Category: Windows

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Amazon Android Apple Barnes and Noble BlackBerry Google Internet iPad iPhone iPod iPod touch Kindle Mac Microsoft Nook Research In Motion Windows Windows Phone 7

Amazon Kindle versus Barnes and Noble Nook

I’m going to start out by warning you that will be a long post as I plan to cover everything I’ve known so far about both the Kindle & the Nook. I know of at least two people who have a Kindle & I have seen them. I have not yet laid eyes on a Nook.

Well I decided the other day to look at any updates there may have been for the Kindle as I have wanted one for over a year now. I was happy to see the following "Kindle Library Lending

Later this year, Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 libraries in the United States through the new Kindle Library Lending feature.

When Kindle Library Lending is launched, you will be able to check out a Kindle book from your local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone. Kindle Library Lending will provide the same unique features as Kindle and Kindle books, including the ability to read on any Kindle or free Kindle app, Whispersync technology that synchronizes your notes, highlights and last page read, real page numbers, and more. After a library book expires, if you ever decide to check it out again or purchase it from Amazon, all of your annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.

You’ll be able to borrow Kindle library books from any of the more than 11,000 libraries that work with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital content solutions for libraries.

Availability of books and length of loan will vary by library. Kindle Library Lending will only available for U.S. customers at launch."

I guess now is as good a time as any to list the versions of both the Kindle & the Nook. I’ll start with the Kindle Kindle, Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6" Display – includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers, Kindle, Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6" Display, Kindle 3G, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 3G Works Globally, 6" Display (In either Graphite or White.), Kindle DX, Free 3G, 3G Works Globally, Graphite, 9.7" Display. On to the versions of the Nook Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook Reader (Wi-Fi only) [ Black & White ], Barnes & Noble NOOK ebook reader (Wi-Fi + 3G)[B&W], Barnes & Noble NOOK Color eBook Tablet.

I’m not sure what Barnes and Noble mean by the "Borrowing" listed as only on the Nook color only means at See which Nook is right for you.

With that announcement I have dropped all consideration I had for a Nook as the only feature it had that the Kindle in a lower standing in my opinion is now gone. Since both devices are going to or already support the same network I don’t see that as being a major difference between them. If you want to find out if your library is participating you can do a search at OverDrive to either find books or if your Library participates. You can also check for a full list of devices that are supported at OverDrive’s Device Resource Center

There are a few other minor issues but none of them are deal breakers for me. Here in the order that I can think of differences between the Kindle & the Nook.

