This Old PC

CLICK: Why I'm running boring ol' Debian Lenny, Part 1

2009-12-25T17:47:00.001-08:00

CLICK: Why I'm running boring ol' Debian Lenny, Part 1

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Puppy Linux 4.1.2 runs great on This Old PC

2009-02-11T14:38:00.000-08:00

I hadn't fired up This Old PC in quite awhile, and I didn't even know if it would boot (OK ... I knew it would boot, but funny things can happen after many months of inactivity).

I brought a new live CD — Puppy Linux 4.1.2, the latest version of that OS — to boot.

This Old PC (333 MHz Pentium II MMX, 256 MB RAM, 10 GB hard drive with Windows 2000) already had a pup_save file from Puppy 2.13 (the first version of Puppy I ever ran).

That's the beauty of Puppy: You run it from the live CD and can create a save file in your Windows partition, so you can have a full Linux environment without installing or partitioning anything.

Anyway, I did an "upgrade" from Puppy 3.01 to 4.1.2 on a different PC , and that didn't go so well. A few desktop icons didn't appear after I ran the new CD, which modified the pup_save.

When I booted 4.1.2 on This Old PC, I received the same sets of warnings, and the messages on screen acted as if I was doing a 3-to-4.1.2 upgrade rather than 2.13-to-4.1.2.

However, once the machine finished all its housekeeping, I was in 4.1.2, and everything looked just like it should.

I don't have any networking on This Old PC at the moment, but a check of quite a few apps in Puppy revealed that the OS runs great on what now is a 12-year-old PC.

I can't wait to stuff a couple of wireless cards into the box and/or hook up Ethernet to see how well it performs on the Internet.

I do have a few spare drives, but I'd really consider using my CF-to-IDE adapter and running with a 2-to-4GB CF card instead of a traditional hard drive. Puppy runs fairly well in 256 MB of RAM (although it's always good to have some Linux swap available; a good reason to keep a spinning hard drive).

One thing Puppy IS good at is minimizing writes to flash media and thus extending its life by orders of magnitude, and that makes Puppy a great system both for This Old PC and the Self-Reliant Thin Client (which is now running Debian Etch from CF but would run much better with Puppy). Both have 256 MB of RAM, which is doable with Linux but not ideal. If either of these systems would address 512 MB of RAM, I'd install that much immediately, but since they both max out at 256 MB, that's what I have to work with.

144MB is enough -- not a lot, but enough

2008-05-31T21:59:00.000-07:00

I recently upgraded my 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt laptop from 64MB of RAM to the maximum of 144MB (16MB on the motherboard, plus two 64 MB SODIMM EDO modules), and it made the computer run a whole lot better.

I'm using the Puppy Linux 2.13 live CD's Seamonkey browser to write this Blogger post, and it's running extremely well.

I'm also running Damn Small Linux 4.3 from live CD (not at the moment, though), as well as OpenBSD 4.2 on the 3 GB hard drive.

OpenBSD isn't as fast as the live CDs, but it is usable -- and much more so after the memory upgrade.

Memory upgrades make much more of a difference in performance on the low end of the scale. Going from 32MB to 64MB, or 64MB to 128MB will dramatically increase performance.

While another machine performed well with 256MB of RAM, boosting that to 1GB -- in Linux, anyway -- didn't seem to make as much of a difference, mostly because that machine was working very well with 256MB. 1 GB made it bettter, but for a 64MB machine, running the X Window system in Linux was difficult, especially when using Firefox.

But with 144MB, I'm able to run Firefox (or in this case the Mozilla-based Seamonkey) with a whole lot more comfort.

Sure, I love Blogger, but ...

2007-11-10T12:36:00.000-08:00

I'm probably going to start a WordPress blog in the near future to focus on open-source operating systems and applications, as well as the hoary, old hardware I run them on.

But first I need to think of a name.

The past eight months

2007-11-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

I've written hundreds of entries at Click, which at present is broken and can't be added to. I've done dozens of Linux and BSD installs on various old PCs. Among them:

2001 Maxspeed Maxterm thin client -- built around an ECS VIA C3 Samuel-based, nearly mini-ITX-sized motherboard, maximum of 256 MB RAM, built-in CF-to-IDE adapter (disconnected so I can run extra-long IDE cables to external drives outside the thin-client box), with IDE cable connected to TDK CD-RW drive and one of three 14.4 GB IBM hard drives.

1998 Compaq Armada 7770dmt laptop (aka the $15 Laptop) -- 233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor, 64 MB RAM (max is 144 MB) no USB, no Ethernet, with swappable CD-ROM and floppy (not working) drives. With Orinco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA 802.11b wireless card, plus original 3 GB IBM hard drive. Currently running Debian 4.0 Etch and Damn Small Linux 4.0 from CD.

2001-2 Gateway Solo 1450 laptop (aka the $0 Laptop) -- 1.3 GHz Celeron M processor, 256 MB RAM (maximum 1 GB ... if only I had the cash), 2 USB ports, built-in Ethernet, PCMCIA has bent pins and doesn't work, floppy drive and DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, with 30 GB Toshiba hard drive. Currently running Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy and Debian 4.0 Etch.

And of course don't forget This Old PC:

1998 generic white-box PC with baby-AT motherboard (??), 333 MHz Pentium II MMX processor, 256 MB RAM (maximum), 10 GB hard drive, CD-ROM (CD-RW was pulled for Maxspeed thin client), 15-inch LCD monitor, USB ZIP drive, Ethernet card (Airlink 101 wireless card doesn't work and has been pulled). Currently running Windows 2000.

You owe it to your geek self to try Linux

2007-02-27T15:57:00.000-08:00

I've burned and tried about a dozen Linux distributions that run on live CDs, meaning you don't have to install them on your hard drive until you want to. They boot directly from CD (if your system can handle it). On This Old PC, I had to go into the BIOS settings and change the boot order to look at the CD-ROM drive first, the hard drive second. Actually, it checks the floppy first, but that's another story. On the newer Dell, I can hit F12 and change the boot drive for that session only, or go into the BIOS and make a permanent change in boot order.

Anyhow, in the month that I've been doing this, I've tried:

Knoppix (granddaddy of bootable Linuxes)
Ubuntu
Xubuntu
Fluxbuntu
Puppy
Damn Small Linux
Damn Small Linux-n
MepisLite
Zen Walk

Hey, that's only nine ... but it's still a lot.

So far, my favorites are Puppy Linux and Ubuntu.

Both are wildly popular (Ubuntu being the most popular, according to distrowatch.com) with extremely active user forums -- there's plenty of help available to get started.

The dirty little secret of Linux is that it can be murder to configure your system. They're called "distributions," because they include a bunch of applications along with the operating system -- and the applications are often "tuned" to the type of hardware the distribution is meant for.

For older, smaller systems, the biggies are DSL and Puppy. But when it comes to actually getting things to work, Puppy has been better. On the Dell, which is newish (only about a year or so old), everything works -- sound, Ethernet, printing. At home, I haven't been able to get my old ISA soundcard to work, or wireless, but I can get Ethernet. So it's a mixed bag, even for Puppy. With DSL, I've had trouble getting even Ethernet on the Dell. But either one of these "small" Linux distros can make an older system come alive again, especially Puppy, which is designed to boot from CD and then run entirely in RAM (preferably 128 MB, better with more -- and remember, old RAM is cheap).

I'm going to do my best to make either Puppy or DSL work on This Old PC, but for now, I much prefer Puppy. I can easily save to a Windows directory or a USB flash drive, printer setup is straightforward, as is Ethernet setup. If you're using DSL (as in Digital Subscriber Line, not Damn Small Linux) for your home connection, you'll probably get Internet automatically with just about any Linux disc -- they're set up for DHCP.

As I said, Ubuntu is king of the Linux distributions at present, as it is blessed with financial backing from some South African bigwig, a fast-growing user base and a blissfully easy-to-configure front end. I've been able to get just about everything working on both the Dell and This Old PC. In fact, I've almost got wireless working -- it sees the routers, but I've yet to actually get Internet through the box. Now Ubuntu is a bit too much for a 333 MHz processor, and there are lighter "flavors" of Ubuntu for older PCs -- Xubuntu and Fluxbuntu. I like Xubuntu, especially its Xfce window manager (as opposed to the GNOME used by Ubuntu). But the setup programs are not as easy to use -- Ubuntu is much more accommodating. I think I will try Ubuntu with a Xubuntu-like desktop, switching over after installing (yes, you can do that). Then I can switch at will. That and installing the Abiword word processor and SeaMonkey browser (used in Puppy and DSL) to further lighten the load.

