December 13, 2004
MSN Desktop Search Beta Available
You heard it here...last.
Seriously, lots of postings that the beta of Microsoft's MSN Desktop Search is now available.
I read the news first on Marc Orchant's great blog. Marc added his own thoughts on how the beta compares to various competitors along with links for more info (including Scoble's lengthy developer interviews which really are interesting and seem totally unscripted -- a VERY refreshing change from PR-managed, tightly controlled, and content-free interviews you usually see when new products are being discussed).
More from Charlene Li on Yahoo!/X1
Charlene Li has a great follow-up on the Yahoo!/X1 announcment that builds on the point she made previously that web search vendors are busy in the desktop search market trying to cement customer loyalty.
Desktop Search Feature Checklist
Robert Scoble put together a checklist of questions for would-be desktop search reviewers and Zsmarties has some good follow-up thoughts.
December 10, 2004
Forrester: Search Loyalty and Innovation
Speaking of competing search vendors, Charlene Li talks about her research showing the battle to build customer loyalty is driving innovation and specialization.
AOL to use Copernic for Desktop Search
According to Search Engine News, AOL is going to use Copernic technology for their branded desktop search. Great article here: http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/2004/12/aol-to-use-copernic-for-desktop-search.html , including:
- speculation that Yahoo will have to trim X1 a lot to make a reasonable download. (I don't know about that: I think the X1 download is about 6MB -- big but not impossibly so).
- speculation that it might be a good idea for AOL to acquire Copernic before a deal with Mamma.com is fully completed (Seems reasonable, but maybe too late now?)
So:
Web - Desktop
AOL - Copernic
Yahoo - X1
MSN - MSN
Google - Google
Ask Jeeves - Ask Jeeves
Yahoo and X1 Join Forces on Desktop Search
InfoWorld has an article today about Yahoo's plans to release a desktop search tool using X1 search technology. It will allow searching through personal files as well as the web (via Yahoo's own search engine). Future versions will include searching Yahoo's email and instant messaging services.
I think X1 is a good product that looks to get even better with the next version (you can test-drive the current beta to see what's coming at www.x1.com). How much of those features ends up in Yahoo's desktop search tool will be very interesting to see. Hopefully, the Yahoo version won't be hopelessly neutered.
Certainly, a free Yahoo-branded version of their product would address one concern: that X1 is priced too high ($74.95) for the current market. I've been suggesting dropping their price in half would be a good start -- but free would really level the playing field.
As usual, Amit Agarwal immediately had an insightful post on Yahoo and X1.
One thing that caught my eye in his post was the mention of separating desktop and web results:
"Both Yahoo and X1 contend it makes sense to maintain a dividing line between hard-drive search and Web search because one quest focuses on recovering old information while the other strives to discover new information."
I couldn't agree more. These tend to be two separate tasks for me -- one retrieval, one research -- and combining them isn't typically useful (any more than if I'm looking through my drawer for blue socks and kept running across advertisements for blue socks or articles about how blue socks and brown pants don't go together...well, actually that last might be helpful <g>).
However, I expect there will always be pressure to blur or eliminate that separation for many desktop search vendors because their revenue model depends on connecting users to commercial information on the web. I wrote a few days ago about this.
I said that X1 could afford to break this model, because unlike competitors, it had a simpler revenue model: selling software. We'll see if Yahoo tries to find a way to make money on its search tool through advertising, or if it is used primarily to strengthen brand loyalty for Yahoo's other services (search, email, IM).
There sure has been a lot of activity in the desktop search market recently, including another update to Copernic Desktop Search with performance and UI improvements and new products coming soon from companies like Ask Jeeves and Microsoft. InfoWorld has more details in an article title "Desktop Search Avalance Set to Hit."
November 30, 2004
Copernic to be Acquired; Who's Paying for Desktop Search?
Amit Agarwal points to a news release that Mamma.com is looking to acquire Copernic Technologies.
I wonder what this will mean for the free Copernic Desktop Search. I like CDS, but I don't see the unique advantage it delivers in what's getting to be crowded market. What niche can Copernic carve out when much bigger guns like Microsoft and Google also deliver a free product?
More importantly, is a free desktop search program viable for the long run?
Niki Scevak of Jupiter Research is quoted saying that free desktop search software lacks a clear revenue model on its own, since revenue is really only tied to "searches of commercial interest."
