Hardware vendors who preinstall Linux (worldwide/U.S. centric)

GrokDoc: Switching to Linux —
How to convert users from a Windows environment to a Linux environment

Quick: Windows Vista, XP and 4 Gb of RAM and performance

Best explanations:
http://makfu.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/okay-one-more-time/

More here:
4sysops.com: Why Windows Vista only sees 3Gb [of] memory in a PC with 4Gb [of] RAM and how [Windows] Vista SP1 fools its users

What to tweak and what not to tweak on Windows XP/Vista:
Lifehacker: Debunking common Windows performance tweaking myths

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 improvement and caveats

When looking through all the Blogger posts about the release of Windows Vista SP2, I noticed that they regurgitated all of that information that has been provided on major sources anyway. How unimaginative.

Some stuff with issues has already seeped in.

For other stuff related to Windows Vista and ThinkPads, here's a relevant Google search.

Things to do

The Microsoft TechNet resource page on wVista SP2 is the best place to start, because it has all the information at a user's fingertips.

Avoiding automatic updating to SP2

The resource page features specific download links and a Service Pack Blocker Tool. The latter is useful if a user wants in due course to make a specific wVista computer ready for SP2 deployment by first getting all the necessary drivers and software updated. The postponement entails blocking automatic download and install of SP2 via Windows Update, in a similar manner to Internet Explorer 8 Blocker Tool.

Predeployment work is very important

Before performing the update process itself, I did alot of predeployment work beforehand on a ThinkPad R60e.

Users are recommended to download and run the System Update Readiness Tool to see if there are any inconsistencies.

Doing all this work is laboriously recommended by Microsoft itself. It's best to wade through all of the article, so as not to miss important tips.

Computing history and economic crises

From a letter to someone who works in the computer industry, pasted quickly.

Just by chance, when looking through the list of various nettops
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettop ), I first stumbled upon a device called Linutop
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linutop ), which is based on a ThinCan reference design that originates from Estonia (I was rather surprised). ThinCan is actually a great name, reminds me of the word Think, which then reminded me of a rather fruity company.

This image of a nettop —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linutop_polo.jpg
vaguely reminded me of something else that originated from Estonia, but was widely produced elsewhere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minox
Mass production of the camera began in Latvia, but the prototype was made in Estonia by Walter Zapp and many things there just happened by chance anyway. Maybe this is also the era that began the craze and craving for the small form factor.

The miniputer that could uses AMD's Geode for their CPU and uses the GPL Coreboot for the BIOS:
http://wiki.thincan.org/DBE61#Booting_the_DBE61
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreboot

(I later learned to my dismay that AMD closed its Geode development team down and moved its developers elsewhere, although it still manufactures the chips. Maybe AMD has something similar up their sleeve.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinCan — Behold the computer in a can! See accompanying photo, which reminds me of a cutout from a rocket or something. Now I remembered R2D2. Oh, the memories...

The nettop market is said on Wikipedia to have huge potential, though I also have my own tack on why.

Nettops are basically a full-featured reinvention of Network Computers —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_computer.
Larry Ellison can now be seen as a visionary in this field, because the form factor fits in nicely and what he promised then and more is now readily available for much less cost than 10–13 years ago.

Reasons for nettops' potential market adoption cited here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettop#Market

(Someone on /. wrote that “Windows Vista is not slow, it is 'special'” :-)

That main reason now is cost, and while it's mentioned everywhere anyway because it's such a factor, it has currently become a major reason. The .com bubble saw through the deployment of integrated peripherals (yay, an everyday user didn't need expansion cards no more!). The current global financial crisis: While computer and notebook sales are lagging, most PC companies are held up by brisk netbook sales. Nettops are likely to have their cut now and then in the future.

TGDaily: "Netbooks slow decline of PC market, but bring new headaches"
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42818/118/

I was thinking that Intel's integrated peripherals foray might have originated from the first iMacs, although small form factors have always been in existence, with various degrees of success:
http://www.embeddedarm.com/software/arm-netbsd-toaster.php

I remember, that at around 2005 or so I had seen websites of a few small computer manufacturers that sold very basic and affordable PC's that had really small form factors. Take away the hard drive and you have a dumb terminal. I guess they've almost always been there, it's just that people never notice these things during boom years.