  • The Kindle does not have a user replaceable battery & the non-color Nooks do. The color Nook does not have a user replaceable battery. From what I’ve read the battery in the Kindle’s battery typically lasts for three years so not a deal breaker in my book.
  • The Kindle does not have any support for color while one version of the Nook does. The color screen means it has a backlight & will run the battery dead faster.
  • The Kindle can run for up to one month of reading while the Nook gets only 8 hours for the color & only 10 days for they grey scale. (All mentioned times are from the respective manufactures site & are with the wireless turned off.)
  • The Kindle does not have a port for expansion, the Nook can accept a microSD card of up to 16 GB for the non-color versions & the color version can accept a microSD card of up to 32 GB . But since Amazon says "Delete with abandon. We automatically keep an archival copy of your Kindle books-—re-download for free, anytime. We even back up your last page read and annotations, so when you re-download to the device you can pick up where you left off with all of your notes still in place." I don’t care as much about the lack of expandability on the Kindle.
  • The Kindle has 802.11 b/g for the wireless models. The Nook has 802.11 b/g on the non-color model, while the color nook has 802.11 b/g/n.
  • The Kindle uses buttons for the interface while the Nook uses either a small 3.5 inch color touch screen or a 7 inch touch screen in the case of the color Nook. Remember the color interface means it has back lighting which will eat up the battery life & will most likely have issues when trying to look at it outside.
  • The Kindle has 4 GB internal storage (approximately 3GB available for user content). The Nook has 8 GB for the color & 2 GB for the other versions (Actual formatted capacity may be less. Approximately 5GB available to store content, of which up to 4GB may be reserved for content purchased from the Barnes & Noble NOOK Store.).
  • The Kindle comes in 6 inch or 9.7 inch display sizes. The Nook comes in either 7 inch for the color or 6 inch for the other models.
  • The Kindle has "Free Access at AT&T Hotspots". While the Nook only has Free Wi-Fi® in all AT&T hotspots for the versions that are not color. Obviously the Nook also has Internet access at Barnes & Noble stores.
  • The Kindle can do Portrait & Landscape View on all currently sold models while only the Nook color has that feature. The non color nooks are Portrait only. (I don’t remember if the 1st generation Kindle had the landscape view option.)
  • The Kindle has the following dimensions 7.5" x 4.8" x 0.335" while the Kindle DX is 10.4" x 7.2" x 0.38". The Nook is 7.7" x 4.9" x 0.50" for non color versions & 8.1" x 5.0" x 0.48". (Where " indicates inches.)
  • The Kindle is 8.5 oz. for the Wi-Fi only, 8.7 oz. for the Wi-Fi & 3G, & 18.9 oz. for the DX. The Nook is 11.6 oz. for the Wi-Fi only, 12.1 oz. for the Wi-Fi & 3G, & 15.8 oz. for the color Nook.
  • The Kindle has WebKit-based browser in the 3rd generation as well as the DX. Only the Nook color has any mention of having a web browser.
  • The Kindle has apps for the following devices Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Macintosh, Windows PC, & Windows Phone. The nook has apps for Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Macintosh (beta), & Windows PC. (Sorry Nook but I want a Windows Phone & I don’t like beta software either.)
  • The Kindle can read books to you I only see mention of the Nook color having this feature.
  • The Kindle has native support for
    • Documents: Kindle (.AZW, .AZW1). Text (.TXT), Unprotected Mobipocket (.MOBI, .PRC)
    • Audible: Audible (.AA, .AAX)
    • Music: MP3 (.MP3)
  • The Nook color has mention of support for other formats & they are Word, Excel and Powerpoint document support. I didn’t see any other formats listed for the Nook.
  • The Kindle does have support to convert the following formats over to the Kindle format.
    • Microsoft Word (.DOC)
    • HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
    • RTF (.RTF)
    • JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
    • GIF (.GIF)
    • PNG (.PNG)
    • BMP (.BMP)
    • PDF (.PDF): (PDF support added to 2nd generation, 3rd generation, & DX devices.)
    • Microsoft Word (.DOCX) is supported in our experimental category.
  • The Kindle has two ways to send the converted documents to your computer either via email or through the USB cable. I assume the Nook can only do it through USB as I was not able to find any information on that subject. If you send it to your @free.kindle.com address it will be sent to your Kindle via Wi-Fi or if it is sent to your @kindle.com address it will send it to your Kindle via 3G & you will be charged according to the size of the document up to your per document limit. If the document exceeds the limit it will be sent to your @free.kindle.com address and a notification will be sent to your Kindle.
  • The Nook color has support for POP & IMAP in email, while the Kindle & other Nook models do not have that support. (I was not able to find an app that adds email support for the Kindle)
  • The Kindle has an app store with several free games along with some paid games & other apps. The Nook comes preloaded with Chess & Sudoku & only the Nook color can do crossword puzzles or download additional apps in the Nook store.

At the time I wrote this you can get the Kindle for $114 Wi-Fi with special offers, $139 Wi-Fi, $189 Wi-Fi & 3G, or $379 DX. While the Nook is listed as $149 Wi-Fi, $199 Wi-Fi & 3G, or $249 Color. (These prices are coming directly from amazon.com for the Kindle & from barnesandnoble.com for the Nook.)

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Apple Google Mac Microsoft Windows

Upgrading a Mac book

I know people who know me will be surprised but I did do some upgrades to a Mac book last year. I think I will finally write about the experience. I can list of several things I liked about it & at the same time I hated about it.

We did this as part of upgrading to OS x 10.6. We bought the following Western Digital AV-25 WD5000BUDT 500GB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal AV Hard Drive, macally PHRS250CC Aluminum 2.5″ USB 2.0 & 1394 External Enclosure, & Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Memory for Apple Notebook Model KTA-MB667K2/2G for the hardware. On the software we had an unused Windows XP license, Mac OS X version 10.6.3 Snow Leopard upgrade DVD, as well as iLife ’11. I’m including links to the parts we used in the upgrade.

I had to spend a large amount of time to find out what limitations the Mac had as well as how to install the upgraded hardware. Thankfully I found a video that showed how to do the upgrade, but it was so long ago I can’t remember where I found all the needed info to do the hardware upgrade. Here is more of the love hate relationship I have with Macs. To upgrade the RAM & the Hard drive you must remove the battery. This is forced on you which I don’t mind, but it makes it really hard to tell if you have the RAM in correctly which is what I dislike about the process.

