Friday, January 23, 2009

My Windows 7 Experience

When Peter posted the links for Windows 7 Beta, I went to download it. Then I though I have a membership in Technet so why not download it from them. I downloaded the 64 bit version and installed it on my Athlon X2 4400 w/3GB RAM and a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT Video card.

The installation went well with very little problems. As I remember I did have to reinstall one or 2 things in order to get them to work. I have Skype Beta 4, I don't care for the new version of Skype. It takes some time to get used to it.

Everything is working as it should, I also installed Office 2007 on the box and did the 355.8MB of updates for Office.

The only problem I have encountered was Windows 7 said there is a problem with my sound, But I was talking on Skype to Gregg so I know it was working. I did have to reboot a few times to get everything to update correctly. I have a free version of Kaspersky 8 for Windows 7 and I needed to reboot again to get it to update.

As I said I am running Windows 7 64 bit version. this computer is not getting a very good Windows Experience because I used an old hard drive I had sitting around. it's only running at ATA100 and slowed the system down a lot. If I feel like it I will try cloning the drive to a new SATA drive I just received.

Just this morning I see that Microsoft wants to test Windows 7 on some slower computers, Microsoft is looking for testers with machines that adhere to the following spec list:

* 1 GHz processor
* 1 GB of system memory
* 16 GB of available disk space
* Support for DX9 graphics
* DVD-R/W Drive
* Internet access
I am happy with Windows 7 so far, if you have a spare machine laying around why not try Windows 7 Beta, You might be surprised.

AlaskaJoe

Sunday, January 18, 2009

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 01-18-09

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 01-18-09. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific that's 1PM to 4PM Eastern. Join us for the live show and chat. If you prefer, you can download the same MP3 file here via ftp.

Links from the Gregg Zone

1) I was at one of the downtown casinos the other day, and noticed one of the car give a ways they were using as a promotion was a Smart Car. It kind of caught me of guard because I thought that might mean they were available in the U.S. I saw one a while back in a casino parking lot, but assumed it was someone’s import. Any way got to looking around found an interesting article about John Doerr one of the investment guys that started Google, and Amazon. He was addressing the government about how our green technologies are behind the world, a very interesting article. http://www.sfgate.com From there I wound up at the American Smart Car of America site, yes they are in America, quite a few states too. Check them out here http://www.smartcarofamerica.com/
2) This one is a how-to, or how they do it item. I have seen several of those David Blaine street magician shows on T.V. one of the tricks he did that fascinated me was the levitation bit he did on several shows. It is called Balducci Levitation, this is a link to a video that will show how to do it, amaze all the kids next door, and make your neighbor think you are a space alien. http://www.livescience.com
3) I ran across this comment in a story some where that we had a solar storm event in the 1800’s that was so strong it fried telegraph lines on earth, starting numerous wild fires all around the planet. The article was talking about possible future events that might cause us major problems. asteroids, pole shifts and the like, anyway the comment about the storm got me to start googling around. After all when all we had to worry about was telegraph, while it was no doubt destructive, it's nothing like it would be to day. A very scary concept, sounds like it would be much worse than anything that was projected with Y2K. http://www.space.com
4) Ever notice how occasionally a single word can catch your eye, and cause some real confusion trying to establish a coherent definition in your mind. Well such word is this one The Noosphere, wow that one set off my spell check. Any way this is defiantly in the “out there” category. Ran across it while cruising through a 2012 site. Yea I know I apologize for last week, this one is in the same category, so be fore warned http://www.lawoftime.org
5) Now for a geek type link, probably nothing new to this crowd, but this one appealed to me because it sounds like a conspiracy theory gold mine. I think almost every world domination theory could get a boost from this. The threads from this are endless, not to mention it leaves me thinking about that cave in the desert again. Sometimes I am glad I am getting older, I really question if I want to be around to see the new world coming in another fifty years. http://www.sott.net