Automaatkorrektuuri väljalülitamine Word 2007-s

Siin on siis lühidalt koopia tekstist, mille ühele sugulasele saatsin, kui ta kaebas, et tal on eestikeelne Word, aga ainult ingliskeelne tekst, punased sakilised jooned sõnade all ja sõnad parandati automaatselt eestikeelseteks.

Vali kõik tekst (Ctrl+A). Olekuribal (status bar) on all nupp, kus on märgitud dokumendi või tekstiosa kohta käiv keel. Kliki sellele, tuleb uus aken ja vali keel, millega õigekirja teostada — nimekirja ülemises osas on keeled, millel õigekirjasõnastikud programmile olemas on.

Kui tahad automaatkorrektuuri välja lülitada:
• Kliki Office'i pallile üleval vasakus nurgas, kliki uue ala all parema nurga juures "Wordi suvandid" nupule;
• "Wordi suvandid" akna vasakus menüüs kliki Õigekeelsuskontroll.
• Sektsioonis "Õigekirja ja grammatika parandamisel rakenduses Word":
· Võta ära linnuke "Kontrolli õigekirja tippimise ajal" juurest.
· Kui sa ei soovi rohelisi jooni teksti all, võta ära linnuke "Märgista grammatikavead tippimise ajal" juurest.

Allpool on erandid dokumentidele, kus sa saad õigekirja- ja grammatikavigade märgistamise "peita" valitud avatud dokumentides.

OpenOffice.org (millest kevadel lasti välja 3.1 versioon) on selle poolest palju lihtsam, et tööriistaribal on siuke tore nupp, millega saab õigekirjakontrolli ühe klikiga välja lülitada ja kõik ("ABC" nupp siin pildil).

Various iterations of gtk+ 2.6.10 for Windows

Today I was searching for various iterations of later Gtk+ 2.6.xx runtimes compiled for Windows, to see which project offers their most recent version of Gtk+ 2.6 and if there is anything newer than 2.6.10-rc1.

The reason for this kind of search is that Gtk+ 2.6.10 is the last major version of Gtk+ to run on Windows 98/Me, providing compatibility for a number of important Gtk-based applications, including Pidgin, an instant messaging program and GIMP, an image processing app.

The free software nature of Gtk+ means that many projects that depend on Gtk+ can create their own versions that may be more compatible with their apps.

The GladeWin project at SourceForge.net has perhaps the most stable version of Gtk+ that I know of, offering
2.6.10-rc1 for download.

The Pidgin instant messaging project on SourceForge has
2.6.10 Rev A

The Gimp-Win project, which specialises in releasing The GIMP for Windows, offers
Gtk+ 2.6.10-20050823.
This is possibly the most widespread variant of all Gtk+ 2.6.xx releases available, but not all that stable.

The Gtk-Win project run by Alex Shaduri offers
2.6.9-050806-ash /dated 06.08.2005, if dates for the 2.6.9 release date at ftp.gtk.org are correct /The installer is in English and Russian

Netlog and dubious invites

Many users have received invites to join the Netlog social networking website.

Fetching e-mail addresses from various other services' address books happens through the sign-up process, whereby an unsuspecting user is asked to enter his/her user names and passwords for his/her other services that s/he uses, which is how Netlog subsequently and automatically acquires all the e-mail addresses from a users' accounts in almost any of the popular services they use.

All reputable services (such as those from Google and Microsoft) strongly advise in their terms of service documents and elsewhere for their users not to divulge their user names and passwords to others. This not only means other people, but also other websites.

The only current Wikipedia entry containing information about the sign-up process was in the Russian Wikipedia.

Remedies

Change your services' alternate e-mail addresses

Before you change your accounts' passwords (which you subsequently have to remember anyway), make sure that the alternate (other/secondary) e-mail address for all of your relevant services' account settings is yours and only yours. If it has been changed to something that isn't yours to begin with or is a blank (less likely if the account might be compromised and more likely if you haven't entered an alternate address), change it back to your default alternate e-mail address. With all the services that you use, the action must be done in fairly quick succession.

