News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

Warning: This is a fairly technical discussion that will probably not be of interest to Mom.

A few times lately I have struggled with people’s computers trying to find out why they are running so sluggishly. When no programs are running, Task Manager shows the CPU usage at 50% – 80%, though the process list doesn’t show anything using any of that processing power. Normally, CPU usage should be between 0% and maybe 4% when idle (at the bottom of the Task Manager window.) I thought at first that there must be a hidden virus, or rootkit running in the background. But I was wrong.

What happens is that the hard drive is not being accessed in fast DMA mode, but rather in a much slower PIO mode. Windows monitors hard drive errors, and when they reach a certain level it assumes that the drive can’t handle DMA and switches it to PIO. Usually the hard drive can still run in DMA just fine.

Check it out in Device Manager. Look under “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers” at the “Primary IDE Channel”. In Properties, on the Advanced Settings tab, “Current Transfer Mode” should be “Ultra DMA Mode” or something that has the word “DMA” in it.

If it has fallen back to PIO, the solution is to uninstall the Primary IDE Channel in Device Manager, then reboot. The system may require a second reboot, but in the end it will reinstall the controller, usually back in DMA mode. It will make a huge difference in your performance.

There is a new version of Gaim available, but it’s no longer called “Gaim”. I think AOL was threatening to sue them because “Gaim” sounded too much like “AIM”.
Anyway, the new version is called “Pidgin”, and it’s available here

If you don’t know, Pidgin (Gaim) is a free, advertisement free replacement for several instant message programs, including AIM, ICQ, MSN, Google Talk, IRC and many others.

This new version seems pretty stable.

There’s a new version of Firefox web browser here.

Bug and security fixes; no new features.

There’s a new version of the Thunderbird email client available here; Version 2.0.0.0.

I’ve just installed it and can’t say how stable it is yet. There are a few new features. For example, you can tag messages with different categories (Important, Later, etc.), there are custom folder display options, saved searches, and viewed message history, along with improved security.

They aren’t making it an automatic upgrade for another week or two, maybe to get a better understanding of stability, but if you want to be an early adopter, now’s the time.

If you do download it, you will find that junk mail options are in different locations now and may have to be reset, though I think it retains your learned statistics. Look under Tools, Options, Privacy, Junk for some options, and Tools, Accounts, Junk for each account for other options.

There is a new version (2.1) of WordPress that has some advantages over the previous versions.

One significant improvement is that it is much better optimized in accessing the database, so it runs faster and has less impact on the server.

Unfortunately, it requires a newer version of the database than we have installed. So if you try to upgrade, it will not work.

It’s likely we will be upgrading the server soon (a few months?), but until then I wanted to get this warning out.

I installed Microsoft’s new OS, Vista, on a friend’s computer. Here are my impressions:

General:
With the short time I’ve used it, it doesn’t seem very revolutionary. It seems about as different from XP as XP is from Windows 2000. The interface is fancier, more colorful, but most features are the same as on XP, just sometimes located in different menus.

The “Aero” interface requires a 3D video card, previously only necessary for 3D games and CAD. It’s mostly eye-candy.

It took about twice as long to install as XP. This was with the Home Premium version.

My recommendation is: If you have XP or Windows 2000, don’t bother to upgrade. If you are getting a new computer, it will probably come with Vista, and that’s fine.

Technical Problems (for those interested):
I installed an “Upgrade” copy. The computer started with Windows XP Home. The initial upgrade installation went fine — though it takes longer, it doesn’t stop part way through asking for information. Once it starts, it proceeds until it is almost done before you have to come back and interact.

I also installed a new motherboard. I decided to upgrade to Vista first, then install the motherboard, to see if it handled the change better than XP. It didn’t.

After I installed the new motherboard, Vista refused to boot. But instead of a blue screen, it brought up a screen with a list of options (Safe Mode, etc), along with the recommendation to boot on the DVD and run Repair. Vista’s Repair seems more intelligent than XP’s Repair. It spent a long time looking a things, trying to make it run. In the end, though, it failed.

So normally, the next step would be to do a Repair Install (AKA “In Place Upgrade”), where you just reinstall the OS as if it were an upgrade. But that wouldn’t work either. Since this was an upgrade, it would only let me install it from within a functioning OS. It would not let me install as an upgrade after booting from the DVD.

To make a long story short, it took about 2 hours on the phone with Harisha and Pradeep (you can guess which country they live in) and we ended up doing a fresh install, using some workarounds they walked me through. According to Pradeep, System Repair usually is able to find and fix problems when you switch motherboards, but occasionally problems like this occur.

The lesson from this is that if you didn’t like the hassle and restrictions of activation with XP, you’ll hate them with Vista. Your previous OS will have to be working if you want to upgrade, whereas with previous OS’s you could just pop in a CD proving that you had an earlier version of Windows to upgrade.

I sure wish Linux could become main stream, but Windows has too large an installed base.

I bought my 65″ HDTV about a month ago, and have been enjoying it. A few days ago, as the “free-return” time came near, I started feeling that the image, though excellent on HD, was deficient on SD (Standard Definition – normal TV).

The more I looked at it, the more I felt that there must be something wrong with it. Colors weren’t very accurate, and images didn’t look smooth. I remembered that my old 50″ SD TV was clearer with better color. If this was right, maybe I should return this new one before the time ran out.

But just to make sure, I first took my old 50″ and set it up right next to the new one, and fed it the same signal.

What a surprise! In every way, on every channel, with every picture, the new TV looked better than the old one. Colors were more natural, and images were smoother. The old TV was a tad brighter, but that wasn’t necessarily better.

Apparently, after a month of watching mostly HD images, my impression of what was acceptable had shifted up the scale. The sharp, clear picture on HD signals had colored my perspective so that when I viewed SD signals I felt there must be something wrong.

Just shows how your opinions and perspective are influenced by what you’re used to.