Still, when the going gets tough, it's off to the forums for long lists of esoteric things to type into a terminal window ... and I don't like it one bit, but that's often the way with Linux, at least at this point.

I had a pretty good experience with MepisLite, the "lite" version of SimplyMepis, But I tried to load it again, and it wouldn't work at all ... so it's back to the 'Buntus and Puppy for now.

So my recommendation is to figure out how to burn your own ISO images to CD (if you have Nero, it will do it, or you can download one of the free Windows add-ons suggested at the various Linux distro Web sites) and start downloading. I'd get Ubuntu, Puppy and DSL and start playing around. The best news source for Linux is Lxer, which will lead you to any number of other sites at which you can keep up with what's happening in the fast-paced world of Linux, where new distributions crop up like dandelions in spring.

More on eBay laptops -- and a good deal elsewhere

2007-02-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

The bidding gets furious as the listings come to a close -- and all that aside, the overbidding I see (or that I perceive, anyway) is testament to the demand for used laptops, and the fact that people are willing to pay. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of these are legitimate transactions and that there are real buyers with real money behind them.

That said, new laptops generally start at $500 to $600. I can't see ever paying MORE than that, but the $1,000 laptop is very common. In fact, Apple doesn't have anything cheaper than that.

One of my favorite places for used gear, Geeks.com, has a good deal on laptops: A Compaq Pentium M 1.4 GHz with 512 MB RAM, 28 GB hard drive, modem and Ethernet, and XP loaded for $389. It's probably a way better deal than a much older 300 MHz laptop for $200 ... but $389 is still more than $100 ... $289 more, in fact. Going down to the Pentium III realm, Geeks has a ThinkPad 900 MHz with 128 MB RAM, 20 GB hd, no OS loaded, for $249. That's more like it ... but it's still not $100. Here's a Dell with better specs for $279.

I love the way that a $75 purchase suddenly jumps to $100 ... then $175 (I've seen some good ones at that price) ... up to $400 ... such is the evil of acquisition, one of the reasons This Old PC and This Old Mac champion making the gear you already have do as much as it can.

Looking for This Old Laptop

2007-02-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a used laptop. I'm OK with something in the 233-350 MHz range, and I'm getting nowhere.

That's because people feel that laptops in this range are worth more than $200. To me, they're not. $100 is my upper limit, maybe $120 with shipping, but people seem to feel that their 7-or-more-year-old laptop, is worth a lot of money. And judging by what's going on with eBay, they might be right.

Go here for all laptops on eBay, and here for the IBM ThinkPads I've been focusing on (for no good reason other than that they're supposed to work well under Linux and there seems to be a lot of them). Ideally, I'd like to score something for $75. After all, there's not a whole lot you can do with a 233 MHz laptop with a 6 GB hard drive, Windows 98 and no built-in Ethernet or wireless ... and often not even USB. But there's quite a market out there. I wish I had a bunch to sell -- it's like printing money.

If you paid $1,000 for your laptop, getting $200 for it 7 years later is a pretty heady feat. You'll get more if you sell earlier. And the beauty of it is that if you buy one of these $200 laptops, the chances of you turning it around for what you paid for it are very, very good.

I just don't want to spend more than $100. I've even tried Craigslist. You wouldn't believe how many people are selling a laptop with posts that offer not nearly enough information on what it is they're selling (not even a model number often) and with prices that are way inflated. I've lowballed a few, and most don't even write back. Are they getting their price? I can't think they are. All I know is that for laptops, it's definitely a seller's market at this point.

One factor is the fact that a laptop is generally one piece (not including the power adapter) and easily shipped ... and people just seem to love laptops, even for home use (they take up less space and are less noisy).

If I do succeed in my quest, I will report here ...

To build a new PC, or not to build

2007-02-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

I’ve been looking into building a new PC lately. I’m fascinated with the mini-ITX form factor – extremely small motherboards and cases (nano-ITX is even smaller), along with low noise, low power consumption and sometimes fanless design – but less fascinated with the prices and performance of such systems.

Today’s “conventional” motherboards are mini-ATX size, which is about 9 by 9 inches. I figured This Old PC's case couldn't handle the new motherboards. Well, I popped the hood, and it turns out that This Old PC's motherboard is ATX-sized. It's a thin ATX, measuring 7.5 by 12 inches, but it's ATX nonetheless.

And according to the info stamped in the case, it will accommodate mini-ATX motherboards. So I could pull the Pentium II MMX 333 MHz board, slap in some 3 GHz processor-equipped motherboard for about $60, drop in a half- ($50) or full gigabyte of RAM ($80-90) and a SATA drive ($50) and be off to the literal races. I could keep the current case, power supply, CD drive, keyboard, mouse and monitor, minimizing the environmental impact. I'd hold onto the old motherboard, just in case.

So it's a minimum of $160. But I've already found a new PC, case included, for $139. At 800 MHz, 256 MB RAM and 13.6 GB HD, it's way underpowered compared to what I listed above, but it's damn cheap (link here). I suppose I could spec my own "new" system this low and get it for less, say a motherboard for $30 (if I could even find one that low-spec'd). RAM for $20 and HD for $30. That would be about $80 total ... so it would be a savings. But it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to put in a new board if I wasn't going for the 3 GHz speed cushion that's available for so little today.

And as I've learned, XP runs great with 512 MB on a 3 GHz box. I have no complaints about not having a full GB of RAM.

Still, I'm not comfortable about losing This Old PC as a test bed for what an older PC can do. I might just wait and go the mini-ITX route after all. Who wouldn't love a small PC that's not a laptop but which makes little or no noise and consumes between 8 and 15 watts of power? Not that people don't do it all the time with conventional PCs, but this kind of box I'd be comfortable leaving on all the time, given its power-sipping characteristics.

An early morning with This Old PC

2007-02-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

You know, this system, running under Windows 2000 and Office 97, isn’t all that bad at all, even with a Pentium II MMX 333 MHz. I suppose having 262 MB of addressable RAM helps (given the context of this system, it’s a lot). Internet Explorer 6 comes up rather quickly, as does Word 97. I’ll have to run Photoshop and see how that does.

I wonder if Open Office 1 or 2 would be as fast as Word. There have been plenty of complaints about OO’s relative sluggishness on first launch. When closed and launched again during the same computing session, the lag in OO is not as pronounced, since some portion of the program must be running in the background. Perhaps OO does the same thing, but only after loaded the first time.

All I know is that Word 97 launches in about 5 seconds and relaunches in 2 seconds on this Windows 2000 box. That is a sweet, sweet situation. My ideal computing environment is one that boots quickly, with applications that launch quickly. I also ALT-TAB between applications frequently… and also want that to happen quickly. It’s one of the reasons I generally prefer IE to Firefox on PC and Safari to Firefox on Mac – if that first load is slow, it harshes my computing mellow, big time.

On the Pentium II box, the 8 GB hard drive (remember when that was big?) only has about 1.5 GB remaining, so the next step in This Old PC’s evolution is stuffing it with a bigger drive, making a bunch of partitions for Windows and a few Linuxes and going from there. The only software I’d lose if I pull the drive, as I don’t have the discs (the computer was passed down, as they say), is the aforementioned Office 97, which includes a full version of Outlook, and Photoshop 5. The rest is shareware or freeware (EditPad, Firefox) or stuff that I actually have discs for.

Quick interruption: It must’ve been around 1990 or ’91. We bought a Dell PC at the big-box membership store than called Price Club (now Costco). I can’t remember how much we paid, but I remember well that it was a 386 SX 25 (25 big Mhz) with something like 8 MB RAM (can’t quite remember), Windows 3.1 and DOS (can’t remember the version). I mention DOS, because in those days, with that kind of “power,” you couldn’t really run Win 3.1. You pretty much had to live in the world of DOS, where applications were lean and really, really mean. Not Word for DOS, but just about everything else. I can’t remember the name of that free dialup program that we used to get on BBSes, but it was pretty sweet. We used it to get on Prodigy, GEnie and even early AOL, also.

