Category: Tech Stuff

I have a Roku soundbridge, with which the communication with my iTunes library was broken after upgrading to iTunes version 7.

I was initially holding out to see if Roku was going to come out with an update so that their soundbridges would once again work with iTunes but apparently that faith was misplaced 🙁

So a few days ago I elected to go the Firefly server route. Until now I’ve been using a laptop that had an older version of iTunes to serve up my library, but it didn’t have all my playlists and I didn’t really want to bother with keeping it in synch with my main computer.

Following the directions for setting up Firefly on the Roku website resulted in a seamless and simple install (no configuration needed). And it worked immediately.

Now I’m playing my iTunes playlists perfectly through the Firefly server. What’s even cooler is that new songs are picked up automagically within about 5-10 minutes after adding them to iTunes. Again with no effort on my part.

I can’t speak to any DRM protected tracks as I have very few that I haven’t been able to get a non-DRM version after purchasing the track from iTunes. I want to support the artists but I’m not going to allow myself to be hamstrung in the process.

My work laptop has passed some critical threshold and now is having performance difficulties. Based on the task manager and the disk thrashing it looks like it just needs more memory. It only has 512 Mbytes at the moment, which is kind of low given the demanding applications I sometimes run on it. So more memory is on the way.

This got me to thinking about my home machine. I had 1 Gbyte on it and was noticing that applications were starting to get a little sluggish. Especially if I had them minimized for any length of time and then tried to use them. Some hard drive thrashing and a few moments later then I could be on my way. So I decided to pick up some extra memory.

I ended up buying 2 Gbytes of DDR 400 MHZ RAM. Due to the memory slot configuration on my PowerSpec 8922, this meant pulling out 512 Mbytes of existing RAM resulting in 2.5 Gbytes of RAM total.

Running the machine with this much memory yielded a notable improvement, but not as much as I’d hoped.

After little research I came to the conclusion that if I have a Gigabyte or more of RAM and I’m not doing major Video / Music editting I can probably do away with my Cache file.

So I went into “My Computer” properties and disabled the cache file. With some trepidation I restarted the machine and… it came up just fine. Better than that, wow! is it ever fast now. All apps come to the foreground immediately. The sluggishness that was starting to irk me was gone 🙂

I’ve kept the Task Manager up and have been monitoring my memory consumption for the past few days and I’ve yet to dip below 1.4 Gbytes of free memory. AMPLE buffer. The geeks among you will want to peek below to see what I typically have running on my machine and still have this much free.

So I went to my Lenovo tablet, it has 1 Gbyte of RAM. Similar results. And I typically have about 400 Mbytes free all the time. Though it should be noted that I do not run nearly as much stuff on it at any one time. It has a slower processor and it’s not intended to do so much background stuff for me.

But I am very pleased with the results and would recommend doing this to anybody who has at least 1 Gbyte of memory on their machines. You need to be cautious if you have a cheaper machine that shares its RAM out as Video RAM. Try to be sure you’ve got plenty of available RAM before you try this.

One thing to note about the Windows Task manager performance view. It will still show PF (Page File) Usage and Page File Usage History even with the Cache disabled. You can verify that you’ve actually disabled the cache by looking for “pagefile.sys” in the root of your C:\ drive (for most people – if yours is not there you probably already know where to look for it). Make sure you’ve got windows explorer configered to see system files if you’re going to try to look for this file. Apparently the page file information is to let you know what it *would* be paging out if it could. Not sure how much use this item is with a page file in place as I’m not so certain you can trust that what it *says* is swapped out is really what’s out there…

As a side note, if anybody out there is looking for some extra memory, I have a pair of matched 256 MByte (512 MByte total) DDR 400 Mhz memory sticks that I’m looking to sell really reasonably. I paid $95 when I first got the machine about 3 years ago. $20 anybody?

For what I’m running on my main machine:

• iTunes
• FireFox
• Doppler (podcatcher)
• NewsRover (Usenet aggregator)
• Outlook
• Firefly Server
• Roboform
• Norton AV
• Windows Defender
• Clipboard recorder
• ActiveWords
• APC Power Chute Personal Edition
• Taskbar Shuffle
• Google Desktop

Frequently (always have a couple of these running):

• Synergy (control my laptop with main keyboard and mouse)
• IE (for those sites that just can’t get it right..)
• Quicken
• IRFANVIEW
• Crimson Editor
• Picassa

 

While talking with one of the Vonage reps during my recent issues, they put me on to this website called “The List: The Definitive ISP Buyer’s guide“.

It lists loads of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that I certainly did not know about when I was looking for an alternative to Comcast.

In my quest to improve my tablet’s performance I ended up reformatting it and installing Windows XP professional instead of Windows XP Tablet Edition (twice).

So I was going to try to create my own boot disk the kicker is there is a very small file on the CD which dictates whether the install will be a corporate or an OEM one. In order to do that I was going to need a LOT of files from my original install and the best way to get those was to… you guessed it, restore my entire system to its original config.

