January 11th, 2009

Windows 7 Beta 1

Posted by John Havlik in Reviews > Software

Like with Vista, I’m beta testing again. This time, I’m using something a little more powerful, my laptop. Since it came with Vista, some direct comparisons can be done. The first thing to note is Windows 7 Beta 1 is just that, a beta. Though I have yet to have something on it crash, there are some visual bugs that need to be worked out. In certain circumstances I am getting visual corruption in Aero. One thing that was improved right off the bat was wireless networking support. Vista was much better than XP, likewise Windows 7 is much better than Vista in this regard.

Booting does not seem much faster than with Vista, but I am using a slightly slower hard drive, and all my ready boost stuff is disabled at the moment. The sound driver that was installed did not work for the built in speakers on my laptop, but installing a Vista driver for it resolved the issue. Like Vista, the automatic installation of drivers is improved greatly over XP. Unlike Vista, in Windows 7 more information about the devise, and process the installer is following is available. Most devices are just plug-n-play with Windows 7, even more so than with Vista.

The window peaking, and new taskbar are two things I’d throw onto the improvement list. On the taskbar you can move around the currently active applications in a manner that reminds me of Avant Window Navigator (OS X is probably like that too). The mouse gestures will take a little bit to get used to and fully learn, so I won’t comment fully on them at this time.

There are still quite a few problems, but hey, it’s a beta so it’s my job to let Microsoft know about them. The first issues is FTP support, it sucks. Vista FTP support wasn’t much better than XP, they both have issues if you double click on an file (they both try to open the files in Internet Explorer). In Windows 7 Beta 1 I can not even log into my FTP folder, all authenticated FTP accesses fail with the error “The handle is invalid.”

Printer drivers for older USB devices do not exist. My HP Officejet v40 (which is built better than most new printers) had drivers built in to Windows since XP. In Vista the included drivers were slow and made printing painfull, in Windows 7 the drivers are not there. HP does not even distribute Vista drivers for the Officejet v40, so unless you have Vista and rip the drivers out of it, or are resourceful with Google, you are SOL.

There are some screen corruption issues, where Aero flakes out, or the font does not render properly. The font issue is reproducible, go add a printer, and scroll quickly through the driver listing (not using the scroll wheel but instead the scroll bar). It is a flaw in the rendering of the letter ‘e’, and specifically the horizontal line is too thick (two to three times the thickness it should be). The fact that a screen capture using the Print Screen button captures this points to a rendering issue caused by windows rather than a driver issue. Using the ClearType configuration utility (a quick, six step, which text chunk looks best ‘test’ ) seems to resolve this issue.

The Aero corruption issue may be a graphics driver issue. So far I have not found a method that reliably reproduces the issue. It will some times affect the taskbar, when opening and closing windows, or minimizing and maximizing them. Sometimes it will affect the titlebar of an application.

Overall Windows 7 is shaping up to be a good replacement for Vista and XP. Sure the Beta has some bugs, but then again it’s a beta.

-John Havlik

December 31st, 2008

Wood Hard Drive Case Mod Part Four

Posted by John Havlik in Reviews > Hardware

Now for the fourth set of images for this project. I finally found some stain that I liked, and hence went to town staining the wood case. The stain is a gell stain, which I’ve never worked with before. Since it was old (found it in a bunch of old wood working tools) I was surprised it was any good. It says to apply liberally and wipe off after 5 to 10 minutes. Due to it’s age, leaving it on that long would result in it drying too much, a very bad thing, but nothing a little water can’t take care of.

The case all fits together now, but the mounts for the hard drive are causing some problems that allow it to power up but Windows will not recognize it. What is happening is the little converter board that plugs into the hard drive gets tweaked and the data connector loses it’s connection. This will require redrilling mounting holes in the bottom aluminum plate, this time I’m going to use the drill press and hopefully that will be the end of the project.

-John Havlik

: Masking the status/power LED window.

: Testing the gell stain on the inside.

: After removal of gell stain.

: Applied gell stain to the outside.

: Another view of gell stain on the outside.

: First removal, nice color, but too light for this mod.

: Closeup of the one side, the color is nice, but not what I’m after.

: Another picture of the case with the lite stain.

: Overall view of the lighter color.

: Application of second layer of stain gell.

: After removal of the second layer of stain gell.

: Another view of the richer color.

: Soldering up the status LED.

: Closeup of the lead on the status LED.

: Status LED connected to board.

: Glueing the status LED into the window area.

: Using a bit of hot/thermal glue to adhear the status LEDs.

: Notice how tall that is, it didn’t fit so I had to redo the status LED.

: After a bit of clipping, the status LED now fits properly.

: Adding more glue.

: A better closeup of the new, shorter assembly.

: Nice rich color of the outside of the case.

: Overview of the stained case.

: Everything is put together now.

: Time for a little testing, the white LED is for power, blue for activity.

: Here you can see the white LED better.

December 30th, 2008

Pardon Our Progress

Posted by John Havlik in Weblogs.us

Right now Weblogs.us is in the progress of migrating select blogs to the new Apache server. This is one of those blogs. The new mtekk.weblogs.sc (temporary) is much, much faster than the old location. All blogs on the new server will be running WordPress 2.7 (we are doing a mandatory upgrade for all blogs).

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

December 23rd, 2008

Looking Forward

Posted by John Havlik in General

December is almost past, and still little to show for it here. It’s not that one wanted it to be this way, but it just happened. Now into the first full week of “Winter Break” , one would think there would be time to do things that could not be done in the semester. However, thanks to some interesting projects one is part of, the free time will not show itself for yet another week or two. That brings us to January 2009.

There will be no Breadcrumb NavXT 3.0.3, no critical or minor bugs have been reported for 3.0.2, so this month’s release would be pointless. Comming January, Breadcrumb NavXT 3.1.0 will feature some changes in the way default settings are loaded. This may cause a change in the anchor templates, but will allow localized default settings. The Tabular plugin will be removed, and its usefull parts integrated into the Administrative interface.

Berry will be updated with the Build 100 Cran-Berry code. There will be a design refresh either in late January or in late March. No code names yet, but it will probably be a red color scheme again.

A new, previously unannounced navigation plugin will rear its head near the end of December to early January. It is dependent on theme setup, and has been tested to work with Berry and the WordPress Default theme. More on that next week.

The Weblogs.us transistion to its new apache server is suspended until later this week. We setup the new server. Now a process of testing, transfering, and opening up ports on the firewall must take place before things go live. Expect the transition to take place near the end of the year.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

December 17th, 2008

Server Upgrades

Posted by John Havlik in Weblogs.us

Weblogs.us will be migrating hosted blogs over to the new Apache and SQL servers beginning on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 4:00PM CST. This will continue through the end of the week. During this time availability of this blog and all others hosted by Weblogs.us may be sporadic. Once the migration is complete, speed and availability for hosted blogs should greatly increase.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]