Essentially, how is anyone going to make money by letting me search my own hard drive for my own files?
A number of possibilities exist, including:
1) Show me advertising while I'm searching. (The quandry here is how do you make advertising effective but not intrusive.)
2) Show me similar information from the Internet, whether I want it or not. (That seems to be Blinkx niche now. Personally, it's interesting but not my ideal. When I want to search the Internet, I will. When I just need to find something on my own computer, searching the Internet is wasting my time.)
3) Tie this tool into other pay- or advertising-driven products in a way that I want (or need) to use both. (Google and Microsoft's approach)
4) Skip the whole dance of giving you free software and finding someone else to pay for it -- and just charge you for the program (X1's approach. They just need to cut the price in half.)
My guess is that some of these approaches more shaky than others and that ultimately many of the current players will be bought up or will abandon this market.
November 24, 2004
Bogging Down Fast Computers
Alex Scoble asks:
"Here's a question for all of the Computer Engineers out there. Why do PCs become slow almost to the point of unusable when the PC's drive buses are in heavy use?
What am I talking about? Copy a CD to a CD or perform a disk intensive process like copying a lot of data from one PC to another and see what happens to your nice 3.2Ghz P4 with 512MB of DDR RAM. It slows to a crawl! At least it does in Windows...."
Read the rest of Alex Scoble's post here.
He mentions that servers handle disk I/O much more effectively, and wonders why desktop computers can't too.
Great point. Right now I have two computers under my desk connected via an Iogear KVM switch so that when I tie one up with a long-running task, I can bounce to the other. With the KVM, shared drives through Windows, and a shared clipboard (using a freeware program called Spike), it's *almost* like getting the benefits Alex would like to see built into every computer -- though at twice as expensive and a lot bulkier.
And this is an area where improvements could mean really noticeable benefits to users (as opposed to the MHz races that made good marketing copy but often didn't deliver anything in real-world use).
- Jim
November 21, 2004
Blogjet 1.2 Beta
There's a new 1.2 beta available for BlogJet, the blog editor I've mentioned I like before. Lots of new features that will come in handy, including extended posts, image thumbnails (and resizing of images), and typographic characters. Nice quick write-up at Working Smart.
November 19, 2004
Blinkx Takes a New Tack on Desktop Search
Several people have suggested I take a look at the new Blinkx 2.0 beta for a better desktop search tool. From what I've heard, Blinkx takes a very different approach from its competitors by trying to judge the "gist" of any document and automatically show the users related files on the users' PC and other related information from the web. The new beta includes Search Folders, which let you create topical folders on your computer that are automatically populated with related documents Blinkx finds. Very innovative ideas, and nobody else seems to pursing them. However, cool as some of these features sound, I'm still not sure Blinkx is going to be the best fit for my specific needs, which are more about finding/browsing a variety of files on my computer. Most of the time I'd turn to my search program to find something, I wouldn't need -- or even want -- to waste time with additional information from the Internet (which is what Blinkx seems to do best). Marc Orchant has posted some thoughts on Blinkx, pointing out some rough spots but ultimately saying the program will stay on his "worth watching" list.
November 15, 2004
Unauthorized MSN Desktop Search Screenshots Available
Is Microsoft feeling a little left out of buzz about new desktop search tools? Maybe.
Their own MSN Search blog went to some pains today to say that screenshots of a pre-release build of MSN's desktop search posted at Neowin.net were unauthorized. But the Microsoft blog post still included a convenient link right to the screenshots for anyone curious.
The screenshots do look very promising -- certainly no other company is better positioned to& integrate searching into applications like Explorer, IE, Outlook, etc. -- and it's good to hear that they're still hoping to get a beta out the door before year's end.
New Beta for X1 Desktop Search
A beta of the upcoming version 5 for desktop search program X1 was just released. Lots of improvements to the search options, user interface, integration with other programs, and overall performance (check out this list).
Feature-wise, the beta addresses many of the shortcomings I've mentioned in posts over the last couple months about X1 and competing products like Copernic Desktop Search and Google Desktop Search.
With so much competition -- and Microsoft supposedly poised to deliver its own MSN-branded destkop search utility -- X1's enhancements couldn't come at a better time. But at least two more things still need to be done:
- X1 needs to lower it's price. I'm willing to pay for useful software, but my guess is that X1 needs to cut is $74.95 price about in half if it wants to grow (or even just keep) its share of the market, especially when some serious competitors are totally free.
