We smackdown about the classic argument. And Eric and Zuney are back!

Ok, you may have heard the AUDIO BOO I did earlier.  If not, it is posted below for your listening enjoyment.  But I just have get this out in a post as there is a bit of elaboration needed.

First of all let me tell you that I am writing this on my Dell Mini 10v and that the blue PARITY ERROR screen pops up only once in a while and only on start up.  After that, I can usually boot into safe mode then restart normally and the problem goes away…usually.  There are two rants I have to make here.

First of all, the Dell tech support.  The positives.  There were many.  Very curtious, very polite, very eager to help and respond.  I have to state that I really do appreciate that.  However, what I soooooo don’t appreciate is that five time, FIVE FREAKIN’ TIMES, they had pushed me to buy MORE warranty coverage.  Everyone, please let me explain something to Dell.  THE TIME TO PUSH AN EXTENDED WARRANTY ON SOMEONE IS NOT, I REPEAT NOT WHEN THEY ARE HAVING PROBLEMS.  ALL YOU WILL DO IS PISS THEM OFF!  There that is off my chest.

Second of all, I STILL don’t have a definitive answer what the problem is.  When I take something to the Apple store 8 times out of 10 they can tell me right away what could be the problem.  If I have to leave it with them overnight I get a response the next day.   But now I have to send it in, be without it for up to 10 days, and THEN find out what the problem is.  All things point to something going wrong with the RAM but we just don’t know.

I know, I know, and I’ve had so many people say “you brought this on yourself” “you should have gotten the Mac?” Yes, and thank you for those warm regards   The point I want to make here is not one of one computer platform over another.   Moreover, I just want to reiterate how much I appreciate having an Apple store withing driving distance.  I can GET things taken care of quite fast and I have been spoiled by that.

Now here we come to a point that we have been kicking around on the show for a bit.  So let’s just say that I have a new Microsoft store nearby.  Will I be able to take a Dell Mini 10v to it and get support?  How is Microsoft going to handle a situation like mine?

I welcome your comments as always.

We’ve all run into a situation where you need application X that currently is installed on machine A that you want to move onto machine B.  Sounds easy in theory, but the truth of the matter, the only sound way to try to make the application work on the other machine is to reinstall it — at least that is true under Windows.

Sure, you can copy the folder over.  It still won’t work.  If you’re terribly clever, you might be able to find all the relevant registry settings and export them to reimport them onto the other machine.  There’s a pretty safe bet you won’t get them all.  Even if you get all that taken care, there is just as much chance that the application will consider you a new user again and force you through all the hoops required for registration.

For those with Windows machines, we’ve all suffered with the problem more than once in our computing experience, and it seems like there is no practical resolve for it.  I would agree — under Windows there really is no practical solution (sure, us geeks can work it out — if we spend enough time on it, but for the rest of the world this is already more than they’re ready to take on).

Enter in Mac OS X.  Based on Free BSD Linux/Unix, it carries many of the same robust underpinnings with the easy to use interface that the Mac is known for.  One of the things that makes it robust is that it lacks the registry that Windows is so famous for.  The registry was probably the biggest technical gaffe Microsoft ever made — and it still haunts them.

So, here’s the scenario:  I needed to move Quicken 2007 from my computer over to my wife’s laptop.

Disclaimer:  I made a mistake when I did this process, so I had an additional step in order to grant my wife’s account access to the files I was moving.  Had I just connected to her machine with her account, it would have been fine (or copying them from removable media).  Live and learn.  :)

I connected to her hard drive through the network.  I copied the application from my application folder to hers.  I copied the data file to the users folder (I don’t have permission to her user folder by default).  I went to her machine to copy it to the right place.

Almost done.  Now, I need the preference files (plist) for Quicken.  Not knowing what they were, I used an app I had installed called AppZapper to find all the parts.  Once it located the plist files for me, I simply copied them over to the library folder on her machine.

Again, I had to give her permissions to the files that I copied, but that was easy enough — right click, Get Info and add her account in the bottom section of the panel.

It sounds like I went though a lot of steps to accomplish this.  Hardly.  Overall time to copy the application and the data files was about 50% longer than the time to do the other parts.  If I was on a Windows machine, I would probably still be hunting for the media to reinstall.

Even if this isn’t something you are going to try right now, isn’t it nice to know that when the time comes, it’s actually possible?  OS X makes computing easy.

NOTE:  I did not research the process of doing this in advance, nor did I need to do any research during the process.

by Michael Penney

I thought I’d start off my blogging on the Smackdown website on a lighter note. As Cal pointed out in tonight’s episode (101), I am from Canada. We have a satirical TV show up here called the Royal Canadian Air Farce. Collectively, it is some of the best examples of Canadian comedy all rolled into one juicy package.

