Tangled up in Purple » windows

Reinstalling XP Tablet Edition

nix — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 04:09:33 +0000

I’ve had my Toshiba M400 for nearly six months now and in that time I’ve fallen out of love with the Tablet. I love the concept, but if having the extra functionality means having all of the extra bloatware then it’s not for me.

I have re-imaged it from Toshiba’s image several times but the sheer number of bits and pieces added in by Toshiba have alway annoyed me. The hardware is great – but the software to support that hardware is awful. Over the last week it’s been like woring through thick sludge trying to get basic tasks accomplished. Having a gigabyte of memory is useless if it’s swallowed up by seemingly redundant drivers and processes. I like to be in charged of what I run on my computer. They don’t call it a PC for nothing.
So this week I bit the bullet. After a search around the interweb I discovered a way to cleanly install XP Tablet Edition. I used nLite to create my own Toshiba flavoured version of the Tablet PC OS. Using Media Centre Edition as the base OS, I slipstreamed in the Toshiba Raid drivers. Then after tweaking it a bit for my own particular preferences, I made an ISO. I used Nero to burn the ISO to CD and voila – one Tablet Edition disk.

Last night I started the XP install process. I used the key that Toshiba used to install Windows even though it’s different to the one printed on the sticker on the notebook. I’m not totally certain about how kosher that is? It worked though!

After getting XP loaded, installing my anti-virus and testing the pen (to make doubly sure that I had done it right), I put in my Toshiba drivers disk – the one one that I made from the factory install. I loaded the wireless drivers and then headed straight out to Windows update. After that I headed to Toshiba’s support site and got the latest basic driver set. After making sure I had got all the drivers I started to load the additional stuff to run the stuff that I wanted to run.

I have loaded the hard drive protection utility but not the accelerometer (who in their right mind would want to shake a computer to start a programme?). I loaded the raid driver but not the additional systems because I don’t think that I’ll be using an extra hard drive.

I haven’t loaded the Toshiba Power Saving stuff because I’m hoping that Notebook Hardware Control on top of the default Windows setup will take care of my power saving needs. I haven’t loaded ConfigFree because, much as I like the idea of being able to change the network and proxy server information on the fly, it’s just too resource hungry.
At the moment I have a basic installation with all of the basic programmes that I use on a day to day basis. Firefox (and all my extensions – gotta love FEBE) is looking after my browsing and FeedDemon is taking care of my RSS. Office is installed and I’ve got Nero and WinDVD loaded. I’ve put VideoLan in for my media needs but I still need to load Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative to manage the extra codecs.

At the moment I am back in love with this little computer. It’s whizzing along beautifully with none of the lags or stuttering that have blighted things previously. For sure I have yet to put in PaintShopPro, Inspiration, KidPix or some of the other programmes that I use regularly. So far so good. Now I really need to find that Ghost disk!

Getting the Jobs Done

nix — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 03:33:33 +0000

Some of the places that I work in are Windows places and some of the places that I work in are Apple. Some of the people that I work with are Windows people and some are Apple people. I get a bit of flack from the Apple people about my decision to mostly use the Windows platform.
I used to be a Commodore 64 user. In 1992 my Dad gave me a 286 computer to play with. Quite quickly, I managed to upgrade through the 386 years and onto a 486. I vividly remember upgrading my 486SX23 from 4MB ram to 8MB. I put in a Soundblaster 16 and a double speed CDrom drive. I had a CGA video card and a brand spanking new 14inch monitor. My children were very excited to be able ‘play’ with Encarta and to be able to watch movies and listen to audio. They used to love a piece from AA Milne about Pooh (Bear) and the Living Books software – ‘Just Grandma and Me’ and Athur’s Teacher Troubles’!

After a few years of upgrading desktop machines I moved into the world of laptops. Last year I got a 15 inch Apple Powerbook so that I could support teachers who were using Apples. The Powerbook is a beautiful machine. It runs Tiger (OSX) and has a range of good software on it. It’s a light machine and it’s damn sexy to look at.

But it’s not my machine of choice. I’m a PC user from way back. I’m not dogmatic about using the PC, it’s just what I am used to using and what I am most comfortable using. For me it’s about getting the job done. I’m not able to get the work that I do as comfortably on the Mac. If I had ‘grown up’ using a Mac it might be quite different.
So when I was in the market for a new laptop a couple of months ago, I took a look at the new MacBooks. They are very nice machines with some cool features. Bootcamp and Parallels desktop could have given me the best of both worlds, PC and Mac.

In the end I decided to stay inside the PC world a bit longer. I’d been thinking about pen computing and how a tablet pc might be an interesting computer. I was really interested in the convertable tablet and decided that it was time to go to the smaller form factor offered by the Toshiba M400. And if Apple had a tablet on offer? I would have been interested. Maybe next time?
I was interested to see what Apple’s Steve Jobs had to say at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). He talked about some of the exciting new features of Leopard (the next version of OSX) due out sometime early next year. Then he rubbished MS Windows and accused the developers of Vista of stealing everything except his last billion dollars. Apple even made one of their funny little commercials about the conference.

Does Microsoft do this? Do either of these companies need to do this? People use the technologies that they want (and can afford) to accomplish the tasks that they need to accomplish.
Frankly I am tired of the one-eyed illogical ranting of the Mac fan-boys. Macs, Pcs, Linux boxen, iPods, Palms, Smartphones, PocketPCs, iPhones, Zen and Zunes … who cares? It’s about getting your stuff done in a way that you are comfortable with.

Links:

Steve Jobs at WWDC

Lifehacker puts Vista and Leopard side by side

Paul Thurrot’s take on Jobs’ keynote

iPhone – Smoke and Mirrors?

MS Vista

nix — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 15:09:15 +0000

started this post yesterday and then got carried away on other stuff. The next version on Microsoft Windows is not going to be called Longhorn but instead will be known as Microsoft Vista. Vista?

According to the blurb,

It enables a new level of confidence in your PC and in your ability to get the most out of it.

It introduces clear ways to organize and use information the way you want to use it.

It seamlessly connects you to information, people, and devices that help you get the most out of life.

It’s very interesting that the brave new world of computing is now about getting, storing and organising “information, people, and devices”. A quick flick over to the Wikipedia where they’ve already noticed the Microsoft announcement. Interesting though is this reference to vista from Tolkein. Now I get it. It’s really a middle earth thing.

Vista on the Tablet