Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on January 23, 2008 by CyberNet.

Earlier today I was over at jkOnTheRun and read something that really caught my attention. It was an observation that the iPhone could potentially turn out to be a Vista SideShow Competitor. Now, before we get into the details of how the iPhone could work great as a Vista SideShow competitor, I thought we’d review exactly what it was first. On Microsoft’s website, they explain it as the following:

Windows SideShow is a new technology in Windows Vista that supports a secondary screen on your mobile PC. With this additional display you can view important information whether your laptop is on, off, or in sleep mode. Windows SideShow is available in Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Thanks to gadgets and programs, information from your computer is extended to other devices using Vista SideShow.  So where does the iPhone come into play? Well, once Apple releases the SDK, someone could come up with an app that will utilize the iPhone as a secondary display, just like sideshow does. I hadn’t ever thought of this before, but I could really see it. I think Kevin’s observation over at jkOnTheRun just might be right.

Oh, and one last thought. I wonder what would happen if Apple got the same idea themselves, to use the iPhone or the iPod Touch as a secondary display? Maybe users would be able to control iTunes on their computer from the iPhone? What do you think? The possibilities could be endless…

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on April 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

For Today’s MyFive, we’re taking a look at the computers that we (meaning Ryan and I) have owned over the last several years. We’re also interested in hearing what computers you’ve owned over time and which you have found to be the best. The one thing you’ll notice with our computers is that for our “1st generation,” Ryan and I each had a different model, and that’s because they were bought before we got married.  Ever since we got married and Ryan sucked me in to technology, we’ve always bought two of the same computer at the same time. Prior to meeting him, I never would have thought I could get so excited about getting a new computer, but I have to admit, I do.

Our list below briefly includes the specifications and a picture. The pictures you see are real images of the computers that we had and were taken before selling them on eBay (it’s amazing we still had them). Anyhow, on we go with our five “generations” of computers…

1st Generation

The first generation of computers includes Ryan’s first laptop and my first laptop. They were bought before we got married, so they’re the only computers that aren’t the same.  Ryan received his for Christmas as a gift, and I bought mine during my 2nd year at college.

2002-2005 – Ryan’s Compaq Evo N800c

• 80GB hard drive
• 1GB RAM
• Intel Pentium 4 Mobile at 1.60GHz
• Windows XP Professional

2003-2005 – Ashley’s Compaq 910US

• 30GB hard drive
• 256MB RAM
• AMD Athlon XP 1.33 GHz Processor
• Windows XP Home

2nd Generation

The “2nd Generation” was the first and only Tablet PC we’ve ever purchased, it was also the first time we bought two laptops at the same time. Being college students, we didn’t have a whole lot of money to spend so we were looking for a great deal. These Tablet PC’s definitely were a great deal, but boy did we have problems getting ones that worked! It took about three tries for each of us before we ended up with a working computer. Averatec did eventually discontinue their line of Tablet PC’s shortly after we purchased ours. Over-heating seemed to be the cause of most of the issues we had which resulted in terrible battery life, unexpected shutdowns, and super-slow performance.

Oh, and these were the only computers we’ve had where they sold for more on eBay than what we paid for them in the first place, even after stating the issues!

2005-2006 Averatec C3500 Tablet PC

• 60GB hard drive
• 512MB RAM
• AMD Athlon XP-M 2200+ with PowerNow Technology 1.66GHz
• Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

3rd Generation

After having quite the experience with the Averatec computers, we decided to go with a more well-known company for our “3rd generation” of computers, Dell. Of course Dell isn’t known for using quality parts, but we never had any issues. All in all, these were great computers and it was so nice to not have to worry about the computer over-heating and turning off unexpectedly.

