Philoking.com

First, read this:

HP Exploring Shift to Linux in Order to Bypass Vista, Compete With Apple [Hp]

By Sean Fallon on Vista

According to Businesweek, HP has been quietly working on two projects aimed at bypassing unpopular features in Vista and possibly competing with Apple down the line. The first involves developing software that modifies Vista to make it easier to use. That much has been confirmed. However, rumor has it that a second "Skunk Works" operation has been going on behind closed doors that has a much loftier goal—building a customized replacement OS based on the Linux platform.

HP denies funding such an operation, but Phil McKinney, the chief technology officer in HP’s PC division, acknowledged that such conversations may have taken place below senior management levels. Still, he noted that such a project "makes no sense. For us it’s about innovating on top of Vista."

So why do it? Well, it would obviously make HP less dependent on Windows, and if executed properly, a custom OS would make things a little easier on mainstream users. However, HP may have another motive: competition from Apple. HP fears that Apple might eventually make a budget MacBook—cutting deeply into their business. By moving to an open source operating system, they could drastically cut costs. Again, nothing has been confirmed at this point and Microsoft is working hard on updates and spending lots of money on advertising in an attempt to create a more positive impression with consumers. So, we will just have to wait and see what develops. [Businesweek via Electronista]

Ok, now, seriously? Really folks? Easier on customers? Why don’t you go back and ask Steve Jobs how hard it was to get hardware and software support in the last 20 years. So now “customers” have to figure out what software will work and more likely what won’t and hardware? Forget it… nobody is going to waste their time writing and much less supporting drivers for such a mess. The LAST thing we need is another operating system.

Sighs….

Last weekend I walked a tightrope. I was probably the most nervous working on a computer I have ever been. I gathered my courage and undertook the most dangerous of all upgrades, the Macbook Pro hard drive replacement.

My Macbook Pro has been suffering with an anemic 120GB Hard Disk for quite some time. Now 120GB on a notebook shouldn’t be that anemic right? After formatting and such it’s really only about 112GB, and after a full install of the OS, Photoshop CS, Final Cut Express, iLife, Office 2008, Logic Studio and a few dozen other various applications, I was sitting with about 16GB of free space.

I had decided to give VMware 2 Beta 2 a shot, and knew something had to give. It would be pointless to start a VMware with Windows Vista with 16GB of space.

The Hardware
Luck was in my favor last Sunday. After a strike out at Best Buy, Office Depot had a Seagate Momentus 250GB SATA drive on sale for $89. That was just what I was looking for and I took it home following a short trip to Radio Shack to get the prerequisite T6 Torx screwdriver that is required for the upgrade.

Also required to complete the task successfully, was the hard drive converter I purchased a few weeks ago at Fry’s. The Apricorn Drivewire is not only a very slick device, but it makes this whole process totally easy. This slick device allows you to connect a 3.5" IDE, 3.5" SATA, 2.5" IDE or 2.5" SATA (What the Macbook Pro Uses) Hard Drive to your computer via USB 2.0, without having to use an external case. With this device I am able to transfer data among hard drives without having to constantly crack external enclosures and swap things around to get things done.

The Software
Many people will tell you that to pull this off you need software like SuperDuper or the like. I am here to tell you, there really is no need for such software, everything you need is built into OS X, both Tiger and Leopard and even earlier I am betting. It’s called Disk Utility. I’ll tell you more about that in the process.

The Process
Dismantling the Macbook Pro is no easy task. You will need a small, and I mean very small Phillips screwdriver, jewelers size, as well as a T6 Torx screwdriver and by some accounts a spludger. I didn’t have the spludger and all went well for me so I am thinking that is optional.

First of all, either use a second laptop, or print the directions from iFixit. The Hard Drive Replacement guide is thorough and all I needed for my operation.

To make my life easier, I took a piece of poster board I had handy, and I drew circles each time I moved to a new section of the laptop, labeled the circle something like "right side of case" and I placed the screws in that circle. That way every screw went right back where it came from.

I removed all 30 or so screws, including the four, you count em, 4 T6 screws that you need the Torx screwdriver for, and replaced the hard drive empty. I did not make an attempt to backup the drive or move the OS contents until after the hardware upgrade was complete.

