Not that I’m paranoid or anything, but have you noticed anyone missing from this list of people covering WinHEC? (Thanks to Scoble for the pointer.)
Update: Ah, good to see that Microsoft is paying attention and I’m now on the list. If you want the latest news from WinHEC, follow the blogroll.
When you open a dialog box to change a setting in Windows or a Windows program, the buttons often include both OK and Apply. What’s the difference? It’s simple:
Clicking the Cancel button closes the current dialog box without saving any changes. This is the preferred option if you opened a dialog box to check a setting and you want to be certain you don’t accidentally change it.
Last Friday my main computer started exhibiting some odd behavior. The case fan was running full tilt all day long, and response from other applications was slow. When I looked at Task Manager, I saw that the System process was pegging out at 99 percent and making it impossible for any other app to work properly.
I followed my own advice and used Msconfig to narrow down the problem. It turned out that PC-Cillin Internet Security 2005 was the culprit. This Trend Micro Knowledge Base article acknowledged that I wasn’t the only one who had been hit by this rogue antivirus pattern file, and it gave me the fix, which involved booting into Safe mode, removing or renaming some files, and then restarting and updating PC-Cillin.
When my notebook started displaying the exact same symptoms this afternoon, I was able to fix the problem in a few minutes. If you’re experiencing a sudden slowdown and you use Trend Micro’s security software, you know where to look. (Their article says the problem is caused by pattern file 594, but I found that my notebook, with pattern files 586 and 596 on hand, was affected.)
I was really looking forward to liveblogging Bill Gates’ keynote address at WinHEC today. I’m sure a few other folks were as well. But a funny thing happened when I made it into the exhibit hall. Someone had decided to (1) Disable Wi-Fi in the exhibit hall (but not announce it – it’s amusing to watch people try every possible setting in the Windows XP wireless dialog box); (2) Squeeze the media (print and online) into a specially reserved section without any tables (why do you think they call them laptops?); (3) Provide no power outlets (thus giving my old Toshiba a real-world stress test).
So, you don’t get the benefit of my real-time analysis of BillG’s keynote, and instead you have to put up with my after-the-fact pontificating based on notes I wrote in the dark until my battery died with a half-hour to go. The last 30 minutes was just a blur.
It was a low-energy keynote, without a clever, self-effacing video clip like the ones that have become a hallmark of Gates appearances in recent years. The geeky audience got an appropriately geeky talk from the Alpha Geek, who had (in classic Microsoft style) three key messages to pass along:
Bonus geek content: The Longhorn demos were using build 5060. If you downloaded anything older via BitTorrent, you are so last week
(Good news: This afternoon’s sessions, including a fascinating presentation on new hardware designs, were held in rooms with tables! Bad news: Still no power strips. So I had to drag a chair to the back of the room, next to a power outlet, and blog from long distance. Good news: My battery is back up to 70% charge.)
Bloggers’ lunch tomorrow at Tulio. Don’t expect me to liveblog it.
Stay tuned.
I’m here in Seattle at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, where Microsoft is laying out its vision of what sort of technology will be running your office and living room in the coming years.
There’s lots of good stuff, including some nicely detailed looks at Longhorn. I’d be sharing all sorts of details with you, except that the rocket scientists who set up the conference facilities didn’t set up these facilities to be blogger-friendly.
Stay tuned. I’ll be passing along details soon enough.
When you insert removable media (such as a CD or a flash memory card) into a drive, or when you attach a removable drive to your computer using a USB or Firewire connection, Windows XP checks its AutoPlay settings to see what to do next. That can be annoying if Windows decides to do something other than what you prefer. Fortunately, the fix is easy.
For permanently attached devices that hold removable media, such as a CD/DVD drive or a flash card reader, you can make changes any time, regardless of whether any media is in the drive. Open My Computer and right-click the drive icon under the Devices with Removable Storage category. Click Properties, and then click the AutoPlay tab.
Each time you insert a CD or other media type, Windows analyzes its content and uses the AutoPlay setting for that type of content. (If it can’t figure out what the content is, it uses the generic “mixed content” setting.) You’ll need to define the action for each type of content. You might want a DVD movie to play in one program, for example, and use a completely different program to automatically begin ripping tracks to your hard drive whenever you insert a music CD. (Third-party programs can add themselves to the AutoPlay menu with their own specific actions.)
If you prefer to decide what to do with each new CD, DVD, or flash card on a case-by-case basis, you have two choices:
AutoPlay settings apply to removable drives as well, including USB and Firewire hard drives and music players that appear as hard drives. You must attach the device and right-click its icon to set AutoPlay options for it,
David Carnoy mourns the loss of his TiVo but says he simply had to replace it with the cable company’s HD-capable Scientific Atlanta 8300HD:
The long and short of it is, the 8300HD isn’t quite up to TiVo standards. But it does a decent job and offers significant feature upgrades over its predecessor, the 8000HD. The strides Scientific Atlanta has made in just eight months is impressive and should be of serious concern to TiVo. Yes, TiVo has cut a deal with Comcast to provide that cable giant with its boxes, and it’s also announced plans for a CableCard HD DVR. But with those products not due until late this year and early next year, respectively, the company’s left HD-enabled cable customers such as me no alternative but to look elsewhere.
My biggest quibble with the review is that it completely ignores the many reviews and how-to articles that have been written over the past few months by people who don’t work for CNET. Lots of good stuff at AVS Forums, and at the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 Yahoo Group, and even (ahem) this site.
Scoble says: “I think we’re gonna try to get a little blogger thing going on Tuesday night.”
Intel, Gibson Guitar, and Cakewalk are also sponsoring an event at the Experience Music Project Museum on Tuesday night at 9:00. Admission is free with a WinHEC badge. I went to a similar event at EMP last year and it was a blast. Robert, be sure to factor this into your plans.
Ars Technica has just unleashed their April 2005 Ars System Guide. Boring? I don’t think so.
We are not concerned with what you should be buying your 500-person company for your next mass upgrade. These are the systems that we, your fellow enthusiasts, either have, plan to have, or would love desperately to have. 🙂 We know how you think, ’cause we think that way, too.
Now, when recommending products, you’ve got to take two main factors into account: available funds and performance. Some lucky bastards have unlimited funds; some have to pinch every penny. Most of us are somewhere in between. So, when you say something is the “best thing out there,” it’s important to ask, “Best for whom?” In recognition of this fact, our recommendations come in the form of three hypothetical computers.
At the top, there’s the God Box. This is for the guy who has just won the lottery, or whose company is funding the purchase (same thing). Of course, this doesn’t imply adding stuff for the hell of it. Even on this spec, we don’t want to be wasting money. It will be, however, generally beyond the range of mere mortals.
Uh, yeah. Before you get too attached to this machine, be aware that it runs $10,661.15, not including shipping and handling. Yowzah! The Budget Box, on the other hand, checks in at a very reasonable $804.95, sans operating system. You can probably find something between those two extremes.
(Via jkOnTheRun)
You know the rules: Shuffle your entire music collection, click Play, and report the first 20 tracks, no matter what. This week’s list is formatted as artist, song title, and album (in italics):
I really enjoyed hearing some of these tracks that I hadn’t listened to for a while. If you like honky-tonk roadhouse music, I enthusiastically recommend the Caught in the Webb
Ed Bott 