Archive for January, 2009

Windows 7 Beta and Dell XPS Laptop Gen 1

Since Windows NT 3.1 I have enjoyed installing beta versions of Microsoft’s operating systems, call me crazy. The latest beta I have installed is Windows 7 32-bit. I installed in on my old Dell XPS Gamer laptop that is over 4+ years old. It has a Pentium 4 (3.4) 1 Gig of RAM, ATI 9800 Pro (256 MB) video card and a 60 Gig hard drive.  The installation was super fast, I mean super fast!!The issues with installing Windows 7 on the Dell laptop was 2 fold:

  1. Windows 7 Beta 1 did not recognize the ATI video card and installed the standard VGA driver.
  2.  Windows 7 Beta did not recognize the sound card (Sigmatel Stac 9750).

So off to the ATI web site as I remembered seeing Windows 7 beta drivers there. No luck, only drivers for the newer cards. Well I decided to see if Windows 7 Beta did include them and just did not pick up the video card on install, yes sir I was right. So off to the Device Manager and told Windows 7 to use the ATI 9800 Pro driver and presto, I had 1920×1200 resolution back in full aero mode (which is even nicer in Windows 7 BTW) .

As for the sound card I went to Dell’s support site and downloaded the Sigmatel driver for Vista 32-bit and it installed and worked like a charm. Downloaded Divx and watched a movie on the laptop, very smooth with full audio.

Initial reactions after Day One:

  1. Most stable Microsoft OS beta I have ever used.
  2. I like the new Library feature in Windows Explorer.
  3. It would not create a System Recovery Boot Disc after I backed up to network share. Need to investigate. I think it is a DVD-R driver issue, not a backup issue.
  4. AVG installed smoothly.
  5. The new task bar has a nice visual over haul. (more on that later)
  6. The UAC aggravation is gone.
  7. Wordpad is looking better but stll no spell checker..grrr…
  8. IE 8, not too bad, going to try FireFox 3 on it in the morning

One cool service is called “Adapter Brightness”. If your laptop has a light sensor the OS will dim or brighten your screen as needed. I want to see that!

So Day One is over with Windows 7 beta and it is running on this old machine as fast as the Windows XP it just replaced. I would say this old laptop boots just as fast as Vista on my Quad Core. I am looking forward to this year as this goes from Beta to RTM. As I get more applications installed (VS 2008 and SQL 2008 next) I will report back from time to time the good, the bad and the ugly.

Note: Before you blast me and call me a Windows lover (which I probably am), I have a Linux firewall and a Macbook I use everyday as well.

 

 

Comments (10)

January 9, 2009 · Filed under Computers, Windows 7

Beginnings of My Trek into Digital Photography

I have been interested in photography for a long time. I got my first Spiderman camera when I was six. I still have the pictures I took being 6 and 7 years old in a photo album. I learned early on that taking pictures was expensive (especially for a youngin’) and I did not have the patience level required for photography, especially because:

  1. Cost of film
  2. Limited number of pictures per film
  3. Cost of developing pictures
  4. The wait for picture development
  5. The complexity of developing your own pictures
  6. The management of all the developed pictures (photo albums, shoe boxes full of pictures)
  7. Storage of original film

So my interest in photography was overcome by it complexity and cost.

At the dawn of the consumer digital camera era my interest returned but never had enough cash for a good camera I always had access to a “OK” digital camera. The first one I got to use was a AGFA 2.0 mega pixel (MP) camera. The pictures where not worth crap and the batteries lasted about 10 minutes. Yup, it would go through a 4 set of AA batteries in 10 minutes. Ug. Then I got a free 3.2 MP HP when I bought a color laser printer for work. It was OK, pictures where OK and the battery life was OK, but nothing to inspire the inner photographer, I found the press of the “take picture button” and the 5 second delay until the picture was taken was painful taking pictures, especially when taking pics of the kids. While we had lesser digital cameras Kristy had a decent film camera which was still capturing the “moments” but I never seemed to use it much.

Next up was Kristy’s new 5.0 MP Sony Cybershot. The pictures where good and the battery life was great. Armed with a 512 MB Memory Stick this is what I was waiting for. I starting taking good pictures, but not great pictures. But the one thing I did notice it that I was enjoying carrying the camera and trying to capture the events and taking some interesting shots. This all changed when Sean showed me his pictures and introduced me to DSLR. Wow. His shots where fantastic and the quality of the shots where a cut above mine (pinto vs. ferrari). What I learned is it is not all about the massive MP but also the lenses, image stabilization, and of course good lighting.

So this year one of my 2009 New Year’s Resolutions is to unlock the inner photographer. I picked up a Canon XS Rebel DSLR from the Boxing Day sale of Future Shop (got to love those 6 AM crowds).

One thing about taking all these pictures is about managing them. So I have set out to explore how I can mange these pictures. I am been playing with Microsoft Expression Media 2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and I will blogging about that discovery later. Also there is a collection of Dummies books on the Canon XS Rebel and using Photoshop of digital photographers which I will be reviewing in upcoming months.

Happy New Year everyone.

Comments (3)

January 2, 2009 · Filed under Digital Photography