- X1 needs to drop its constant "phone home" anti-piracy approach. Even if X1's activity is totally benign and respects users' privacy, the company is going to have waste a lot of time and effort explaining that to customers. Reviewers will continue to bang X1 on this issue too. Whatever value X1 gets from this offset by lost goodwill and trust. Instead, X1 has a golden opportunity: by flipping its policy and becoming a champion of user privacy, X1 can position itself as distinct from for-free competitors who make their money by pushing advertisements to their users or who gather and re-sell user activity statistics.
November 09, 2004
AppRocket - Faster than a speeding finger
Nice review at mrpunkin.com of AppRocket, a Windows program similar to the popular Quicksilver for the Mac. AppRocket gives you a little typing window that lets you quickly find/open programs, files, browser favorites, songs, and more. It's not a replacement for a full-fledged search program like X1 and isn't as flexible as a keystroke macro program like ActiveWords, but AppRocket is small, simple and fast. As a quick way to navigate your files or launch common programs it looks very handy -- and the price is very, very reasonable (under $10!). Bryan pointed out couple ways it could be improved; hope CandyLabs spots his ideas (hint: take advantage of the buzz and support Firefox).
(By the way, check out Bryan's photo gallery too. Very nice work. I really like the porch shot -- the simple construction of the chairs, the texture of the wooden building and the golden reflections in the windows fit together perfectly).
October 27, 2004
Amit Agarwal's Perfect Desktop Search Tool Wishlist
Amit Agarwal posted his wish list for the perfect desktop search tool here:
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2004/10/what-is-missing-in-desktop-search.html
I agree with a lot of what he wrote, though I'm not sure I can think of the business model for a program that's free and doesn't tie into advertising somehow. What would generate revenue? Support? The only company I could seeing doing "free/no ads" is Microsoft which could include this in a new OS they'd sell. Or here's an idea: provide the basic search tool sans lots of viewers for free and sell the "loads of file format viewers" version for a reasonable price.
For what it's worth, I'd be willing to <gasp> *pay* for a tool that did everything Amit outlined. Though I'd also want:
- low use of system resources so that computer performance isn't killed.
- smart indexing that doesn't kick off when I in the middle of another long-running task (like recording or converting video, burning a CD/DVD, etc.)
I'll see if I can think of any more "must haves"...
October 18, 2004
Copernic Desktop Search
It may have been coincidence, but the day before Google Desktop Search was released, a new version of Copernic Desktop Search was rolled out. Version 1.1 includes new usability enhancements, more flexible indexing, and greater file compatibility. Cnet.com gives Copernic Desktop Search the nod over X1. After updating my PC to 1.1, I can definitely see improvements, but I'm still torn. You can't touch X1 for support of multiple file formats. On the other hand, Copernic really does seem less intrusive when indexing.
October 14, 2004
Google desktop search falls short of hopes
Google has released a beta of Google Desktop Search. Lots of commentary on it (including here, here, here, here, here and here). Back in May I said I hoped it would turn out to: 1) be fast, 2) respect users' privacy, and 3) be able to handle a broad range of file formats. Looks like I got two out of three. It's fast and small, and integrates into the same Google experience people use for searching the web. It has a pretty specific and reasonable privacy policy.
But one major thing that's missing is search/display support for a variety of file formats. Right now it does the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Outlook Express, text files, instant messages, and your Internet Explorer cache. Full desktop searching that's not.
If you live just in Outlook and Word, it seems to do a great job. But that's just not my reality. I use a lot of software tools and want a desktop search tool that doesn't ignore half my hard drive. What about pictures? Music? Adobe PDFs? Contents of Zip archives? Alternate e-mail and browser support? Other common, popular programs?
The idea of ghetto-izing my data -- searching for mail with one tool, for pictures with another, etc. -- does *not* sound like a step forward.
Even more frustrating is that the unbearably slow, clunky and limited search feature built into XP does one basic thing that almost every new desktop search tool, including Google, skips: it indexes the *filenames* of all files even when it can't read their contents. Since I use XP's long filenames to always include at least one keyword, I can find all sort of files that other search tools ignore. Of course XP search is so bad, I'd almost never actually try to do that <grin>...
