Tag: Windows

Quiet PC

zalmanAfter a bit of thought I’ve finally decided to get the old pc up and running as a server. The first task was to make it quieter. The fans on it were quite loud….cue visit to Quiet PC. I’d always liked the look of the Zalman Flower so I gave into temptation and made the purchase. At the same time I was convinced that the power supply also was a bit too loud so I picked up a quiet one of those too.

Delivery for once really was next day so ii got round to installing them both today. The verdict – the flower cooler is definitely quiet and keeps the cpu (it is an ageing 1GHz Athlon) cool. It’s heavy though and is only suitable for certain motherboards and chips. The power supply was disappointing . At first it seemed very quiet but listening from a different angle you could hear a very deep hum. Tried the old power supply and it was quieter. Some you win, some you lose. So I’ll be returning the power supply back to Quiet PC – hopefully their returns policy is as good as the rest of their store had been up to now.

Once I get windows on it I hope to run it as a server with the main pc and xbox using it as a media storage device. It will also have a webserver which I can access from anywhere (work firewall permitting :-() and ultimately I may host this website from it. That’s a long way off though.

 

Google Desktop

Beta now launched and can be downloaded from the Google Desktop site. First impressions are good. Quick to index my files using less system resources than Windows in-built indexing and search results are fast. Also searches Outlook . Option to integrate with Google web searches which is nice. Finally its as quick to find my files as it is to find others peoples files on the web.

*Update* Couple of alternatives for searching. One is Filehand which also searches mp3’s and pdf’s and the other is Copernic Desktop Search. Both are standalone search engines – I’ll give them a whirl over the weekend.

Widgets

avedeskI’ve always been a sucker for desktop applications – one’s that tell you free disk space, weather updates etc. Well, they seem to be commonly called Widgets now and there’s a growing market in supplying them. Reading an article on the Widget applications available I trialled a few over the past month and selected a firm favourite – Avedesk. With this utility you are able to configure a number of desktop applications to display disk stats, network info, weather stats – really anything you like. At the same time it is resource friendly and easy on the eye. The piccie shows a weather app running on my desktop – how depressingly wet (and yes…all I need to do is look out the window to see that but there is a nice 6 day forecast :-)) Avedesk also allows you to run Objectdock Docklets which means there’s thousands of icons and apps that you can use. I’ll be spending some time later in the week configuring the desktop. Eye candy here we come.

 

Spread Firefox

Looks like the browser wars are back. Spread Firefox has been launched to promote the Firefox 1.0 preview release. Even the previous owner of the domain firefox.com has handed it over. Using Firefox is a joy compared to Internet Explorer, but I can’t see them overhauling IE. It really is only the geeks and the tech-savvy that are using Firefox at the moment – it will be a while before the average user downloads Firefox and understands the difference.

Arsu

Adobe Acrobat seems slow to start-up nowadays. Loads of plugins are getting in the way of easily viewing pdf’s. Thats where Arsu comes in….or Adobe Reader Speed Up. Download from here and run – I’ve got reader starting up in no time at all now. It cleany removes some of the plugins that aren’t really required for day to day viewing.

ATI Drivers

There’s a new version of catalyst drivers out – 4.8 – grab them here. For the last two years I hadn’t bothered keeping up to date with drivers as the old pc started to get long in the tooth. The difference between each version seemed minimal except Battlefield 1942 needed the latest drivers all the time – every patch wouldn’t work unless I upgraded the driver- never had that with any other game.

However the new pc has changed that. Not strictly true – Doom 3 has changed that. The mearest sniff of a new driver and the download has started. Except these drivers are 26Meg in size. 26! Bloody hell. Bloaty or what. My old drivers were around 5Meg. Progress, eh? Hope they are worth it – a 5% improvement in framerates is promised.

Service Pack 2

Downloaded and installed Windows Service Pack 2 last night. This is the much trumpeted update to Windows XP which should make the OS much more secure than it currently is and also explain to the masses just how vulnerable their machines are to virus and trojan attacks. A hefty 260Mb download and half an hour install time later and the service pack was installed.

