Notes on my experience upgrading a DELL Inspiron E1705 running Windows XP with Vista RC 1:

·        Memory stick reader was reported as an unsupported device before the upgrade.

·        Nero 6 had to be uninstalled before the upgrade.

·        The upgrade took hours to complete. Many very long steps have no indication of how long they’ll take.

·        Microsoft OneCare was incompatible. The Vista version is not yet available.

·        X1 was initially incompatible. The latest free download version is compatible. The integrated desktop search lacks critical features like document pre-viewing alongside search results and search term highlighting within preview documents. Together these make it enormously less productive to find target documents.

·        AIM and MSN Messenger lost some of their settings.

·        Keyboard mapping of left control onto caps lock was lost. Remapkey.exe fails with a “Cannot open registry” error. Shift-right-click on remapkey.exe and select “Run as administrator” and it works.

·        iTunes 6.0.5 doesn’t complain of having to use basic color scheme (6.0.2 does) but text updates in play list windows are buggy. Scrolling the window fixes the display.

·        Canon i960 on a networked XP computer required a driver update. Downloaded v1.73e XP driver and installed it on the hosting machine. Had to fiddle with the printer on the Vista machine to get it working again.

·        The screen goes dark as soon as hibernate is selected. The disk is still active for about 30 seconds while the image is written. Restore takes about 30 seconds as well.

·        Can’t play a DVD with Windows Media Center because “…the video resolution may need to be lowered…” from the display resolution of 1920 x 1200?

·        Windows Media Player 11 can’t play a movie DVD because “…there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card. Try installing an updated driver for you video card.” Worked fine under XP…

Robert D. Kaplan’s editorial in the WSJ is an excellent big picture summary of where the world is at in the Middle East.

Verizon launches iPod-like phone is the article title but can someone explain to me how charging me “as little as 99 cents” to copy a song I presumably have already paid for from my Windows XP PC to my Verizon phone is the least bit like buying a song I don’t already own from Apple for the same amount of money?

How long is it going to take for Verizon to give up on gouging us to move specific bits of bytes from one device we own to another device we own over their usually frustrating wireless network?

Get a clue Verizon or someone’s going to knock you off your horse.

Schaesberg’s latest post on the energy issue is worth a read.

http://www.petri.co.il/configure_mx_records_for_incoming_smtp_email_traffic.htm

See the NSLOOKUP screen shot at the end for a quick reminder on how to test MX record configuration.

This note is a record of the major applications that don’t correctly support multiple monitors:

Quicken 2006 Premier Home & Business

Doesn’t notice if you change which screen is your primary one. Results in a non-maximized application window disappearing from the screen with no way to recover it except to switch the primary monitor back, move the window, and then switch again.

Pop-up auto-completion menus don’t always appear where they should.

Quicken is in general an amazingly crappy application given the amount of time it’s been in development:

http://tonesnotes.org/2005/08/30/quicken-2006-upgrade-continues-trend

http://tonesnotes.org/2004/05/26/quicken-2004-buggy-software-with-poor

http://tonesnotes.org/2004/03/24/quicken-2004-turbotax-2003-premiere

http://www.iamcal.com/ Flickr Developer’s personal site.

http://carsonworkshops.com/index.html Web development workshops.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/03/WindowsFormsPerformance/default.aspx Speeding up Windows Forms application startup and running.

http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/electricity.htm World AC power and outlet plugs standards.

For people who paid for a registered copy of winzip up to version 9, the recent disappearance of download options for WinZip 9 can be a problem.

Here’s one source: http://www.toneengel.com/d/winzip90_31019377.exe

On two different phones I get the same bizarre sound effect when initiating and ending calls.

It’s volume appears to be tied to the non-phone volume level. I’d describe it as kind of a strangled “bing” noise. Sounds very much like a “cosmetic” bug no-one could fix before the release date.

Anyone find a way to squelch it?

Larry Fish, CEO & Chairman Citizens Financial Group

One Citizens Plaza

RDC 575

Riverside, RI 02915

Dear Larry:

I’m writing to you today out of hope that perhaps you are unaware of how frustrated at least one of your new customers has become after transferring my accounts from Bank of America to Citizens Bank.

Integration between my personal checking account and Quicken is a critical feature for me. After confirming that this service was offered by Citizens, and hearing good things about how the bank treats its customers, in November of 2005 I opened a personal checking account and purchased a $5,000 CD to offset monthly fees. While Quicken integration wasn’t simple to set up, I was fully connected to my new account within a few days and happy.

In December, my local Hudson, MA branch office convinced me to add a business checking account with a promise that it would also provide Quicken integration at no additional monthly fee. That was the last time I have been able to access either account from Quicken.

With the help of many technical support reps, among whom Lori Evans and Steve Schonberger were most helpful, the problem was finally traced to the unique file assigned to my tax ID within your bank’s data center that had acquired an invalid property setting which could now not be changed without a software fix.

I have been tracking case number 25955 through your technical support department for several months now. There has been no action to solve the problem. The problem has not even been assigned a priority. I’m told that the bank is far more interested in their customers who make use of the Bank’s own web site than it is in customers using Quicken or Microsoft Money, and that your CIO has made the priority call to ignore “PFM” issues for the time being.

In addition to mailing this letter to you today by first class mail, I am also posting it to the web so that other potential customers can be made aware of your bank’s priorities. It can be found at http://tonesnotes.org/2006/02/22/citizens-bank-priorities. I will be happy to append any reply I receive from you to that posting as well as any resolution to the problem that may occur.

For future reference, a source of excellent one liners: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Alfred_North_Whitehead