Like myself, Ed Bott over at his ZDNet Blog is also documenting his transition to Windows Vista. Unfortunately for Ed, he hit a bit of a snag when trying to update the BIOS of his Dell computer. As he relates in his Day 2 post, I agree that it is probably unrelated to Vista. In any event, I will monitor his progression via his blog as I am curious to see his experience.

I should probably give a little computer info to keep things in perspective. My computer is over three years old, and has a P4 3GHz, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB, and 120GB hard drive. Windows XP Pro ran on if from day 1, and ran well.

So far, I am quite happy with Vista. It has been rock solid, and the performance is in general better than I was expecting. I was wondering how the 1GB RAM would hold me back. So far, I really only experience serious disc swapping first thing in the morning. I am guessing that the full system virus scan that happens over night is causing all the swapping. After this initial swapping, everything runs quite smoothly. I switch between Adobe Photoshop, Outlook 2007, Word 2007, and a variety of web utilities(FTP, SSH, etc.) and everything is snappier than I imagined.

One thing that really got my attention, was the new firewall in Vista. Finally Microsoft is shipping an operating system with a decent firewall. It is highly configurable, the only relative weakness in my limited experience with it so far is the logging. Even still, it is leaps and bounds ahead of their other firewall offerings.

If you are looking for a SD Card for your electronic device, buy.com is a place to consider making your purchase. Being one of the largest online stores means they can bring you a large selection of SD Cards to choose from. SD Cards are appropriate for many devices, from cell phones to digital cameras.

The interface of the site is quite good as well. If you hover your mouse over one of the SD Cards, the product box will expand giving you a better look at the product image as well as including a bit more information about it. Clicking on a SD Card image will quickly bring you to the product page where you can get further information such as shipping cost, warranty information, and view more images of the product. There is also a handy comparison shop feature. The product page will list the price for the same product at other vendors, including providing a link to the competitor’s page for you to compare. This is a rather nice feature, and shows a confidence that buy.com has in their price and service.

If you are looking for a SD Card for your electronics, consider buy.com for your online purchase.

This has been a sponsored post.

Using the keyboard to help navigate your computer can be areal time saver. Unfortunately, Windows XP and Vista by default turn off permanently underlined shortcut keys, which is a handy way of using the keyboard quicker to access menu shortcuts using the “Alt” key. These can be turned on, but the ability to do so is buried. I’ll show you how to get it turned back on.

Before:

After:

Navigate to your “Control Panel” and enter the “Ease of Access Center” icon.

Find and click the “Make the keyboard easier to use” link.

Near the bottom will be the “Underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys”. Check this box and select the “Save” button at the bottom of the window.

There, now the key associated with the “alt” key is permanently underlined for easy recognition.

There is no question that there has been an explosion in the number of blogs recently. These new blogs are on every subject imaginable, including weird things. I freely admit to being something of a geek myself, so finding blogs that are covering interesting or weird things is of a personal interest to me. All too often blogs take a dull or “professional” approach to posting, it is nice to see a little humor and personalization in a blog.

One example is a post about a lighter. The post includes some tongue in cheek references to people who do not “get” the geek attraction to gadgets thing. For example, “when a dull ignorant idiot someone that isn’t much into gadgets” illustrates the bewilderment that I sometimes experience when I excitedly discuss something I think is cool, but receive a look in exchange like I’m some kind of lunatic. OK, lunatic is a slight exaggeration, but you get my point.

Did you realize that you may have been missing out on that fancy new gadget? You know, the USB powered vacuum for your computer you’ve always needed, or that motion sensitive foul mouthed parrot that is perfect for when the Mother in law walks by. Well, find the right gadget blog, and you’ll miss them no more.

This has been a sponsored post.

Here is a handy Windows Vista tip to allow you to administer Vista from the command line more easily. Create a new or copy a shortcut to either the command prompt or the new PowerShell on your desktop. Right click it for the options menu, then select the “Shortcut” tab if it is not already. Click the “Advanced” button near the bottom:

Now, check the “Run as administrator” box, and select “OK” on the two option dialogs.

You will be prompted to allow your new command prompt administrator access when you run it.

Savvy users will realize that this can be done to other shortcuts as well. You can use this whenever you need to automatically run an application with administrator privileges.

Please put your “Irony Detectors” in a safe place before reading further. They just might explode. If you believe in free speech online, read further.

