Gadgetopia

Will XP fill need for speed in 2008 better than Vista?: Could the Vista situation get worse? XP SP3 is coming next year, as is Vista SP1. Wellington, Fla.-based Devil Mountain Software ran several versions of XP and Vista through a test simulating common desktop computing tasks. It found the ...

Apparently, the program conflicts Windows XP Service Pack 2 created still have a lot of companies spooked: AssetMetrix surveyed 136,120 PCs between January 5 and March 10. It found that 37.6 percent of those PCs ran Windows XP. The operating system is more widely adopted among companies with fewer than ...

Windows XP Hacks: These O'Reilly "Hacks" books are first-rate. Here's an excerpt from the Windows XP book, and there are some great little tips here. "The book delves into XP topics such as controlling the control panel, changing unchangeable icons, removing uninstallable XP components, stopping pop-up ads, taking a bite ...

Microsoft says XP is definitely dead in June, Dell says it ll keep installing it: Dell has found a loophole in Vista licensing which it plans to exploit in order to keep selling XP machines. Dell s going to report a Vista sale to Microsoft, but deliver an XP box with Vista ...

Users force Dell to resurrect XP: This is interesting. If you remember, a few months ago, I had to work pretty had to find a Dell with XP. Responding to customer demand Dell has restarted selling new PCs with Windows XP installed on them. The decision reverses a policy begun ...

The Tweaking Experience: Here's a really phenomenal list of XP hacks shortcuts, regiustry changes, undocumented features, etc. The download is a big WinHelp file that's exceptionally well-done, complete with copious screenshots and step-by-step guides. The Tweaking Experience Registry Guide provides an extensive range of registry tweaks, tricks & hacks ...

At least according to benchmarks done by the guys who were able to pull of the trick of getting XP to run on the MacBook Pro. Now ain't that a kick in the pants! Of course, the question of why you'd want to run a second-rate OS like XP on ...

Mark recently reinstalled Windows XP on his laptop. He was kind enough to keep a running diary. My Apple bias not withstanding, I find this rather funny. "34. Update driver. 35. 'This driver is not digitally signed.' OK. 36. 'This driver may cause your computer to become unstable.' OK. 37. ...

PC makers, distributors pass on Windows XP N: Microsoft was forced to start selling a version of Windows in Europe that didn't include Windows Media Player. So Microsoft created "Windows XP Home Edition N." But big surprise no one wants it. I mean, why would you? Who would ...

ISO Recorder Power Toy: Here's a great little Windows tool if you burn ISOs to CDs a lot. Install it, and then right-click on any ISO file and select "Copy image to CD..." Pop in a CD, click finish, and the image is burned using the standard XP CD-burning utility.

Aprelium Technologies - Home: Bummed out that Windows XP Home doesn't come with a copy of IIS? Need to develop at home? Well, never fear with this Web server, and this add-in, you're back in business. It's not going to set any speed records, but it's handy for development.

eBay item #3626246138 is obviously a joke (isn't it?) but wont the seller have to pay a hefty commission?

WinBeta.Org - TweakUI 2.10 for Windows XP and Server 2003: This little app allows access to every single Windows setting you can think of. Don't like the size of the Alt-Tab box? Don't like the style of the little arrow sub-icon on shortcuts? Want to auto-login your system every time ...

Boot Windows XP on an Intel Duo Core Mac and Make Money: Someone has won the contest, and took home the bounty of about $14,000. I can't find many details, other than this: Contest has been won - updates to follow shortly. All further donations will go into an account ...

scannow sfc: Here's a handy Windows XP feature I had never heard of until today. From a command prompt, type "sfc /scannow" and Windows will look through all its system files for ones that don't match up with the others (if, for instance, a third party app replaced them with ...

The University of Minnesota's school paper has done a spoof edition this week for finals that's a brilliant mockup of Windows XP. Make sure you try to 'shut down' the paper for hi-larious results. Also, don't miss one of the greatest journalistic works of our time, "Star Trek debate ruins ...

Companies brace for Microsoft security update: An interesting look at the apparently huge Windows XP Service Pack 2 due next month and what it means for software companies. The changes will affect thousands of programs that have depended on how Windows handles certain things. The new system bolsters security on ...

Windows XP Prefetch Clean And Control 1.2.0: The other day, I couldn't delete an application file it was locked. I rebooted but still couldn't delete it, even though I hadn't run the application yet. I wonder if this is why? Windows XP monitors the files that are used when ...

