Year: 2008

From the “better late than never” department:

If you’re one of the last people that prefers IE 6 to IE 7, you might want to tread carefully when it comes to installing SP3 for Windows XP on your computer.

If you have IE 7 installed before the SP3 upgrade, you will not be able to go back to IE 6 once SP3 is installed. According to this article, this is “because the service pack includes newer versions of the old browser’s files. If Microsoft had allowed users to revert back to the pre-SP3 version of IE6 – the one saved on users’ PCs when they upgraded to IE7, and what was used until now to back out of the newer browser – Windows would have ended up in a ‘mixed file state’. This state is not supported and is very bug prone. To ensure a reliable user experience, [Microsoft] prevent[ed] this broken state by disabling the ability to uninstall Internet Explorer 7”.

If you want to retain the ability to uninstall IE 7 from your computer, remove IE 7 before installing SP3, then reinstall IE 7 once the Service Pack update is complete.

Have you ever wanted (or needed) to have one of your technically-challenged friends download a file via BitTorrent? It can be a huge pain, because that friend would need to install a BT client, go to a tracker and download the torrent file, and then seed it to completion. Hell, a lot of my “less than technical” friends can’t even wrap their heads around BT lingo, much less actually download stuff.

This is where Torrent2Exe comes in. You upload a torrent to the site (either via direct URL or from a local torrent) and the site packages the file along with a lightweight BT client. All the end user has to do is download (and execute) the packaged EXE file… really folks, BT just couldn’t be any easier!

If you like the desktop animations provided with Windows Vista, but aren’t ready to trash Windows XP just yet, you might enjoy a handy lil’ freeware app with a strange name: Lebendig. Lebendig adds Vista-like animations to program windows in Windows XP. You can have windows fade in and\or out, spin in and\or away, or lots of other nifty combinations.

I really like this lil’ app, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to play well with Outlook 2007. Once you start Lebendig, minimizing Outlook causes the app to “disappear”. You can try to maximize it again (and you’ll briefly see the full-screen Outlook window), but then the Outlook window will simply “disappear”. The only way to get it back is to use Task Manager to kill OUTLOOK.EXE and start the program over again (but remember, you can’t minimize it again!). Also note that I’ve only seen this behavior with Outlook 2007 – other programs seem to work just fine with Lebendig (although I’ve only tested the few apps that are on my system).

I like Lebendig – I just wish they’d fix that Outlook bug.

This post over at istartedsomething.com talks about a (possible) groovy new feature in Windows 7: built-in support for virtual hard drive (VHD) files.

VHD files are the “virtual hard drives” used in Microsoft’s virtualization software, like Virtual PC and Virtual Server. Normally, one installs Virtual PC on a Windows XP or Windows Vista computer, then generates a VHD file to act as a “virtual hard drive” for a virtual computer. You then install Windows XP, Windows Server, or whatever operating system you need on that virtual hard drive. You can then boot up the virtual machine and use it exactly as you would a “real” computer.

Adding native support for VHD files means that you could boot directly into a VHD file without having to run Virtual PC on the computer. This would allow you to run VHD computers at “native speed” without first loading a host OS. Even better, you could have multiple virtual hard drives on a system: you could have a “work” virtual hard drive (with Office, QuickBooks, and whatever else you need to do your job) as well as a “play” virtual hard drive (with games and music files). And if Microsoft’s talk about Windows 7 is to be believed, you could even optimize the “play” VHD for gaming by giving Windows 7 the smallest possible footprint.

There are also huge implications for system administrators, too. With Windows 7, an administrator might be able to make an VHD image using Virtual PC, then push that image out to corporate desktops so that everyone is using the same desktop computer image. Now that would be cool!

Any thoughts about this?

As I mentioned in the “I’m Back” post from the other day, I went to Asheville this past weekend to attend a family wedding. On the drive home, Lisa and I stopped to pee at a convenience store somewhere in the sticks. As I walked in the store, a video game caught my eye. I stopped to look at the screen and saw this:

(Click to enlarge)

There are hundreds of websites out that that have pictures of Windows error messages on ATMs, airport arrival\departure screens and giant billboards (think Times Square).

I’ve always wanted to be able to post my own picture… and now I can!

And BTW, you might notice the EA logo on the side of the console! 🙂