Windows Vista Versions
There a lots of versions of the latest version of Windows. It’s not sure at this point how much MS is going to enforce the licensing, but w/o experience, based on the EULA it’s easy to assume the worst. These are the different versions of Vista and the different licenses available.
Version |
Price |
Purpose |
| Home Basic | $100 | No frills, cheap home user |
| Home Premium | $160 | Typical home user |
| Business | $200 | Typical business user |
| Ultimate | $400 | All features in one package |
License |
Version |
Price |
Purpose |
| OEM | Home Basic | $60 | |
| Home Premium | $120 | ||
| Business | $150 | ||
| Ultimate | $200 | ||
| Upgrade | Home Basic | $100 | |
| Home Premium | $160 | ||
| Business | $200 | ||
| Ultimate | $260 | ||
| Full | Home Basic | $200 | |
| Home Premium | $240 | ||
| Business | $300 | ||
| Ultimate | $400 |
- You can see that the OEM versions are cheaper by far. The constraint here is that you can’t upgrade motherboards. For most people that’s fine, but I upgrade motherboards about once a year. Most people I know should get this one.
- The Upgrade is what MS is pushing hard. You can’t download the Full or OEM versions from their site and Retails stores have this version almost exclusively. The constraint here is that you must upgrade from a previous version of Windows. In past versions, you could present a Win98, WinME, etc. disk and fresh install. Upgrade installs always leave you with a slower computer than a fresh install. MS states this in not the case with Vista, but Tom’s Hardware already did the comparison. You are also “trading in” your old WinXP
- The Full version is the hardest to find. I ordered mine from Amazon, but couldn’t seem to find it at NewEgg. It’s also the most expensive. There is not a constraint concerning the motherboard and there is no silly “upgrade” requirement. You also don’t lose your WinXP license. This is the best for me, since I don’t want the loss of functionality while upgrading, waiting for Vista drivers and applications, losing a license, transfering to the new computer once a year.
Update 2/1/07: Vista Upgrade Decision Flow Chart
AT&T growth by Stephen Colbert
This is a hilarious clip explaining how Cingular and pretty much everything else has become AT&T. From the Colbert Report.
Daylight Savings Time
I recieved this email from Microsoft. DLS sucks and is completely unneccessary. It’s hard to believe it saves any energy or money. It does an excellent job of screwing up peoples equilibrium twice a year and helps us feel less connected to nature. And the latest change is very expensive. Some computer systems have this designed in them with no intention or capability to modify the DLS start/end dates. Win98 for example will never be fix, MS has stated such. However, there are millions of these computers out there and that’s not even 10 yr old.
Dear Valued Microsoft Customer,
This year Daylight Saving Time (DST) extends by approximately four weeks. In compliance with this provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, DST dates in the United States and Canada will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November).
In some instances, effort will be required to accommodate the new DST legislation. For example, systems and applications may need to be updated directly, while in other circumstances the application may inherit the date and time information from the underlying system.
Microsoft is committed to helping customers that are affected by the DST changes make this transition as seamless as possible. Microsoft is producing updates for Windows products as well as other Microsoft products affected by the new U.S. statute. These updates will be released through technical support channels including Microsoft Customer Service & Support (CSS), as well as online channels such as Windows Update and Microsoft Update.
Details of the updates for Microsoft Windows and affected Microsoft applications, how customers can acquire them and when they will be available can be found on the Microsoft website at http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007. Corresponding technical Knowledge Base articles are linked from this website as well.
Vista Doorbusters
I have been waiting for the Vista doorbusters for years now. WinXP came with some cool free/cheap things. USB memory sticks, mp3 players, etc. Vista’s doorbusters can be summed up in one word, “lame”.
BestBuy
Buy a Vista and get one of these:
Free TaxCut, Laptop Memory, MS Live OneCare
Save on 6200 video card, printer/scanner/copier, 7.1 megapixel camera, Nero 7, Paint Shop Pro 11, Wireless N Router
TaxCut - don’t need it
Laptop memory - don’t have one
OneCare - free for a yr then $50/yr
6200 video card - 2 generations ago, this is an attrocious deal should be 7X00 card
printer/scanner/copier - don’t need it
7.1 camer - don’t need it
Nero 7 - maybe
Paint Shop Pro - don’t need it
Wireless Router - don’t need it
OneCare is really a trick to get you to buy it next year and it’s MS’s own product. Does that really count as free?
Circuit City
Buy a Vista and get one of these free after Mail in Rebates):
printer/copier/scanner, wireless G router, MS Live OneCare, SpySweeper, TaxCut Premium, Norton Internet Security ‘07
I don’t need any of these things. It doesn’t seem worth the hassle to buy, resell, and wait for rebates to come in. SpySweeper and Internet Security shouldn’t be necessary for Vista. The biggest upgrade over WinXP was it’s security system. I won’t touch an MIR with a 10 ft pole, so all of this stuff is out.
