More about Windows..

I was asked to help solve a wifi connection issue yesterday, and was very impressed with the Dell Latitude running Windows 7 Pro!

So, if Apple's next Macbook Pro 15" doesn't have ethernet or USB 3 ports I will seriously consider getting one of the above. For once it was nice to hear Andy on Macbreak Weekly ranting about the above possibility.

The trouble with Windows

My T91mt doesn't get used every day and every time I switch it on it takes an hour or so being updated!
Like today. All I wanted to do was install a very fast search app called Everything. That finished ages ago and still its only on 5 of 14 updates :(
Why do I keep it?

Easy Upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04

Really impressed by how smoothly this upgrade from 11.10 went.  I was expecting the worst, this being a Virtualbox installation, but it couldn't have been easier.  Things have changed a lot since my Gentoo days.

The only problem I had shows how far I have been left behind concerning Linux. Installing VLC was simple enough, but I couldn't for the life of me find where the app was started!

Eventually I found the Dash Home button, and discovered that Linux has become unbelievably simple to use.

Not sure what the Gentoo guys think about that..?

Even installation of Guest Additions was simple, and after a while I was able to play a CD.

Nothing more to do, other than sort out bookmarks in Chromium. Xmarks isn't behaving as I would like.

Sorting out local and cloud email links

Quite a while back I decided to forward all mail from my main 'gfraser@online.no' account to Gmail, where it was checked for spam and returned to the online.no account.

Yesterday I split the online.no and Gmail accounts on both mobiles.. one client for each service.

Today I went a step further, cutting the link From online.no to Gmail, but retaining the link from Gmail To online.no.. not sure what affect that will have on spam levels, which were terrible a few years back. We'll have to see ;)

What it means is that my Norwegian account is once again 'private'.

Had a hell of a job stopping the Samsung email client's notification squawk every time mail arrived. Eventually I found it was a matter of right clicking the account name and there lay yet another group of settings.. so peace has been returned :)

Decisions, decisions.. and Google Drive

Came across an article linked on Google+ about Cloud storage, and how perhaps one should be rather more concerned that the T's & C's one accepts for most of these services refer to US jurisdiction, should one have something stored there which the US finds objectionable. Now the author of the article definitely did not like that thought, and I must admit to that being my worst nightmare, not that i have any actual reason to worry.

It made me think. Then I thought some more, slept on it, and wonder how on earth I got sucked into these services in the first place..?

Dropbox was the one which gave me a clear benefit when running Apple, Windows, Linux, and Mobile devices. It still does, but I don't use Windows very often, Ubuntu runs on my iMac, and I have lots of space on my two iMacs, besides half a dozen WD drives rotating regularly.

So, I'm going to change a few things round here, starting with separation of my Gmail and Online.no accounts., running Online.no on the GS2 and iPhone clients, and Gmail on its own clients.

What I do with Box, Google Drive, Evernote and Dropbox I'll leave for a bit more thought..

Completion of the iMac RAM upgrades

The 2x4GB Crucial RAM kit arrived the day after Easter, and was immediately installed (by the way, though the 21.5" iMac is a touch heavy to swing around, it has very sharp edges in places..)

I was expecting to feel the same kind of boost as the 512MB upgrade gave to Hege's machine, but it wasn't until I ran Virtualbox that the additional 8GB was really taken into use. Both Ubuntu 11.10 and Windows 8 Preview ran faster, but I found the latter to be so uninspiring, it was removed. Guess I've never been a Windows fan..

A few days later the 1x2GB RAM replacement card for my old 20" iMac arrived from Apple  - a quarter the capacity of the Crucial kit for twice the price! One day people will catch on. The 4GB RAM total only made use of 3GB as expected, but it was good to get the useable 512MB back, even though the price galls me every time I think about it.

In fact, I've removed the iPad 3 from my list! Who needs a tablet..?

Upgrading Hege's 17" iMac

The idea was to install Lion on her Leopard system, but during the initial backup and preinstall checkout I found her system had only 1 GB RAM! Would Lion run on that? Then there was her old 2004 copy of MS Office which was 'a must' - Lion wouldn't like that. Initial backup of her 34 GB used space took an hour or so, installation of Snow Leopard from DVD took getting on for an hour more..

During this time Hege went for a walk in the local woods, and took a wrong turn, so by the time she returned it was getting late, and we were both tired. This turned out to be a good thing, as it allowed my grey matter to work in the background. First thing next morning I swapped 1 GB RAM from my Old 20" iMac (same vintage as Hege's) with one of her 512 MB cards, and was blown out of the water by the difference this made! (BTW, Lion ran OK on my Old iMac with 1 GB RAM)

Then I bought a SuperDuper license, installed ClamXav, OpenOffice, & VLC, cleaned up her Desktop, updated Snow Leopard & iTunes, ran a Smart Copy of SuperDuper, and tested a few things before Hege came to see the great results :)

We decided to leave Lion for now..

Until now I was pretty happy with the speed of my 21.5" iMac, but running Ubuntu 12.10 Beta and Windows 8 Preview in VirtualBox proved to be frustratingly slow. On checking my RAM I found only 4 GB and two empty slots, so after checking which RAM I needed, I found 2x2 GB kits in the Apple Store for kr. 1640,- ($280). Hmmm! To cut a long story short I ended up buying 2x4 GB Crucial RAM for under $70... that should speed up VirtualBox ;)