Updating to XP SP3

Well it finally showed up today in windows update... XP Service Pack 3. So I thought I'd bite the bullet and install it on all the main PCs here which consists of the wife's PC, my laptop and my main machine.

Through various podcasts I have heard a few minor issues with service pack 3 with respect to some driver issues, though these problems seem few and far between I decided that I would take disk images of each PC's system drive before installing.

Two tips: -

1. Set aside some time to install, it takes a long time to install it.

2. If you like windows themes you'll need to go grab an updated uxtheme dll in order to display your lovely appearance changes. You can find this at http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/SP3-UxTheme-Patcher.shtml

I'm on Twitter now

As is no doubt apparent I have signed up for twitter. I have decided to do this for a couple of reasons: -

1. I want to send out links to people that follow me that I think are of interest with out having to write any huge essays.
2. I was fed up hearing about it on podcasts and wanted to see for myself what the fuss was about.

That second reason is a bit of a lame one I grant you, but it did get to the point each we where I was listening to Twit (This week in tech) and over half the shows seemed to twitter related even Dvorak was getting in on it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who laughingly refers to the podcast as "this week in twitter" at the moment.

The main reason is to get links and stuff out to people that like what I like quickly. So if you like the content of this blog, then you'll probably want to follow me on http://twitter.com/sacs

The Back-up fashion

It seems to me that in the last 6 to 12 months there has been a real increase in the talk in various podcasts about taking proper back ups. It's not really surprising, just think of how much data we rely upon in our personal lives these days. All those pictures of our kids, our music, financial information and much more.

So I've decided to follow this fashion and I have purchased two 500GB external drives. One for drive images and the other for data.

I think I'll be using syncback for data files and Acronis for drive images since this is able to do incremental imaging the drive images. Though Arconis may be able do the data back up as well I have yet to find out if it has the same advantage of creating data back up profiles. I've decided to avoid symantec's Ghost, as with many symantec products it seems to be getting bloated these days.

Anyway... though I am still trying to decide what software to use and how to schedule it, for now its safe to say I am getting serious about making sure my data is backed up and being a dedicated follower of this fashion.

Archos 605 Wifi

I picked up a shiny new Archos 605 Wifi recently and I have been living with it for a while and thought I would post a quick few comments about it (seeing as many of my previous posts have simply been too long).

Good points: -

• I can surf the web over a WPA protected wireless connection
• It plays Xvid and DivX out of the box
• The screen is nice and big and really sharp

Bad points: -

• The Opera browser currently supplied in version 1.7.13 of the firmware is slow, annoyingly so.
• Google Reader does not work well on it at this time (not sure exactly who is to blame for this)
• You have to buy an add the plug-ins on top of what you have already paid for the device which at the time of my purchase was around £50.
• Can't charge standing up without a dock (home made or otherwise)

I got the 40GB version which was around the same price as the 30GB. To be honest I would have rather got the 30GB to get the thinner case so it was more pocket friendly.

Lastly, loads of people are trying to download the plug-in activation files from torrent sites. Currently this is a waste of time. These are serial number specific and this is very very fixed to a single device (loads of hardware signing and stuff like that going on under the hood).

Overall, I am happy with it and use it a lot, but I should have got a thinner one and the firmware still needs work in terms of performance in the pdf reader and the browser.

Autopatcher Alternative

We all know that guy that seems to do everyone's home based tech support. From close relatives to all the relative's friends, it seems this guy does everyone's PC and never seems to get paid. Though getting paid for fixing this does not really matter as this guy generally enjoys solving the problem and it's not what he does for a living. Well for now, I'm one of these guys and yesterday I was wanting to do the usual security updates to someone's PC as they do not want Microsoft's satanic crippler of PCs (Windows Genuine Advantage) and its not been done since July. So I go to grab the latest copy of Autopatcher but alas Microsoft's legal boys have put the breaks on this by sending them a big old friendly cease and desist putting an end to a great utility.

Autopatcher was a great download. You would download and install this and either create a CD for patching or run the program locally to patch the current PC. You could select what Microsoft (and others) patches, updates and essentials that you wanted to install, hit the button and watch it get on with the job... absolutely great for supporting other people in a quick way.

