Don't Install Fonts in Windows without Asking Me

Trying to clean things up, there's a ton of fonts in Windows\Fonts I don't need. I don't know exactly who put them there (beyond the ones that Vista includes), but it doesn't matter: never install fonts into the user's Fonts folder without explicitly asking permission!

Thank you.

Vista: Sharing your entire Users folder

So I try to share a folder in one of my user accounts on Vista so I can copy files to it from another computer on my network. Instead of sharing that folder, it shares the "Users" folder and everything under it.

WTF?

I found an answer through the Interwebs (unshare "Users" and share the subfolder in question), but that resulted in the same thing.

I ended up sharing a folder at C:\. Not a huge deal, but still.

What's that other new OS out there...? Leotard or something...?

(Ubuntu: Fix the font rendering and general UI issues and you'll have me back! Though I am digging the latest version of MS-Office...)

Adobe - WTF?

I asked you to install Reader 8. I did not ask you to install "Photoshop Album Starter Edition" as well.

For all that people complain about Microsoft, I'm really sick of this crap from other companies. Adobe does this, Apple requires (at required) you to install iTunes when you installed QuickTime... And these are two companies the hippies are all in love with.

Hey - install only what I want, not all this extra garbage. It's like Sierra Utilities all over again.

And now I have to restart to install Acrobat Reader! Again, WTF?

Ubuntu is looking better again...

Some Nifty Free Software I've Recently Found

Below are a few free utilities I've recently started using. I thought I'd share them here:

EmEditor: For some time I've been a fan of EditPad Lite. It's a great editor; far better than Window's Notepad. However, I had a problem running it under Vista on my new laptop (review of that to follow). Basically, when I would try to "flip" through my running apps (using Alt-Tab or Win-Tab), EditPad wouldn't go away even though I was supposed to be on a new app. I don't know if that was a Vista issue or one with EditPad, but in any case I needed an enhanced editor that would work well under Vista (and XP, since that's what I run on my desktop). After a little searching and playing around I found EmEditor. It can do everything EditPad could, it's got a clean interface (one of the reasons I don't use editors like TextPad is that they're too "busy"), plus it has color-coding based on the type of file you are editting (HTML, XML, C#, etc.). Like EditPad Lite, there's a more powerful version available that you have to pay for, but for a free editor, EmEditor is very good.

PrimoPDF: This is a free PDF creator which I just used to create the new Mythosa PDF. It works like most PDF creators - it installs as a print driver, so you print your document using PrimoPDF. It's small, quick, and doesn't have any ad banners or other annoyances. Also, unlike CutePDF (which is good, don't get me wrong), you have a few options you can select ahead of time, like print quality and security features. I recommend it if you want a cheap way to create PDFs quickly.

EverNote: This is a cool note-taking application, though I'm still playing with it to get a feel for how I best want to use it. Like the other programs here, it's a "lite" version of a more powerful application you pay for. But, again, for a free program, it's pretty slick. It's even more useful if you have a tablet PC, which unfortunately I don't (though you can still sketch things with your mouse). You can download EverNote here.

A Curse of a Thousand Sand Fleas Upon HP Marketing...

...or whoever was the genius who decided that their laser printers shouldn't have power buttons and let them be controlled by Windows. Why the hell would you hand control of your hardware to #$&*#@$% WINDOWS?!?!?

The reason I ask is that I have a Word document that I'm trying to print but each time I do, it locks up my printer. Such that I need to unplug the stupid thing because HP, in it's infinite wisdom, didn't think to put a power button on it! This is as brilliant as taking reset buttons off of PCs (years ago, when I was interning at Compaq, I asked about that (since they were one of the first, if not the first, PC manufacturers to stop putting reset buttons on their computers). I was told that it was a decision by marketing (or some other non-technical group) since putting a reset button on a computer implies that it may need to be reset. Apparently, it was an image thing, as they were afraid people would think it was the hardware's fault that Windows locked up your computer. So, in the end, the consumer was screwed regardless of who was responsible).

(Note: I'm not some anti-corporate socialist hippy, so don't take that as a "Yeah! Down with market forces!" On the other hand, corporations of course aren't the equivalent of bunnies who crap ice cream).

Anyway, this rant is getting (?) incoherent, so I'll stop. For the record, my HP printer (LaserJet 1200) has served me pretty well for a number of years now. But that sort of thing is just maddening. Maddening, I say!

In the end, I finally got it working. How? I opened up the .doc in OpenWriter, saved it as a PDF (since printing from the hippy program gave me the same result), and printed the PDF.

So the points for this round go to: Adobe, since they're the only one involved that didn't give me any problems. And Apple, since I'm still digging my iPod.

And Thus Begins Our Journey into . . . Ubuntu

I may have mentioned in the past that I played around a little with Ubuntu, one of the more popular Linux distributions. I used version 5 ("Breezy Badger") for a bit but switched back to Windows, with a minor dalliance with the Vista beta (which has gone untouched on my other computer pretty much since the initial installation). I downloaded version 6.06 ("Dapper Drake"; gotta love them cutesy names I guess), but I'd been holding off on installing it until now. This time, I didn't mess around with using VMWare under Windows, but did a full-blown install into it's own partition (after repartioning my drive with GParted, which was very intuitive and easy to use; of course, I had to defrag the drive first to have a large enough contiguous space to install Ubuntu; unfortunately, neither its installation utility nor GParted informed me of that first).