... back to our regularly scheduled post:

I wonder how much used copies of Office and Photoshop are going for on eBay these days? I bet you can get a few bucks for the full versions. The moral – if you own software legitimately, keep those discs, boxes and crappy manuals; they could be worth a little something even 10 years down the road.

This Old PC also has Nero 5 (didn’t know until right now) which I could use to make the bootable ISO discs for Linux that I’m churning out like crazy. I do have the Nero disc in my pile – it came with my TDK 32/10/40X CD burner, which I also still have installed. Do you think Nero 5 will run under Windows XP? Reports on the Web are mixed on this. But it would be sweet.

I haven’t really written on This Old PC in awhile, as I am this morning It’s an enjoyable experience. I forgot how much I like Word’s spellcheck on the fly (with the red underlines for potential misspellings). Open Office does it too, but the Daily News’ in-house spellcheck in the paper’s Unisys Hermes system does not.

Agendus Mail SSL Edition for Palm

2007-01-22T14:22:00.000-08:00

To use your older Palm with e-mail services that require SSL on both outgoing and incoming servers (including Yahoo! Mail and Gmail), there are two third-party programs that can get it done.

The one I hear most about is SnapperMail, but the versions with SSL are between $49.95 and $59.95. And you can't download the manual to see exactly how it works unless you're already a customer. If there's one thing I've learned, it's to READ THE MANUAL before buying.

But in terms of value, Agendus Mail SSL Edition, at $24.95, is a better deal. And with the manual, I can confirm that it handles an unlimited number of wireless e-mail accounts but only one hotsync account. So if I decided that I really, really wanted to get POP access on Yahoo! or use my Gmail account, I could do it this way for $24.95.

All told, I'd rather stick with VersaMail, but since I can't get an updated version with the SSL, if I want to use my main e-mail account with the Palm, I have to get one of these "extras."

Palm Desktop without a Palm

2007-01-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

It has been suggested that you can benefit from use of the Palm Desktop software for both PC and Mac, even if you don't own a Palm handheld.

The software is available for free at Palm.com, and even without the handheld, you get a really good address book and calendar application. If your PC is set up to have Outlook as the default mail client, you can send e-mail, using the Palm Contacts portion of Palm Desktop, directly through Outlook. And if you do need a calendar or Tasks-type list, those are all here too.

The reason Palm Desktop runs so well is that it probably hasn't had a major update in the past five or more years, and that makes it eminently suited to older PCs (and Macs -- it runs on OS X and OS 9).

And did I mention that it's free?

Bringing Palm to This Old PC

2007-01-22T10:04:00.001-08:00

At this point in its history, even the newest Palm handheld
is kind of retro. That means the Palm itself -- and the
software that comes with it -- is quite friendly to older
PCs.

Now I have the Palm Desktop software running on the XP box
at work, the iBook G4 at home and This Old PC -- the Pentium
MMX 333 MHz.

The software is very, very fast -- great for older hardware
(you need USB, at least for the Palm Tungsten E that I'm
using). For the moment, the Palm is changing the way I
approach computing. I can write just about everywhere and
either save my work as e-mail and send it when I "hot sync"
the Palm, or create text files in the Palm Memos application
and pick them up after the same hot sync operation.

The Palm also comes with a program called Documents to Go,
whlch can read and write Microsoft Office-format files.
It works very well.

Besides the Memos, Documents to Go and VersaMail applications,
I also use the Palm's Tasks as a running "to do" list (having
the list synced on multiple computers AND with me on the
Palm is key -- as it is for all of this. I was also able
to bring both my Outlook contacts and Yahoo! Mail address
book into the Palm's Contacts program. This also helped
me bring all of that data into the OS X Address Book --
which doesn't accept the .CSV files from the old version
of Outlook in This Old PC, but does work with the vCards
generated by Palm Desktop.

Another thing -- the Palm's VersaMail e-mail app works very
well with Outlook to send mail. They somehow sync together
-- and you can originate and receive Outlook mail on your
Palm.

It's a little dicier with POP and IMAP mail, but it does
work. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to upgrade
VersaMail, and only version 3 allows for SSL on the outgoing
server. The current Palms will do just about any e-mail,
but this older Tungsten E, with VersaMail 2.6, won't do
Yahoo or Gmail.

Still, I can use my DSL Extreme and FastMail accounts, as
well as the Outlook. I believe you can sync up to eight
accounts. And with the current Palms, all of the popular
mail providers are available.

There are also other e-mail programs for Palm, SnapperMail
and Agendus Mail among them. Those programs seem to excel
with either a Wi-fi or cell-phone-connected Palm. For hot-syncing
multiple e-mail accounts, VersaMail is the only way to go.
But if you have an older Palm and just need to sync one
e-mail account, the other apps are definitely worth looking
at.

Old PCs are contenders

2006-12-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

Most of the trouble Mac users have with Web browsing -- if they're not using OS X -- doesn't bother PC users at all. You see, since Microsoft abandoned the Mac platform entirely, and since both Safari and Firefox will NOT run on Mac OS 9 or earlier, using the Web on an older Mac is a major crapshoot.

Not so for Windows PCs, where Internet Explorer 6 (surprisingly good) and Firefox 2 will both run on Windows 2000 and 98. Minimum specs for Firefox are Windows 98 with 64 MB RAM and a 233 MHz processor, with "recommended" specs being Windows XP, 500 MHz processor and 256 MB RAM.

I'm not sure which Firefox version I have on This Old PC, but I'm right on the edge -- in between the minimum and recommended specs with a 333 MHz processor, 262 MB RAM (although I've two 128 MB SIMMs and one 64 MB SIMM on the mother board -- that's all it will address) and Windows 2000.

Firefox 1.5.0.8 is still available for the rest of us and will be "maintained with security and stability updates until April 24, 2007."

Internet Explorer 6, the minimum system requirements are: 486/66 MHz processor (Pentium recommended), Windows 98 or 98se, Me, NT 4.0 with SP6a and higher, 2000 and XP. Memory: 16 MB for 98 and 98se (oy!), 32 MB for ME and 2000 and XP. Trust me, you want more power than this, but it will work.

So between these two browsers, especially IE 6 -- which I predict has a few years of MS support left in it -- there's a lot of hope for your older PC in terms of general Internet browsing.

Don't cheap out on the Wi-Fi

2006-12-14T10:25:00.000-08:00

I recently installed an Orinoco Silver PCMCIA wireless card in my Powerbook 1400 (it'd work in a PC laptop, too, but I'd only recommend it if your slot wasn't Cardbus-compatible, otherwise you can get cheaper, better 802.11g cards -- this one is strictly 802.11b).

In side-by-side comparisons to This Old PC's Wi-Fi, using the AirLink 101 internal card from Fry's, the Mac and the Orinoco connected much more easily -- and stayed connected longer -- to far-away routers. I can't help but thinking that a name-brand Wi-Fi card and software (Netgear, Linksys, D-Link) would do a better job for This Old PC. If you'll recall -- and as this blog began -- I had to upgrade from Windows 98 to 2000 just to get the thing to work. I'm glad I did the upgrade, because the whole box works a lot better (although the password situation annoys me -- it keeps asking me to change passwords, and I'd rather it stopped). And if the router was in the same room, the Fry's card (cost me about $10) would be fine, but I'd feel a whole lot better with improved hardware and software.

Anyhow, this is just my from-experience suggestion that you avoid off-brand routers and Wi-Fi cards. I'm pretty happy with my free Netgear router -- I wish I had a newer one, but this piece of equipment is pretty rock-solid.

This OId PC vs. This Old Mac

2006-12-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

I can debate the merits ot This Old PC vs. This Old Mac, the computers themselves, all day -- and I will, but when it comes to the blogs, the posting goes in stages, depending on which machine I'm working on at that particular time. But the number of posts is roughly the same, about 25 to 30 for each, and at this point, This Old PC is in the lead in terms of visitors, with 420 uniques to This Old Mac's 341.

I don't think that either of these blogs has a daily following, and it's mostly through searches that people find their way here. Nothing wrong with that. If you do manage to drop in due to a Google or other search, there's lots here to read/comiserate with/learn from.

If you've benefited in any way from these blogs, I am grateful. And if you've decided to rehabilitate an old PC or Mac, I hope you're having more fun than frustration (c'mon -- even the frustration is fun, admit it.)

