scattered technology news

Upgrading To Vista Service Pack 1 - Thursday, March 27, 2008

When Microsoft Released Service Pack 1 for Vista to Windows Update on March 18th, I upgraded immediately. The process took a while to download since the servers were being hit hard by the large amount people trying to get a hold of the update file. After the download it took about one and a half hour to completely install. It required a few clicks of the “next” button to begin the installation. The computer will be unusable during the process. After it was complete, I was disappointed to find that it was now taking over 5 minutes to start up my machine. It normally took about 2 minutes. In addition there were absolutely no recognizable visual changes. After a few days of use, the performance of my machine drastically changed. Since the upgrade had deleted Vista’s pefetching, caching, and indexing databases, they had to be rebuilt. Today my machine starts up at least 30 seconds faster than it did before SP1. Shut Down, reboot, and suspend speeds have also improved greatly. Launching applications such as Phtotoshop CS3 has become much faster. The best part is that my system hasn’t crashed even once since upgrading. Previously I usually sat staring at blue screens at least a couple of times each week.

Beginning next month, Service Pack 1 will automatically be installed onto your system if you have Auto Updating enabled. However if you want to go ahead and get it now, just launch Windows Update from Vista’s Control Panel and click on check for updates. If it doesn’t appear make sure you have all the critical updates installed. Once you hit install it will close all your programs and then begin the process. The duration it will take to complete will vary depending on the performance of your machine. I was lucky not to run into any major issues whatsoever, however some have complained about major fatal errors. Despite those complains, the majority of those who have upgraded have done so successfully.

Links: Windows Vista Blog

Apple Announces iPhone 2.0 And SDK - Thursday, March 6, 2008

Earlier today Apple announced the iPhone 2.0 software and the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK). A beta version of the iPhone 2.0 software will be available today, however the finalized version won’t be available to consumers until June. The phone will also be getting much demanded business features such as the compatibility to function with the widely used Microsoft Exchange Servers, which will bring wireless push email, contacts, calendars, and access to encrypted private networks.

“We’re excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community with potentially thousands of native applications for iPhone and iPod touch,” said Steve Jobs - Apple’s CEO.
“iPhone’s enterprise features combined with its revolutionary Multi-Touch user interface and advanced software architecture provide the best user experience and the most advanced software platform ever for a mobile device.”

The iPhone SDK is available for download for free. With the SDK they’ll have access to the iPhone Simulator and all the information they’ll need to create native applications and distribute it through the Application Store for iPhone and iPod Touch owners. Apple boasts that their Multi-Touch interface, Core Animation, storage space, 3-axis accelerometer, and triangular cellular tower locater will allow creation of even more unique and powerful iPhone Apps.

Developers who create iPhone Applications will be able to retain 70% of the sales revenue of the amount sold through the new Apps Store. Developers will also have to purchase either a $99 standard license or a $299 enterprise license. In addition to the SDK-related content, the iPhone will also be getting other heavily demanded features such as the ability to view PowerPoint, Word, and Excel Documents and to mass delete messages. Anyways for the rest of you folks that aren’t interested in make applications but instead using them you’ll have to wait another three months for the final upgrade.

Video: March 6th Event with Steve Jobs
Links: iPhone Dev Program | iPhone Enterprise | Apple iPhone

One Step Closer To Vista Service Pack 1 - Monday, February 4, 2008

Earlier today, Microsoft announced that Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista has been finalized and was released to manufacturers today. Unfortunately customers won’t have access to the upgrade which brings “enhanced reliability, security, compatibility and performance” until March. Consumer using the auto-update feature won’t receive the upgrade until April unless they manually download and install the patch. Microsoft claims performance improvements by as much as 50% for tasks such as moving large files around your machine or network. Today’s launch of SP1 to manufacturers indicates that new computers produced by companies such as Dell, HP, and Sony soon be available with the upgraded Vista pre-installed. In addition, new shipments of licensed retail boxes of Vista will come with SP1.

Hopefully the changes will help fix many of the major problems which a fairly large portion of customers are experiencing. SP1 for Vista will probably still not help it gain a lead over the performance XP will be offering with the upcoming Service Pack 3. Despite this, Vista users should be glad that at least some improvements have been made and will be available within a foreseeable date.

Links: Windows Vista Blog Post | Microsoft Vista

MacWorld 2008: iPhone Update - Saturday, January 19, 2008

If you are an iPhone owner and you have not already heard, a major update (v1.1.3) became available last Tuesday during MacWorld. The update brings many anticipated features such as the ability to SMS multiple people at once and watch iTunes Rental Movies. The upgrade added an easier interface for bookmarking web pages through the Safari browser and the ability to add shortcuts to websites called “web clips” to home screen. The home screen also got a bit of a makeover, now allowing icons to be re-arranged and moved to multiple pages.