With the new drive in place, I reassembled the case, twice. Why twice? Somehow in the process I bent the top of the DVD slit slightly and it wouldn’t close just right, I re-opened it, bent it back, and it closed up perfect the second time.

With the hard part finished, I started the process of restoring my OS to the drive. I connected the old drive to the Drivewire device mentioned earlier, and booted the computer with the OS X install DVD. When time came to install the OS, I instead chose utilities from the top menu, and selected "Disk Utility", on the restore tab, I was able to select the new 250GB drive as the target and the old 120GB as the source. In about an hour total, it had formatted the new drive to the Journaled OS file system and restored the entire OS, all my software, settings and data to the new drive. I removed the DVD, rebooted the system and my desktop loaded as if I had never touched it. Talk about easy!

Bootcamp
I decided I wanted this set up a certain way. I wanted Windows Vista Home Premium installed on a 50GB Bootcamp partition, and I wanted to be able to access it from Mac OS X via VMware Fusion if I needed to.

I used the Bootcamp Utility to set up the partition and begin the Windows installation. After a few hours I had it up, all drivers set up, all the software and updates I wanted and I was ready to boot back into OS X.

VMware
I would say setting up VMware to read the Bootcamp partition is easy, but that might be making it more complicated than it is. If VMware detects a Bootcamp partition, it shows up as an OS in your VMware system list. You boot it, it runs, installs the drivers it needs and prompts you to install the VMware tools. Done deal.

The Aftermath
I now say that my Macbook Pro has a split personality. The list of software installed is formidable. In addition to the earlier listed load of Mac apps, I also have all that’s included with Vista, as well as Visual Studio Professional, Expression Studio 2, Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 and the suite of Live apps I love including Windows Live writer that I am using to write this post right now.

Now my daily life I spent in OS X, chatting, mail, browsing the web and the like. My more serious work I do in Vista, that is development, blogging, etc.

I decided today to make a Vista theme for my blog. I started with a screen shot of Outlook, and opened it in Adobe Photoshop and started simplifying it. Once I had the basics of what I wanted, I had a single flat jpg that looked something like this…

I brought it into back into Photoshop and made a couple slices to create a top header, top fade, repeat fade and footer image, as well as a background fade, and I was able to get started with some html and css.

I laid out the elements and got it all working before I installed WordPress on my local wampserver and began integrating it into the “default” template.

I spent about an hour adding all of the formatting for the WordPress generated content to the css file I created when I sliced the image up, and within about 4 hours, give or take, I had it as you see now, well as long as now is June 13th. I am sure I will tweak it more tomorrow and throughout the weekend getting it just how I want.

But there you have it, a tribute to Vista as a WordPress theme. I want my blog to be a bit unique so I won’t release this out for everyone, although I may make a pink twist on it for Dawngrrl.com.

Hope you like it, and if you are a Mac or Linux fanboy, get over it…I work for Microsoft, remember?

I would venture to say that given this site’s general topic of OS Agnostic computing, I know more than most the arguments for and against these two titan operating systems. The arguments against Vista are legendary. I have made no secret of the fact that I started carrying a Macbook Pro in September of last year. With the exception of using VmWare Fusion sometimes at work, it has truly lived as a Mac. It shipped with Tiger and was upgraded to Leopard as soon as it was available. Still, I have never strayed from my Windows roots. I used a Windows XP desktop machine regularly at home and these days I have two Vista powerhouses side by side at home. My laptop still runs Leopard and I have added an iMac into the mix that runs Leopard also, but I still remain divided right down the middle in my personal computing world, two Macs and two PCs. I might just give someone a headache to think about how this works, but for me, it’s computing Nirvana.