For example, live.com (formerly known as msn.com) account information page is here (requires signing in):
https://account.live.com/summarypage.aspx?mkt=en-us

The same page in Estonian:
https://account.live.com/summarypage.aspx?mkt=et-ee

Change your passwords

Only after changing alternate e-mail addresses and then confirming them (if the relevant services' systems require that), change your passwords. Remember to note the passwords down somewhere for quick memorization and be careful as to how you type the passwords, because these are always case-sensitive.

The same account information pages also faciliate changing your passwords. Again, please be careful and diligent when doing this.

Delete information and apologize

In your Netlog account, delete (or change some something untrue) any personally identifiable information and post an apology. Anyone who receives the dubious invite spam e-mail and then dares to click on the profile visitation link, should see your apology and that you did not actually intend to use the service.

Please keep in mind that before you join any social networking service, ask the person who allegedly sent the invitation if s/he has really sent the invitation or not. If not, then the invite is dubious and you should not join the service. If you do want to join a service, make sure that it's run by a reputable company, such as Microsoft or Google. AOL, Yahoo, Facebook and MySpace are also good.

BTC Keyboard driver and Netropa Internet Keyboard

This is basically a review of a software app

If anyone has a desire to download a keyboard driver (with an accompanying app) for a BTC keyboard (the model I encountered was a PS/2 model 5107), please be advised that the accompanying Netropa Internet Keyboard application also includes the Internet Receiver news ticker. Because of its annoying nature, I suggest that experimenting advanced users don't include that one when installing the app.

If, for some reason, Netropa Internet Keyboard or the Internet Ticker (which is still functional) cannot be uninstalled (by way of only having a limited user account), then just press the Print Scrn to turn it off.

The Channel Guide page for the Netropa Internet Receiver does not work.

Netropa Internet Keyboard itself modifies keyboard buttons' functions — F-buttons for web browsers and Print Screen, Scroll Lock and Pause|Break buttons.

The functionality that reorders F-buttons' usual intended functions affects browsers of the time when Netropa Internet Keyboard was released (typically in Internet Explorer). The reordered F-buttons target certain websites — some of which are offline and outdated. The functions can be re-set to a different website or portal from a selection of some preconfigured websites.

Changing or disabling the functions

The functions can be reordered or completely turned off for each button by pressing a function button for longer than a second, after which a menu appears and retargets the mouse cursor it. You can choose from a number of preconfigured websites.

To disable, take the cursor down to the Special sub-menu, then click Disable. The normal button behaviour will then return.

The reordered F-buttons don't work in Mozilla Firefox.

Conclusion

All in all, the additional functionality that captures/steals F-buttons' usual intended functions in a web browser is still annoying, as some of the normal functionality is also stolen. Neither is there a separate driver installed for the keyboard.

As it is, the intended target audience is probably a home user (who might wish to have quick access to certain websites), although advanced users are usually those who install drivers to devices.

Computer manufacturers or re-sellers might install accompanying applications in a new computer as part of one or many kickback agreements to lower the selling price of a new product.

Non-exhaustive list of some of the online stuff that isn't there or just online anymore:

Community
• iVillage /still operates, finally bought by NBC Universal, Inc. in 2006.
• GeoCities /acquired by Yahoo!, operating at geocities.yahoo.com

Finance
• Datek Online submenu /Datek Online Holdings Corporation merged with TD Ameritrade in 2002

Games
• heat.net /totally defunct

Greetings
• eGreetings.com /bought by American Greetings

Reference
• MySimon /acquired by c|net in January 2000 during the height of the dot-com boom.
• exp.com /defunct? Domain owned by EXP Systems
• ExpertCentral /www.expertcentral.com now redirects to allexperts.com

Shopping
• Productopia /product review site launched in late July, 1999.
On Google, Productopia's top search result is www.consumersearch.com
• Guild.com now redirects to www.guildsourcebooks.com /still in shopping
• Shopping.com /acquired by eBay

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I will update and reformat the article later on.