Andy’s Technotes and commentary

I tried to upgrade the RAM on an A105 series Toshiba laptop using a DDR2 667 memory module. These are incompatible and I had to use a 533 chip instead.

Window Update wants to downgrade your Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 drivers to 4.5.2.3 dated 7/23/2003. Don’t do it. This bad driver causes the display to revert to 640×480 16 color mode.
You can use Driver Rollback if you have problems with the 4.5.2.3.

The default driver on the XP SP2  CD (5.6.7.3 04/07/2004) works. MS must think there is something wrong with it but they don’t want to share that information.

Why hasn’t Microsoft fixed this problem in the last three years?

Compaq AMD 3800 running Vista Home Premium lost connectivity. The box would not acquire a DHCP  address but would only default to a Windows 169 address. I suspected Norton Internet Security. Turning off NIS did not fix the problem. In fact I found it impossible to turn off the Anti-Scam portion of the software.

Uninstalling NIS fixed the problem.
I replaced the functionality with AVG free and Windows Defender.

Seagate Seatools diagnostics shows an error on many Maxtor DiamondMax drives.
The temperature shows at 254 degrees which is an improbably high value. The diagnostics will then warn you that the temperature has been to high and ask you to continue or abort.
Seagate has verified that their own diagnostics is incompatible with the drives.

Ugh….Google Pack bundleware/crapware/trick_user_into_loading_with_Firefox-ware error. Uninstall all the Google crap and the tricky gimmick crippled version of Spyware Doctor to get rid of this error.  Ironic that Google makes its money spying on users and bundles an “anti-spyware” app that crashes.

I stumbled across the Breakfast Bytes show:

http://www.wgtd.org/breakfast.asp

I like it.
No commercials. Good depth and breadth.
Audio quality could be better.
I think it is from a community college in Wisconsin.
Tons of 45 minute archives.
No Apple propaganda.
I think this could be my favorite show  right now.

I set up a Dell Vostro 200 for a client today.
This appears to be a standard mini-ATX machine with standard motherboard and power supply. The motherboard appears to be a Foxconn. The case is as good quality as the $20 Rosewill cases sold on Newegg although Rosewill has more drive bays and better expandability. Processor is dual-core (not the preferred Core 2 Duo) 1.6 ghz. The hard drive is 80 gig SATA Maxtor. RAM is 1 gig (2×512 DDR2)
Dell brags about the Vostro line’s lack of trialware. I call it trashware. Even though the customer opted out of all trashware (Norton) the system still tried to trick user into loading Google Toobar and came preloaded with Google Desktop. Google tracks behavior of their users, compiles it, stores and uses it to make money and shares it with the government without asking the user.
The $439 delivered price tag is hard to beat. Buyers need to avoid the trap of buying overpriced add-on software and hardware from Dell.

Added 11/5/2007:
Vostro 200 comes in a mini-tower form factor with standard parts and a slim form-factor that uses non standard  parts and the “low-profile” PCI cards. Make sure to know what you are buying.

I tested Microsoft Live OneCare with Vista Ultimate on an AMD XP 2200+, two gigs ram, 160 gig hard drive.
Live OneCare appears to significantly impair the performance of this system.
At one point, perhaps after the last Patch Tuesday, Live OneCare antivirus turned itself off and would not restart until I manually started the service in Administration Tools. I cannot recommend this product.

Its nice to wake up with Morgan Webb and her daily tech news cast WebbAlert http://www.webbalert.com. Great with your coffee and oatmeal.

I tested Vista Starter on a 2.0 ghz celeron on a BIOSTAR P4M80-M4 with 512 meg.
This configuration is usable but sluggish under light duty web  browsing even with no anti-virus, scanner or printer software loading.
These results support the conventional that Vista is not suitable for even a 3 or 4 year old machine.