India, like many nations in the world, has many deeply religious groups. Often times, these groups believe they have a monopoly on morality, to the extent that they believe theirs is “The Truth”. Clearly, this can have ramifications when other groups believe that they should be allowed to have free speech, including criticism of ideologies. Many people, myself included, believe that the Internet is the perfect place for open discussions of this sort.

However, there is a particular group in India that has a rather ironic view of free speech or expression. The group in question is the Shiv Sena party, a right-wing Hindu group. They have recently become upset over people in India using Orkut to criticize their beliefs. The student wing of the Shiv Sena has taken it upon themselves to visit Internet cafes and “warn” the owners “that it is their responsibility to see that surfers do not use their facility to carry out such hate campaigns”. The “campaigns” being referred to are people being critical of Hinduism, their cultural beliefs, etc. The Shiv Sena members have gone so far as to vandalize Internet centers, claiming that they were not stopping their customers from being involved in sending hate messages. Business owners also claimed that if they did not stop allowing this kind of thing, that their businesses would be attacked. Did you have your irony detectors in a safe place?

Suffice it to say, that I think this kind of behavior is not acceptable. I’m a pretty big believer in free speech online.

Now maybe it is just me, but for some reason the image of an angry religious zealot storming the Internet center with a whip, driving the people out of their, and knocking tables over entered my mind. Hmmmm …

Source: Reuters

I mentioned that I would share some tips as I discovered them from my recent migration from Windows XP to Vista. When I was trying to install some of my favorite utilities, I was noticing some of them not working correctly. I scoured the internet regarding this and came up with a solution. Normally in Windows XP I would simply double click a program to install it, but due to the added security features in Vista doing this can result in the lower privileges of the default account type causing problems. Fortunately, the solution is very simple. All you need to do is “right click” on what you want to install, and select “Run as administrator”. This will elevate the privileges of the install and so far has allowed everything to install fine. This was necessary to get my Belkin UPS software to work correctly.

I finally decided to install Windows Vista on my computer. I installed it last night, and am already noticing some differences from Windows XP that have me wondering why Microsoft would make these changes. One that jumps out at me is the renaming of “Add and Remove Programs” to “Programs and Features”. I found no functional difference between the XP and Vista version, so I am left wondering why on earth they felt the need to change the name of it. I’m sure there will be many things like this for me to find out.

On the positive side, installing it was a painless experience. It was even less painless than XP. I have it set up as a dual boot with Vista and XP. Vista automatically set up the boot menu for me so I can chose which operating system to boot up.

So far I am impressed with Vista, even though there are a few of my favorite utilities that do not offer Vista support yet. I have Office 2007 installed, and migrated my Outlook configuration over. My Firefox migration was painless as could be expected. Yes, I do like the new interface. I find it very attractive.

I will probably start making it a habit to post Vista related tweaks and tips as I discover them. I’m sure there will be a number of you over the next few years migrating to Vista, and my posts may interest you as well.

Call me a geek, but I was happy to learn that the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs discussion that happened at the D5 Conference yesterday is available for download at iTunes. There are video and audio versions for download, and the video one is downloading as I type this.

The influence that these two have had on the computer and technology industry is undeniable. Having them on the stage at the same time discussing things, especially given the controversy and history between the two, has me looking forward to watching it. The link to the iTunes download was found at AllThingsD. Look near the upper right of the front page.

Installation of home theatre components is getting more and more complicated. Gone are the days of needing only to worry about 1 or 2 types of connections between components. Not to mention, the components themselves are getting more and more varied. Certainly one of the easiest ways to deal with this is to hire Professional Home Theater Installers who make it their business to understand these kinds of things. Hiring professional installers means you will not have to worry about whether your HD-DVD player is compatible with the particular type of Hi-Def that the TV you are interested in supports. Their knowledge and experience is available to make your life simpler.

Beyond the knowledge of the technical aspects of home theatre components, you get the peace of mind that they will be able to install your components to your satisfaction, and integrate it with your home décor. Their professional installers can install wiring in the walls to keep them securely off the floor while keeping a neat appearance. Why try and wrestle with your new big screen TV while trying to attach it to a wall swivel? Let the professionals handle it.

If you are in the L.A. and Orange County area, consider Interstar for your professional installation needs.

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