It seems like adding filename indexing would be a minor tweak for products like Google that would at least meet users of other programs halfway.
Two alternatives I've found interesting are X1 and Copernic Desktop Search. Unforunately they have their own set of warts. You have to pay for X1 (something I'm always ready to do for good software) and it supports a long list of file types, but the downside is seems very resource hungry. Copernic Desktop Search is free, but supports a much shorter list of file formats (though still *much* longer than Google Desktop Search) and makes you choose to search by category (files, music, images, web) with no choice to search across all categories at once.
So far I still haven't found a perfect desktop search tool for my needs.
September 16, 2004
Max-ing out the Hard Drive
Hard drive space has been disappearing fast on our main home PC as we've been adding pics from the digital camera, movies from the DV camcorder and time-shifted TV video from the Leadtek Winfast card. So when I saw our local CompUSA had a good deal on a Maxtor 250GB drive, I decided it was time to add a little breathing room and at the same time replace my old primary drive on the PC.
Physically installing the new hard drive wasn't a problem, but it took the included MaxBlast partition copying utility *forever* to copy all data off the old drive and onto the new one (I know, time to get a decent drive imaging program). I also had to update my copy of atapi.sys so Windows XP could properly support such a large hard drive. None of it was hard, but it was all time-consuming and required a surprising amount of research to make sure I did the right things in the right order (for example a quick browse of the Maxtor documentation and Web produced conflicting directions on registry patches, bios updates, etc. that turned out not to apply to my setup).
Two days later and it's all working. However, I agree with Steve at furrygoat.com that most non-technical people would probably find this process pretty daunting. The SATA interface available for newer drives helps by eliminating some of the cabling and jumper issues, but seems to me that basic software tools for managing partitions should be part of Windows' disk management. Fdisk and xcopy are simply not enough these days to handle basic tasks like replacing a drive.
May 21, 2004
Google's Desktop Search Tool
From WinInfo Short Takes:
Google to Deliver Desktop Search Tool
And speaking of Web-based trends that aren't as big as some people think, Google.com this week announced that it would soon release a desktop-based file search tool for Windows that will bring the company's Web-based search tools to the PC. Code-named Puffin, the search tool will tackle one of the weakest parts of Windows, its search functionality. And perhaps most important, it will do so at least two years before Microsoft ships Longhorn, the next major Windows version, which will allegedly fix this problem as well. As many a Microsoft representative has remarked to me recently, "Why does it take forever for Windows to find a file that I know is on my hard drive, but I can go to Google and find anything on the Web in seconds?" It's a good question, however rhetorically it's been delivered.
It will be very interesting to see if Google can deliver a PC file search solution that really works, isn't intrusive or bog down the PC, and doesn't invade user's privacy. It's not as easy a nut to crack as it might originally appear and Google's success on the web may not translate -- Google has rooms full of servers dedicated to task of returning your search results quickly and really only focuses on a small number of mostly plain-text file formats (Adobe Acrobat PDF being the main exception I know of).
On PCs, you have a lot of different file formats (and a search tool that only works with a handful of the most popular formats will be of little value...at least to me) and a much lower tolerance for performance-bogging indexing (which is why Microsoft Office indexer is routinely turned off).
Here's hoping though. Fast keyword access to documents would a big plus.
May 18, 2004
Hurray for a Faster Acrobat Reader
A note -- and some feedback -- on making Acrobat Reader MUCH faster. Acrobat PDF files work great but, boy, I've always hated how s-l-o-w Acrobat Reader loads.
Taking Note of Notepad2
Pity poor Notepad, the default text editor that ships with every copy of Windows, that lacks the oomph to handle more than the simplest tasks, and that never seems to get any better. Everybody has it, nobody loves it. Thanks goodness there are a LOT of alternatives. One recent entry is Notepad2 from flo's freeware. Small and simple, it looks just like Notepad -- but adds improvements such as syntax highlighting, line numbering, drag and drop editing, regular expression searching, block editing, and even a zoom feature. Very nice. I'll have to take a look to see how it compares to EditPlus, my old favorite Notepad replacement. Here's some tips for how to open multiple Notepad2 windows (read comments, you don't need to edit the Registry),and adding Notepad2 to your context menu.
