Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

I decided that it was time to make a concerted effort to get my TV-Tuner card working in Windows Vista 64-bit edition so I could watch TV in my downstairs office without having to have a dedicated TV for the purpose. This meant breaking down and trying to figure out how to get the unrecognized TV-Tuner to work.

As it would turn out, the Tuner card has no discernable markings that could tell you what brand and model it may be. I took a simplistic approach, and went to HP’s web site to try and find the drivers. I had done this before, but a month or so had gone by so why not. I was, of course, out of luck so I moved on. I decided to try the online chat support next and received an incredibly helpful response:

HP Rep: Hello Jason, how can I help you?

Jason: I have an HP Media Center PC m8227, and I upgraded it to Windows Vista 64-bit edition. I need the driver for the TV-Tuner card for 64-bit Vista.

HP Rep: How did you upgrade your operating system?

Jason: I went to the store, bought a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and did a clean install.

HP Rep: We recommend you do not upgrade the operating system that comes with the computer as we can not guarantee drivers will be available for your system.

Jason: Fair enough, but I have upgraded and intend to keep it that way with or without the TV- Tuner card, so you are saying you do not have the driver?

HP Rep: Please wait while I look.

Jason: Sure…

HP Rep: It appears as that driver is not available for 64-bit Windows.

Jason: Could you at least tell me the model and brand of the card so I can try to locate it from the manufacturer?

HP Rep: Yes, it is an ASUS NTSC & ATSC PCI Express x1 TV-tuner card.

Jason: Thank you.

So I got a little help, but not much. Further discovery led to zero help at the Asus website either. The model wasn’t even listed and as far as I could tell checking other cards there were no Vista drivers at all, much less 64-bit.

Finally I decided to try something funny. I went to the device manager, right clicked on the offending card, and clicked "upgrade driver."

I got the standard no driver located, but saw "Would you like Windows Vista to try and find the correct driver for you?" I chose yes and within a minute I got a dialog telling me the driver had successfully been installed and I set up media center and was on my way. It works like a charm.

I thought it was a great time to share a positive Windows Vista driver story, and a 64-bit one no less. Go Vista.

Photo: This is the new setup with the 64-bit machine, 24" main display, with a 15" LCD dedicated to the Media Center. It’s working well.

I can’t say that this was an easy decision for me. I had long loved and had great affection for my self built P4 2.4Ghz box running Windows XP SP2 that I had been using for years. The computer had been rock solid and even when I brought home my new 64-bit Vista HP powerhouse, I still used the old computer more often out of comfort and familiarity.

Recently, my motherboard had started to fail and to be honest, I was starting to feel the computer’s age when compared against the newer box. Now logic might lead you to ask why I didn’t just switch to the new box and retire this box completely. The answer would be that I just can’t seem to manage on a single box, and that the new 64-bit machine, while awesome for gaming, Photoshop work, and all my media madness that my iMac doesn’t serve, just has a different bag of tricks than my development machine which I am retiring.

So early this week I placed an order to Newegg.com to replace all of the guts of this machine and make it shiny and new again. It was literally when it was time to install an OS that I made the final decision to install Vista and not XP SP3.

The new (old) box is now a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 3GB Ram, 400GB HD and a nVidia GeForce 8400 GS video card with two 20" LCD monitors and a DVD-RW drive.

The build process went surprisingly smooth. I got home about 5:30PM, grabbed the old PC and the box of parts and went to the kitchen table. I removed all of the offending parts from the case, installed CPU and RAM into the new motherboard, screwed it in place, connected all of the cables and inserted the video card. Once that was complete, I closed the case, carried it downstairs, plugged it in and bam, it was ready to install Vista. I had not one single problem or incedent in the build…..amazing.

By 6:30, Vista was installed and I was updating and installing software. The entire build and OS install took an hour….wow!

It’s now 9:30 and including a break for dinner, all of my applications are installed, and updated, the OS is updated and all of my email accounts, IM, browser faves, printers and file shares are good to go. Now with the exception of two Macs running OS X 10.5 Leopard, all of my PCs are running Vista Ultimate at home and Vista Enterprise at work.

This is one computer crazy household for sure, but now the tide has definitely turned towards Vista being the dominant OS. Our household has 6 running PCs and 2 laptops (not counting work machines) and the OS split breaks down to 3 Vista Ultimate (1 64bit), 2 Windows XP and 3 OS X Leopard. Sure OS X and Vista are tied at the moment, but Dawn’s old PC is giving up the ghost shortly to be updated to a Vista machine as well.

And for the record…I am loving Vista. I kind of look at it like some people do underwear. Sure the new pairs are a little too tight and don’t quite fit your bum like the holy ones, but if you take the time to wash and wear them a few times, they feel just like they should. Give Vista a real chance on a machine worthy of running it, and I doubt you will be dissapointed.

I love watching documentaries. I am a hopeless addict of them. Tonight I decided to watch “The History of the Internet” on the Science channel and I have to admit my Microsoft hairs on the back of my neck are raised and annoyed.

If I had to start with a history of the Internet it would begin with things like the beginnings of TCP/IP, goofy app names like Kermit and Archie and a bunch of geeks sitting in college computer labs around the world.

This show instead decided to start with dark red and black imposing images of Bill Gates. The use of words like Predatory, Monolithic and Miscreants just went further to point out what is in effect a total attack on Microsoft.

Crudely packaged as a battle royal between Netscape and Microsoft, it is beyond clearly biased, painting rosy tech bubble goodness and good vibes on Netscape and characterizing Microsoft as the monster who only wakes to swallow unwitting passers by.

Painting employees like me as ruthless. Painting Bill Gates as mean and hateful. It’s all pretty petty.

We have all heard this song and dance before, none of it is new territory, I just am trying to figure out how the Science Channel has the balls to call it, “The History of the Internet.”

John Heilemann continues in part two to point his rose colored glasses at Google nearly pretending that the likes of Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, Dogpile never existed and that before Google there was just no way in the world to find anything on the Internet.

Somehow the faux history of the Internet manages to begin with Netscape vs. Microsoft and skip ahead to Google and somehow skip over what I feel is pretty much the entire history of the Internet.

Where is the start of e-commerce? Where is the beginning of video online? What websites kicked off it’s popularity? What about the online music boom? Email anyone?

I am done ranting, it’s just really, really bad journalism.