QuickTime is slow on a PC

2006-10-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

I needed to download QuickTime for the PC the other day to watch a video, and while video on it looks great, somehow Quicktime became my default program for listening to MP3s when I clicked on .mp3 links on Web pages. The slowness was killing me ... and while the MP3s on my hard drive were still coming up in Windows Media Player, I couldn't get the clickable links to come up that way.

While trying to make Quicktime behave, I opened it up. Every click was torture. Slow ... like you wouldn't believe. And this is a new Dell with Windows XP.

We don't have full access at the Daily News to all settings, so I had to do what I could in the applications without access to the Windows Control Panel.

Anyway, I just deleted QuickTime. Even that took a long time -- it's a bloated program. As I said previously, I even prefer Windows Media Player for casual MP3 listening -- it's easier to deal with than the iTunes. And QuickTime? Fuggetaboutit.

Getting comfortable with Windows XP

2006-10-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

It's been about a year, I figure, since the Daily News junked its 400 MHz Celerons running Windows 98 for new Dell Optiplex GX520s with Windows XP, and I must say that I've gotten quite used to the operating system.

It's pretty solid -- crashes are rare. And it's so easy to grab photos and files of all kinds and put them where I want them. Easer than Mac OS X, which always seems to want me to save to the desktop, which I don't ever want to do because the reason I have folders created is to keep unorganized crap off of that very desktop. Now my real desk, and its top, for that matter, is another story entirely, but I like to keep some order on the virtual one.

I really appreciate the way the My Documents, My Pictures and My Music folders work in XP. I'm no expert, but I suspect that they're account-specific, and that if my PC was set up for different users with separate logins, each would have their own versions of these folders. I only suspect this -- I don't know enough.

From reading the great OS X book in the "Missing Manual" series by David Pogue, I leaned that much of the OS X world is acocunt specific. For instance, Safari bookmarks and settings, Mail configurations, even many folders, the desktop itself and other settings change with the different accounts. Now since probably 99 percent of all laptops, and almost as many desktops, are used by one person only, the whole idea of separate login accounts (in the Unix sense) is probably moot, but it's nice to know the power is there, especially for a multi-person household or workplace.

Me, I've written before that I'm loath to use a mail program of any sort, be it Mail on OS X, Outlook on PC, Eudora or any other, because I don't want my mail to be stuck on a single hard drive on a single PC when I'm doing computing in so many different places. Now for the sake of archiving it, that might be attractive, but for now I'm trusting Yahoo! Mail, and in the case of the Daily News, not really caring what happens to my e-mail.

But back to XP. I really love all you can do with right-clicking, and the aforementioned ease with using the My Pictures and other specialty folders. I do it so seldomly that I forget exactly how to put applications either in the Start menu or on the desktop, but it only takes me 5 minutes to figure it out (gotta get "Windows XP -- The Missing Manual" -- there are probably hundreds of tricks that I don't know).

I actually appreciate the ease of using the Windows Media Player. I've since downlaoded Quicktime for work purposes, and it somehow took over my playing of MP3s -- I'll have to deal with that at some point. But the My Music folder, though it's no iTunes, for me is refreshingly easy to deal with, just as the My Pictures folder is more straightforward than iPhoto (albeit without all the capabilities).

The bottom line for me is that I'm in the PC environment way more than I'm on the Mac, so it's perfectly logical that I'd be more comfortable on the former. And even though This Old PC just doesn't have the goods to run XP (Windows 2000 is pretty much the end of the line OS-wise for it), I'm giving very good marks to XP for its plain old workhorse ability.

A case in point, today I clicked on a Telnet link on a Web page, and a terminal window opened right up out of Explorer, and I began my Telnet session. The same session didn't go as smoothly on the Mac, but that might've had more to do with my ISP and setup at home on the iBook than it did anything else. Still, XP handled it well. And I've been using GIMP on a regular basis for my image-manipulating needs -- runs pretty fast on the Dell.

Making the leap, IE 5.0 to IE 6.0

2006-10-07T17:14:00.000-07:00

I did it. If This Old PC can run Firefox, it certainly
can run IE 6.0. That and I couldn't find IE 5.5 as a
stepping stone.

Looks like I didn't need it, as IE 6.0 starts up fine,
runs fine, too.

Since this computer will function as a backup for my
posting to the Daily News Web site, I also removed
Yahoo! Toolbar, as it renders IE 6 incompatible with
the MediaNews Group Web-posting software.

While I was in there, I also did a Windows Update. All
is well at this point.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

From Avast to Open Office to Gimp and beyond

2006-09-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how many free applications I've been using lately. You can really outfit a PC and get real work done on it with these freeware programs. Not little utilities or come-ons to buy a non-crippled version, you can both save money (or in my case, "have applications," as I'm not going to shell out $100 to $800 for programs for an 8-year-old PC) and be productive with the following:

Avast: Bruce recommended that I use this free program for virus protection. It's free to home users only, and you must register, but for a free antivirus program that updates automatically, I'm pretty OK with that. It's been working great so far -- updates come down whenever I have This Old PC hooked up to the DSL.

Open Office: We use this at the Daily News after years of telling sources, " We can't open up attachments, especially Word files ..." Well, now we can -- and we can work on documents, spreadsheets (lots of sites like Nielsen Media Research's press site offer their information in Excel format), "presentations" (I guess this is like PowerPoint), HTML documents (I haven't tried it yet) and Drawing (also haven't tried it).

It's a real Office-like suite of applications that's being pushed by Sun Microsystems as a kind of Microsoft-annoyer. And I'm sure it's doing a good job at that. Most people -- me included -- aren't tapping into the arcana of Word. I'm just trying to write stuff, and Open Office does great with that. And it works on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix.

The GIMP: The latest program to join my freeware linup is GIMP, which stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program. It's basically a Photoshop substitute, and for what I need to get done, it works like a charm. Mostly I need to take big photos and shrink them to specific sizes and resolutions for the Web. Again, at the Daily News we don't all have Photoshop, but many of us have begun working with art -- mostly for the Web. I couldn't figure out how to make GIMP put a black border on a photo, and at one point I just deleted the whole program in frustration. But Daily News web guru Josh Kleinbaum told me that you have to "stroke" the photo. So a "stroke" is a border in photo speak ... I never know. Well, first you select your photo, then add the "stroke," so I'm all good with the GIMP.

The funny thing about installing GIMP is that you need the program itself and something called GTK+ -- both available via links at the GIMP site. The program also runs on Windows, OS X and Unix, so you can have a familiar application on every platform you work on.

While I think the trend in computer applications is toward server-based, or more specifically Web-based applications, programs that are installed on individual PCs will still hold sway for years to come.

And when it comes to hardware like This Old PC, an 8-year-old Pentium II MMX at 333 MHz, the whole idea of purchasing new, off-the-shelf applications tuned to 1.8 GHZ processors and Windows XP is nothing short of ludicrous. It's either scrounge for older, used versions of software that work better with the old hardware, or try these free programs, which are often less laden than their commercial equivalents. And if it doesn't work, or is too slow, what have you lost? Certainly not money.

These are the major free programs that I use. I'd love to know about others -- and I will be on the lookout for them, both for the PC platform and the Mac.

Free Wi-Fi update

2006-09-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

My ethical musings aside, I tried the free Wi-Fi connection this morning, and it wasn't working. I stayed connected, but the DNS address was sketchy at best -- it kept cutting in and out. Mostly out. Moving the antenna did nothing but make it worse.

Soon I'll have to go to the next round of Wi-Fi networking, trying different spots for the router that can potentially hit both the bedroom and The Back Room. I'm still eyeing the "telephone table" drawer, which, as its name warrants, has a phone jack. There are already two wall worts there (for the cordless phone and answering machine), and I'd have to add two more (router and modem). So I'd need either two extension cords or a power strip that can accomodate four power transformers (maybe one of those "octopus" things?). I've though about mounting all the equipment in a plastic box of some kind under the drawer. That would leave the drawer itself for all the other crap we keep in there.

I'm pretty sure I can hit the bedroom with Wi-Fi from there -- it's about 20 feet. But will it go from there to The Back Room? Well, I can easily power up the router from under there and check for a signal. I don't have to wire it up just to see if it's working radio-wise.