Basically under the battery is an “L” shaped piece of metal that covers both RAM slots & the tray for the Hard drive. You unscrew 3 screws in it on the long side where the RAM is located to remove it. The screws in the upgrade I did stayed in the “L” shaped piece of metal. I then removed the RAM using the levers & paid close attention to where the notch in them was located so I could just insert the new modules the same way. Then I removed the old Hard drive using the plastic tab to pull it out. I switched out the drive in the tray I inserted the new drive.

After all that I put everything else back to where it was & started on installing OS X. The install from the DVD was uneventful other than I had to figure out how to partition the drive to run OS X, the drive came without any partitions. Which meant more time using Google. After I got past that issue the install finished although partway through it wanted me to add it to my wireless network which if I tried to do I would get stuck so I just skipped that step & used a wired connection to get the wireless settings & download the first set of updates.

During the boring parts of the install, IE while the install was running & not asking me any questions, I put the old Hard drive in the external enclosure so if we needed to get any data from it we could easily.

After the install & updates finished for OS X I got to have fun trying to figure out how to use boot camp to install Windows XP. I learned several things from those attempts which resulted in me reinstalling OS X more than once.

  • Windows must me installed on the partition that boot camp on OS X is listing it as, install it on any other partition or deleting of the partition boot camp assigned it to will cause issues.
  • The partition tool in boot camp does not use the same math as the partition tool in OS X, one say that 1 GB (1 GB = 1 Gigabyte) is 1,073,741,824 bytes while the other tool says that 1,000,000,000 bytes is 1 GB. (I’ll update this when I get a chance to figure out which used 1,073,741,824 as 1 GB)
  • If you want a FAT32 partition to share data between Windows & OS X you will need to add it later using the partition tool in OS X & remember that after you add it you can’t use boot camp again unless you want to wipe out the install of Windows.
  • If you are going to have a shared partition you need to either have it already created before installing Windows as an OS X format or leave it as extra space after the Windows partition. If there is un-partitioned space between the partitions you will need to edit the boot.ini file using the recovery console.

That’s all that I can remember from that adventure in my life. So about the only thing I really liked is that you have to remove the battery to replace either the RAM or the Hard drive. I disliked the inconsistency of measuring what 1 GB is on OS X, that you couldn’t easily tell if the RAM was installed properly (mainly because you couldn’t see it), & I thought it was rather primitive of boot camp to only support one FAT32 partition.

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Games for Windows - LIVE Microsoft Tinker Windows Xbox Live

Issues with Tinker from Games for Windows – LIVE

Well about two weeks ago I installed Tinker from Games for Windows – LIVE. It is an interesting puzzle game. It was released previously for people who purchased Windows Vista Ultimate. You have a timer, can only make a certain number of moves, & on some levels have to get all the gears to get an achievement in the game. After performing certain tasks you receive achievements that are viewable to everyone.

If you look at my gamer card on the left you should see that I have played it & earned most of the achievements so far. I hope to get the remaining three in the future.

My first issue with the game is that to install it I have to manually start the Windows Firewall which is frequently disabled if you install a third-party software firewall. So it is a good game just a really annoying issue to be able to install it on my computer.

It looks like they fixed my second issue with the game. The requirements page had claimed that the 59 MB download needed 9 GB of disk space. Which made me wonder, do they think this is Fallout 3 or some other blockbuster title.

My third issue is that when I earn achievements in the game it doesn’t always update my gamer tag. Right now it is displaying all the achievements that I have earned so far, but is has been buggy in updating my profile. One time even though I was connected to live on my computer I had to close out the game & the client, then restart them so that I could get my achievements updated.

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Apache blog Microsoft PortableApps.com Windows WordPress

Installing WordPress to XAMPP on a portable drive

A long time ago I wish I could to do exactly what I’m about to show you how to do, that is have a portable web server that I can plug into almost any computer. This is a useful way to develop for a client & never let it be seen on the Internet until you have finished the job.

Before I list the space needed as this may be an issue if you try to do this on just any portable drive. For some reason Hard drive manufactures think that a megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes when in reality it is 1,048,576 bytes or 1,024 bytes times 1,024 bytes. Also if you are using a flash-based portable drive it only has a limited number of writes for any particular sector, so with use the amount of available space will go down. (I’m not going to get into the details of that in this post as that is another discussion altogether.) So all the space that I’m saying you will need you will need the manufacturer to say that you have IIRC about 7% to 11% more than what they say. (Sorry I didn’t feel like doing that math again.)

One other note with most if not all flash-based drives you can not read at the same time that you are writing so during the copying process you get to wait before you can do much else. Also because the drive I’m using in this is really old you should get faster speeds than I did.

Also I reference “G:\” through out this walk-through you should substitute that with whatever drive letter your drive is assigned.

