Windows 2008 R2 is awesome

There are a lot of reasons to upgrade to Windows 2008 R2.  Testing and understanding all the features of an operating system is the key to optimizing a corporate infrastructure as well as completing integration projects. 

This week I learned about a new feature of Windows 2008 R2, restoring a system image.

My primary home/lab server runs Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.  The system has four SATA II  disks:

• (1) 80 Gb system disk
• (2) 1TB drives – Data
• (1) 750 Gb drive – VM’s

Naturally, the 80 Gb drive was not mirrored, and pulled from another workstation.  And it was not mirrored.  And it failed. Actually, it had disk errors and the system would not boot.

So…………

I pulled the 80Gb drive and imaged it with Acronis TrueImage Home 2010 and restored the image to a spare 750Gb SATA drive.  After installing the new drive with the restored image to the server, I restarted the system.  On boot, I found the SYSTEM hive was corrupted and the system went into Repair Mode.  It prompted me to look for a system image, which I have on an external USB drive as well as on the D: partition.  The System Image Wizard found the image (along with a time/date stamp), and I selected it to restore to the C: drive.

The restore took about 30 minutes, and the wizard can restart the system automatically.  I’m up and running and will run updates to make sure I get the latest Microsoft Updates for the server.

Lessons learned:

1. Always have a current image of your server system drive.
2. Use a dedicated system drive that you can image reasonably.  A large system drive (500 Gb, for example), would be a hassle to image and would take a dedicated internal and external drive.  My 80 Gb system drive was fast and easy to image and backup to an external USB drive.
3. Always have a current image of your server system drive.
4. Always have a current image of your server system drive.
5. Retain copies online as well as offline (USB or eSATA).
6. Restore took me under two hours, including the backup and restore of the 80Gb drive, testing three drives to find one that was large enough and SATA II, and Win2008R2 image restore.
7. Always have a current image of your server system drive.

Technorati Tags: hardware,Win2008R2

iPad

Technorati Tags: hardware,Apple

Encryption busted on NIST-certified Kingston, SanDisk and Verbatim USB flash drives

 At first I thought this was hyperbole from ZD-Net regarding encryption of some popular USB flash drives.

After reading the article, I’m very surprised at how simple the crack is to implement:

When the correct password is supplied by the user, the authentication program always send the same character string to the drive to decrypt the data no matter what the password used. What’s also staggering is that this character string is the same for Kingston, SanDisk and Verbatim USB flash drives.

UPDATE:  To clarify, my concern is that the NIST security specification doesn’t include a protocol for how the authentication token is managed.  I expected it to be unique between vendors at a minimum.

Encryption busted on NIST-certified Kingston, SanDisk and Verbatim USB flash drives

Technorati Tags: encryption,storage,security

Home Energy Monitoring

There was a useful piece on the Today Show this morning on home energy use.  They referenced two devices that cost about $100 - $130 and do whole home monitoring (you connect them to your meter).  They work in the same fashion as the Kill-A-Watt, but you can plug in your local energy rate ($/KWh) and monitor your costs real time.

On the show, the woman demonstrated the before/after on her home after unplugging various 'vampire' devices including transformers and always-on appliances.

I still think the Kill-A-Watt is the best bang for the buck, but I like the idea of 'whole house' monitoring and the ability to monitor the cost using the device.

http://www.blackanddecker.com/Energy/PowerMonitorCompatibility.htm

http://www.bluelineinnovations.com/Products/

Technorati Tags: energy,home,frugal

Location Aware Printing

This is a Windows 7 feature I stumbled upon this on my work laptop.  I noticed that my default printer changed when I connected to my home wireless network.

TechNet has a walkthrough article and downloadable document detailing the setup.  A screen shot from my laptop is below showing how you can customize the default printer based on your network connection (and, yet, I miss Frank Zappa).

Technorati Tags: Win7,printers

The Motorola DROID Review Mix!

 

The Motorola DROID Review Mix! - iSmashPhone iPhone Blog

This is a summary of reviews from NYT, WSJ, Gizmodo, and Engadget with my comments on each topic.

Screen

The screen is the biggest and brightest I have experienced on a handheld.  Text and graphics pop from the screen, and the best feature is its automatic brightness adjustment based on ambient light.  The phone is easily visible at all times, even in direct sunlight.