On rebooting, before Windows was fully loaded an option screen encouraged you to ensure Automatic Window Updates were selected. Once past that screen XP loaded as normal. What was noticeable straightaway was the length of time XP took to get up and running. Slow as a dog. When it eventually loaded (3 mins against 30 seconds) there was a new icon in the sys tray – a red shield. This was the Security Centre telling me my machine was vulnerable. On opening it up fully it said I was fully firewalled as the new XP firewall is enabled by default. It also said my Windows Updates were good as they were set to automatic. However anti-virus was amber as Nortons was running but the software couldn’t detect if it was active or not. Doh. Disabling the windows firewall set that option to red also. But I’ve got a hardware firewall – no need for software. So Security Centre would also say I was open to attack as I didn’t have a software firewall. Nice.

I tried a reboot to see if the startup was any faster. It wasn’t. A quick trip to the services panel and Security Centre was disabled. One reboot later and the speed was back. On talking to others they haven’t seen an issue with speed so maybe it was another setting or bit of software slowing things down but I didn’t need a bit of software telling me I wasn’t secure when I was. However it’s a good tool for the great unwashed who don’t have a foggy about the nasties that can harm their machines. Pity the Security Centre didn’t nag the user into doing backups though – far more useful especially with the increase in DVD writers.

Other updates include improved support for Bluetooth (worked a treat with the T610) and Wireless networks and also some updates for Internet Explorer. Pop-ups blocked and an add-in manager to see what has attached itself to IE. Also mail will no longer download images by default and there’s a few other security related fixes. Windows Update is now at version 5 (seemingly doesn’t work with known dodgy keys used in non pucker copies of XP) and annoyingly it will also install Windows Messenger. To remove it follow the instructions here.

Finally there seems to be a lot of new drivers and compiled XP code. Certainly feels slightly more spritely in use. So a worthy update – just don’t believe the hype around Security Centre.

Doom 3

So I acquired Doom 3 on Sunday night. The verdict. Astounding.

The graphics are the best I’ve seen in any game. The lighting is amazing and really helps draw you into the game. Firstly it’s not like any Doom game where you constantly run and shoot. This is more Resident Evil crossed with Aliens. I don’t think I’ve played a game which has sent shivers down my spine and makes you jump as you play as much as this does. Opening a door to find an Imp leaping at you is a shock to the system. There’s also some adventure elements to the game – finding PDA’s of dead people and looking for clues in e-mails and voice recordings. Theres even links to the real www mentioned in the game.

The surround sound really works. You can hear a zombie creeping up from behind but the noise from the pistons and machinery running really disorientates you as you play. But compared to the graphic and sound engines the gameplay is pre-historic and doesn’t contain any new ideas. That said, what is there is very polished although there have been some frustrating ‘what do I do now’ moments when you can’t find a way out of the current level.

Still, I can see me playing this through to completion which is very rare these days. Hopefully Half-Life 2 (which I expect to surpass Doom 3) will deliver the goods next month on the gameplay as well as the graphical front.

Realplayer

Why oh why does the BBC insist on using Real formats for their video and audio. Real make the shabbiest software known to man. After installing Realplayer to access BBC radio my pc took an age to load. At the time I didn’t know if it was the Real software or something else as I had installed a fair wee bit. The pc was slow during ‘Loading your personal settings’ but I couldn’t tell what bit of software was slow. Cue golden tip:

Show Verbose Security Status Messages (Windows 2000/XP) This setting allows you to configure Windows so that you receive verbose startup, shutdown, logon, and logoff status messages. This may be helpful to in troubleshooting slow startup, shutdown, logon, or logoff behaviour. Open your registry and find or create this key:- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE -> Microsoft -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> Policies -> System To enable verbose status messages create a new DWORD value called “verbosestatus” and set it to “1”. (verbosestatus REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1)) An additional value called “DisableStatusMessages” forces status messages to be disabled, make sure this value does not exist or is set to “0”. (DisableStatusMessages REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)) Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

*Update – after taking advice from my IT industry colleagues I should point out that before changing anything in the registry back it up and if you don’t know what the registry or regedit is then do what you do with most of this site and ignore this post.