The WOW starts now…

I got my new laptop this morning. They attempted to deliver it yesterday, but I was at work, so it got taken back to the depot. I wasn’t expecting it for about another five days. I guess it’s been about 3 days from ordering to arrival. Well done Dell!

So this morning I’ve been having fun with Windows Vista. Here are my first impressions:

The  good:

  • It looks great. There are lots of bells and whistles. It’s certainly better than the Telitubbies theme of XP. It could be said it’s a little over the top in the flashy stakes, but I like it.
  • The dynamic menu is cool. Much quicker than the old menu, or having to select the Run option.
  • Rolladex (Windows+Tab) is a fun gimick, but I doubt I’ll ever use it again now I’ve tried it. The Alt+Tab version is still present and is a bit quicker.
  • I’m using Vista Ultimate, so I have no idea what the other versions are like.

The bad:

  •  The first thing I attempted to install was Checkpoint Secure Remote, which I use to VPN into work. Unfortunately, it won’t install and they don’t have a production release for Vista yet. No support from this laptop!
  • Next I tried to install VMware Server, the freebie. I’d heard reports it didn’t work, but I thought I’d give it a go. The reports were correct. It doesn’t work.
  • I plugged in my webcam and it didn’t recognize it. I went onto theCreative website and downloaded a beta driver. Now it works. More of a “Phew!” than a Wow!

The ugly:

  • Nothing is really wrong with Vista. Much as I wanted to hate it, it’s pretty nice. Once all the drivers and software manufacturers catch up with this release it will be cool. It’s going to take a while to get into using the new interface. Everything it different enough to slow you down, but similar enough for you to know you’re going to get there in the end.

Remember, I’ve been using it for a few hours, so I reserve the right to freak out and hate it at any time. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Another encounter with the law…

It’s been over a year since my last encounter with the law.

Last night I got stopped by the police as I drove out of a pub car park, and thus started my most recent encounter with the law…

The policeman explained he’d seen me pull out of the pub car park and wanted to breathalyze me. I knew I was OK, I’m not a drinker, but as I stepped into the back of the police car I suddenly started to get really paranoid. By the time I got the result I had convinced myself I was going to get banged up, where I would, “get raped in the showers by Mr Big who’s in with the warders” (quote from Rick Mayal in the The Young Ones). I was ready to confess to just about anything to get a lighter sentence… 🙂

In the UK, the breathalyzers have four lights that show the results:

  • Zero
  • Pass
  • Warning
  • Fail

And my result was… Zero!

Hardly surprising, but a relief anyway. So I’m not in prison and I still have a driving license. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Based on one of the comments, I’d just like to clarify something. The only reason I was stopped was because I was leaving a pub car park in a car. In the UK, it’s perfectly normal to be given a Breathalyzer test if you are stopped by the police. They don’t usually bother making you perform a circus act to test balance etc. Just making sure people didn’t think I was driving erratically or failing to walk in a straight line. 🙂

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5)…

I’ve been having a play with the beta 2 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5).

Having seen the various Fedora Core versions released since RHEL4, I knew what to expect from RHEL5, but somehow I hoped for a bit more. If just feels like RHEL4 with a different theme.

I can see why Microsoft always add a bunch fancy new gizmos to every Windows release. They need something to differentiate the product, regardless of its usefulness, and people like me fall for it every time… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Ubuntu 6.10…

A little over a year ago I blogged about installing Ubuntu 5.10. At the time I thought is was a nice enough distro, but not really anything to rock my world. In a fit of boredom I recently installed Ubuntu 6.10 (screenshots by SnagIt 🙂 ). What a difference a year makes.

First off, it’s a live CD, so when you boot from it you can use Ubuntu straight away. I think that’s a really nice touch. On the desktop is an “Install” icon, which not surprisingly allows you to install the distro onto your hard drive. A handful of mouse clicks later you are presented with an installation progress bar and in no time you have a complete installation.

Now the distro itself still doesn’t rock my world, they’re all pretty much the same to me, but I think this is the easiest and cleanest Linux installation I’ve ever done, and I’ve done plenty.

Once again, this isn’t going to make me change my base distribution, I need an enterprise clone, but I certainly think it makes a good candidate for your average desktop, or people using Oracle XE…

Let’s see what it’s like next year… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Forum Spam…

Until recently, my forum had become the center of the porn and precription drug universe. I was already using Captcha to protect user signup, but this proved useless. A few days ago I switched off Captcha and installed the Textual Confirmation mod. This allows you ask prospective users a question at random from a list, and only let them sign up if their answer is correct. Since making this change I’m not had a single spampost. Fingers crossed, it’s going to stay this way.
Cheers

Tim…

SnagIt…

I’ve written before about getting screen shots in Linux, but recently I’ve been doing some screen grabs from Windows. I started using GIMP, which does a reasonable job of capturing and scaling them, then I remembered I used a tool called SnagIt when I was writing my first book. I’ve got a license for version 7, but I didn’t have it with me, so I downloaded the free trial of version 8 and within a couple of minutes I was grabbing like crazy. It allows you to select active frames and automatically scale them to size, so it’s just “grab and save”.

I used SnagIt to get the screen grabs for a RHEL5 installation when I was running a VMware client on Windows. It must have been the quickest set of screen grabs I’ve ever done.

I’ll have to dig out my version 7 license and upgrade it to 8. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

WebCams, Linux and Windows…

With the recent departure of one of my friends for New Zealand, I thought it was about time I got into using Skype. I’ve had it installed on my CentOS machine at home for some time, but only have one friend who uses it, so it’s not really been a big thing for me.

Until yesterday, I used a dodgy old microphone and my PC speakers, but I thought I’d nip down to Rip-off World (PC World) and buy a headset to make it more convenient. Whilst shopping, I decided to buy a cheap and crappy headset and webcam package, allowing me to make video calls… Or so I thought.

It turns out support from webcams on Linux is really crappy. I quick search on the net shows there are several projects that produce drivers to support an assortment of webcams, but there are none that support my hardware. Added to that, the latest version of Skype doesn’t include the beta video call functionality under Linux.

I guess I should have expected it really. There is little reason for manufacturuers to write Linux drivers for their kit when the demand is so low, but until they do using Linux on a home desktop has some limitations.

I’m going to stick with CentOS on my main machine. It serves me well and it’s free, so I can’t complain. I’m planning on buying a new laptop in the next few weeks/months. I had half a mind to install Linux on it, but maybe I will stick with the preinstalled copy of Windows Vista after all…

Cheers

Tim…

The end of an era…

I don’t remember a time when I’ve been so sad, and I hope I never have to feel this way again. A good friend of mine has just left to start a new life in New Zealand. We met about 12 years ago on a computer training course and we’ve been like brothers ever since. I’ve had about 3 months notice of this move, but I don’t think I really believed it until I just said goodbye.

There are lots of really positive things I should say, but at this moment I just feel like life really sucks!

Things can only get better…

Tim…

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