Keyboard

I agree with other reviews – the keyboard is marginal, particularly for people (like me) with large hands and fingers.  I type with my thumb, and I miss the auto-correct I had with my WinMobile phones.  Auto capitalization does work with the keyboard.  I *do* like the keyboard layout which is optimized for e-mail and web use.  The ‘@’ sign, ‘/’, and most commonly used punctuation don’t require use of Shift or Fn.
I’m not too keen on the screen keyboard, but Motorola needs to enable auto-correct with the slide out keyboard.

Camera

It works, it’s 5 megapixels, it integrates with  software, and it supports applications such as barcode reader, which I like have found very useful.

Operating System

Android 2.0 is very impressive.  I have used Windows Mobile since the 2003 release in various form factors (flip phone, QWERTY no touch, touch screen with keyboard, touch screen only). 

 

The biggest feature I need to address is the full ActiveSync with Exchange/Outlook.  The base ActiveSync support works with e-mail, contacts, and calendar (Corporate Calendar on the Droid).  However, in my testing, e-mail and contact sync appear to work fine, but I’m debugging an authentication issue with Calendar and using Google’s Outlook Calendar Sync as a work around.  Also, Outlook/Exchange Tasks and Notes are not supported, which makes me sad. 

Android integration with Google is very, very good, but still not complete.  I would like to see full mobile support for all Google Apps.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Droid,review

Droid Day 3

1. First full business day of use summary
2. Droid recharge issue (possibly operator error)
3. ActiveSync error with Corporate Calendar
4. USB Sync with Windows (tested Win7)

First full business day of use, I had a very light day of e-mail, text, and web use. 

Phone configuration – Bluetooth, mail sync (GMail and ActiveSync) enabled all day. 

Use – 5-6 phone calls, ~15 texts, Twitter post and review morning, lunch, and evening.  GMail checks real time, about 100 messages total.   The battery level 40% at 8PM.

Another odd observation is that the Droid turns on when you charge it.  I turned it off on the charger, but if the power is cycled (turned off and on), the phone turns itself on again. Not a big deal, but not expected behavior.

ActiveSync – works fine with e-mail and Contacts, and I’m getting an authentication error with Corporate Calendar.  Not sure how e-mail is working and Calendar sync is not, but I’ll look into it and see if I can enable logging to debug the issue.

USB Sync with Windows 7 is not well documented.  Connect the Droid to your computer with the USB cable, a USB icon is displayed on the status bar.  Pull down the status bar, select USB and select “USB connected”, then Mount the Droid SD card. 

You can transfer files manually, or use DoubleTwist (http://www.doubletwist.com/dt/Home/Index.dt) to automate synch of media files.

Technorati Tags: Droid,USB,review

Verizon Droid

I went to the Mount Laurel Verizon store at 6am this morning to buy a Droid.  Oddly enough, I was the only one in line over the age of, oh, 30?  Lots of customer service people and they even had a photographer and some marketing folks.  Bill was my customer service person, and he did a great job – he knew the Droid and even took some time to walk me through the interface and apps a bit, even demonstrating how to search the App Marketplace for a Twitter client.

I was the first person to complete my purchase, so they took a picture of Bill, me, and the Droid with the time displaying.

My first impression is very, very positive.  I will wring the hell out of it this weekend and post my comments. 

I bought a set of screen protectors, but the Droid fits in my Samsung i760 holster as well as my car holder.  I’m amused that the Droid manual has fewer pages (it’s actually a gatefold) than the Product Safety and Consumer Information brochures.  The only accessory is a 115V USB wall adapter and USB/mini-USB connector, but this fits into my existing car charger, so I’m ready to go.

Current Favorite Apps

• TwitDroid – twitter client
• Advanced Task Killer Free – task management utility
• Google Voice
• Car Home – GPS navigator
• Barcode Scanner – scan barcode and web lookup
  
  

Technorati Tags: Droid,Android,Google,mobile,communications

Cell phone users rack up accidental data charges

NOTE – if you ask Verizon, they can setup your account so it is impossible for your mobile phone to access the Internet.  Period.  They incorrectly stated that multimedia messaging would be disabled, but this is not correct.  You can send and receive pictures without a data connection.

It also appears that need to have them reconfigure your account to disable Internet access if you switch phones or reset features of your plan.

I find it very troubling that Verizon talks about “fixing this aspect of our service” when I know this is not true, and my local Verizon tech people have configured my accounts in this fashion.

 

Verizon Wireless is looking into ways to prevent subscribers without data plans from accidentally starting up the Web browser on their phones and racking up $1.99 in fees each time.