Despite that initial obstacle and another problem (which I'll cover below), I'd have to say I'm rather impressed. Ubuntu installed much easier than Windows, more quickly, and recognized most of my hardware. I particularly liked the fact that v5 would only give me a 1024x768 resolution, but v6 has no problem seeing that I've got a 1200x800 screen. Though that may have been an issue with the VMWare player rather than v5. In any case, it recognized my video, my Microsoft wireless mouse, my printer (after I set it up - about a 30 second task), and my onboard sound (AC97). I did have a problem with the sound - it recognized the device and installed the proper drivers, but I couldn't hear anything. I tried a bunch of things people mentioned on-line but that didn't help. Finally I found the solution (I double-clicked the speaker icon at the top of the screen to get "Volume Control" (Alsa mixer), selected "Switched", and unchecked "External Amplifier"). Network connectivity worked like a charm. I haven't tried my wireless networking (I'm connected via cable at my desk), so I'm not sure if that works yet, nor have I tried my scanner. I'm sure I can get both to work with Ubuntu somehow - the question is, will they work without a bunch of extra effort on my part?

All is not roses, however. A few issues remain:

• Microsoft seems to have a better handle on readable fonts in the OS, and Firefox's choiced are a bit hit-and-miss. This is something I'll have to play around with for awhile. I've actually turned off the "subpixel smoothing" since I see too much of the color "fuzziness" with it on. Though the "TSCu_Comic" font actually works quite nicely as my system font.
• The extra buttons on my mouse don't work. I generally only use them in Firefox for "back" and "forward", but it's a pain to be without them. Still, I'm sure someone's created a plug-in for Firefox and/or Linux to use them. Just have to find it...
• Hmm...guess that's it at the moment.

There are other things I haven't tried yet - burning a CD or DVD, for instance. One thing that is nice is that the volume buttons built into my laptop not only register with Ubuntu, they show me a visible bar of what my volume is when I use them, unlike Windows XP. Score one for the hippies! All the hardware buttons work, actually, except for the musical note, which is probably because I don't have a default music player set up yet.

For anyone interested, this installation is on a Gateway 7330GZ.

Now, time to see if the scanner works...

Modern Technology: Not So Wondrous!

Back in August I posted about the new router I bought. Well, turns out the Linksys WRT54GC is a piece of crap, at least when it comes to wireless. Awhile back I tried running World of Warcraft on my desktop PC, which is connected to my network wirelessly. I ran into major lag problems but I wasn't sure why, so I just installed it on my laptop - connected physically to the router - and I play it there.

Friday I purchased Guild Wars, which is far more graphically intensive than WoW. It "ran" on my laptop, but not very well, even with all the graphics settings at their minimums. So I decided to try it on the desktop and see how well it worked. Graphically, it was stunning. But I ran into the same lag problems as I did with WoW. Which indicated to me that the problem was not with the software but with the hardware somewhere (or the drivers or network settings or something).

Doing some research (which I wish I'd done originally) I discovered that the router I had really sucks when it comes to wireless. It's not super terrible, but if you are using a computer in another room for something more than web-browsing and downloading your e-mail, it's not worth getting. Today I replaced it with its "bigger brother", the WRT54G (which is the same size as the old router I compared the little one too). After I got that set up I saw signal strength in the desktop connection that I never saw with the WRT54GC. And I was able to play Guild Wars for a couple hours with no noticeable problems.

In other news, I've started playing Guild Wars. I'm not giving up on WoW yet, but there's really only one person I know who I can group with on WoW but there are 5 or 6 on GW (I prefer playing with people I know rather than strangers). So far my opinion is mixed on GW, but I need to evaluate it more to give it a proper review. I've played WoW for about a year now and GW for about 4 hours. There's a lot of differences, but I do like it so far - in part because it's different.

The Wonders of Modern Technology

I'm a technology-oriented person, but I still am amazed at times when I see the type of stuff that's out there. Case in point: I picked up a Compact Wireless-G Broadband Router from Linksys to replace my old Linksys router. It was on sale for $40 at Best Buy, so I figured "why not?" The old router didn't support 802.11G and didn't have MAC address filtering, plus I seemed to be having some wireless issues with G cards (the old B card in the old laptop worked fine).

Anyway, here's a picture of the two routers side-by-side. Both do essentially the same thing and have the same capabilities, though the one on the right (the new one) is better in that it supports faster wireless:


Not a big deal, but I still find it to be pretty cool.

Trials and Tribulations with Gateway Technical Support

Recently, I upgraded one of our PCs to a Gateway 7330GZ. It's a very nice notebook, so much so that I use it as my main PC now. Unfortunately, I went through a bit of a nightmare in dealing with Gateway technical support trying to figure out what kind of expansion memory it takes (the 7330GZ comes with 512MB RAM by default; I wanted to upgrade it to 1.5GB).

