Zit Seng's Superwall » microsoft windows

Installing Windows XP

Zit Seng — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 01:32:59 +0000

I have unintentionally become an expert at installing and reinstalling Windows. It’s Windows XP this time. This is my third Windows XP installation in two days, before I finally got a problematic program running correctly. It’s a silliness with software compatibility. It’s the year 2010, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is standard. But no, this problematic program isn’t compatible with MSIE8. It isn’t even compatible with MSIE7. It needs MSIE6.

Then, I’m reminded about how difficult it is to deal with Windows. I installed a program. I attempted to install its update, but failed. The program doesn’t work anymore. So I try to uninstall. Uninstall failed. So I tried to reinstall, but it requires to uninstall the existing installation first, which fails. So I’m stuck.

I retried in a Windows XP virtual machine I have on my MBP. Main program installed. Then attempt update, but failed due to lack of disk space. So I cleared some space. The update needed about 300MB free, and I had over 600MB free after clearing some space. The update ran, then failed, oddly still running out of space. Fine, uninstall the entire program. After uninstall, I found my disk still entirely full. Huh, what happened to that program that was supposed to have occupied about 1GB of space? I checked Add/Remove Programs… it’s really not there anymore. Somehow, uninstalled without freeing any disk space. So I’m stuck again.

There’s many more silliness that I couldn’t be bothered to list them all. Just one other example is about the setup program insistence that a network installation requires the network path to be mapped. Fine. I did that. The setup program still bombed out with exactly the same error.

Sigh, dealing with these “old programs” is nightmarish. Fortunately, virtualization solutions like VMware make things just a little bit easier.

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Windows 7 to Launch at US$30

Zit Seng — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:22:31 +0000

Apple’s Snow Leopard must really have put the pressure on Windows 7. Microsoft has announced a new educational pricing of just US$30. Yes, that matches Snow Leopard’s retail price of just US$29. But Microsoft’s offer applies only to college and university students, and the offer lasts till 3rd January 2009. I imagine that there will be similar offer available in Singapore too.

There’s a difference between Snow Leopard’s offer and Windows 7′s offer. Snow Leopard’s US$29 is for those upgrading from Leopard. That’s what Apple says, but users have reported that the installation DVD does allow you to upgrade from Tiger or install on a fresh hard disk too. It is available to anyone, students or not. Windows 7 educational offer is, of course, available only to qualifying students.

It seems like Microsoft is trying to counter Apple’s US$29 strike, which undercuts the usual retail pricing of Windows by about US$100. I guess all these competition is good for all consumers. Windows 7 will launch, on 22nd October 2009, is a little over a month away. Most people who have tried the betas and release candidates have good things to say about. I will certainly look forward to see the troubles that Windows Vista brought to us go away.

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The New Safari

Zit Seng — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:16:41 +0000

Apple recently released a new version of their Safari browser, version 3.1. Apple describes the new Safari as blazingly fast, and significantly outperforms the other popular browsers (Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9). Okay, cool. I’m ready to try. Particularly since it runs on both Mac and Windows. I regularly use both operating systems, it would be nice to have the same browsing experience.

Installation was fuss-free. Well, except for a minor oddity that the installation on Mac OS X required to restart the computer. Surprisingly the installation on Windows XP did not require a reboot. How strange for Apple’s own browser on Apple’s own operating system to behave this way. Small matter anyway.

Whether it’s on the Mac OS X or Windows, Safari spots the same user interface style that is taken from Mac OS X. It is a refreshing change if you’ve been too used to the standard Windows look. The Safari browser is clean, simple and uncluttered.

Apple says Safari is the fastest in both HTML performance and Javascript performance when compared with Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9. I only regularly use Firefox. Safari does feel a little snappier, although I did not carry out any objective measurement. It could all well be due to the fact that Safari is not burdened with cruft from my browsing history, browser extensions, etc.

There is no status bar at the bottom of the Safari window. In Firefox, if you hover your mouse cursor over a hyperlink, you get to see the URL in the status bar. It is a habbit of mine to check where I’m going to be headed off to before I click on a hyperlink. With Safari, I now feel a bit lost. Perhaps it is a configurable setting I can fix somewhere. Does anyone have any ideas?

What else do I miss with Safari? Well, a couple of Firefox plugins: Firebug and Web Developer. I find these extensions invaluable to my work. If I may add on, I would also love to have Html Validator and Live HTTP Headers.

Safari does have plugins too, although the selection is quite limited. You can check out PimpMySafari. Another unusual thing for Apple’s famed user interface friendliness… installing Safari plugins is shockingly clumpsy.

I think, for now, I’ll just stick with Firefox.

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World’s Fastest Vista Notebook is a Mac

Zit Seng — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:56:02 +0000

Yes, PC World has declared the world’s fastest Vista notebook is a Mac. How ironic is that? Apple has quite cleverly turned it into one of their TV ads. For those who aren’t aware, do check out their really fascinating series of advertisements. The series has been running over a year now. I actually do return to the site from time to time to check out any updates. They’re really funny and hilarious. Some nice entertainment during this holiday season.

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Vista’s Greatest Enemy is XP

Zit Seng — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:29:08 +0000

How ironical is it to find that Microsoft Vista’s greatest enemy is their own predecessor? Newer should be better. Newer should be what people want. Especially techie people. Yet, with Microsoft’s operating systems for desktop PCs, XP still remains the preferred choice. It is not like users want Vista and just haven’t gotten around to upgrade. It’s not even Linux, or Mac OS X that is the greater enemy. Rather, some users are choosing XP over Vista, even for brand new PC purchases.

First, we saw how some PC manufacturers, such as Dell, u-turned from their exclusive Vista offerings to start preloading XP again. Then shockingly enough, Microsoft themselves started to offer a free downgrade-to-XP program. Microsoft also announced sales of XP to be extended till June 2008. Quite clearly, many of us are not ready for Vista.

The latest development is that the planned service packs for Vista and XP continues to widen the performance advantage XP will have over Vista. A benchmark test reported by Cnet found that XP SP3 could be over twice as fast as Vista SP1.

Who still wants to get Vista?

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