On many phones, including ones on other carriers, it's easy to inadvertently hit a button that brings up the Web browser.

"It is obvious to us that we need to fix this aspect of our service," spokesman Tom Pica said.

He said the company is refunding data charges to subscribers who complain.

My Way News - Cell phone users rack up accidental data charges

Technorati Tags: Verizon,mobile,budget

Asus WL-330gE – travel wireless adapter

I purchased the Asus WL-330gE after spending several weeks in hotels on large projects. One of the architects had a Linksys travel adapter, but it’s no longer available and had reported power supply issues.

The Asus WL-330gE is a great little device, and it can act as a repeater, access point, or USB adapter for your laptop.

Installation was a snap, with the only problem being the initial interface is in Chinese. The other problem is that the Asus support site times out more than often than not, so I’m posting the support files here for download as well as screen shots of the install.

WL-330gE Firmware

WL-330gE Setup Software

Default setup screen – Chinese Language
Select the upper left corner pull-down menu and select the first option to reset the screen to English Language.

Technorati Tags: firmware,setup,Asus,WL-330gE,wifi

Paul bought an iPod

This is absolutely shocking.  I don’t know what to say, other than it’s a refurbished 40GB 4th Generation iPod and it cost under $80 from ecost.com.

I still feel a bit dirty.

But I did it for my daughter.  Sarah’s Zune was in her car when it was stolen in Atlanta.  I’m shipping my original 30GB Zune (white, refurbished, $99!) tomorrow.

In my defense, I’m not running iTunes.  iTunes is a piece of poo.  Lots of strange services, ACC format files, DRM, ugh!  I’m running Rockbox, a firmware upgrade available from www.roxbox.org.  I used the Rockbox Utility to detect the iPod, download the appropriate software, and install.  It was a very painless process.  The really neat part was just did a drag and drop of MP3 library to the iPod, and I was in business.  It even recognized my WinAmp playlists.  I have some songs in FLAC and Vogg Orbis formats and will experiment later. 

I tried using the ml_ipod add-on for WinAmp, but I was having some problems and just opted to move to the Rockbox firmware.

I’m quite pleased with the combination of the iPod and Rockbox software.  I am experimenting with the Themes so I can read the screen without glasses when I am on my stationary bike (single speed bike with Nashbar fluid trainer).

 

Technorati Tags: ipod,rockbox,mp3,firmware

Sprint HTC Mogul – Hard Reset

While traveling, I had my HTC Mogul die.  The symptoms were ‘artifacts’ on the home screen (overlay), and the device was generally unresponsive.  I turned was able to turn the phone off and on, but it was stuck at the green Windows Mobile 6.1 initialization screen.  I had to remove the battery to shut down.  A soft reset made no difference, so I performed a hard reset.

This is disturbing when you are on the road, but at least the problem was resolved in less than 30 minutes.  No additional hardware or software was required, ActiveSync and Mobile applications data are retained on the laptop.  I have considered disaster recovery applications for Windows Mobile, but I do not think this is necessary.

Data lost after the reset was limited to Text messages.  I didn’t have any other data in local storage because I configured all other applications to store on the SD card.

Hard Reset – hold down both the soft keys (right and left with the dot at the bottom of the device) and press the reset button on the base of the device.

1. After the reset, you are prompted to be sure you want to reinitialize the device.  You must respond using the keyboard. 
2. System performs an auto-restore with Sprint customizations, some of which can not be uninstalled.
3. Next, the phone auto-restarts to initialize the auto-restore.
4. The phone can be used at this point, but I need to restore my contacts and applications, so I connect to my laptop running ActiveSync 4.5.
5. ActiveSync device with local laptop.  I configure my synch to maintain
   1. Contacts - ~900 contacts – everyone I know, business, personal, and family
   2. Calendar – three month history of appointments
   3. Tasks – typically 45-75 total
   4. Notes – 55 notes
   5. Favorites – 5
   6. Microsoft Office OneNote – light use, about 20K-30K
6. Reset Theme and interface.  I use Windows Default and simplify the interface so I don’t have to scroll the screen.  I also added my basic Owner Information.
7. Add/Remove Programs
   1. Developer One Agenda – install on device
   2. Evernote Mobile (3.0.0.981) – storage card
   3. OneNote Mobile – storage card
   4. Microsoft Voice Command PPC 1.60 – device
8. Device restarts after the Voice Command install to re-initialize the device.
9. Last, reset the Ring Tones to my personal choices

Technorati Tags: Windows Mobile,HTC,Sprint,Mogul,ActiveSync,disaster recover

Hardware and Software I use

Starting this as a sanity check, and to answer some questions people have asked in the past few months.  I’m burning time while we wait to take Sarah to the airport.