2006-2007 Dell XPS M140

• 60GB hard drive
• 1.5GB RAM
• Intel Pentium M/Centrino 1.73GHz
• Windows XP Professional

4th Generation

Because we never had any issues with our Dell XPS M140 laptops, we decided that we would stick with Dell, but upgrade to a computer with better specs. This is what we ended up with last year:

2007-Present Dell Inspiron 6400

• 160GB hard drive
• 2GB RAM
• Intel Core 2 Duo T5200 1.60GHz
• Windows Vista Ultimate

5th Generation

It’s about that time of year again where we upgrade our machines. We carefully looked at different models and manufacturers to see what would be the best option for us, and over the last two months we’ve been reading all kinds of reviews so that we could make a good decision. We’ll fill ya in within the next week or two on which computer we decided to go with. Stay tuned…

Question: To wrap it up, what computers have you owned and which have you found to be the best in quality and performance?

Update: Some people are wondering how we’re able to upgrade laptops so frequently. This comment helps explain that and how we spend very little to do it.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on September 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Back in July we created a screencast of a great freeware app called Vista Virtual Desktops that made use of Vista’s advanced Aero interface. The program has since gotten a much requested upgrade which includes support for the Windows XP operating system.

The version for XP isn’t quite the same as the one for Vista, and the largest difference is that Vista’s shows live previews of the windows. Of course, I’ve had problems getting the live previews to show up after they’ve been moved off of the current desktop, as seen in the screenshot above, so XP users shouldn’t feel that they’re missing out much from that aspect.

There are some other changes as well, such as support for unique backgrounds on each virtual desktop:

• XP support
• Better support for per-desktop background pictures (turned off by default)
• Major bug fixes
• Per-desktop tray icons change color to show activation
• "Send Window to Desktop X" keyboard hotkeys (Ctrl+Win+Numpad 1…9 by default)
• Win + Up and down arrow keys now move up and down in the desktop list

Note: I haven’t tried this out myself on XP, but I’d have to imagine that it’s pretty much the same as the Vista version. If you try this out on XP let us know how it goes.

Vista/XP Virtual Desktops Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Monday

Vista is more known for all of its visual appeal than it is for the “under the hood” types of features. One such feature is the new file management options in Windows Vista that allow you to sort, group, filter, and stack your files. It’s simply a new approach to organizing all of your files in Windows Explorer, and something I think you’ll find convenient. Of course there’s still the option to sort files just as you always have in XP, but there’s so much more to file management in Vista than just sorting. Today we’ll go through how to group, filter, and stack your files in Windows Explorer.

Step 1:

Open up Windows Explorer (Windows Key + E), and open a folder that you’d like to view.  Notice at the top that there are column headings, and drop-down menus will appear when you hover over one of those headings. The four column headings you’ll probably see see are name, date modified, type, and size.  These are always there, no matter which view you’re in (list, icon view, etc.).

Step 2 – Grouping and Filtering

I like to think of the grouping feature like a file cabinet.  When you have a file cabinet, all of the papers aren’t just thrown in the drawer. Instead, they’re nicely organized into folders and then placed in the drawer either in alphabetical order, or some other form or organization.  Grouping allows us to place files and folders into groups whether it be a group based upon the name in which case it would be in alphabetical order, or the type of file in which case they would be grouped by whether it’s a PDF, a word document, or any other type. The screenshot below shows what I clicked to group my files by files type. First I clicked the drop-down menu besides “Type”, then I clicked “Group.”

Once I clicked “Group,” my files were then grouped by type. Instead of a list of files sorted by name, I had a list of files grouped by the type of file it was. The first screenshot on the left shows what it looks like before grouping, and the second shows what it looks like after grouping. You’ll notice that I have 5 different groups – one for my GIF Image, another for my JPEG Image, one for Microsoft Excel Files, etc. 

 
click to enlarge

Isn’t it nice how everything is grouped? You can also collapse groups by clicking the arrow at the end of every dividing line for each group. If you were to select group under the column heading “Name,” files would be placed in alphabetical order. If you were to select group under Date Modified, it would divide files into groups based upon the various dates they were modified.  I think you get the idea of how this works.

So where does the filtering come into play? Well, under each column header will be a list of different filtering options. The image below shows me my options for the “Name” column. By checking the A-H option, it will show only the A-H files.

