Using Google to find answers to esoteric questions has built-in risks. In terms of wisdom and experience, the crowd is not always right and certainly not consistently reliable.

Today’s case in point involves a new system I placed into service last week. It’s a Dell Inspiron 530, purchased for about $500 from the Dell Outlet Center two weeks ago, with an Intel Q6600 quad-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB hard drive. Its role is to replace a three-year-old dual-core Pentium D830 system that I use for testing Windows Server stuff. Installing the RTM version of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition (x64) was fast and easy. Getting the release candidate of Hyper-V working was a little trickier (more on that later) but it’s also working just fine.

However, this morning, when I went to create a new virtual machine running Windows XP, I was surprised to see an error message telling me I didn’t have enough RAM. Really? I had two other VMs running at the time, each using 1024 MB of RAM. There should have been enough left over for the 512 MB I had specified.

But when I looked at Task Manager on the server, I saw that the system was only recognizing 3.3 GB of RAM. This problem shouldn’t crop up on a 64-bit operating system, unless there’s a problem with the hardware.

So I asked The Google to help, searching for 4gb x64 inspiron 530. And in the top five search results I saw a post from Ubuntu Forums with preview text reading, “The Inspiron 530 has had its BIOS tweaked so that it is not possible to use all 4GB, including windows (Even in 64-bit mode).” A commenter on the same forum as recently as February insisted:

You can search dell community forum and get the same answer. The manual said 4 gb max with note(*) that you will not see 4 gb; so you cannot win this argument with dell. It is crippled in the bios. This is Dell line of low end desktop so people will tell you that Dell will probably not going to uncripple the bios.

And indeed, another post in the top five search results was from the Dell Community forums, with the heading “Inspiron 530 BIOS 1.0.12 does NOT correct 4GB RAM problems … If you read the actual post, you might infer that his real problem is the fact that he’s using a 32-bit version of Windows XP Pro, which will not see more than 3.25 GB of RAM. But how many people will just see that title in the search results list and file away the “fact” that this BIOS update doesn’t work? A search of other posts on the Dell Community forums didn’t turn up any more encouraging words.

Now, I had previously noted that this BIOS update was available (the system I received was using BIOS revision 1.0.10) and had downloaded but not installed it. So I ran the BIOS updater, restarted the system, and … well, see for yourself:

That number had previously been 3316 or so. The only change I had to make to unlock that extra RAM for my 64-bit OS was to update the BIOS. And the conspiracy theorists who were certain that Dell was deliberately “crippling” this system to force customers to buy more expensive hardware? They were … what’s the word I’m looking for here? Oh yeah. They were wrong.

I had a similar experience last week, when I ran across an add-in that promised to make the SnagIt screen capture program (one of my 10 favorite Windows apps of all time) work with Windows Live Writer (another one of the all-time faves on the list my ZDNet readers created). The only review at Microsoft’s Windows Live Gallery said “Doesn’t work. Unusable.” So I tried anyway. And you know what? It works. In fact, it works exactly as advertised and it’s a real timesaver.

Like I said, don’t believe everything you read.

Update: I’ve now upgraded this system to 6GB of RAM. Windows recognizes and uses the entire amount.

Windows Vista Inside Out, Deluxe Edition will probably head off to the printer this week, and Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for it. The deal is actually a very good one: You place the order and you get 5% off the current (discounted) price of $37.79. If the price changes between now and then, you get the lowest price. Your credit card isn’t charged until the book ships, presumably in June, and you can cancel any time.

Full disclosure: I get a commission from Amazon when you order through this link. I think this is an excellent deal, but if you can find a lower price somewhere else, I won’t be offended if you order from that source.

Update: I’ve mentioned this edition before, but I guess it’s unfair to expect people to sift through the archives to find those older posts, so here are some details about this update:

It includes about 300 pages more than the original edition. The main difference, of course, is that it incorporates full coverage of Service Pack 1. It also includes more than a year’s worth of details we’ve learned about Vista that we didn’t know in December 2006, with double the coverage of Windows Explorer and Search, as well as a greatly expanded chapter on performance. And it includes coverage of some advanced features that we left out of the first edition, like speech recognition, Tablet PC support, and Group Policy.

