line of text:
  export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
• Save.
• Restart any applications using flash (ie. Firefox)

[Source: ubuntuforums.org]

Officially Windows 7 hasn’t supported upgrading Beta and RC builds but that hasn’t stopped people from doing it anyway. Now that Windows 7 is released to RTM, and was published to TechNet and MSDN yesterday, millions of users around the globe are starting the migration to this latest and highly anticipated iteration of Windows. Officially Microsoft says you will need to reformat your drive and start from scratch, using Windows Easy Transfer to migrate to a new version of Windows 7 (official guide here). However, some users may not want to reinstall their old programs even though Windows Easy Transfer is said to migrate your settings for these programs.

I’ve created this simple guide on how to upgrade Window 7 RC to the RTM build without using Windows Easy Transfer, but rather the upgrade option that is normally not available in this scenario. Read more…

It was only a matter of time…

First we have Google Docs in 2007,

Then Google Chrome and Google Android OS in 2008,

and now Chrome OS in 2009.

Slowly Google is continually positioning itself as a bigger thorn in the side of Microsoft (and Apple soon) than ever before. My speculation is that a desktop/laptop OS is next. But who gets hurt more from this, is it Apple or Microsoft? While Apple’s marketing is laser-focused as the alternative to the PC, where does Chrome OS lie? My speculation is that a desktop/laptop Chrome OS will steal market share from Apple as another alternative to Windows. In the netbook arena, however, Windows XP and Windows 7 Starter will have a new competitor. Sure, Linux has had its challenges in the netbook market, but this one is Google branded…

Why netbooks? Well, that’s easy. All netbooks have the same basic specs: Atom processors, Intel GMA, etc. Like Apple’s OS X, it’s a simpler kernel than having to support multiple OEMS, specs, etc (which is what Windows needs to do natively).

I must say that I’m surprised though it’s called Chrome OS and not Android or something else. I would have figured an Android netbook version would have been their offering.

Let’s see how many OEMs alter course after gearing up for the Windows 7 RTM. I suspect we will see Chrome versions of popular netbook offerings.

With Google becoming increasingly powerful (and arguably, Microsoft-like), will their “don’t be evil” internal company mantra hold up? We’ll just have to find out.

PS – As the well-known user-friendly Linux distro, I wonder how Canonical (Ubuntu) feels.

In a move not expected any time soon, Microsoft has released Windows Vista SP2 for public download. Commenters on Engadget claim there are noticeable performance gains and improvements made to the OS after installing this. If this is true, this should keep Vista users happy until Windows 7 is released – or longer.

Download links here:

32-bit (x86) download
64-bit (x64) download

Over the weekend AVG pushed out an update to their client. This update breaks Windows 7 by causing a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) after 3 – 5 minutes of using the machine. While I haven’t done extensive research on the issue, removing AVG seems to have fixed the problem. During the uninstall I got the BSoD error, which caused the process to be incomplete. Luckily it removes enough of AVG to have it show disabled when the PC is rebooted. Running the uninstall again makes sure it’s completely out of the system. I’m hoping AVG gets this problem fixed ASAP so I can re-install their virus protection on my PC. After recently having to fix Kaspersky’s BSoD on my system, I really hope I don’t have to install Norton by default.

More to come!

UPDATE: Looks like this issue isn’t only related to AVG.

According to this article, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard  drives are failing at an alarming rate globally. Ask any Seagate user and this will be no news to them as this has been a hot topic on the forums for a little while.

This article is concerning though. I’ve had 4x 750GB 7200.11 in a RAID 5 in my NAS since June. When I first bought the parts to build the system, 2 of the drives came DOA. Newegg quickly replaced them and I’ve been fine since. No weird clicking anymore but this makes me think I should consider running RAID 6 dual parity incase two drives fail at once. Having all the build dates nearly the same is worrysome. Even with rock solid linux RAID I won’t be able to sustain two drive failures.