Office Depot
Buy Vista or Office 07 get software for free (after Mail in Rebates) and $50 off a printer
Software List: Aquazone Open Water, Professor Teaches Office 07, Professor Teaches Vista, Hoyle Casino 07, Symantec Antivirus, 07, Spyware Doctor
According to MS, you don’t need the antivirus or spyware software for Vista (at least not as much). The teaching software is probably dirt cheap. Same with the casino and water (screensaver?) programs. Also the spyware and antivirus can be rolled into yearly subscriptions like MS OneCare. Dito, on the MIRs.
Office Max
Buy Vista and save on these applications no Mail in Rebates
Norton Antivirus 07, SpySweeper, Professor Teaches Office 07, PC-cillin Internet Security 07, Print Shop 22, System Mechanic 7, Norton Internet Security 07.
Again software Vista shouldn’t need and most of it is a yearly subscription to keep it up.
Summary
I’m deeply disappointed in these deals. They are pathetic. MS spends a lot of money on product launches, but I don’t see it here. Maybe the developers had one massive $100 million party.
And what’s with all the software. A few months back MS was talking about shutting security vendors out of Vista guts. Is this part of the appeasement deal? Or did someone actually line these products up intentionally. Either are bad prospects.
The printers aren’t much better than the software. Everyone knows they run on the “razor blade” model of ultra cheap printer (razor) and expensive ink (blades). The common thread seems to get you to spend more money at a later date. There is no incentive to buy from any of these stores unless you want one of those items.
There’s one last possibility. MS is selling Vista through downloads on their site. Since Vista is almost the same price everywhere. Cutting retailers out of the chain means a higher margin for MS. Maybe they don’t want to support the retailers, because every dollar to them in incentives is a two dollars less to MS from a downloaded copy. I tend to think downloads should be cheaper. You can buy a copy of Vista and be installing an hour later. Try and download 3+ GB in an hour. And you’ll have to provide the media. No beautifully hologrammed “genuine” discs.
If you want the best price, Amazon seems to have it. Home Premium Full $226.99. Yes, you save $12.96.
Vista PC
Today was spent searching for a cheap built computer with WinXP on it. Either all the computers are being upgraded or no one buys computers in January. (Looks like Amarillo isn’t the only city.) Anyway, I want to try out Windows Vista, but w/o wiping and rebuilding my main PC, though it needs it. There’s usually about 3 days of heavy and 2 wks of light-medium installing. That’s just boring.
So, I’m buying parts in building a Vista PC. It should be interesting. I’ve been shifting philosophies away from the 1 super storage, super fast computer to the fast, out-of-sight, silent workstation + fat, massive storage server in the closet. This will be the second box with that design. The one I made for Grandma 2 yr ago was the first. A Via CPU smaller than your college Intro Psychology textbook.
Case: IN WIN IW-BT611T.240SL MicroATX 230W $39.99
Motherboard: MSI K9VGM-V VIA K8M890 $51.99
CPU: X2 3800+ 65W $135.00
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint P Series SP2514N 250GB $68.99
DVD: have one
Memory: DDR2 667MHz $85.49
Case Fan: 22 dBa 80 mm $2.49
Video: GigaByte nVidia 7300GS 128MB $53.99
Shipping: FexEx $46.12
Total: $484.06
Plus Vista Home Premium $200
By my estimate the computer won’t exceed 200W. That’s less than half the main computer.
CPU: 65W
HDD: 25W
DVD: 25W
Fans: 5W
Video: 35W
Total: 155W
2 GB SD Camera Cards at Amazon.com for $23.79 w/shipping
I’ve been looking for a new computer to put Vista on. I found these sites and an ultra low price on digital camera memory. This would be a good price for a 1 GB card much less a 2.
WordPress 2.1
The latest Wordpress was released yesterday. It looks very interesting. Of particular interest are the video upload manager, bundled Askismet spam plugin, and tabbed WYSIWYG editor. I’ll update in the next few weeks. Though everything should look the same.
Target: Storage Solution
After seeing the specs for Windows Home Server, I was very excited. However, the release date of 6+ months from now is worthless. I want it today, have wanted one for about 2 yrs now.
I’m looking for something that would:
Allow me to add any size drives
This way I could buy the drive at the best price point, on sale, or whatever.
Would not die due to failure of one drive
I have a lot of drives now, 1+ TB, over the past 3 yrs. Failures have started happening and losing all the data due to one drive is unacceptable.