April 27, 2004
What are your Top 10 programs?
Stefano Demiliani responds to a new piece on Slashdot: What are your Top 10 programs? 10? Who could live with 10 programs? Beyond the standard word processor/database/spreadsheet/presentation programs, I'd need at least:
- Winzip (unpack those zip files)
- Winamp (music for the soul)
- EditPlus (handy text editor, 1000x better than Notepad)
- Adobe Acrobat Reader (for reading PDF files)
- Adobe Photoshop (image editing)
- Adobe Pagemaker (old-school desktop publishing, but I like it)
- Ahead Nero Burning Rom (for burning CDs/DVDs)
- Xara X (great vector graphics app from merry old England)
- Macromedia Dreamweaver (fast web design)
- Blogjet (posting to this site)
- SharpReader (nice RSS news aggregator)
- WS_FTP (full-featured FTP utility)
- Vmware Workstation (for non-destructive testing)
- MyInfo (a handy note/outline editor from Milenix)
- Symantec Antivirus
- TurboNote+ (great yellow "sticky" notes)
- Audacity (quick audio editing)
And why stop there? I'm always finding handy utilities that prove useful, including ones I've mentioned here before such as JPEGCrops (for cropping digital images), FolderSizes (for figuring out what's eating up all that hard drive space), and Spike (the network clipboard utility).
What about you? Any tips?
April 19, 2004
Spike provides neat network clipboard
I have two computers at my desk tied together with a keyboard-video-mouse switch. I've always found it a convenient productive solution. But on a regular basis I run across information on computer #1 that I'd like to paste into something on computer #2. Spike, a new network clipboard program from Porchdog Software, makes that a snap. Using a cross-platform implementation of the Zeroconf networking standard -- think Apple Rendevous -- you can share temporary and persistent clipboards between PCs and Macs automatically (though you can also specify ports for firewalls and passwords for clipboard privacy). Very nice.
February 16, 2004
BlogJet Nice Match with MT
Just started looking at a new entry update tool for this blog called BlogJet. Setup was a snap. The interface is very intuitive and makes things like including images really easy.
November 03, 2003
Data CDs: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?
CDs have long been a popular standard for delivering new programs and backing up important information. I've got a shelf in the basement stacked with old program CDs and backups from my own PCs.
But what if they turned out to be worthless when I tried them in the future?
That's the concern raised in Fred Langa's latest Langa Letter in Information Week. Is he right? Well, looks like too like data to be absolutely sure, but, happily, I've always been reluctant to stick labels on a circular disc that's spun at high speed so can at least rest easy that this won't be the reason my CDs fail.
...That was certainly the case in my tests: I did discover bad CDs, but not one--zero--was traceable to a specific brand or dye type. Instead, for me, the only disks that failed were those that I had covered with a glue-on paper label from a print-it-yourself CD label-maker kit. Several of these labeled CDs were, in fact, totally unreadable by every means I tried (including special data-recovery software); all the data on those CDs is just plain gone. My best guess is the glue on these do-it-yourself labels interacted with either the foil or the dye, rendering the CDs useless.
Fortunately, although I have more than 1,000 data CDs in storage, only a handful have these labels. All my other CDs were hand labeled using an ordinary permanent-ink felt-tip marker, and all of these that I tested--all of them, including the very first CD-R in my collection--remain intact and fully readable. Plus, because I make multiple backups of important files [see http://www.langa.com/backups/backups.htm] , no essential data was lost (what was missing on one CD was available on another.)
I'd used two different brands of CD label-makers in the past, and (alas) have no way of knowing whether only one or both caused the problem. But the bottom line is that while some CDs with glue-on labels had problems, none--not one--marked with a permanent ink felt-tip pen did.
August 29, 2003
Corel, Adieu.
Vector Capital Completes Corel Purchase.
Corel, hit it big about 10 years back with an innovative vector graphics program, CorelDraw, and then slowly killed itself branching out for the "next big hit" into an steady stream of unsuccessful ventures (thin client computing, education and entertainment software, office productivity suites, and, finally, its own Linux distribution). Pulled back from the brink several times -- the last by Microsoft (in what many believe was a two-pronged attempt to both kill Corel's user-friendly Linux distro and prop up someone they could point to as a "competitor") -- an independent Corel will finally disappear for good.