Sadly, I think this momentary display is probably inaccurate:

Sure enough, it displayed a mere 5 hours of estimated remaining battery life just a few seconds later. Which actually isn’t that bad, if it’s accurate.

For the past six months, my main Media Center PC has been a Dell XPS 410 with a pair of CableCARD tuners. How’s this fully digital, cable-compatible, high-definition configuration working out? Let’s just say you’d have to pry the Media Center remote from my cold dead fingers. In this new post at ZDNet (with accompanying image gallery), I give you a peek under the hood. I also tackle the question of whether this type of system is right for you.

Windows Media Center meets Cable TV in HD

See the full Media Center/CableCARD image gallery

Questions? Ask in the comments here or over there.

If you’ve fallen for the latest round of breathless posts about how you can save a lot of money by buying an upgrade version of Vista and using it for a clean install on new hardware, please go to ZDNet and read my latest post:

The Vista license "loophole" that isn’t

I wrote about this way back in February 2007, when the same sources issued the same breathless reports. Nothing has changed since then. If you qualify for an upgrade license, this technique allows you to do a clean install, legally. If you don’t qualify for an upgrade license, then doing a clean install with this technique is technically possible but violates the terms of the license agreement. That distinction seems to be lost on the folks who are dredging up this old story. So allow me to explain, again.

Short version: How you do the install (clean versus upgrade) is a completely separate issue from the license you purchase:

• If you have a PC with an old version of Windows that qualifies for an upgrade, you can buy an upgrade version of Vista and do a clean install. Legally.
• If you are setting up a new PC (or a virtual machine) that does not currently have a Windows license that qualifies for an upgrade, you need either a full retail license or an OEM copy. Although you can use an upgrade version to do a clean install in that circumstance, in that case you are violating the terms of the license agreement.

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

The editors of PC World have some April Fool’s fun at the expense of their InfoWorld cousins. Savedos.com takes you to this very elaborately constructed special site:

Save DOS: The Ultimate Antidote to Vista’s Bloat

I love the image gallery. The scary thing is, I remember this cover, because I was Managing Editor of PC World when it was published.

$149 for PC Tools Deluxe? Wow.

Don’t miss the feature comparison: DOS Trounces Vista

Even scarier, a year or so later, when I had jumped to PC Computing, we did a I (Heart) DOS bumper sticker and bound it into every copy. To the best of my knowledge, that one is not on the Internets. Yet.

Windows supersleuth Long Zheng hooks up with an “anonymous and disgruntled Microsoft employee” and uncovers a new Windows Vista sound scheme that will ultimately be released as an Ultimate Extra.

Very cool. Sounds like something Robert Fripp would have done 10 years ago when he was still cool. I have no idea whether it will sound as good tomorrow, though.

The mysterious Shipping Seven blogger* reappears after an absence of more than two months. And I was about ready to assume that he or she had been sent to Area 51.

[* For those who haven’t been following, Shipping Seven is a reference to the development process for the next version of Windows. Despite the name, this blog doesn’t actually contain much about Windows 7. At least not yet.]

Engadget HD reports:

While the rest of us wait for the mythical DirecTV Windows Media Center tuner, some are apparently lucky enough to be a part of the beta program to test the HDPC-20.

About time. This was announced in January 2006, fer cryin’ out loud.

I gave up on DirecTV two months ago in favor of a dual-CableCARD system with Comcast, so I’m not likely to get an invite. Of course, the dish is still installed on my roof, and reconnecting it wouldn’t be too difficult…

I mean, it’s not like anyone would actually want to compare the cable and satellite alternatives side by side, would they?

WordPress released version 2.5 today. In the past, I’ve put off upgrading because it was such a hassle. Unfortunately, that makes a site vulnerable to security exploits. But I just upgraded both sites running on this server, and it took a total of about two minutes each, thanks to WordPress Automatic Upgrade. From the description of the plugin:

allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

Really, really simple. I used version 0.8, which was already on my servers, and I had to go back in after the upgrade was complete to enable a few other plugins. I suspect if I had downloaded WAU v 1.0 first, that would have been a non-issue.

If you use WordPress, this plugin is a must.