So I have found the solution to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and it had nothing to do with nVidia’s Windows 7 pre-release driver. When I first installed Windows 7, it notified me that I had no anti-virus software (obviously) and listed three recommendations, one of which was free: Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7 technical preview. I’ve heard many good things about Kaspersky and decided to give it a try.

Kaspersky Lab releases technical preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7

After installing it seemed like it was working OK, but after a while it would generate a BSOD with the error pointing to kl1.sys. A quick Google search revealed that this file belongs to Kaspersky AV. I uninstalled it, installed AVG Free and I’ve been error-free since.

Now Windows 7 is running completely stable and fast. For being a beta release it runs pretty much like an RC, except for the recent MP3 corruption hotfixed they pushed out yesterday. Great job so far, Microsoft.

After much anticipation from the tech community, last weekend Microsoft released Window 7 Beta to the public – initially with a 2.5 million download limit (which was removed today). Being the geek that I am, I decided to download and install it and see if the next iteration of Windows lives up to the hype. I was delighted to know that the beta ISO was available on TechNet, which I am a proud (and paid) an member of. Not having to deal with the public download frenzy, I painlessly downloaded the 3+ GB Windows 7 64-bit ISO and began the install process. Here’s my breif review and initial impression of the OS. I will be going in to more detail in future posts. Read more…

Those complaining about a laggy interface on their HTC Touch Pro / Fuze will be delighted to know that there is a fix that will make it feel much snappier (especially TF3D). Apparently by default the device is set not to use hardware acceleration through the built in ATI Imageon processor. Instead it uses the normal CPU for these types of processes. Enabling the ATI hardware is as easy as modifying a registry entry to point to the ATI driver and rebooting, or you can install the cab over at xda-developers.com.

According to the thread, this cab makes the following registry modification:

HKLM/System/D3DM/Drivers/LocalHook
Replace the original value 'D3DMXSx50PB.dll" to "d3dm_ati.dll"

The best way to test if the driver is working is to use the Diamond VR Hologram App on the first page of the thread. A successful install will yield 20 – 25 FPS in the app.

UPDATE 1/7/09: For those looking for the CAB install file, I have uploaded it here:

diamond-ati-d3d-driver.cab

(save to your phone and open with File Explorer to install.)

If you have any questions, please post in here and I will try my best to help!

Today I saw an Article on ZDnet about “Why Windows users won’t switch to Mac” that references another blog where the author lists eight reasons why. The article goes on to comment on how Apple’s famed co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs “preaches” to Apple fans via Apple expos that consists of no holds barred Microsoft OS bashing. In addition, the article goes on to mention Apple PCs are expensive (which they are) and to “show [the author] a $500 Mac” like can be found in the PC category. Below is my response to his article:

Preaching to the converted is an effective technique for Apple for many reasons. Jobs has an Apple devotee army at his disposal, why not utilize them for marketing? In today’s age traditional forms of marketing are losing their effectiveness, referral marketing is the most credible and believable. What better way than have everyone tell their friends how great Apple is and how crappy Microsoft is. Jobs isn’t stupid, he knows exactly this. For as long as I remember Apple users are the ones that have always made all the noise. There’s something about being an underdog that creates cohesiveness and tons of energy that if channeled correctly is a formidable force as we area seeing from the Apple camp.

Oh, and I wanted to comment that *there is* a $500 Apple called the Mac Mini. It’s more like $600 but you get the idea. It’s not bad either except for the integrated video processor.

One last thing I wanted to comment on is that most everything on the apple can be done on the PC. Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier and all the software that Apple users pride themselves in are just as good on the PC. Where the value comes from Apples OS is the Unix platform, near virus immunity, and Apples air-tight lock on peripherals they endorse with the product that work solidly every time.

I’m in no way against Apple or Mac computers. I’ve actually been looking at them to purchase one. I was thinking about getting an iPhone until Steve Jobs announced there will be a newer, faster one out soon.