Because it's "too new", there's virtually no technical documentation available for this notebook - the most technical details that came with it were on the side of the box! Anyway, the information on the box, the Gateway website, and the Best Buy website seemed to indicate that I needed the RAM to be PC4200. So, I place an order with the good folks at Newegg and order a PC4200 1GB SODIMM, along with a couple of other things. Two days later, the RAM arrives, and...

...it doesn't fit. The slot in the SODIMM is offset from the tab in the expansion bay.

After some investigation it appears that I may need a PC2700 SODIMM (a slightly older technology; "DDR" rather than "DDR2"). But the few specs I've seen contradict that. So, I contact Gateway technical support. And then the fun begins!

The first response is that the "73330GZ" (their incorrect spelling) doesn't exist, and I should contact them if I need further assistance. I respond by directing them to their webpage for their product to point out that it indeed does exist (OK, technically, it's probably not their product but the product of the American company that has outsourced their support to them, but they're still supposed to be representative of that company). And again I ask what the specs are for the memory expansion slot.

The response is to a page that shows you how to install more memory. Thanks, guys. In their defense, the page did mention in passing that notebooks in the 7000 series use 333 Mhz (PC2700) memory modules. This did seem to answer my question, so I replied asking for verification that that indeed was the case for my notebook - I wanted to make sure that I didn't order another SODIMM I was going to have to send back (and get hit with another restocking fee). I still wasn't comfortable with the fact that BB and Gateway were saying the memory was of one type but the expansion was of another.

The reply to this e-mail confirmed what I asked but when they mentioned my particular notebook, they got the details wrong - like saying it had 256MB internal RAM, not 512MB which was the case. This didn't fill me with confidence that we were talking about the same thing. It also didn't help that, while waiting for e-mail replies, I had spoken with a Gateway tech in a "livechat" and she told me that the 7330GZ would accept the faster, DDR2 RAM - though it would only work if I bought it from Gateway since only proprietary Gateway memory would work in their notebooks.

The response I then got from the e-mail support was "Sorry this issue is giving you trouble; please give us 48 hours to research this more fully. Don't contact us during this time as it will hamper our research." My (unwritten) response to this was "WTF?" All I wanted was some technical specifications for a particular model of computer that was currently being sold and this is going to take 48 hours?

After almost 72 hours and no reply I picked up the phone and called their support line. Finally, I was able to talk to someone that - regardless of whether they did or not - seemed to know what they were talking about and, more importantly, seemed to know what I was talking about. The tech (unfortunately, I don't recall her name) gave me the information I was looking for and I was able to order the RAM I wanted. The lesson - I should have done this in the first place! I also replied to the e-mail I had (since I'd given them the 48 hours they'd asked for), and the response was basically "Sorry, we don't have any information we can give you on that."

So...nice notebook but a nightmare for support. Of course, if I'd called first thing rather than pursue the other forms of support, I'd have no complaints...

(Side note: In case anyone's wondering, my messages to the support people were cordial and courteous, even when expressing frustration and dissatisfaction; I don't want people to think that my experience was my fault due to some sort of written yelling, screaming, and/or bitching. I'm fully aware that that's not a good tactic to use when dealing with people or companies).

Rant: SheetToGo and an MS wireless mouse

SheetToGo is a program for PalmOS that allows you to view/use Excel files on your Palm. It's part of DocumentsToGo from DataViz (which also allows you to view/use Word files on the Palm as well - that's the "WordToGo" part of the suite). Since I'm an Excel junky (I find it easier to organize thoughts and ideas in a spreadsheet than a word processor), I really like SheetToGo. It makes me regret buying...I forget the name, but it was another Excel-like Palm program. I bought it awhile back and it was OK but not quite what I wanted for a Palm spreadsheet. Then I ended up getting DocumentsToGo for free with a new Palm. Sigh...

Anyway, that's not the rant. The rant is that when I try to adjust the size of a column, nine times out of ten the stupid program brings up the pop-up menu that assumes I tapped the column rather than the divider between two columns. It's probably something I'm doing wrong, but still... I still like the program, but that issue always annoys me.

As long as I'm ranting, what's the deal with the stiffness of the mouse wheel button on the Microsoft wireless "Intellimouse Explorer" mouse? I picked one up the other day since one of our cats has taken to going after my mouse cord when it's moving around (usually while I'm doing something vitally important, like playing World of Warcraft). I tried one in the past but discovered that the weight difference compared to the old mouse I had was adversely affecting my performance in Unreal Tournament 2004; having batteries in the mouse makes it a lot heavier and I had gotten very used to the lighter mouse. However, since WoW is my addicition these days and isn't a twitch-heavy game like UT2004, it's not as much of an issue. And this mouse is quite nice (though I disagree with the feature that allows horizontal scrolling; we really don't want to encourage that). But clicking the mouse wheel button is maddening; it's very stiff, and half the time I end up in "autoscroll"mode when I'm trying to open a link in a new tab in Firefox. And I do that all the time.

I like the mouse a lot, but that aspect of it is really getting on my nerves...