Windows XP: The featured article over at Wikipedia today was on Windows XP, and it included this bit explaining what limitations are contained in Windows XP Starter Edition the Windows version for developing countries (launched in India two days ago). [...] display resolution can only be up to 800 ...

WinExposé I didn't think it would take four months for someone to come up with a clone of Apple's Exposé feature for Windows. Should we start a pool to bet on how long it takes before they get their first cease-and-desist letter?

Apple introduces dual-boot software Seems Apple wasn't too worried about folks hacking their new Intel Macs to boot windows. They've been working on a solution themselves and it appears to be much more polished than anything a guy who never sees the sun could ever hope to create. Apple today ...

I'm a little frustrated with Microsoft and a couple computer manufacturers tonight. You see, I'm owed an operating system, and these companies are conspiring to prevent me from collecting. I had an NT4 server. It was an old machine, and we replaced it earlier this year with a very fast ...

OS Shootout 2003: Mac OS X vs. Windows XP vs. Linux: Great article comparing these three OSs in a matrix with rows for UI, wireless support, CD burning, etc. Good place to see what the different OSs are better at. I only read halfway down the list, but it looked ...

Microsoft tags IE 7 'high priority' update: This strikes me as a really bad idea. Really bad. Microsoft plans to automatically push Internet Explorer 7 to Windows XP users when the browser update is ready later this year. IE 7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a "high ...

Does Your Code Think In Ink? is a contest to develop your best PowerToy for the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. A Tablet PC is not even required to enter. "The Tablet PC Platform SDK application development can be done on a standard Windows XP desktop. The SDK provides the ...

Has Windows Update gone nuts for anyone else? Every day for the last 10 days, I've been told by my Windows XP Home system that I have a new update to install. I have dutifully installed them all. None have required a reboot. My Windows XP Pro machine at work ...

HP lowers price pole with $349 PC | CNET News.com: That's awfully cheap, and it comes with XP Home. "The desktop is fitted with an Advanced Micro Devices Athlon XP 2000 processor running at 1.67GHz, 128MB of RAM (random access memory), a 40GB hard drive, a CD-ROM, a modem, and ...

So I'm in New Orleans at this convention with a little Toshiba laptop running XP Home. To my horror, I have no development platform (XP Home won't run IIS). That hasn't stopped me from coding as I have EditPlus and I can upload from dial-up the hotel, but still. This ...

The Contest: Here's a contest to be the first person to boot WinXP on a Intel-based Mac. It started out with a bounty of $100, but it's climbed to $3,097 at this writing, and it just hit Slashdot, so expect it to go higher. My MacBook is shipping on the ...

Some not too kind things have been said about John C. Dvorak around here, much of it well deserved. But I'm wondering if his assertion that Apple is steering towards Windows is so far off base. I stand by my disagreement with him on why he thinks it's a done ...

I've always wondered, with the porting of open-source apps to Windows, is it possible to build an XP system that's functional for day to day use, but uses entirely free software? Well, I wonder about a lot of things like that, but I'm pretty lazy, so that's where it ends. ...

As of yesterday afternoon, if you want to buy a Dell computer with Windows XP Pro, you have exactly one choice of model: the Optiplex. Everything else is Vista Business only.

Developers Developers Developers Developers: This is one area where Microsoft has excelled: getting people to build software for its operating system. I have worked in an IT shop with the subscriptions Joel details below. It's overwhelming to have that much software. "If you're a software company willing to commit to ...

The WinFS File System For Windows Longhorn: Faster & Smarter: Some good information on the upcoming WinFS for Longhorn: Microsoft is breaking new ground with Longhorn, successor to XP. The upcoming WinFS file system will be the first to be context-dependent, and promises to make long search times and wasted ...

Microsoft Codenames: Here's a list of Microsoft software project codenames. EVeryone knows about "Longhorn," there days. And a lot of people know that Windows XP was called "Whistler." Goign further back, a handful know that Windows 95 was code-named "Chicago." But "Impala"? "Starfighter"? "Airstream"? As anyone who had worked with ...

Apple releases software to let Macs run Windows: Could this be a joke? Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday rolled out a software patch that enables its Intel-based Macintosh computers to install and run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system. Apple said that the new software, called "Boot Camp" is available ...

WinZip Disclosed Sales Figures: Interesting information on the revenues of WinZip, which I thought was dead just as soon as Windows included native zip support. Most people say that they may not be selling much, because of a number of reasons (XP ZIP support, freeware competitors, still works after expired). ...