This old Toolbar

2006-09-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

Goodbye, Yahoo! Toolbar. We had quite a few good years together, you at the top of my Internet Explorer screen, allowing me to do searches without opening a Yahoo! window (hey, wait, that's built into Safari and Firefox).

And I could click on my Yahoo! Mail, or anything else I could stuff up there -- Like Yahoo! Movies and Yahoo! TV, both of which I use with some frequency.

I had all my IE "favorites," all nine hundred and fifty-something of them, uploaded as bookmarks. I never had to access them through the Toolbar, but at least they were there. It sure helped when we got new computers at the office and I wanted to preserve them all. I just downloaded from Yahoo! and somehow followed the instructions -- and it worked.

But I had to cut you loose, Yahoo! Toolbar. I've been having trouble with the Web-posting interface (is it a program, a system?) for the Daily News, which is used by all of the MediaNews Group papers across the country -- and which can only be accessed via IE on a PC (not on anything on a Mac, even IE, nor on any other browser on any other system). I've been unable at times to save my work or upload photos.

When I called for help a month ago, tech support in Denver (the MediaNews HQ) had me dump my cookies and temporary Internet files and empty my "trash."

Remember the last time dumping your cookies, temporary Internet files and trash did anything?

Didn't think so.

Well, the guy in Denver had no ideas, and he said to contact local tech support here in Woodland Hills.

I did that. I left a message (that's how you do it here -- you leave a message).

Computer guy Jerry showed up within five minutes. He worked on it for a few minutes, took a screen shot (for his scrapbook, I guess) and said there was nothing he could do.

Before he left (as I was cracking walnuts on my desk -- no nutcracker for us), he said, "What's this toolbar?" "We should delete it." I said OK. At this point, I've been frustrated enough to try anything.

Jerry leaves. He doesn't remove the Yahoo! Toolbar. So I do a quick Web search on how to do it (takes about 5 seconds), and I remove it.

Problem solved. IE works fine with the Web-authoring site. Now I'm running naked IE 6, no toolbar, no tabbed browsing (probably the only cool thing the latest Yahoo! Toolbar added -- and how a toobar adds something as complicated as tabbed browsing, I'll never know. Somebody should win a programming Nobel Prize for that one).

Somehow, I'll go on. I've already blabbed plenty about how I prefer IE, even though, yes, I know that Firefox is so much better, yadda, yadda, yadda.

While on that subject, I was running Firefox on This Old PC a few days ago. I needed to print. Now I almost never print any more, but I was making a "Finding Nemo" coloring page for the kid, and Firefox just hung on it -- nothing was happening. While it was hanging, I started IE 5.o, found the page and printed it. Then I stopped the print from Firefox, which I expect was never going to come out.

Once again, the lean and mean IE gets it done. So should I upgrade to IE 6? I'd love to try 5.5 and see how it does ... but getting it from Microsoft, or anywhere else for that matter, seems impossible. Bastards.

Brevity is in the eye of the beholder

2006-09-03T22:24:00.000-07:00

They say nobody has the attention span to read anything long on the Web. I believe it. Therefore, I apologize for the length of the post below.

Major Windows update

2006-09-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

I decided to run Windows Update for the first time since I installed Windows 2000 on This Old PC. At the time of install, I went up to Service Pack 4, and I didn't think it had been long enough to need 44 updates.

But that's what happened.

So I downloaded them, and they're installing right now.

Did I mention that I never put in a new CMOS battery? Well, the CMOS settings are holding, except that the clock loses whole days at a time when the box is turned off. I'll have to get a battery and crack the case soon.

I'm doing the Windows Update process because I've been troubled by IE 5.0 crashes, and I figured I'd get things right before either going to 5.5 or IE 6. I'm thinking the system can handle IE 6, but why not give 5.5 a try first -- If I can find it. From Microsoft.com, you can only get IE 6 or 7 .

Of course, IE 7 only works on XP and the not-yet-released Vista. And the only other IE still available on Microsoft.com is IE 6, which supposedly will work on everything back to Windows 98. IE 5 and 5.5 don't seem to be available, and support for them has ceased. So even if you have an old PC, or a very old one, Microsoft will not help you. Even unsupported, older browsers are not available from Microsoft. I think they want to give you every reason in the world to think you absolutely need to buy a new version of Windows and, naturally, the hardware on which to run it.

This kind of thinking works. But I don't like it one bit. What if I had an old PC running Windows 95 or 98, and I wanted to upgrade to Windows 2000? Could I buy it from Microsoft? No. They only sell XP, no matter what the needs of your hardware. If you've got an old PC that can't handle XP, there's no help for you. They won't even take your money. That's where eBay and other networks of swappers come in. There's quite a market in used software out there. Everything from operating systems to office suites, graphics programs, utilities packages, etc., for every era of computing, is pretty much out there and out for bid. So if you want Windows 2000 on CD, Microsoft won't get a penny -- and some guy with a deep shelf full of obsolete crap is more than willing to sell it to you. If you need it, I suggest you buy it. For the Macintosh, Low End Mac's swap list is invaluable. I don't know if the same thing exists for PCs, but if it doesn't, it very well should.

I've gotta tell you, if you need old Microsoft software, and MS will only sell you versions that won't run on your old hardware, there's no harm in buying it used -- or using someone else's ancient discs to install it on your PC. If Microsoft is orphaning this stuff (with Apple doing the same thing, albeit to a lesser extent), why should they care what happens to it? It seems to be a dilemma for them. If they continued to sell and support older versions, they'd be admitting that their users might not need the latest update. But by disavowing these older editions of software, they are giving the message that they don't care what happens to those products, or what people are doing with them.

Shifting gears, but keeping the above in mind, I still have to say, in the race between 1998 PC (Pentium II MMX 333 MHz) and 1996 Mac (Powerbook 1400cs 117 MHz), the PC by far offers the better longevity for the sole reason that it runs modern browsers -- Firefox and IE 6 -- and provides a better online experience.

And getting back to the Windows update, since I do have Firefox on this box (and am using it now on Blogger), a working IE isn't as critical as if I hadn't installed the browser everybody else is using. But if I do need this computer to post to the Daily News Web site, I'll need a working, stable IE, since the Web-posting system requires it and won't work on anything else.

Not Dora the Internet Explorer

2006-08-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

IE plagues me at home and at the Daily News. On This Old PC, it quits for no apparent reason and won't restart. At work, where Web posting requires use of IE, I'm having an unsolvable refresh problem that causes my edits to vanish.

DAMN YOU, Bill Gates. You lull us into using your browser, then abandon platform after platform. And the new IE 7 will only work on Windows Vista? Good luck with that, boyo.

Wireless router BLOWOUT

2006-08-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

Had a quick walk over to Fry's today (closest retail business to the Daily News), and they have refurbished Netgear routers -- wireless or wired -- for $19.99 each. They're packed in plain brown boxes. So if you need a router, it's a whole lot less hassle than buying a used one on Craigslist or eBay, and the damn things look new.

And keeping the previous entry in mind, the Netgear router includes a firewall as well as password-protection, encryption and MAC address filtering to keep out all those you don't want to let in.

The wireless is a somewhat older WGR614. One thing different from my old-school Netgear router -- you CAN turn the wireless off.

And if you want a wired-only router, there's the RP614 (no boxes were opened, so I couldn't examine to see which "revision").

A Netgear router, not a no-name, no rebate hassles, for $20. Just do it.

The ethics of "free" Wi-Fi

2006-08-29T15:13:00.000-07:00

Should I be piggybacking on somebody else's Wi-Fi? Since I've had such trouble making my own Wi-Fi network connect reliably to both the house and The Back Room (home of This Old PC), I've recently begun connecting to a neighbor's wireless router. We've got a big apartment complex and a new condo building right behind us, and since the condo units started selling, a bunch of new routers have come online -- none of which I can get on the house's iBook, but many of which hit between 40 percent and 60 percent power on This Old PC (now equipped with a cheap Fry's antenna on the desk).

Am I doing a bad thing? Is it illegal, unethical or perfectly reasonable?

As it turns out, there's a lot of chatter out there about this very topic. Start here:

Tech Builder: Opinion: 'Stealing' Your Neighbor's Wi-Fi

PC World: Use a wireless network, get arrested?