I think it’s important to dissect each computer’s purpose and see how it lends itself to a particular operating system. I think this first exercise might just lend some light to this dubious setup:

1. Macbook Pro Laptop: (2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB Ram, 120GB HD, nVidia GeForce 8600m) This laptop is hands down my favorite laptop I have ever owned. To quantify that, this is laptop number 10. I have been a card carrying, or laptop carrying, geek since I was in the 10th grade. I am not kidding, we are talking monochrome plasma screen, DOS and a 5 1/4" floppy drive. It probably weighed 10lbs. These days, it’s a svelte Macbook Pro, 15.4" display, thin and light, fast as hell and it runs OS X Leopard. I use it for mobile photo work, email, chatting, browsing the web and the like. It’s just a keep me connected while I am away machine. I have a PC laptop Microsoft provides that does the work duty while I am mobile, and I keep my laptop free to play and have fun. Steve Jobs can cringe, but I would hardly consider an Apple laptop if it was my primary business laptop, that is unless my primary business was graphics, audio or video. Not that one couldn’t survive on one (or boot Vista on it for that matter, but this is about OS X) I just don’t think it would be a practical machine. That being said, I have never loved a laptop more.
2. Home Built Vista Ultimate 32-bit Desktop: (2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 3GB Ram, 400GB & 120GB HD’s, nVidia GeForce 8400 GS) This machine is a week new. I say a week new because I replaced all of the guts in this machine last week. This has nothing to do with the OS, but I hardly think I could have revived a waning iMac for $340 and literally replaced every component but the case, power supply and DVD drive. In a way it does have everything to do with the OS though. Windows Vista is flexible. It doesn’t require Steve Jobs approved hardware. It will run on nearly anything. I bought a box of parts, put them together, turned it on and installed Vista without incident. I am writing this blog on it and so far this machine is fast, stabile and a dream to use. This is the machine I use for development work, including maintaining this site. I also sometimes do some light graphics work on it, manage all of my email, and browse the web and communicate with friends. This box has been my general purpose computer for five years. I think it cost me about $2,000 to build in 2003, and now another $340 and it’s better than any machine I could have bought at the local PC retailers for three times as much. I know, I looked.
3. HP Vista Ultimate 64-bit Desktop: (2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB Ram, 350GB HD, nVidia GeForce 8800 GT) This machine is arguably the most under utilized machine in this house. It’s fast, has gobs of ram and a big ass 24" monitor. I use it for photo work from time to time, watch TV and movies on it, and most of the time I just plink around on it when my other box is busy. They side side by side in my office and it gets maybe 20% of the overall use. It screams through Photoshop and given some of the upgrades I gave it, it plays games fantastically well. It has 4GB of Ram, a Core 2 Duo processor and a nVidia GeForce 8800 GT video card. It’s a true screamer and to me it’s just a fun machine to play with. I am sure someday I will come up with something useful to use it for regularly, but for now it’s kind of the Tim Allen machine, you know, the one that makes you grunt when you use it.
4. 24" iMac Desktop: (2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo, 3GB Ram, 250GB HD, nVidia 7300 GT) I bought this computer for the sole purpose of doing music work with it. It excels at that task well and has now also picked up some video work. This computer gets the least use of any in the arsenal, but when it does, it never gets in my way, it’s rock solid and Logic Express is a dream to use. It’s connected to a variety of audio hardware and it never gives me a minute’s trouble. I would possibly use this machine for more if I didn’t already have several others. I have intentionally left certain applications off of it so I am not tempted to garbage it up full of stuff I could too easily use on other computers that already have that software.

Now one might ask why the hell have all these computers, couldn’t I have gotten one big ass computer and done all of this stuff on it? Yea, possibly I could have. But that’s just not how I work. Without having a business to pay the ridiculous cost of a Mac Pro or a high end Workstation computer, I buy these on my budget. I also like the ability to dedicate a machine to a particular task, like compressing video or playing a game, and still be able to browse the web about the game or work on something else while one is crunching away.

The entire point to this article is simple. With all that information I just threw out there, I use Windows and OS X simultaneously. Never am I on one when I am saying to myself "Man, I wish this had x on it." I think they both have their own strengths and weaknesses, but neither are so strong or so weak as to make a clear winner. And one last note to leave on, don’t let anyone tell you that Vista is crazy buggy, slow or hard to use. I gave up Windows XP for Vista officially last week, and not once have I wished otherwise. This machine runs it exceptionally well, it’s rock solid and I have no complaints.

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.