“iPhone doesn’t stand still—we’re making it better and better all the time,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve delighted millions of users with this revolutionary and magical product and it’s great to share these improvements with them.”

The most notable upgrade is probably the Maps application. The iPhone can now utilize cell phone tower data to triangulate your exact location. We tested this feature a few times, but unfortunately it didn’t function as well as I had hoped for it to perform. In most scenarios the best it could do was to narrow down my location the the city I was in. In reality it wouldn’t be of much help. Hopefully it will do a better job when it’s used in areas with stronger cell phone signals. Another neat addition to the Maps was the new “hybrid” view feature which will display satellite images with a overlay of street names.

If you’ve got an iPhone and you would like to upgrade it, just connect it to a machine running the latest version of iTunes (v7.6) and press “Check for Updates” on the iPhone page. It should download a file about 150MB in size and then install the new firmware. It took us over 10 minutes to update our unit. Although it was successful, the installer wasn’t very clear about what was going on during certain points. Just be sure not to disconnect your iPhone if it is taking too long since that could brick the unit. Anyways if you have an iPhone spend a few minutes “upgrading” since it’s got quite a few neat features.

Links: Apple iTunes | Apple iPhone

MacWorld 2008: iPod Touch Upgrades - Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Although the iPod Touch features just about all the hardware components that the iPhone has, except for the cellular chip, but despite this it lacks many essential applications. Fortunately Steve Jobs came to the rescue yesterday when he announced a major software update which would bring Mail, Maps, Stocks, Weather and Notes to the iPod Touch, brining on par with the iPhone. In addition the upgrade will also include some of the features that were added to the iPhone upgrade such as web clippings, customizable homepages, and iTunes movie rentals support. Unfortunately the upgrade isn’t free as previous firmwares have been. Newly purchased devices will have the upgrade pre-installed, however current owners will need to pay $19.99 to get the extra features.

“These amazing new mobile applications make iPod touch not only the best iPod, but the best Wi-Fi mobile device in the world,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With its revolutionary touch interface and software, plus its stunning 3.5 inch screen, iPod touch is evolving into the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform of the 21st century.”

With the new Mail app and a WiFi connection, you now can check your POP3 or IMAP email accounts to read and compose messages. The Maps feature can now track your location using an IP Trace via a WiFi Hotspot and offers a Hybrid view to see Satellite Images and Street Names at the same time. And rental movies purchased from iTunes will transfer to your iPod Touch, but will retain the same 30-day retention and 24-hour limit after playback begins. This is a good improvement, but it should have already been in the iPod Touch when it was first released. Secondly the fact that they are charging $20 for the upgrade is even more annoying. Especially since newly purchased units with the upgrade will retain the same price. If you just purchased your unit and it is still eligible for return try to see if the Apple Store will offer the software upgrade for free, if they don’t agree return the unit and get another one.

Links: Apple iPod Touch | What’s New

Mac OS X Leopard Ships On Oct. 26th - Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Yesterday, Apple announced that the final release of the Mac OS X series, Leopard, will go on sale on Friday October 26th 2007. OS X Leopard has over 300 new features including desktop Stacks, a newly designed finder, QuickLook, Spaces, and Time Machine.

“Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we’ve ever released,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “And everyone gets the ‘Ultimate’ version [...] for just $129.”

Just to go over some of the features, we’re going to start with Stacks. Stacks allows accessing and placing files right onto the new 3D dock to keep the desktop clean. With one click, the Stack will spread out cleanly, displaying all the files in it. The finder now borrows a neat feature from iTunes, Cover Flow. In addition, once setup, Mac users can easily search, browse, copy, and transfer files between any other Mac or even a Vista machine. Another feature which will save a lot of time is Quick Look. This pre-installed application will allow fully viewing any image, pdf, or document and even watching or listening to music or videos without having to startup the associated application. This means you can instantly open up a Word Document to read without having to startup Word. However if you wish to modify or edit the file, you will have to open the actual program. If you have used Linux, you probably know that most distributions allow creating multiple virtual desktops. Spaces does just the same thing for Macs, except now it is much more interactive as well as powerful. You can now do neat things such as drag a window from one virtual desktop to another. Although there are ton of more neat features, the final important feature we’ll touch on is Time Machine. This application is a built-in backup tool which allows visually browsing your backups. Instead of having to an entire system restore, Time Machine will allow searching or browsing through your archives to bring the file you wanted “back to the future.” The more hard drive space you offer Time Machine, the better of a job it can do creating more detailed backups.

As mentioned it will be available on the 26th of October at 6:00pm for $129 (single license). Apple is already accepting pre-orders through their online store. If you happened to purchase a new Mac after October 1st, Apple will include the upgrade for just $10 (shipping charge).