Here's a comment from this one:

If someone is using your wireless network from the street, it's because your wireless network is broadcasting beyond your property, pushing its connection protocols. If that doesn't seem like an explicit invitation, it's at least implied permission to connect.

and another:

It's beginning to sound like our society has become full of people that are looking for a free ride. The ethical thing to do is buy your own access. If you're in a residential area it's a no brainer that the network you see isn't some company offering free access. It sounds like a large percentage of people would use their neighbor's access without telling them and you can bet they wouldn't offer to pay any of the monthly bill. What happened to good old fashioned honesty and integrity?

More on this subject:

Darknet: Jacking Wifi is ‘OK’ say Ethics Expert

Wikipedia: Wardriving

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Wi-Fi users piggyback on free signals

The New York Times (reg. required): Hey Neighbor, Stop Piggybacking on My Wireless

Here's a sample from the NYT:

Many who piggyback say the practice does not feel like theft because it does not seem to take anything away from anyone. One occasional piggybacker recently compared it to "reading the newspaper over someone's shoulder."

...

Wi-Fi is in the air, and it is a very low curb, if you will, to step up and use it," said Mike Wolf of ABI Research, a high-technology market research company in Oyster Bay, N.Y.

This is especially true, Mr. Wolf said, because so many users do not bother to secure their networks with passwords or encryption programs. The programs are usually shipped with customers' wireless routers, devices that plug into an Internet connection and make access to it wireless. Many home network owners admit that they are oblivious to piggybackers.

Some, like Marla Edwards, who think they have locked intruders out of their networks, learn otherwise. Ms. Edwards, a junior at Baruch College in New York, said her husband recently discovered that their home network was not secure after a visiting friend with a laptop easily hopped on.

"There's no gauge, no measuring device that says 48 people are using your access," Ms. Edwards said.

And there could be malicious goings-on:

David Cole, director of product management for Symantec Security Response, a unit of Symantec, a maker of computer security software, said consumers should understand that an open wireless network invites greater vulnerabilities than just a stampede of "freeloading neighbors."

He said savvy users could piggyback into unprotected computers to peer into files containing sensitive financial and personal information, release malicious viruses and worms that could do irreparable damage, or use the computer as a launching pad for identity theft or the uploading and downloading of child pornography.

"The best case is that you end up giving a neighbor a free ride," Mr. Cole said. "The worst case is that someone can destroy your computer, take your files and do some really nefarious things with your network that gets you dragged into court."

But others see it differently:

Some users say they have protected their computers but have decided to keep their networks open as a passive protest of what they consider the exorbitant cost of Internet access:

"I'm sticking it to the man," said Elaine Ball, an Internet subscriber who lives in Chicago. She complained that she paid $65 a month for Internet access until she recently switched to a $20-a-month promotion plan that would go up to $45 a month after the first three months.

"I open up my network, leave it wide open for anyone to jump on," Ms. Ball said.

And still one more:

ZDnet: Is it wrong to steal wireless bandwidth?

From a quick perusal of these Web pages, my gut feeling is that sharing Wi-Fi is OK if both parties -- the router's owner and the piggybacking user -- agree on it, even though broadband providers probably aren't too crazy about it (they'd rather collect $15 to $50 from everybody). AND if the router's owner doesn't charge for it. (I think splitting the bill gets into some uncharted waters.) In the real world, the vast majority of customers are just not going to pimp out their Wi-Fi to 20 neighbors -- and the really paranoid ones aren't going to use a wireless router at all, either plugging the modem directly into the computer or using a wired router (or turning off the wireless on their Wi-Fi router).

But piggybacking on someone else's Wi-Fi without them knowing? Every once in a while and for a limited amount of non-malicious activity, I think it's OK; but on a daily basis, not OK. As was expressed in many of the articles linked here, routers generally ship with the security wide open so they will work for unsavvy users. There needs to be better, easier software for configuring and maintaining these routers so even the technophobic can implement their security. And as my friend Bruce says, "Ethernet is best." He likes the wire for the speed, especially with gigabit Ethernet and CAT6 cable.

But if you want to create a network with the expressed purpose of sharing it, FreeNetworks.org has the guidelines on how to do it. This organization in San Diego is currently setting up such networks.

On our Netgear router, the lengthy manual (available to all on PDF from Netgear) goes through how to implement password protection, encryption and MAC address filtering. I think it would be a nice thing, if you know a neighbor or neighbors who just do a little surfing -- not running a business or anything -- and let them in by password and or MAC address.

And Google is planning to offer free Wi-Fi in Mountain View and San Francisco, while other cities, including Los Angeles, have some plans to offer Wi-Fi and charge for it.

Assuming it can be done, I think that making a transition from wired to wireless Internet for home users would be a great thing. And much in the same way that home phone service is regulated to be affordable, I think the same should be done for Internet access, which these days is as essential, if not more so, to the lives of most of us.

Free wireless update

2006-08-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

With my new antenna, speed on the free wireless connection is up to 24 MB/s. As far as I'm concerned, that rocks.

Next step: I plan to look into the nerd-ethics of sharing Wi-Fi connections. If somebody just plugs their router in and doesn't bother to even change the name from the default (the one I'm connecting to is still called "Linksys," as that is the brand name of the router), is it as OK to connect to it as it would be to someone more tech-savvy who actually knows how to give their Wi-Fi router a unique name with the expressed purpose of letting others share in their bandwidth? (Our Netgear router, when running, was called The Back Room, and has password protection AND 64-bit encryption turned on).

Now I have no desire to hack into this router -- to go to the Linksys router's URL and poke around -- I just want to surf the Web, but others may not be so scrupulous.

So even if you want to share your DSL or cable Internet bandwidth -- and I think it's a noble and doable thing -- do yourself a favor and at least rename your router and set the password.

By the way, you can help your neighbors AND block out others by offering them free Wi-Fi: Just ask them for (or help them figure out) the MAC address of their PC. MAC doesn't stand for Macintosh, though every Mac has a MAC, which stands for something else, but I don't know what. Every wireless card (and every Ethernet card, for that matter) has a unique MAC address, and you can filter for them, only letting those who you approve use your connection. It's a nice thing to do for your neighbors, if you're the do-nice-things-for-your-neighbors type.

IE 5.0, you wound me

2006-08-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

Just as I'm basking in the new free-Wi-Fi glory, IE crashes and won't load again. So it's onward and upward. Glad I loaded Firefox when I had the DSL modem back here. Now I can even do links and photos in Blogger.

I don't know if Microsoft knew it was going to get its ass kicked in the Web browser market, but that pretty much has happened. In glaringly obvious spades.

Wireless success is mine -- MINE, I TELL YOU

2006-08-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

About six new routers have cropped up in the neighborhood since the last time I checked -- probably the best thing about the San Fernando Valley's out-of-control condo construction -- and I now have up to four that require no passwords.

Speed is a bit slow, and I had to mount the $3 Wi-Fi antenna I got from Fry's on the desk, but I do have wireless Internet in The Back Room, through This Old PC.

After all the problems I've had trying to set up our own Wi-Fi network, it's a relief to have somebody with a router on a upper floor beaming a signal to the entire neighborhood.

Thank you, whoever you are.

I'm not sure what the hacker ethics are in situations like this. As I've read on BoingBoing, many think it's a Netizen's duty not only to offer up a Wi-Fi connection to everybody, but to keep it password- and encryption free as well. Hooray, I say, because as a result, This Old PC's stock has just risen dramatically.

Old dog, new browser

2006-08-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

The truth is, I'm not all that keen on changing browsers. It took me long enough to get with Safari, and on the PC, I'm just so used to Internet Explorer. Well, the tabbed browsing feature of Firefox might be enough to convert me, if only I can figure out how to switch the tabs with the keyboard. the Yahoo! Toolbar update I downloaded recently added tabbed browsing to IE, but the inability to switch tabs without a mouse click made the whole thing somewhat worthless for me.

My favorite PC command is Alt-Tab to switch programs. There's an equivalent on OS X (funny-thingie-key-Tab) and even an extension to make the same command work on the Mac's OS 7.6.1 (get it from System 7 Today). Switching between windows of the current application is something else I'd love to do. If Firefox can help me there, I'll be so sold ...

Update: Ctrl-Tab switches between tabs. Deal!

Another reason to switch to Firefox

2006-08-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

Blogger photo upload stops working with Explorer.