The good news is that it does not seem like Autopatcher is going away, a new version is currently in early beta that will download all the required files from Microsoft directly. However, since this is still in an early beta (if the content of the forums at the time of writing this is correct) and since I tend to only use software on other peoples machine that is not quite so hot off the press. You never know whether or not there is an issue just waiting to leap out at you so I tend to wait and let others take the fall and therefore I did not want to put such software near another person's PC quite yet. So the search was on for a stop gap alternative.

With a little bit of googling I found this offline update which is not as pleasing on the eye but is a neat little set of scripts that ties in to services that windows update uses to download the latest critical fixes and allows you to create a custom ISO file to burn or mount in order to patch the system of your choice.

The dialog is fairly self explanatory, just select what you want to be able to patch, whether or not you want the service packs included, if you want one big ISO or separate ones for each version of windows or office and then you simply start the scripts running, minimise and forget until in the end you get a dialog stating your ISO(s) are ready.

One advantage this program has over the traditional Autopatcher is that you can update your ISOs as soon as the updates are available via windows update.

One thing that is missing from offline update is the level of information you can get in what is about to install before it does which I imagine would make a big difference to someone wanting to deploy this to a lot of machines. Being able to review these things prior to the installation does mean that any show stopping fixes that you don't want can be removed right off the bat saving you some valuable time.

Personally I'm looking forward to further releases of Autopatcher. It was such a great utility before Microsoft decided to use the heavy mob letters and I'm betting it will be again, but until then this will keep me going nicely.

Edited 14th Jul 08 -- Updated the link to the offline updater

Freeing up time from feeds

Many years ago Kev introduced me to the joy of reading blogs, one thing led to another and before you know I was downloading podcasts like "this week in tech" and boagworld and watching online video shows like dltv and more recently crankygeeks. In fact I started to look at enough of these to install various feed readers before ending up with the excellent jet brains omea reader. However recently I have found that I want to reclaim some of the time I have in the evening for doing something more productive so here is some small simple steps I am doing to achieve this: -

1. Weed the rss feeds - Now old feeds that don't update much are not the problem, you really need to get rid of feeds that suck away your time but don't really give you much in return. Ask yourself what you are getting out of it. If you struggle to answer, you need to unsubscribe.

2. Moving from a desktop app reader to an online reader. This means I can keep up with feeds on the many PCs I use and not duplicate any effort or clicks. This also means I can read these at other times than when I am sat at my main PC wanting to do something constructive. E.g. lunch time at work or in the Kitchen at the weekend (I like to sit in the Kitchen with the laptop in the morning before anyone else in the house is up).

Currently I am trying out Google reader... and to be honest I find it just as good as the features I actually used in omea. I especially like when you scroll through a long page of entries it marks them are read one by one without having to click on something or anything like that.

Acer Aspire 5633 Laptop

Well the company I work for were daft enough to give me a bonus this year and even better they managed to back themselves in to a silly corner and had to pay out double the amount they wanted to. I'm positive many larger companies base the targets they want for bonuses not to reward the good work as such, but to only cost them so much. They want a carrot to tempt you, not a whole veg garden.

Anyway... back to the laptop, cause they had to give me more than they wanted I decided to buy a laptop so I hunted high and low and finally ended up with an Acer Aspire 5633. Specs as follows: -

• Core 2 Duo 1.66GHz
• 1GB ram
• 120GB 5400rpm HD
• GeForce Go 7300 with 128MB
• DVD writer
• 15.4" screen (1280 x 800)
• Integrated 1.3M webcam, wireless, ethernet, modem, bells, whistles and trombones!!

At £565 delivered it the most bang for my buck I could find, even cheaper than a dell.

Have to say... this is a great little bit of kit, just let down by the supplier in one respect and one respect only. Packaging. They took the Acer box and packed it in the solid container know as a plastic bag. The Acer box was not much bigger than a VCR, this should have arrived in another box especially if you are going to let initial citylink deliver it.

The box was damaged and if the strike had been 1 inch to the right, the laptop would surely not work.

I think I may be upgrading the Acer warranty... just in case.