Daily Archives: July 29, 2008

general ramblings

making the plunge to 64-bit vista

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after fooling around with vista basic and mac os x, i’ve finally settled on 64-bit vista. it might not seem like a big deal, but a 64-bit version of windows makes quite a bit of a difference for me. this, however, is not necessarily a good thing.

pros:

  • all 4GB of memory that i’ve bought for this laptop can be fully addressed
  • if running 64-bit software, there’s potentially a performance boost

    cons:

  • 64-bit drivers are STILL not necessarily readily available for all of your hardware
  • there isn’t a lot of native 64-bit software yet

    what this really boils down to is whether or not you can find drivers for your hardware. for me, it’s been a mostly mixed bag. i cannot find 64-bit drivers for the touchpad made by dell. synaptics makes a driver, but there is no support for an emulated middle click. this absolutely kills me.

    vmware server does not support a 64-bit OS. their paid product vmware workstation does, but man, server doesn’t. this was almost enough for me to give up 64-bit vista. but i really wanted to make use of all of the memory that i bought. paul told me to use virtual pc which does work…for the most part. video support for X doesn’t work out of the box, but it does install an OS.

    trying to find 64-bit software is pretty difficult. firewall was one of the bigger challenges for me at first. my firewall of choice, zonealarm, does not produce a 64-bit version of their software. comodo firewall pro however does work and works fine for me. it’s better than the windows firewall, so i guess it’ll have to do.

    antivirus support is still handled by avast, thankfully. it looks like avast uses a hybrid approach to scan for viruses, so a big part of the engine is still run in 32-bit mode. how much of a performance impact this is, i’m not sure. i haven’t noticed anything.

    the bulk of the rest of my applications are still 32-bit though. everything seems to work for the most part. video drivers were manually updated from laptopvideo2go. that definitely made things more stable on the video front, but still the drivers are a little buggy from time to time. when vista first came out, i read an article that nvidia was responsible for nearly 25% of all vista crashes. crazy, huh?

    • general ramblings

    new lamp for the DLP tv

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    it’s been several years now and with all of the heavy tv watching that i’ve done, i decided to go into the service menu and see how many hours of tv i have watched. it turns out that i’ve watched over 3800 hours of tv with this bulb. they say that the average lamp life of a samsung dlp tv is between 2000-4000 hours. kind of a big range there, eh? well, the brightness of the lamp has significantly decreased and it looks like it’s time to replace the bulb. i’m going to try to do the lamp install myself, it doesn’t look like it is that complicated. pictures to follow when i do it! i found the lamp for sale on ebay for considerably cheaper than other stores online. if you need to buy a DLP lamp, try ebay!1

    this brings up the big question about whether or not i should buy a new tv or just get the lamp replaced. the problem is that i have a tv cubby the exact size of my current 46″ TV. the cubby makes it difficult to put a flat screen tv on the wall, so i think that it makes the most sense to just replace the bulb for $120 instead of buying a new $900 tv. besides, i should save my money towards the projector that i’m going to get. ah, yes, the joys of the projector will soon be realized. i can’t wait!

    i haven’t made the projector order yet, i wasn’t able to place the order before i went on the camping trip and now i just don’t know why i’m shy about pulling the trigger. i think that i’ve done all of the research that i need to do and i’m pretty confident about my decision. i’m excited.

    1. i used a seller called river valley electronics [↩]
    general ramblings

    we’re in the last week!

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    this is the last work week of the company that i’m working it. in just a couple of days, it will be shut down, never to be seen again. needless to say that there is actually very little work that needs to be done around here because we’ve pretty much closed shop.

    i have committed to be around to help train someone who will stick around and babysit servers and shut things down gracefully. my employment ends at the end of the month as well as pretty much everyone except one busdev person and the hired gun to close up shop.

    i anticipate that my training session won’t last very long and once i’m done with that, that will be the last thing that i’m responsible to do. luckily, there are only three days left of work including today, so i suspect that there are not many people who are going to be showing up.

    in fact, we have been asked to submit our laptops already earlier this week. once i submit my laptop, i don’t know what i am going to do with myself at the office. it’s not like i can do ANYTHING without my laptop. i can’t even kill time effectively.

    i start my next job next week, so no rest inbetween. kind of a bummer, but oh well. it’s not like i’m working very hard right now… =P