Techno

Just installed Fedora 18 . Here are the 2 snapshots. Will post some more if i find anything interesting.

Not clear how the brand/advertising department in Microsoft allowed Windows RT to be marketed as a separate brand. I know engineers must have put real hard work for this happen ( i have no idea in what goes in porting OS’s to different CPU architectures) but that does not mean the end consumer has any interest of the CPU architecture his device is running on. If you don’t agree you should probably go to your local computer shop and observe the customers and their questions. When such customers buy a tablet or phone or a music player they are more interested in the usability factor and the price of the device. They want good battery life. If you can provide the same battery life with a x86 based CPU i am all for you.

The problem is not that WindowsRT is a new product and still has the name Windows attached to it. The real problem is WindowsRT actually behaves differently than the regular Windows8. Customers who go in for a Microsoft Surface RT which launched recently thinking that they would be able to use it as a replacement of their Windows laptop would be disappointed/shocked/surprised as WindowsRT  is indeed a different creature which i feel should have been managed internally without the poor end user having to decide all the math.

I guess somebody out there at Microsoft forgot the KISS principle.

You can read more on this in an excellent post by Danny Sullivan .

If you are tired with your PC getting virus infected too often here are 2 approaches that have worked for me for a long time.

Things to do before the computer can be marked as “usable” after a clean format

1. Install antivirus and firewall software. Avg and Zone alarm are pretty good options.

2. Create an user with standard permissions.

3. Start using the computer using the standard permission user. You will get popup screens asking for administrator permission for some task which require admin privileges(This may seem irritating at start, but its worth the deal)

4. Install all standard applications that you would like to be used in the PC.

5. Take a snapshot of your machine using some hard disk imaging software. Macruim reflect works fine for me.

Things to do once you start using your computer

1.Always use the PC with the user with standard permission (created in Step 2 above). This is the most important step.

2. DO NOT download any executable if you don’t trust the source. Actually the best approach would be download all executables from reputed websites like Download.com, since there are less chances of those executables being virus ridden.

3. Always update your antivirus definition updates.

Every time I install windows I find a new way to screw up things. In this process i also manage to learn something new. This time it was a kool issue which resulted in a deadlock.

1. Installed Win 7. The “Administrator” user is disabled during installation.
2. Created a user which had administrative privileges.
3. Changed the default ProfileListPath (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList) registry key so that User data is stored on some other drive. (In this process did a typo in the ProfileListPath.
4. Created another user with Administrative privileges.
5. Changed the privileges of the user created in Step 2 to that of a Standard User.
6. Restarted the machine.

And then the fun begin. Windows wont allow the new administrative user to login into the system giving the “User profile could not be loaded” error due to the type in Step 3. As a result the machine had no user with administrative privileges. There was no way the registry key typo could be corrected within Windows.

OS Re installation was looking the only good option.  Some questions to Google god and it pointed me to the right direction – Offline Registry editing.

Offline registry editing means to edit the registry outside the Windows environment. Windows 7 has a super kool feature where you can go into repair mode  using your Installation DVD and execute the registry editor and actually edit the installed registry using the “Load Hive” option. This was a blessing for me.

Listed below are the steps which i performed

1. Loaded the hive where the key was present and corrected the typo.
2. Restarted the machine.
3. Logged into new user. (Voila! it worked)

Learned a bit about Windows 7 repair mode system tools as a result of this whole process and looking forward for more

In my earlier post about the decision to buy a tablet, i wanted to answer the question which came to me repeatedly by many of my friends. If you have decided to buy one and now are confused about various options available in the market then check out this excellent post at Gigaom. It will surely help you decide.

Link: http://gigaom.com/mobile/best-tablet-for-you/

Found these lying deep inside of my electronic trash…

5inchfloppy

Yes you read it right. BSOD also know as The Blue Screen of Death may not be “blue” any more. You can read it at http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/windows-8-drops-blue-for-black-screen-of-death-20110427/ .

We can tell our kids that when we were young Windows had a blue BSOD.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/225897/5_website_blunders_that_need_to_die.html#tk.rss_news

The answer is – It Depends.

It depends on the purpose of your usage. PC users can be classified into broadly 2 types

1. Information Consumers: – Web Browsing (Email, Blogs )etc.
2. Information Producers: – Spreadsheets, Documentation,Designing, Programming etc.

If you are a information consumer i.e one who consumes information from Internet or various software applications then the tablets are for you. If you are a information producer then you should be really looking into a notebook/laptop or the plain old desktop.

Tablets such as the Apple Ipad, Samsung Galaxy tab, etc, etc are really good at Consumption but they fare poorly for Production. They lie somewhere between a smart Phone and a PC and therefore serves as a really great secondary computing device (if you do not mind spending the $ for the extra luxury).

To summarize Tablets are a great device for those who find PC too complicated/boring/overwhelming to use for tasks like checking Email or reading news on the Internet.