Can be treated as one contiguous space
Almost all the drives are on the main box. Each with it’s own drive letter. That’s fine for 4 drives or so, but not for 10. I want one thing, massive amounts of storage in one clump.
Can be read by TiVo
The two TiVos are probably the best way to get video, the largest consumer of space, off the computer and on the TV. The TiVo app only pulls from one directory on one drive. That should be the massive “drive”.
Add drives over time
No matter how big it is today, I will find a way to make this puppy bigger. I’ve already built one that uses all IDE and SATA connectors. Next will be filling all PCI ports with hdd controller cards. After attaching USB drives. Then USB hubs+drives…
Remotely manageable
The idea of keeping this growing monster in the closet is great. No need for a keyboard or mouse except on setup. VNC or whatever should be able to configure it. Hopefully, it won’t need interference unless adding/removing hardware.
What would be stored on this? Backups in the form of Subversion repositories. And copies of certain files like downloaded programs, music, web purchased software, photos, system files, etc. Mostly, the largest consumer will be video from TiVos, DVDs, web, video camera, etc.
Photos moving to Flickr
I’m moving the photo management to Flickr. This should bring easier maintanence, easier submission, easier integration with the blog. The current Gallery based photo manager will stay in place to maintain the links and for certain picks that might not be good with the Flickr User Agreement. Perhaps it will add more sharing, since others can open their own Flickr account and submit from cell phones or computers.
Here is the link to the profile.
Tips:
- Upload your photos first to last. The default is to show you your most recent photos.
- Upload the original full size camera pics, the Flicker Uploadr will convert them, don’t worry about bandwidth. The orignal pics have properties like date, time, location, etc. that may be useful in tracking down the photos later.
- Get the Pro account. $25/yr is worth it. Otherwise you are limited to 3 sets, 200 visible pics, and 100 mb/mo upload. For any of my relatives who don’t want to pay, let me know and I’ll give you the info to upload to my account.
- How to embed Flickr Slideshows on you web page
Lulu 2007 Calendar
A while back I had heard of the Lulu website. It is an Internet book publisher. They take your content and, using the website, help you create a book, calendar, CD, DVD, etc. out of it. There is a marketplace where other people can buy your item online. At the time of purchase a copy is printed and sent out. If nothing is ordered nothing is sent out. There are a variety of copyrights you can apply and you can adjust the amount of profit margin on your item.
It looks very exciting. After looking over the photos from the past year plus I wanted to do something with the good ones. So, I made a 2007 calendar. It was very easy. There a templates to pick from, select the pics from your computer, the copyright, sale price, cover, and event dates. Took about 30 minutes. Costs $11.30 (0 profit). You can see it here.
Three calendars cost $40.26 after shipping. I’m curious to see what it looks like. The event days can be edited. This almost seems like an invitation to add family birthdays and give or offer the calendar to your family. I love it that the pictures are my own, making the calendar much more personal.
My Keyboard
I’m very picky about the parts of the computer that I have to touch like the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. A cheap monitor has pixels jammed on a particular color or is dim. A cheap mouse is too like or sensitive or insensitive and I like mine wired. A cheap keyboard can be extremely light, layed out wierd, too quiet, soft on the keys, etc.
Usually, gaming gear is a good bet on all these items. It can be extremely expensive, but is typically priced mid to high. But it’s almost a lock that it’s worth it; brand name, lots of reviews on the internet, “stylish”, and durable. The most recent purchase I made at Christmas and have been using for the past 3 weeks is my Eclipse II Lighted Gaming Keyboard. I use an Eclipse 1 at work and it’s good, lighted from underneath around the keys in blue. It has a good feel and light to fair weight. I’m one of those people who learned keyboarding on typewriters (Thank God) and the IBM 1 ton clicky keyboards were very common then. I still prefer both the weight and clickiness.
The Eclipse 2 is the next generation. Lighted around and through the keys. Easy to read in the almost dark I like at home. Its much heavier than the 1 and the keys feel better. Apparently, it’s difficult to etch a transparency through the keys that looks good. There aren’t many keyboards that do this. The keys are closer together which makes the lighting look better. And the new one has three colors; blue, red, and purple. Which is the blue and red lights turned on at the same time. FF, Reverse, Play/Pause, Stop, Mute, and volume controls are built in and very out of the way above the number pad. They are longish horizontal rocker buttons. A knob controls the light level, which is fairly dim. All these buttons worked without any software install. The keyboard autodetect when plugged. The 1 is $40 and worth it. The 2 is worth $50, but is typically $55-$60. At that price it’s a harder sell. So get it on sale.