Links: Apple OS X Leopard | See 300 New Features
Pre-Order: $109 OS X Leopard by Apple (save $20)

The Best Open Source Applications - Saturday, October 13, 2007

Open Source applications are a great cost-free alternative to commercial applications. In many instances they are even better than paid versions of the same application. Today we bring you a list of a great applications from browsers to video players for both Windows XP/Vista and Macintosh OS X. All items on the list of course are completely FREE and have NO adware or spyware.

Web Browsing:

• Mozilla Firefox - tabbed browsing, customizable, and large plugin library - (Win+Mac)
• Camino - mozilla-like mac-styled browser with rss, spell check, tabs & more - (Mac)

Email:

• Mozilla Thunderbird - secure emails, fight spam, tags, rss, and more - (Win+Mac)

RSS Reader:

• FeedReader - handle large amount of feeds, simple, auto updates, and fast - (Win)
• Vienna - rss + atom, tabbed viewer, customize layouts, and global search - (Mac)
• RSSOwl - opml, bookmarks, export function, search, and alerts - (Win+Mac)

Instant Messaging:

• Pidgin - all in one chat client supporting over 15 major chatting services - (Win)
• Adium - also an all in one client, which supports 13 chatting protocols - (Mac)

BitTorrent:

• Azureus - very powerful, customizable, plugins, and tracker support - (Win+Mac)

Media Player:

• Miro - plays any video file, hd content, free tv, youtube downloads, and torrents - (Win+Mac)
• VLC - plays tons of media formats, powerful converter, and streams anything - (Win+Mac)

Office Suites:

• OpenOffice - word processor, spreadsheets, presentations, and illustrator - (Win+Mac)
• AbiWord - a powerful word processor which supports many formats - (Win+Mac)
• Bean - a simple and free word processor more feature packed than text edit - (Mac)

Virus Scan:

• ClamWin - great virus protection tool for windows based machiens - (Win)
• ClamAV - anti-virus scanning tool for Unix-based machines - (Mac)

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Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 - $60 - Saturday, September 15, 2007

About three days ago, Microsoft announced a very unusual deal for students on Office 2007. Starting on September 20th, Any student with a valid “.edu” e-mail address will have the opportunity to purchase Office Ultimate 2007 for just $60. Offer ends in April 2008. For those of you thinking this is probably just another cut down version such as Home & Student Edition ($100), which has only the basic for processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications, WRONG! The downloadable Office Ulitmate 2007 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, and InfoPath! Although you probably won’t be using half those applications, we recommend going with this offer.

If you wish to grab this offer it’s available on TheUlimateSteal.com. As for those of you who wish to use an alternative to avoid even the $60, we would recommend OpenOffice which includes just about all the programs you would ever need and is completely open source, therefore free.

P.S. Don’t try lying to get this offer since Microsoft will charge the full $679 price if your student enrollment fails to validate!

Links: TheUtlimateSteal | Compare Office 2007 Editions

Get Filezilla v3 - Monday, September 10, 2007

One of my favorite FTP Clients, Filezilla, recently got updated to version 3. The application, which began development in 2001, has now reached a new level. The client is now cross platform, supporting Linux and Mac OS X machines in addition to Windows. And to top that, Filezilla is still open source.

The application has received a makeover and now has a bunch of new features. It remains easy enough for novices to use, but is packed with advance features. In addition to FTP, it also allows using FTP over SSL/TLS and SSH FTP. The client includes a Site Manager for saving addresses and passwords, supports pausing/resuming files even larger than 4GB, and features a neatly organized transfer queue. In addition Filezilla supports “dragging and dropping” of files in and out of the program, configuring upload and download speeds, and plenty more. As this application is open source, it remains entirely FREE. In my opinion it is much better than many paid FTP clients such as cuteFTP and others.

Download: Filezilla | Links: Official Site

Backup Firefox & Thunderbird - Saturday, September 8, 2007

If you use either Mozilla Firefox or Thunderbird, you have most likely never backed up your browser’s settings and bookmarks or your email client’s accounts and messages. This is because neither client includes a built in backup function and the majority of users don’t wast time trying to figure out how to do so. Although browser backup consists mainly of bookmarks and isn’t as important, archiving your important emails is. The solution, MozBackup, a freeware application which allows backing up and restoring “bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, and cache” from Thunderbird and Firefox.

Backup Instructions:

1. Download MozBackup and Install It (windows only)
2. Close all Applications, especially Firefox and Thunderbird
3. Run MozBackup and select either Firefox or Thunderbird
4. Select a profile (normally is called ‘default’)
5. Pick a place to save the backup file and press ‘Next’
6. Enter a password when prompted if backing up emails
7. Choose the items you wish to backup and hit ‘Next’
8. After a few moments, you backup should be Complete!

We suggest moving the file over to a CD, DVD, flash drive, or another hard drive. If your desktop or laptop is physically damaged, those backup files will be not accessible if they are still on your primary HDD. When restoring proceed through the instructions provided above in the same order, except choose the “Restore” option when selecting the application in Step 3.

Download: MozBackup | Link: More Information (screenshots)