Lycoris: Here's a Linux distribution from a company out of Redmond, no less. It seems designed specifically to look like Windows XP as much as possible. "Lycoris is located in Redmond, Washington. The corporation was started in the year 2000 with a vision of making Linux easy enough for anyone ...

How-To Tuesday: Disable AutoRun on Windows!: Some good advice here. The "feature" will, by default, automatically look for a file called Autorun.inf on any CD you pop in to your system if it finds it, it will execute whatever programs it is instructed. This is a big security issue, ...

As if one needs more reasons, this one is a standout; according to a USA Today and Avantgarde joint study, it takes only 4 short minutes for a clean Windows XP SP 1 machine connected to the net without a firewall to become part of some spammer's zombie network. A ...

ongoing - The Door Is Ajar: Tim Bray is anti-Microsoft and anti-Internet Explorer. One good point he makes here is this: "...even though his customers are in IE-land, he keeps up on Mozilla not only because he likes it but because Mozilla may outpace IE in the corporate world: most ...

Microsoft's PHP initiative: This is interesting. Microsoft has recently released the second technical preview release of FastCGI for IIS, a new component for Microsoft's Web server platform. This release is available immediately for download to Windows Vista, IIS including IIS 6.0 in Windows 2003 Server and IIS 5.1 in ...

I downloaded the evaluation version of WinZip so I could untar an archive. Everytime I open it, I get the Buy Now splash screen, but I swear, the Buy Now and Use Evaluation Version buttons keep switching places. Or maybe their placement is random. At any rate, each time I ...

Internet Explorer to stomp pop-ups: Once again, Microsoft is on the cutting edge of software improvements. "Microsoft plans to add pop-up blocking features to Internet Explorer next year as part of its Service Pack 2 update for Windows XP, a move that would go far toward stamping out the Web ...

Bullfighter: Stripping The Bull Out Of Business: Too much 1999-ish Internet crap-speak in your documents? This little add-on will give you a "Bull Index" for your documents, so you know just how much crap you're spewing. Bullfighter is software that runs in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, within Microsoft Office 2000 ...

Asian Pirates Sell Microsoft's Next Windows System: Longhorn is in the wild in Asia already. Underscoring the scale of U.S. companies' copyright problems in Asia, CDs containing software Microsoft has code named "Longhorn" are on sale for six ringgit ($1.58) in southern Malaysia. Microsoft's current version of Windows, XP, sells ...

Microsoft working on paperback-sized PC: Halfway between a laptop and a PDA -- I think it would work. I can see a market for this size device. Origami is the moniker for the first iteration of paperback-sized computers that will run Microsoft's regular Windows XP operating system, [...] The so-called ...

Dell n Series Desktops: I didn't know about these. The n Series features select popular models from the Dimension , OptiPlex and Dell Precision desktop lines sold without a Microsoft operating system. Offered for IT professionals who want control over operating system development and installation, n Series desktops are available ...

Download the Windows XP Service Pack 2: The guys who were doing Microsoft a favor by pushing Service Pack 2 via Bit Torrent got slapped down by Redmond. Microsoft sent DMCA takedown notices to our two webhosts, one of which was just linking to a torrent file on another server. ...

Infinium Labs sets launch for Phantom console: There's a new gaming console coming. It's free with a two year subscription to their gaming service, The console features a PC-like architecture, with 256 megabytes of RAM and a 40 gigabyte hard drive, running an embedded version of Windows XP. It will ...

dean.edwards.name/IE7/: This guy made an "IE7" patch for Internet Explorer that uses JavaScript to force IE to honor CSS features like min-width, :first-child, [attr=value], etc. Here's the good news: it works. It comes with a series of test pages that prove it's doing what it should be doing imagine, ...

Just in time for back-to-school shopping, Walmart puts out an ultra-cheap laptop for under $600. It's an ECS A535, and comes with an Athlon 1.6GHz processor, 14" screen, wireless networking, and XP Home Edition. As expected, Walmart continues its push of cheap imports with little regard for anything but its ...

I paved a Windows machine last night, and reloaded Windows XP Home from scratch. That being the case, I spent a lot of time looking at the default Windows desktop background. You know, the grassy hill picture. The file is called "Bliss." Does anyone know where this hillside is? Do ...

FireWire Depot just announced the IF8C, a new dual drive internal Firewire 800 bridgeboard, which converts two IDE/ATAPI devices into IEEE-1394b/FireWire800. The main board of the IF8C has a plastic housing and connects directly to the connector on the master drive mechanism, while an IDE cable is used to connect ...