Here is one of their skits that I am sure you will all enjoy. Yes. It is Smackdown related, though it doesn’t seem so at first. And remember that this is very old.

Is the iPhone going double-wide with iTablet?  Is Microsoft photocopying Apple with their stores?  Plus, Cal gives you an assesment on his netbook and Win7.

This show brought to you by:

I’ve been happily using Vista 64 for several months without a single problem, until now.  Here’s the story.

Two days ago when my computer booted up, my desktop icons were missing and an unfamiliar icon appeared in my systray.  On ‘mouse over’ the icon divulged itself as the Presentation Settings application and that I was giving a presentation.  Double-clicking the icon opened Presentation Settings, which reported that I was, indeed, NOT giving a presentation.  So Vista was confused in the sense that it was booting up thinking it was giving a presentation, but Presentation Settings was reporting that it wasn’t.  What?!

With a right click on the desktop and a hide then show desktop icons, I could regain the items on my desktop, but after rebooting the same thing happened again.  After searching the internet a while, the solution seemed to be that somehow my power settings were ‘changed’ to ‘Quiet Office’ mode.  Changing the power settings to ‘Entertainment’ or ‘Performance’ mode solved the issue entirely.  No more presentation mode on start up, no more missing desktop icons.

So how did my computer get to ‘Quiet Office’ mode?  I don’t know.  Maybe it was caused by closing the lid of the laptop and going into hibernation.  Or maybe it was a stray touch on a console button or keyboard command.  Or maybe something running from an old Corel application confused this newer 64-bit operating system.  Who can say for sure, but it wasn’t a virus.  It wasn’t getting hijacked.  It was just plain old Windows quirkiness or user error.  Anybody out there have an idea?

Microsoft stores and Google Voice.  Lots of fun stuff to talk about as we are one episode away from our 100th show!

This episode sponsord by:

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CNET Reports today:

Users of Computer Associates anti-virus software were complaining on Thursday after the company’s anti-virus software mistakenly identified a Windows XP systems file as a virus.

Some customers were concerned that the Windows Service Pack 3 and files from the commercial Cygwin application files deleted when they couldn’t find them. However, CA said the files were intact but quarantined and the file extensions were modified.

CA said it learned on Wednesday that its software had detected the file “Win32/AMalum.ZZQIA” as a false positive and was urging customers to update Signature 6606 to address the situation.

The CA advisory reads:

“CA Internet Security Suite users should restore affected files from quarantine using the GUI. CA Threat Manager customers should search local hard drives for files with the extension .AVB and manually rename to their original file extension by removing the appended text on the original file name.”

Through its customer support CA also is offering a tool to search for the affected files and restore them to the original extension.

In the meantime, CA customers were griping on the CA forum. “Shame on CA for not being on top of this,” one customer wrote. “Sure things happen, I’ve seen game patches erase hard drives, stuff happens. But it’s what you do after that defines the value of your company.”

Thanks to Packard Sonic for the heads up on this one.  Man…just too funny.

Windows 7 family pack and Google’s shiney chrome OS news. Plus, we discuss mail programs.

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You have to almost do a double take now adays at how cool some of the new is surrounding Windows 7.  Especially if you are a Mac person.  Because, let’s face it, we are not used to Microsoft being very user-centric and cool.  BUT (very big but here) Microsoft, it is rumored, is planning to sell Windows 7 on a USB key aimed at installation on netbooks.  Windows7news.com reports:

According to a source which was not revealed by CNET, Microsoft could end up selling Windows 7 on a USB drive, whereas right now the only way that a user can obtain a retail copy (legally) of Windows 7 is via retail or by download. This would be a good move for Microsoft as they had announced that any edition of Windows 7 will be able to run on a netbook; however, the trick would be getting it installed.

According to CNET, not selling Windows 7 on USB drives would be detrimental to Windows 7’s success:

The challenge of getting Windows 7 on to older Netbooks threatens to cast a shadow over the technical work Microsoft did to get Windows 7 running on Netbooks. Its predecessor, Windows Vista, proved ill-suited to Netbooks forcing Microsoft to continue selling Windows XP as its answer to the low-cost notebook phenomenon.

Complicating matters further is the fact that most Netbooks are running Windows XP. Those moving from Windows XP can buy an upgrade version of the software, but must back up their data, do a clean installation of the operating system and then reload their applications.

So here we have Microsoft actually focusing on Netbooks just when you thought they didn’t care.  VERY slick move.  I have to say I am really liking the consumer focus Microsoft is maintaining these days.  What are your thoughts?  Leave a comment.