Pigeon Slideshow on YouTube
The photos I took of the baby pigeon on my patio this summer and compiled into a slideshow have 25 hits on YouTube. I’m amazed that’s way more than the other videos on MySpace and YouTube combined. So here’s a shameless plug to get that number even higher.
Playing Computer Video on TV…
… has been somewhat challenging. You can get just about anything these days over the internet through YouTube, iTunes, CBS, XBox Live, NBC, ABC, CinimaNow, MySpace Video, etc. Good luck trying to play that on a TV. There are a huge variety of unusual formats, decoders, DRMs, etc. Your best bet is buying a computer simply to play on the TV. Even ultra cheap $50 video cards have an SVideo or RCA Video port and many computers have as good a stereo decoder as a $500 Reciever (with less power of course). This moves the problem of playing videos to the computer. A modern operating system does not look good on a TV. 640 x 480 is the minimum resolution left over from 1993 VGA monitors and typical is 1280 x 1024. But a standard TV is 600 x 480. The new HDTVs range from 720 x 576, 1280 x 720, 1920 x 1080. They would be easier to look at, but I’m unsure if you could run an RCA cable at these resolutions. Notice how thick the VGA computer cable is vs an SVideo or RCA cable. Anyway, I digress.
The Tech companies have made some recent anouncements that seem to resolve some of these issues. One is the SlingCatcher, intended to prodcast any video played from a computer to any TV. Another is Windows Home Server, which has a “ground break” feature of being able to add harddrives every so often and the OS simply accepting the additional space without assigning drive letters, splitting size, or other annoying issues. AppleTV is wireless micro computer for displaying downloaded content from iTunes on TVs. Microsoft is looking at provide TV service through XBox 360s and an add-on product called MS TV IPTV Edition. Finally, AMD/ATI are showing off their CableCARD addon for approved computers to play HDTV cable through a computer to a TV.
PostScript: Server Application Unavailable
The previous post about my IIS dying was quite frustrating and at an importune moment, doubling the problem. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to fix the problem to no avail. Another issue had consumed the whole day also with no resolution.
Before I went to sleep last night. I spent some time visualizing the next day. Since the “previous” one had been so unproductive this wasn’t easy. I saw myself at my computer and the EE logon screen was up and the screen after EE logons. Thought about how easy it was and that the day would be easy and go well. There was some push back to this (internal or external I don’t know) and I wondered if I didn’t believe myself or was sensing that things would go the opposite.
This morning I resolved both problems from yesterday in the first hour of work and wrote the big one up. Lately, it seems like there is very little delay between thought and happening. Some things even seem to happen within an hour of thought.
ASPNET Problem: Server Application Unavailable
Problem
For one reason or another, my IIS died recently with this highly frustrating error.
Server Application Unavailable
The web application you are attempting to access on this web server is currently unavailable. Please hit the “Refresh” button in your web browser to retry your request.
Administrator Note: An error message detailing the cause of this specific request failure can be found in the application event log of the web server. Please review this log entry to discover what caused this error to occur.
In the event log was this,
aspnet_wp.exe could not be started. The error code for the failure is 80004005. This error can be caused when the worker process account has insufficient rights to read the .NET Framework files. Please ensure that the .NET Framework is correctly installed and that the ACLs on the installation directory allow access to the configured account.
Solutions
There are two KB articles that came up. One suggested changing the ASPNET account password, adding a new account, and checking file security on several directories. Mostly, this was a wash none of that was the problem, since I had changed none of those things.
Another article suggested changing the aspnet_wp to run under SYSTEM, which can do anything. This is very insecure, but it helped. Several hours were spent trying to figure this out the first way.
To fix the problem I changed aspnet_wp to run under the SYSTEM account, run
“C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis -i”, and “iisreset”. Then hit the web page and … viola.After the aspnet_regiis you can modify the MACHINE.CONFIG and the settings take affect after you run iisreset.
I found these articles to be helpful
- Running ASP.NET on a Domain Controller
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q315158 - How to run aspnet_wp as SYSTEM and what directories should have permissions
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317012/ - Here, someone mentions that the ASPNET pwds can get out of sync and that “aspnet_regiis” can be used to fix that problem. This was the final key.
http://weblogs.asp.net/jambrose/archive/2004/09/01/224226.aspxMax, look in your machine.config file under the processModel element. Ensure that its username is set to “machine” and the password is set to “AutoGenerate” as this means that it is set up with the defaults.
If you’ve done that, and it’s still not working, try running aspnet_regiis.exe from the 1.1 framework directory and restarting IIS. This should sync up the ASPNET password.
If you’re still stuck, try asking in the ASP.NET Forums (http://www.asp.net/Forums).
- “Aspnet_wp.exe could not be started” error message when you view an ASP.NET page
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/811320