Magic Number: 30 Billion: You know those little notifications you get from Windows that your machine has crashed and do you want to send the information to Redmond? Here's an interesting look at what must happen behind the scenes. "According to the Computer Industry Almanac, there were 603 million worldwide ...

MSR Netscan - Usenet Social Accounting Search Engine: Microsoft is testing a new tool to collate Usenet postings. It's pretty simply in theory you bulk load Usenet postings into a database, then mine the results to make everything easier to wade through. This demo examines postings from Microsoft's own ...

Microsoft removes ActiveX activation warning from IE: The Eolas debacle has apparently ended. Microsoft paid them off and hopes to update all IE versions by April 2008. For an undisclosed sum, the software maker has licensed the patented technology in question from Eolas, allowing it to modify IE6 and 7 ...

Reg readers sabotage their Windows boxes: Readers of The Register have been a little over-zealous in their quest to defeat the faceless hacker. We now know firsthand why, say, an electric hand mixer needs a warning label advising users to switch it off before licking icing from the beaters. We ...

geeXP: this may seem kind of silly, but there s probably some validity to it. geeXP is a new approach to managing your projects and tasks, in a fun way, that rewards you for making progress on your own projects. Think of it like a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG, where you ...

ThinkSecret has what they claim are photos of the machine being shipped by Apple for Apple Developer Connection members; the Apple Development Platform ADP2,1. The machine's case is similar to the G5, but the cooling fans inside are arranged differently, and in place of the standard G5 processor it has ...

Whatever happened to crooks hiding their wherebouts and activities? I found this site today, posted as a link to a public forum. Their Web site says this: Welcome to our website. We provide different types of services such as: proffessional cracking of any kind of software (CAD, CAM, CAE, EDA, ...

LitePC: IEradicator - the Internet Explorer Hitman!: This is perhaps a little extreme. And given the dynamic loading that Windows apps generally do, I wonder if you're going to wipe out some DLL that something else needs at some point? IEradicator is a tiny, script that uses the Windows setup ...

Hidden Costs of Mac Ownership: I read this entire article, and I can't figure out if it's pro- or anti-Mac, so it must be neutral. Once you get your Mac, those costs are done," said Mac Observer editor Bryan Chaffin. "You most likely won't need to pay anyone to reinstall ...

Zan Image Printer: This is an awfully handy little app. It's like a PDF printer driver, but it prints to BMP, JPG, or TIFF. Great for when you need to extract images from odd document formats (CAD in particular) to include in other media. To us, it's well worth the ...

Microsoft: Legit Windows or no updates: I found this via Techdirt which comes to the same conclusion I have: the more Microsoft does things like this to prevent piracy, the more Microsoft alternatives will thrive. Aiming to crack down on counterfeit software, Microsoft plans later this year to require customers ...

I'm curious to the relationship between screen resolution and actual viewable browser area (see this post). I need your help. I wrote a quick page that will print out the two for you (it should work, anyway -- I wrote it in 30 seconds and tested it for about that ...

I saw a post for this great case mod today, and had to check it out. Some guy took an old Mac SE/30, ripped the guts out of it, then stuffed a Mini-ITX logic board and a 9-inch grayscale monitor inside the case. He now runs Windows XP on the ...

Robert Love points to an interesting article on Kernelthread.com on ten OS-level optimizations built in to OSX to improve performance. I'll bet even you Mac folks didn't know about most of this stuff. This document discusses ten things that Apple did (beyond initial/fundamental OS design and implementation) to improve Mac ...

Here's a scary statistic that I hadn't considered before: SANS keeps a graph of the amount of time you can have an unprotected PC on the Internet before you get some kind of exploit probe. Since last year, this time has gone from 40-60 minutes down to around 20-30 minutes, ...

Windows XP Service Pack 2: Use the Internet Explorer Information Bar: Microsoft did a good job with the latest addition to IE: the Information Bar. Internet Explorer now displays an Information Bar (just below the address bar) where you can see information about downloads, blocked pop-up windows, potential security risks, ...

I'm not one that usually wears logo tees, and I peel all the extra stickers off of the electronics I buy. I just don't much care for being an unwitting billboard for a company when I just paid money for their product. That's why I was happy to read that ...

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP: I know that Power Toys are old hat, but there are some real winners on this page. Clear Type Tuner: This PowerToy lets you use ClearType technology to make it easier to read text on your screen, and installs in the Control Panel for easy ...

Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court: This guy bought a machine with Windows XP loaded on it, but he installed Linux instead. Then he went to court to get his $199 back from the manufacturer for the cost of the Windows license bundled with the machine. Here's ...