Software

Backup – Acronis True Image – great software for full backup and rapid restore to your desktop or laptop.  1GB/min backup speeds to external USB 2.0 drives.

Office 2007 – I live in Outlook 2007, and use Word 2007 daily for my work.  There is a learning curve from previous releases, but it’s worthwhile learning the Office Ribbon.

RSS Reader – FeedDemon.  Period.  It’s great, and I maintain a subscription Newsgator so I synch my RSS feeds across multiple systems (work laptop, home desktop, personal laptops) and I it is available via web as well.

Browser – IE7 and the current release of Firefox.  I live in browsers and use both, selecting the best for the task at hand.  Typically, Firefox for general use and IE7 for business/financial transactions.

Text Editors - Notepad++, TextPad, and VIM.  VIM is a personal choice because I have used vi under Unix for longer than I can remember, Notepad++ is a great open source, multi-platform editor, and TextPad is quite good and I use the workplace feature often.

PDF Creation - PDFCreator – another open source project, I use it to generate PDF files and it installs as a print driver on your system.  It supports all the basic Adobe Acrobat Pro features, but not encryption, watermarks, and other advanced features.

Process Lasso - Process Lasso runs at a higher priority, monitors and throttles processes to optimize the system responsiveness.  I have tested for a few days and it has been stable and measurably improved my system response.  I am using the free version, but may upgrade if I’m still using it in January.  Process Lasso helps system response on my laptop, particularly with the SMC.EXE process and when I’m doing labs with Virtual PC locally.

 

Hardware

Windows Mobile Phone – forget the iPhone, I have used a Windows Mobile phone for almost five years.  It synchs with Outlook, it works well as a phone, and supports

Zune – I don’t like iTunes software, I got a 30GB Zune for $99 a while ago (white versus poo brown), and it does a great job with podcasts, which is my primary use as well as music when I use a bicycle trainer indoors.

 

Technorati Tags: software,list,hardware

Latitude D630 Broadcom NetXtremem 57xx

 

Me thinks there are  ‘issues’ with the Dell Latitude D630 network drivers.  This is the second time my machine went into network hell since the Spring.  I also debugged a memory leak with the wireless driver a few months ago as well.  The symptom today was the TCP/IP protocol stack would not load when upon system start up.  It wasn’t a DHCP or network issue, it was the TCP/IP stack failing to load on the card.  The network cable connection was detected correctly, but you could not do anything via the network.

Another symptom was the system hanging on shutdown.  Probably waiting forever for network processes.

You would think the debugging process would be faster on my part, since I ran into this before but nooooo.  Just the restarts were a killer due to the system hangs…  I started with rolling back system state, rolling back the driver, attempted uninstall of the driver (hangs machine).  Bah!

The fix was going into Safe Mode, uninstall the device, re-start and re-discover.  I tried to install an older, stable driver (per Google searches), but after the re-start, the system installed a *newer* driver from Microsoft.  The latest posted Dell driver was 10.26.0.0 (which was installed originally), after re-discovery, I am running 10.78.0.0 from Microsoft.

Hope this saves someone some time.

Technorati Tags: Dell,Latitude,D630,TCP,network,drivers

Windows Mobile 6.1 Firmware – Sprint Mogul

I updated my phone with a developer version of the firmware.  The production release was issued 8.6.2008 and the link below matches the exact rev I have installed on my phone.

I found the following benefits of the firmware:

• NO SYSTEM RESETS.  None, since the firmware update.
• Device certs for ActiveSync support (future requirement for my company for security)
• Longer battery life (this is more qualitative, but it is noticeably better)
• Text messages conversations are threaded
• Eliminated occasional problems I had answering calls when phone locked
• Java updated – Google Mail application works
• GPS application support enabled – works with Google Maps real time
• Did I mention NO SYSTEM RESETS?

There are probably some other issues, but these are ones I know off the top of my head.

Also, I had a local problem with ActiveSync that I resolved with help from Sandy Dahri.  Details on link below .  The root cause appears to be a beta release of Microsoft Desktop Search 4.0.