I've resisted Firefox, especially for This Old PC and older ones, because it's more resource-heavy than IE. It especially takes longer to load, and I'm all about quick loading. But as IE gets more and more broken, Firefox, which has a growing share of the market, is becoming a must.

So if you can run it, then do.

If only Firefox would come up with a version that ran on pre-OS X Macs, then I'd be deliriously happy.

Wireless woes

2006-07-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past month trying to split the difference, getting a good wireless signal in The Back Room, home to This Old PC, and the house, home to the iBook G4, especially without having a 2.4 GHz wireless router chugging away next to my head while I'm sleeping. Call me crazy, but I don't want microwave RF, even at a watt, that close for that long. So I've been trying to keep the Netgear MR814 router (802.11b only) in The Back Room, where This Old PC connects easily over wireless from about 12 feet away. It's that far because to get any kind of connection, I had to place the router directly in front of the french doors facing the house. Sometimes the signal is good to the house, other times awful. I changed channels on the router, going to Channel 11. That took care of my 2.4 GHz cordless phone interference, but a sniff for the neighborhood routers, of which there are many, shows that they're all between channels 9 and 11 for some reason. So back to Channel 1 I switched, but that didn't work at all.

So I admitted defeat, pulled the DSL modem into the house and plugged it directly into the iBook. I left the wireless router connected in The Back Room for more testing -- which is what I've been doing and what I recommend to anyone trying to set up a troublesome wireless network: Keep your DSL modem plugged directly into your computer via Ethernet, but also keep your Internet-less router running so you can check the signal. If you can make a wireless connection, even only at certain times of the day, you can do things like change channels, or moving the whole damn thing, and still check the signal strength via the wireless capability of your PC, even if it is getting Internet via Ethernet. That's what I plan to do.

I'm hamstrung, as it were, in placement of the wireless router and DSL modem, because we have a VERY small house, and it isn't exactly teeming with available phone jacks and electrical outlets, especially not both in the same place.

One candidate is the drawer at the "telephone table," which is, not suprisingly, the home of our main (cordless) telephone and answering machine. Oh, and now the cat's litter box. Long ago, I installed a double phone jack, so there's room to install the modem's phone plug. The electrical outlet is home to two wall warts (you could call them "AC adapters," because that's what they are), one for the phone, the other for the answering machine (it's a digital Phonemate that's been working with little trouble for YEARS). And this drawer, though filled with crap, does have a lot of stuff we use all the time -- stamps, address labels, keys, cell-phone chargers. If I somehow found a place to store all this stuff and emptied out the drawer, I could fill it with all this junk. Two wal warts, DSL modem, wireless router, extension cord. And it is CENTRAL to the house, the best place from which to broadcast a wireless signal. Hmmm. But no.

The other candidate is the "coat closet" near the front door. It's the most northwestern part of the house and would probably do well for the iBook in the bedroom. But would it reach This Old PC in The Back Room? I'd have to do a test. The problems: the coat closet is filled with stuff. Coats, boxes, etc. Now there probably would be room for the equipment, but there's no electrical outlet OR phone jack. (Yeah, I don't have a phone jack IN THE CLOSET -- can you believe it?) But there is a non-working overhead light. I could screw in one of those light-socket extension cords that terminates in a plug, and if I fixed or replaced the light (I've got a few somewhere in This Old Shed), I'd have power. And it wouldn't take all that much to run a telephone extension in there. Who doesn't love being under the house? Actually, it's cool down there, and during these 100-degree days, that's somewhat enticing. Not as enticing as an air-conditioned interior, but ...

And there's always trying to boost the signal from The Back Room via a different antenna, or placement of the antenna.

Another solution: a wireless repeater somewhere in the house. They had them at Fry's for about $30 recently, and I could plug it in somwhere in the house -- it would retransmit the wireless router signal inside the house, making it strong enough to connect reliably throughout. But there could be problems, especially with WEP-encrypted transmissions. That's what Netgear says in defense of their own product, which they claim doesn't have such problems.

Yet another solution is Ethernet over power lines. For between $50 and $100 per device, these things will turn your house wiring into 85MB Ethernet.

And I could also run Ethernet cable between the two buildings. Yeah, I'm DYING to do that. Bruce would do it. Bruce has done it. Bruce is nuts, but he taught me at least half of what I know.

This Old CMOS Battery

2006-06-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

I suppose that if you only keep a PC for a couple of years, you never have to even think about the battery on the motherboard that keeps the CMOS settings saved when you have it turned off.

But if you have an old PC, those batteries will go dead.

On This Old PC, the clock speed was very slow. It would lose whole days of time, not just minutes or hours.

I pulled the cover and found the battery, a typical button cell. I actually had a replacement in the drawer -- who knows how long that had been there -- and reinstalled. First of all, those batteries are a whole lot easier to get out than to get it, but I did manage to do it.

Did I forget to write down my CMOS settings, which I lost when pulling the battery?

Yes.

It booted anyway -- somehow this BIOS can deal with the hard drives from scratch. The CMOS on this computer was pretty complicated -- there are pages and pages of settings. I tweaked something having to do with the sound card, and everything worked fine.

But the PC kept losing time. Perhaps my replacement battery, old as it is, was too dead to use. Bruce suggested that the crystal in the time clock was bad, but I find that very hard to believe. A crystal is a hunk of rock -- what could go wrong?

And the thing went totally dead -- my clock went back to 1998 the last time I turned it on. I had to hit F1 to complete the booting process, but without doing any CMOS tweaking, it's running fine.

Still, I'll have to remember to get a new battery from Fry's or Target. At least a $3 battery will do it. The PRAM batteries in Macs can run into some serious money, I've learned, and it's refreshing to be able to get the PC battery at any reasonably equipped drug store.

Free antivirus software

2006-06-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

I tried to install the Symantec antivirus software after I made the Windows 2000 upgrade, but when trying to do the install, Windows answers back that I needed a Service Pack before it can be done. That had to wait until I could get the DSL modem, which was connected to the Mac via Ethernet, going through the wireless router.

In the interim, Bruce told me that Avast was better than Symantic/Norton. And Avast is free for home users.

Once I got the router hooked up and had Internet coming to the PC, I installed Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000 anyway, and I didn't opt to save my configuration, should I want to go Service Pack-less. Hopefully all will work fine.

I did get a message about a lack of virtual memory, but Windows said it was somehow adding to virtual memory, but some programs might not load. I'll have to keep an eye on that. I do have the machine stuffed with RAM, maxing out for some reason at 262 megabytes.

I did the Avast install, and it seems to be running fine. You have 60 days during which to license the software, although it's still free, and I think you have to re-up every 60, for what reason I don't know, but maybe it's so they can keep a tally on how many people are actually using it, as opposed to downloading and forgetting about it.

Comments turned back on

2006-06-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how they got turned off, but now they are back on. On Blogger, it appears that switching comments on or off only affects NEW posts, so the two below will be commentless, unless I repost them.

Wi-Fi vs. cordless phones

2006-06-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Wi-Fi was going great .. until we made a phone call with the cordless, and then the signal from the Netgear router would drop from the iMac until the call was done. I had heard that 2.4 GHz cordless phones had the potential to interfere with Wi-Fi, which also operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency range.

I went into testing mode. I took the cordless back to The Back Room, where This Old PC connects to the router about 9 feet away via an internal Wi-Fi card (Airlink Plus from Fry's). No trouble there to stay connected to the router while making a phone call (cordless phone base station is in the house about 30 feet away).

Could it be the weaker wireless connection in the house just can't take the telephone interference? I got a 900 MHz phone, hooked that up in the house. No interference. Would I have to get rid of my Panasonic 2.4 GHz just to achieve Wi-Fi nirvana. I noticed on the display for the 900 MHz handset that I was on Channel 01. You can change channels on a cordless telephone? My Panasonic 2.4 GHz doesn't have a display at all ... but it DOES have a channel-changing button.

One click on the channel button, and my Wi-Fi interference problem was gone.

Here's where the problem begins:

802.11b/g frequency range in the U.S.: 2.412 GHz to 2.462 GHz

Cordless phone frequency range: 2.4 GHz to 2.4835 GHz

So they're pretty much right in the same place -- and that could mean trouble. Since both the router and the telephone have a number of different channels available, it is a matter of changing the channel on one or the other to reduce or eliminate the interference. I believe you can change channels on the router by logging onto the admin page. On the phone, as I say above, it's as easy as hitting the Channel button.