Miguel de Icaza of GNOME fame made some interesting observations regarding Microsoft's recent decision to release certain Longhorn technologies (mainly Avalon, the new UI framework) for Windows XP. My prediction is that Avalon v1 will be a throw-away: it is not really the foundation on which you will build applications: ...

The New X-Men: I read a book on Extreme Programming once, but I never quite got it, and at the time I was working in a company that wasn't ready to embrace it. After reading this article, however, I can't help but think that I'd write better code as part ...

Good article on CNET on how Microsoft is under pressure in the Asian market. Microsoft has always maintained a 'one-price' policy, meaning Windows costs the same no matter where you go, regardless of local currency or economic conditions. This makes Microsoft products very expensive in some nations. Now, with more ...

SQLite: An Embeddable SQL Database Engine: I'm just tickled with this little program. I'm not a client applications programmer, but if I was... SQLite is a tiny, file-based database engine. The Windows exectuable is only 280KB and it's statically compiled, so it needs nothing else to run (read: no install). ...

Everything s Coming Up Milhouse: Some great commentary on the state of the Mac. Even though I m generally a Mac hater, I don t disgaree with anything written here. The Mac has never experienced sustained growth at this sort of pace. Breaking this quarterly sales record isn’t a fluke — it’s part ...

I'm writing this entry from my new Red Hat Fedora Core 1 machine. It's very nice. Install was as simple as Windows (simpler, probably), and it's very functional right out of the box. It had network connectivity right away, and I can browse all my Windows shares without a problem. ...

I'm a nomad these days -- I split my time between two offices, one with a Windows domain, and one without. Because of this, I've decided to remove my computer from the domain to which it was attached. I still have my domain user account to access resources, but my ...

The OQO (pronounced oh-queue-oh) is such a spiffy little unit, I'm surprised that Apple didn't build something like it first! In handtop mode, the screen slides up to reveal a QWERTY-style thumbpad, mouse buttons and a TrackStik. The 800 x 480 W-VGA 5" transflective display is readable indoors and out, ...

inessential.com: Weblog: What should Apple do?: There's a bit of a controversy brewing in Macland about the WWDC conference and the Konfabulator knockoff Apple introduced called Dashboard. The theory is that Apple saw a great third-party app that people loved, and decided it needed to be part of the OS ...

Yeah, I'm pissed. Really pissed. When does comment spam become a DDOS attack? There's a fine line, and some a**hole crossed it this morning. I knew there was a problem when I sat down to eat my cereal and read the news this morning and the Windows XP Home login ...

I love plugin architectures. Having a well-done method for people to extend your system is a huge, huge benefit that we've discussed and lauded in relation to Firefox and Movable Type. But, there's a dark side. When you update software to a new version, you normally do a regression test, ...

Cornell University isn't playing nice with its Apple-toting students, and they are up in arms. Sort of. Cornell is currently conducting a beta trial of Napster's music rental service, which only supports Windows 2000 and XP, leaving anyone with a Mac in their dorm room out in the cold. To ...

I support an older AppleShare IP Server (ASIP) that has been in service for us for years. It does everything we need it to do, is reasonably fast, and is easy as pie to maintain. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Right? This particular ASIP machine primarily serves ...

Anyone an expert on the WinXP file system?: Phillip Greenspun proposes using the Windows file system as a database for organizing pictures, instead of some complicated structure that depends on other software. I'm thinking of writing a tutorial on how to use the Windows XP file system as a photo ...

Given that Microsoft products appear to be full of security holes, more and more thought is being given to migrating to other platforms. However, this has problems of its own. Macs are expensive, and Linux isn't quite ready as a desktop platform. This leaves a lot of people in limbo ...

One of the things that drives me nuts about Microsoft is the licensing. The other day, I found myself wishing for a book or a class on Microsoft licensing so I could understand it...then I realized how utterly absurd that was. Understanding licensing should not be a core competency of ...

[H]ard|OCP - Dell Dimension XPS 400 Evaluation: This is a review of Dell's "gaming PC" line -- the XPS. The review turns into an huge rant about how much crap is installed on a Dell out of the box. These pop-ups were so annoying, and seemed very much like a ...

Here s a side-by-side test I ll bet you thought you d never see; a Mac Plus running System 6.0.8 up against a mighty AMD Athlon Dual-Core running Windows XP. (link) We focussed on running tests that reflect how the user perceives the computing experience. After all, most users don t know or care ...