I saw CorelDraw being demoed at a small side booth at PC Expo in the early '90s and was blown away by it's ability to manipulate fonts (a pretty non-existent features in graphics packages in those days) and immediately bought a copy. I went on to review several Corel products for computer magazines over the next few years, and one year was a judge at their Academy Awards-style design contest in Ottawa (where the grand prize was a cool $1 million). Fun times...
Here's some more info from the CRN news piece...
"Corel, basically the only software company still fielding a Windows competitor to the Microsoft Office juggernaut, has been struggling. Last year it cut some high-profile bundling deals to put its WordPerfect Office on select Dell, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard PCs selling through retail. But Microsoft Office remains the undisputed king of desktop productivity applications.
In October 2000, Microsoft took a $135 million stake in Corel, which thereafter de-emphasized and then spun off its Linux product plans into a Xandros a separate company. Pundits suspected a quid pro quo behind that deal. Microsoft has been fighting the upstart Linux open source crowd as a major threat to its Windows power base. San Francisco-based Vector bought out Microsoft's stake in Corel last spring."
August 27, 2003
Mandatory Automatic Updates - Google Toolbar
The other day I mentioned that I wasn't a big fan of mandatory automatic (ie, no user control) updating of software over the Internet. Not only do I feel more comfortable being able to control when and how I update, but I worry that automatic updates may step on one another and potentially create problems where none existed. And then there's always the concern about shifting licensing agreements being tied to automatic updates.
At the same time, I recognize that mandatory automatic registration and updating of software is exactly what software manufacturers have always wanted. By tying activation of software to mandatory online registration and then adding mandatory automatic updates, vendors can keep pretty tight control over who and how their software is used. Here's another example of the trend -- no control automatic updating of the Google Toolbar utility (and no complaining, since the fine print in the license agreement requires users to agree to that behavior). I bet we'll see more of this in the future.
August 21, 2003
Blackberry in a Jam?
RIM's Blackberry does one thing really well: wireless e-mail. If that's all you need, it's hard to find a simpler, better device. But legal troubles might spell the end for Blackberry fans...at least someday.
(By the way, I've always wondered: if you have two of these devices are they "Blackberries"? It's brand name, so I suppose not. I've always avoided the issue by saying "Blackberry devices.")
Mandatory Windows Updates?
Good article here on the possible move by Microsoft to mandatory Windows updates.
Clearly, not updating can leave holes in users' operating systems for worms and viruses to exploit. Automatic, mandatory updates would help insure users protect themselves and others.
The question Microsoft seems to be pondering is: should users even have the choice not to run certain updates? Shouldn't they be required to protect themselves and possibly others from potential problems?
Well, I'm not sure it's that simple.
Besides the general issue of whether Microsoft or I should be in control of my computer, The TechStuff article identifies a few reasons why even users who aren't lazy or stupid might not be keen on mandatory Windows updates.
My comments expanding on a couple points in the article:
No Tricks - Stop making License Agreement changes part of the update components. By tying EULA changes to critical upgrades, Microsoft essentially holds a gun to customers' heads. "You want your computer to continue operating properly/safely? Then agree to whatever is in today's small print." The one small consolation currently is that, as a voluntary process, customers still have the option to decline particular updates if they don't agree with the matching license changes.
Reversible Updates - too many updates these day come with messages that the changes can't be undone. I just don't buy that updates can't be designed to be reversible, and am much more reluctant to install updates that can't be undone and that might later turn out to not work properly. As recent press accounts of specific flawed Windows updates show, this isn't an unreasonable concern.
These issues make me very carefully review the updates Microsoft suggests I install and opt NOT to install many of them. Would I be better off if Microsoft could force me to install all these updates? I'm not convinced.
[Update: You don't have to be as rabidly anti-Microsoft as the Inquirer to think that EULA changes buried in recommended updates are a cause for concern. ]
July 21, 2003
Computer Upgrade Doesn't Create a Millon New Problems
You know what makes my day? When I upgrade the computer and it doesn't create a million new problems!
Decided it was time to add some pep to the old dependable home PC I put together in 2000 with a new motherboard, processor and memory. But I didn't want to have to re-install Windows or all my apps.