Step 3 – Stacks

Another new feature in Windows Vista is the option to Stack. If I were to stack files by name, they would appear almost like they would with a group, except none of the file names are actually shown.  Instead you’d double click on the stack that you want and it will open up all of the corresponding files.  The more files that correspond with a particular stack, the larger the “stack icon” will be. This is essentially just using Vista’s built-in search engine to find matching files, so this means that it’s able to dive into sub-folders to grab additional matching files as well.

The image below shows what happened when I stacked files based upon file type.

Wrapping it up

The new file management options in Windows Vista moves away from the hierarchical folder structure that we were previously used to and can help you find what you’re looking for faster. Gone are the days when your only options were to sort the files in a window in chronological or alphabetical order, and in are the days when you have tons of options to keep all of your files neatly organized.

Thanks for the tip OldManDeath!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on August 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft has taken the lid off of Vista SP1 (Service Pack 1) by releasing a detailed report of what to expect when it is released. This announcement comes the same day that Microsoft pushed out two of the most important updates since Vista’s release, both of which make significant improvements to the usability of Vista.

All the information that you need regarding Vista SP1 is below, and it’s broken up into categories so that you can quickly find what you’re looking for. Disappointingly there was no news of a revamped User Account Control (UAC), but hopefully they’ll consider adding a "remember my choice" option so that it isn’t so redundant.

UPDATE: A Release Candidate of Vista SP1 has been made available publicly, and feel free to read our initial thoughts on it.

Alright, now we’ll take a look at the important release dates that were mentioned as well as some of the bugs that will be fixed.

–Vista SP1 Beta Release Date & Availability–

Microsoft said that they plan on releasing Vista SP1 Beta to a moderate amount of testers (10,000 to 15,000) by mid-September. It’s speculated that a public build of Vista SP1 won’t be ready until it hits the release candidate stage, which Microsoft hasn’t provided a timeframe for.

There’s no doubt that Vista SP1 Beta will be leaked to Internet shortly after it is in the hands of testers, especially since another pre-beta version was just leaked the other day. This pre-beta is a standalone version with the build number 6001.16633, and it’s a hefty 700MB download. If you do a search on torrent sites for that build number you should have no troubles finding it.

–Vista SP1 Release Date–

We knew that Vista SP1 was in the works when Google hammered Microsoft with an antitrust complaint regarding the integrated search in Vista. Microsoft was forced to open the search capabilities to third-party applications, and Vista SP1 will be doing just that. Microsoft, however, still has plenty of time before they have to worry about Google overtaking the search capabilities in Vista.

The final release date of Vista SP1 is expected to be in the first quarter of 2008. They are holding back on announcing an official release date because they want to hit the "quality bar" first, but they said that it will ship alongside Windows Server 2008 RTM (release to manufacturing).

–Vista SP1 Delivery Format–

When Vista SP1 is released it will come in several different formats just like XP’s Service Packs did. Almost everyone will probably be using the Express version which will download only the updates that are needed for your computer, but I always like to have the standalone on hand. Here are the three different formats that will be available:

Express – Requires an Internet connection but minimizes the size of the download by sending only the changes needed for a specific computer (approximately 50 MB for x86-based operating systems).

Standalone – Recommended for computers with limited Internet connectivity and for applying the service pack to multiple computers. The download size is larger than the express package (about 1GB for the x86 version), but customers can apply a single package to any Windows Vista version and language combination (within a platform).

Slipstream – The slipstream version of Windows Vista SP1 is media that already contains the service pack, which companies can use to deploy the operating system to new computers or to upgrade existing computers. Slipstream media will also be available to Volume Licensing customers.

–Vista SP1 Features–

Reliability improvements:

• Improved reliability and compatibility of Windows Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Improved Windows Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Windows Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Performance improvements:

• Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
• Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
• Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
• Improves performance of Windows Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and speeding JavaScript parsing.
• Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain computers.
• Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
• Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

More Information: Vista Blog, All About Microsoft, Ed Bott, and jkOnTheRun

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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