Windows Mobile 6.1 for Mogul - Sprint

http://www.htc.com/us/SupportDownloadList.aspx?p_id=75&cat=all

ActiveSync problem fix

http://www.paulbegley.com/2008/07/office-2007-and-activesync-45-problems.htm

Technorati Tags: HTC,Sprint,Microsoft,mobile,firmware,ActiveSync

New approach to my web site

I’m taking a mental health break because I should be working on an RFP that is due at noon tomorrow.

Moving forward, I am taking a different approach to my Blog.  I’m not even sure I like the term Blog anymore (although I like the Blogger software/system).  I will still link to sites that have content that interests me, or that is thought provoking, but my new focus is to publish original content or observations for all future posts.  I think it’s the election, but my content will be a combination of politics, technical, personal, and productivity.

I will target 500 words (212 so far), but this will not be a requirement.  The web has reached the point where five people post original content, everyone links to them, and the MLM people still think they can be millionaires working part time from home.  I have reached a  point in my life where I want to add value and not just follow others.

My web sites are hosted on a server I share with friends.  I will be migrating this week and there may be an interruption in service while DNS updates, but the new server is bigger, better, faster, and I am looking forward to the transition.

 

Technorati Tags: personal,blogging,hardware

END_OF_NT_EVALUATION_PERIOD

Sarah is taking the HP TX1110US laptop back to school in August.  Last week she mentioned that the system was mysteriously shutting down after about an hour or so.  I tried to ignore the problem, but I wanted to image the system before I installed XP.

I reset the System configuration so it would not automatically restart.  An hour later, the BOSD shows the event END_OF_NT_EVALUATION_PERIOD. 

This can’t be a Good Thing.  I Google (yes, it’s a verb).  Don’t find much, but I dug around TechNet and found that this can be generated if you installed a beta of Windows Vista SP1.  Crap.  Yeah, I did that, and never updated (well, I thought I updated…).

I uninstalled SP1, restarted (three step count down to complete the uninstall).  After restart, I used Vista Windows Update and painfully re-installed the pre-SP1 fixes, SP1, post-SP1, and just for good measure the latest security fixes as well as some HP specific hardware driver updates.

NOW the system is up and running.  I will image (Acronis is my friend), and install XP (yes, a legit license I have from my IBM Z-Pro workstations which are now running Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows 2008 Server.

Technorati Tags: Vista,backup,BSOD

Office 2007 and ActiveSync 4.5 Problems

ActiveSync stopped doing a bi-directional synchronization with my Sprint HTC Mogul a few weeks ago (naturally before I went on vacation). 

I never discovered the root cause of the problem, but it may have been a combination of Microsoft Desktop Search 4.0 beta, my Outlook profile, and my being very busy and not sorting out the problem when I noticed the synch stopped working.

Around the same time, Outlook generated an error on opening that stated it was not the default Mail Client, even though the option was properly set.

Problem: ActiveSync would not synchronize Outlook with my HTC Mogul.  Period.  End of story.  Not even thinking considering it.  ActiveSync would connect properly, display the proper count for Contact items (934!), the count would jump to 100/934, then complete and go to Calendar without any Contacts being copied.

I reset the phone, still no joy.

Finally, Sandy suggested I delete the contents of \Windows\Messaging on the device. 

This worked!

Resolving the default client error was resolved by a re-install of Office 2007.  All my settings were saved, including my Outlook Profiles, it was just inconvenient.

I also upgraded the HTC Mogul to Windows Mobile 6.1 (Developers build downloaded from third party site, not HTC or Sprint).  It’s a very nice upgrade and I’ll post after I have it running for a few weeks.

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office,ActiveSync

Zune for Christmas

Originally, I saw the re-furb and brown 30 Gb original Zunes on sale, but I waited a bit too long.  Then while I was on my road trip to pickup Sarah from Tech, I found a white, refurb Zune at buy.com for $109, so I jumped.

I could not be happier.  Initializing the Zune, it automatically installed the latest client on my desktop and upgraded the firmware to the 2.3 release.

During the initial setup, I pointed it to existing folders for my audio, video, and podcast folders.  The synch was pretty quick and after it sucked up everything, I still had 19Gb free.  The only

The only problem I had was synching NPR podcasts. By comparing file MP3 ID tags on files that synched correctly and the NPR files, I determined the Zune filters based on the Genre tag.  Genre = Podcast to synch to Zune. I updated using a Sourceforge MP3 tag editor massid3lib.  It worked like a charm.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/massid3lib

Technorati Tags: MP3,Zune,Microsoft,Sourceforge,podcast

Macs are more expensive

I frequently have this discussion with "Mac People".  I don't argue that Apple has a great design group, but I don't believe they offer the value for money I receive from other vendors.