One thing that tipped me off to the problem was the marketing for the new cordless phones, which operate in the 5.8 GHz range. The boxes say, "won't interfere with Wi-Fi" ... yeah ... unless you plan to use the new 802.11a standard:

802.11a frequencies in the U.S.: 5.170 GHz to 5.320 GHz

Cordless phones: 5.725 GHz to 5.850 GHz

Now, there's no direct overlap there, so it might not be a problem, but some real-world testing is needed to make sure -- and I suspect there will be 2.4 GHz phones on the market for awhile.

Interestingly enough, in my research (yeah, it's Web surfing, but I call it "research"), I found out that most 2.4 GHz cordless phones transmit one way at that frequency, the other way at 900 MHz, to avoid interference: You see, since a telephone call is what's called "full duplex" -- meaning you can talk and listen to the other caller at the same time (and hear your own voice simultaneously through the earpiece) without saying "over" like a radio operator -- the phones need to operate on the different frequency bands to a) avoid interference and b) extend battery life of the telephone handset (which I imagine transmits with 900 MHz and receives at 2.4 GHz for that reason).

An interesting quote from Hello Direct:

To keep neighbors from constantly hearing each other's conversations, the FCC initially limited the output wattage for cordless phones to just .001 watt. But when digital and spread spectrum technologies (SSTs) made eavesdropping a less
valid concern by scrambling signals or dividing them across multiple bandwidths,
the allowable wattage for cordless phones was increased to 1 watt. This action made for clearer calls and increased a cordless phone’s range three- to fourfold. Meanwhile, the increased wattage covered up the fact that higher-frequency signals require more power to transmit.

When 5.8 GHz phones were introduced, the allowable wattage was not increased—and here is where the buyer must beware. Because transmitting signals at a higher frequency requires more power, some 5.8 GHz phones use the new frequency only for the
base-to-handset transmission. Then, to make sure a handset’s battery has a reasonable life, handset-to-base transmissions are sent on the older 2.4 GHz frequencies.

2 Although it will be some time until it is introduced, a protocol using 5.8 GHz technology is in development. This new protocol, 802.11a, will be able to send high-quality video. It will also interfere with the new phones.

This Old Router

2006-06-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

I got a free router from Bruce some months back -- a Netgear MR814 wireless that delivers 802.11b Wi-Fi, which means it runs at 11 megabytes per second, not the 54 Mbps of 802.11g. Since the whole point of this is to get Internet both in the house and in the converted garage-turned office, which are in no way attached, it was a little dicey figuring out where to install the router and DSL modem for complete coverage. I determined over the course of testing (you can sniff out a wireless router with your wireless card- or adapter-equipped PC, even if the router doesn't have a modem connected) that at a distance of about 60 feet or so (no, I haven't measured it), it just wasn't happening -- the connection faded in and out -- mostly out.

Finally I figured out that the converted garage, which we refer to as The Back Room, was probably built with some kind of metal mesh surrounding it, making it pretty hard for the RF to get through. So I placed the router in The Back Room on a small footstool in front of the stationary part of the French-door window -- and there's a signal in the house.

Once I got the modem out of the house and into The Back Room, I did some speed tests at DSL Reports (I always get there through my ISP DSL Extreme's support page, but you can go direct, I imagine. As Bruce predicted, there really isn't much difference between the 802.11b connection and the wired Ethernet, nor is there much of a speed issue vs. the more-robust 802.11g. And did I mention that the router was free?

That's the beauty of working on all this old crap -- free router, $9 internal PC wireless adapter (I could be connecting to this computer with Ethernet, as I'm only about 9 feet from the router, but why run the cable when there's already a wireless card installed?)

One problem -- on the iBook in the house, the wireless connects, but it drops when we use the cordless phone. Guess that the 2.4 gHz phone and 2.4 gHz of 802.11 don't really like each other, especially when you don't have the router and PC in the same room. This is something I'll have to look into. There's some kind of interference button in the Mac software -- I'll have to try that. And there's always NOT using the cordless phone (there is a wired phone in that room) or getting a new cordless that runs on 5.8 gHz. These new phones are marketed as "not causing interference with wireless Internet, and I can really see the point of all that.

But phone callers be damned, we have wireless Internet, Ilene is on one computer, I'm on the other, and while it's not exactly rocket science, I am prepared to say it's computer science.

In closing, BLOGGER SUCKS with Internet Explorer 5.0. I'll have to download Firefox.

This Old PC

2006-06-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

Why have new computer equipment when you can have ... old computer equipment?

Our friend Bruce gifted us some years ago with a Pentium II MMX 333 mHz PC, 64 MB RAM, 8 GB hard drive, CD-ROM.

A few years back, I added a TDK CD-RW drive, which did OK for data writes, less than OK for music (lots o' pops, clicks, dropouts, etc.). Got a USB Zip drive connected (not USB powered, the one with the wall wart, bought "refurbished" at Fry's for $20).

A more recent addition was the stuffing it with as much memory as it will recognize -- currently 262 MB (why that number?), even though I've had as much as 384 MB in the slots.
Basically, anything free or cheap, I try to stuff it in there.

Got a 10/100 Ethernet card from Fry's for 99 cents (yep, new and 99 cents), put that in. Got a 802.11G wireless card, put that in (it didn't work until I upgraded from Windows 98 to 2000), and now I'm almost ready to hook up the DSL modem to a free Netgear 802.11B router, which I will still probably use wirelessly with this PC, because even though router and PC are 3 feet apart, it's WIRELESS, goddammit.

What gave this old computer new life was Windows 2000. I was worried about upgrading from Windows 98SE. Would it slow the computer to a crawl? Would nothing work when plugged in? Would software cease to run?

Well, the OS upgrade made EVERYTHING faster, better, and yes, stronger. As I mentioned above, the Fry's wireless card (cost $9) worked, so did the Zip drive, the network card and almost all of the software. I was instructed during the lengthy install process to delete Norton, which I did. Windows has its own disk defragmenter, and that's all I really need anyway.

I couldn't install Symantic antivirus -- something about needing a service pack. Well, maybe when I finally get this thing hooked up to the Internet and go to Windows Update, I will have more success. Bruce says there's a free antivirus program called Avast that's better and ... freer.

The big test will be if the router right next to this PC will be able to make a wireless connection with the iBook that's about 50 feet and about four walls away. If that works, we're golden as far as the wireless network goes. There's something about a wireless router right next to the iBook -- and mere feet from our sometimes sleeping heads -- kicking out 2.4 gHz RF 24-7 that makes me feel unsettled. That can't be good for you. I did a test a few weeks back with the aformentioned router next to the aforementioned hed, and it wouldn't connect going the other way -- to this PC through the four walls and 40 feet. Hopefully the iBook will fare better when I get the wireless card in it (at the time we got the iBook, wireless was optional, and this one doesn't have it factory-installed). After stuffing my Powerbook 1400 with memory, I'm ready to open up another laptop with little fear.

So my quest has been to make a heard of old computers, both PC and Macintosh, useful for Web browsing (love the phrase "light" Web browsing -- there's really no such thing), especially using Yahoo! Mail, posting to Blogger and Google Groups, and using Microsoft Office.

Nothing too heavy, but having a satisfactory Web browsing experience is easier said than done on an older computer. At least an old PC can run a more modern browser. Hell, I'll even load Firefox on this Pentium II MMX at some point to see if it will work. At least Internet Explorer is in no danger of being totally ignored anytime soon. As for the Powerbook 1400, which does not, nor will it ever, run OS X, the door to new Web browser technology is pretty much closed. No Firefox, no updated IE. The best for that is IE 5.0 (5.2 runs on OS X, but Safari and Firefox do way better). I don't know how advanced I'll get with the IE on this PC -- and since it's not connected to the Web right now, I don't know how the browsing experience will be.

That all said, it's nice to get a new PC every couple of years, I guess, but wouldn't know because I've never been close to doing it. And at this point in my life, especially with our nearly 3-year-old girl ruling this roost, I've fallen into old computer resuscitation as a hobby that can be done in fits, starts, stops and whatnot. Gotta get back to guitar playing, but that's another blog for another day