Purchased a new Asus A7N8X motherboard, AMD Barton 2500+ processor, and 512MB of Corsair 3200 XS RAM from NewEgg.com. This would about double my processor speed, improve overall performance with faster memory and bus, and would let me install a newer GeForce 4 Ti 4200 video board I already had. By not buying the absolutely "latest and greatest" equipment, the upgrade equipment was very reasonably priced.
This first experience with NewEgg was great. All items arrived even faster than quoted and everything worked right out of the shipping carton. They'll definitely get more of my business in the future.
Backed up my drives, did the hardware swap, upgraded the BIOS on the new motherboard, disabled the onboard audio in favor of standalone card (no problem, just preference), did a repair install of Windows XP to upgrade/update drives (covered very well here), and finally reinstalled Service Pack 1 from the Microsoft site. No snags. Everything worked fine. Big sigh of relief!
July 16, 2003
No Browser Innovation?
"People say there's no innovation in the browser space," said Mozilla Foundation president Mitchell Baker, "but that's only if you're using IE..." from 7/16 Wired article.
While you can't forget the source, you also can't argue with the accuracy.
I've got to say I was pretty disappointed to hear Microsoft say that Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 would be the last standalone version of IE they'd do before the release of the next version of Windows, Longhorn (expected in 2005). It was especially galling to hear the reason was that Microsoft felt there was point in improving IE before then:
"Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1," [Microsoft representative] Countryman said. "Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS. CNET
Funny, I can think of lots of improvements that Microsoft could make to IE without enhancing the underlying OS: true support for PNG, additional improvements and bug fixes to it's already good support of CSS, the ability to block pop-up ads, improved management of favorites, the zoom text feature found in almost every other browser (including IE 5 for the Mac -- which Microsoft also has abandoned), etc., etc.
I know there are lots of excellent alternatives, but the fact is that IE is the standard for probably 80-90% of the browsing public and will act as the lowest common denominator for web design standards into the forseeable future.
July 15, 2003
Photoshop: Handle is Invalid
Here's one that doesn't come up every day: if you upgrade your computer to Windows XP Professional and find Adobe Photoshop 7 stops working and gives you a "Handle is Invalid" error message, check to see if you have a Wacom tablet driver installed. If so, delete it and you'll be all set.
July 08, 2003
Getting around Win XP search limitations
Our organization is migrating from Windows 98 to XP. Behind the scenes XP delivers a lot of advantages over our previous operating system, but finally working full-time in XP has introduced me to some of the minor annoyances I'm sure many others have long since worked around.
Case in point: XP's revised Search feature. Not only has the interface become much more cramped and confusing (even after you disable the annoying "search pooch"), but when searching for text within a file, XP's Search purposely ignores a tremendous number of file types.
The good news is that we found a quick solution in Microsoft's online help system (Knowledge Base article #309173):
"To configure Windows XP to search all files no matter what the file type, obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP and then turn on the Index file types with unknown extensions option. If you use this method, Windows XP searches all file types for the text that you specify. To do this:
1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2. Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
7. Close the Indexing Service console."
Microsoft says this can affect performance of searches, but as far as I can see only because it now searches all files instead of skipping some. I'll take a slower, but more accurate, search any day.
July 03, 2003
De-cluttering Drives with Foldersizes
One of the immutable laws of computing must be that, no matter how much disk space you have, it will eventually all fill up with junk. Regular review and "pruning" are required. But if you're running Windows like I am, it isn't always easy to see what's hogging up all that space.
A fantastic solution I ran across the other day is Foldersizes, a freeware gem by Mark Richards of Key Metric Software, LLC. The program lets you browse your drives and directories and shows you both in table form and/or as a graphical chart, which directories and files are using up the most space. You can also export your results as HTML files for viewing and printing.
Foldersizes is still a beta version, but I found it stable, incredibly easy to use, and immediately helpful. The day I installed it, the call went out to the 20 or so people in our office to clean up space on our shared network drive. Foldersizes to the rescue! In a minute I had a nice report to share showing which directories were using up the majority of the space so people could focus their efforts most effectively.
Highly recommended * * * *
April 30, 2003
SharpMT looks pretty sharp
I'm having fun checking out SharpMT, a new offline blogging tool for Moveable Type from Randyrants.com. Randy's really done an excellent job here. Installation and configuration were trivial -- though I managed to get off-track temporarily by missing a simple permissions error on my mt-xmlrpc.cgi file (remember kids, 755 is the number you want).