Well I did this – takes about 3-5 hours – good thing I had a couple of other computers to keep me occupied while it did its hundred and one reboots. Then I used the Thinkvantage updates app to absolutely and completely bring everything as up to date as possible.

Guess what? The system hums now. Still not quite as peppy as my T42, but it *is* a slightly slower processor and I have to admit that the Pen support really must come at a price. But overall there has been a significant improvement in performance. I’m now a LOT happier with the machine and am consequently using it much more often than before.

If you share your iTunes libraries across your network (there are some good reasons to do this, being able to play your songs on another computer without having to copy everything over there for one) you’ll find that the recent update to iTunes that brings it up to release 7 will break this sharing.

If you share between computers the solution is to simply bring all the computers up to R7 and you’re fine.

However, I use an appliance called a Roku Soundbridge that allows me to stream my music to our living room stereo. They have to come up with a patch to allow the soundbridge to interact with the new iTunes version. From the company’s support page:

Attention iTunes Users!
With the release of iTunes 7.0 today (9/12/2006), Apple has changed some of the underlying technology that allows the SoundBridge to communicate  directly with iTunes.  We hope to have an iTunes 7.0- compatible release of the SoundBridge software soon; however, at this time  all SoundBridges are incompatible with the music sharing feature of  iTunes 7.0.  We recommend that SoundBridge owners wait for a SoundBridge update before upgrade to iTunes 7.0. Users wishing to upgrade to iTunes 7.0 (or who have already upgraded)  can install the free Firefly media server to share their libraries  with the SoundBridge. Firefly is available here.

Man, this is hard. My Lenovo X41 is a dog compared with my work T42 machine. One of the reasons I bought the X41 was because I was so impressed with the performance of the T42.

I have read a number of posts indicating that the fault lay, not in the hardware, but rather in the software that IBM/Lenovo encumbered the unit with.

But guess what? You cannot get install discs from IBM/Lenovo for just the OS, you have to use their recovery discs which brings the PC to the same, sorry state it started in.

You also cannot purchase XP Tablet PC edition in retail outlets, although the Lenovo rep I spoke with suggested I may be able to purchase such from Microsoft for $300 or so.

I’ve already paid for a licensed copy of Windows XP Tablet PC edition, I just want to have it and only it on my tablet. I don’t want trial software and I certainly don’t want all the junk running on the unit that came with it and slows it down so severely.

I have already gone the route of disabling and removing everything from the unit that I can think of that won’t cripple it. This provided a great deal of relief but the unit is still slower than molasses, suffering from the stuttering cursor issue and very slow reboot times.

I picked up an install CD from a friend with an MSDN subscription, but of course it’s configured not to accept my OEM serial number. So I also ended up using his corporate number. But since it’s just for XP rather than for the Tablet PC edition, that’s all I’m able to install. 🙁

So I’ve just finished installing XP for the second time on my laptop (thinking that perhaps I made an error the first time) and have just vanilla Windows XP professional on there.

The bright side is, the X41 now boots up as fast as does my T42. So that proves to me that the hardware is not at fault. I’m looking in to other alternatives but I have a feeling I’m going to have to go with the miserable recovery process and then spend a couple of hours stripping out all the junk that I neither want nor need.

To Microsoft I say, “Grow up, this shouldn’t be this hard.”. To anybody considering the purchase of a Tablet PC, I say “Take heed – check out the various posts on the tablet PC communities. The X41 is technically very good but has been saddled with software that makes it perform as if it were a generation older than it really is.”.

More to come…

I’m currently on the phone with a Comcast rep as I type this post using my Blackberry. We had some spectacular thunderstorms move through here today. When all was said and done, my little Comcast-supplied Motorola SURFboard modem was no longer showing indications of activity on its “PC/Activity” indicator.

Resetting the modem didn’t help at all so I’m trying to arrange for a replacement unit. I can’t say what’s going on at the other end of the line, but it’s taking the Comcast rep *forever* to do anything.

The problem I faced the last time this happened was that I can’t just go into a Comcast outlet and swap the box. I’m going to have to wait at home for some vague 4-hour period until a Comcast tech can swing by and exchange the modem for me. Normally not a problem (waiting for service folks) as I can often just work from home. Of course *that’s* only possible when I have a broadband connection…

I’m not sure why these companies still think that the “Ozzie and Harriet” family still exists where the stay-at-home mom is going to be available to wait all day (9-5) for a service call while not offering *any* evening and very limited weekend service.

I’ll post an update if anything changes but I fully expect to be without my internet service until next Thursday when I *may* be able to get the replacement unit.

The rep is telling me that I can just take my old unit in for a replacement. I just finished telling him that, when I did that last time I was told the proper way to do this was to wait for the tech at home as they don’t stock these modems in the store, but that time they happened to have a service van outside so they got me a replacement anyway.

I think I’ll hedge my bets and make this guy set up the appointment for Thursday anyway and I’ll try to do the replacement at the store directly.

BTW I’ve been able to type this entire missive on my tiny Blackberry keyboard during the gaps while waiting for the rep to do whatever it is he’s doing at his end. And the call *still* isn’t finished!