Dave Winer is a pretty savvy guy, and a big Apple fan, so I was pretty surprised when I read his article detailing his Mac Book repair.  It's just my nature, but I would probably have my hands around the throat of the Mac support person.  At a minimum, I want a new drive in my system and some assurance, in writing, that data on my original drive will be scrubbed, or the drive destroyed.

The other factor that keeps me away from Mac stores is the "Genius Bar".  Let's face it, these guy (and women possibly) aren't geniuses and calling a 20-something college student (or recent grad) working in retail a genius just sets unreasonable expectations from a customer and dilutes the term 'genius'.  None of these folks have an IQ higher than mine and they don't think out of the box because Apple doesn't want someone like that working in retail in the first place.

The last time I was in an Apple store the little freakazoid manager (Marlton, NJ for anyone interested) asked me to stop taking pictures.  Bugger off, Apple Boy!  I have shoes older than you.

Technorati Tags: Apple,Mac,fanboy,hardware

(Scripting News) " href="http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/12/22/macsAreEvenMoreExpensiveTh.html">

Windows XP Memory Leak - NOT SP3

UPDATE:  I had a comment asking about problem resolution.  The memory leak was resolved by updating the Dell Wireless 1370 WLAN driver (reference below).  The updated version of the driver is an 89 Meg download: http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R174291.exe

=========================================

After removing SP3, my memory leak issue re-surfaced.  I used Process Explorer, configured it to display Page Faults, Private Bytes, and Virtual Size, and I found the culprit.  The Dell Wireless driver had something like 8MM page faults. 

This process (BCMWLTRY.EXE) was visible from Task Manager, but I overlooked it.  Killing the process from Process Explorer, it re-spawned, and immediately started spewing page faults.  The new drivers was issued 18 Dec 2007, details are below and it's available for download from Dell Support.

 

Title      : Network:Dell Wireless 1370 WLAN MiniPCI Card, Wireless 1390 WLAN MiniCard, Wireless 1395 WLAN MiniCard, Wireless 1470 Dual-Band WLAN miniPCI Card, Wireless 1490 Dual-Band WLAN MiniCard, Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card, Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card Desktops Driver
Version    : A17
OEM Name   : Dell
OEM Ver    : 4.170.25.12
Computers  : Dimension - DXP061, DXC061;
Inspiron - 1520, 1720, 1420, 1521, 1721;
Inspiron Desktop - 530, 530S, 531, 531S;
Latitude - D430, ATG D630, D530, D531, XT, D631, D620, D630, D830, D420, D620, D520;
OptiPlex - 745, 320, 740, 755, 330;
Precision - M2300, T7400, T5400, M6300, M4300, 390, 690, 490, M65, M90, M60, M70, M20;
Vostro Desktop - 200, 400;
Vostro Notebook - 1000, 1500, 1700;
XPS - MXP061, MXG061, XPS 720, M1730, 420, M1330
Oses       : Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Tablet PC EditionWindows XP x64 Professional Client

Technorati Tags: Dell,wireless,drivers,download

32 bit Windows memory support

This subject has come up on several occasions, so I'm posting a note with several references on the topic.

Basically, 32-bit Windows desktop operating systems (XP, Vista) will not address more than 3 GB of installed memory.  You can add the /3GB switch to your BOOT.INI file, but hardware constraints, including your video card and BIOS will limit how much RAM above 3GB is available for the operating system. 

NOTE:  This is particularly an issue for high end video cards because the amount of video RAM is deducted from the 4GB theoretical limit for 32 bit operating systems, so even if you have 4GB installed, a 512 Meg video card could reduce your available ram to under 3GB.

Microsoft MSDN article: Memory Limits for Windows Releases

Microsoft MSDN article: 4-Gigabyte Tuning

Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM? - this article includes a nice Intel map of the 32 bit address space memory allocation details.

eneloop batteries - eneloop is a rechargeable battery.

Sony is offering a special PowerPack at Costco that includes a four position charger, 8 AA, 4 AAA, as well as two C and D size adapters (you can put four AA batteries into the adapters and use them as C and D batteries).

The neat thing about the eneloop over traditional NiMH batteries is they retain their charge longer on the shelf.  I just started testing  (AA in a digital camera and AAA in my voice recorder).  I will post a follow-up after I have some real world experience and stats.

del.icio.us Tags: gagets , hardware , recommendations