The following numbers to not account for wasted disk space they only account for total bytes that are used ignoring the wasted space.

  • 1.2 MB PortableApps.com Platform Only (Size on disk is 1.26 MB)
  • 150 MB PortableApps.com Suite Light (Size on disk is unknown)
  • 355 MB PortableApps.com Suite Standard (Size on disk is unknown)
  • 221 MB XAMPP (Size on disk is 241 MB)
  • 116 MB XAMPP Lite (Size on disk is 160 MB)
  • 1 MB XAMPP Launcher (Size on disk is 183 KB)
  • 7 MB WordPress files (Size on disk is 7.04 MB)
  1. 230.2 MB for XAMPP, Platform Only & WordPress files
  2. 379 MB for XAMPP, Suite Light & WordPress files
  3. 584 MB for XAMPP, Suite Standard & WordPress files
  4. 125.2 MB for XAMPP Lite, Platform Only & WordPress files
  5. 274 MB for XAMPP Lite, Suite Light & WordPress files
  6. 479 MB for XAMPP Lite, Suite Standard & WordPress files

So according to these number a 256 MB drive might barely be able to do this with XAMPP & Platform Only, but since it ignores wasted space I guess you could try XAMPP Lite instead.

Here are the files you will need to download. (These links all point to the current version at the time I write this post & the size requirements may change.)

  1. Download PortableApps.com Platform Only, download PortableApps.com Suite Light, or download PortableApps.com Suite Standard (You would go here to check for newer versions.)
  2. Download XAMPP or download XAMPP Lite (You would go here to check for newer versions.)
  3. Download XAMPP Launcher (You would go here to check for newer versions.)
  4. Download WordPress (That link always gets the current stable version of WordPress.)

After you have downloaded all of the files to your computer you will start installing them to a portable drive that can fit all the stuff you just downloaded. Well I just discovered I have a 256 MB flash-based drive so I will try the install on it. I got it almost 10 years ago so it will have some use on it as well. After retrieving the data on it & formatting it I have 246 MB available formatted FAT32. Because I’m installing using FAT32 I don’t have to deal with any security issues I might have if it was formatted NTFS, besides Windows XP won’t let me format it NTFS.

For step 2 You will need a lot of patience as it will take some time to finish installing. Also as far as time goes it does partly depend on the speed of the drive you are copying to my 256 MB drive was old & as such it is slower than a newer drive which would be much faster.

  1. Install the PortableApps.com platform or suite that you chose to download. If you don’t have a previous version installed & have it running you will need to tell it which drive to install it on, you will need to remember this for the next step. Aside from that Windows asks if you really want to run it which is a yes, than it asks which language, since I speak English I went with that, You hit next so it will ask you the drive letter, in my case it was “G:\” (They do have a browse button.), than you click on install, than leave the box checked to “Launch PortableApps.com Platform”. A new icon will show up in your system tray, which is down by the time.
  2. Install XAMPP & specify the drive letter you noted in the last step. (Remember you drive letter may be different then it is on mine so don’t go with “G:\” unless yours was assigned to that letter also.) It will also ask you if you want to run it so you click on run, then it asks the installation folder which on my computer it defaulted to “C:\” which is wrong so I changed it to “G:\” & clicked on install (It has a browse button as well.), I then waited for over 3 hours. After the wait it brought up a DOS window asking “Should I add shortcuts to the startmenu/desktop?” so I said no, then for the “Should I locate the XAMPP paths correctly?”, so I said yes, then for “Should I make a portable XAMPP without drive letters?” so I said yes (this takes a while as well I didn’t time it though, but I think it took less than 20 minutes.), it then lets you know which time zone it thinks it is in, & provides information on what file to modify to correct that if it is wrong. After that all you need to do is tell it to exit with an x & then an enter.
  3. Install XAMPP Launcher If you have the PortableApps.com platform or suite running it should detect which drive to install on to. So if you have the portable app running all you need to do is click on next, than install, than finish. To see it in the list you will want to go to the portable apps icon in the tray, Options, Refresh App Icons. After installing all of that I noticed I was out of room so I can’t even fit WordPress on it. (It turns out that a full copy of XAMPP takes up 241 MB due to wasted space.) Also before I started this I thought that the Lite version didn’t have MySQL but had SQLite instead, turns out I was wrong so I guess I’ll try that instead.
  4. Install WordPress. You need to launch the XAMPP Control Panel so that you can start MySQL & Apache. You also need to copy the extracted files & folders for WordPress into “G:\xampplite\htdocs” I just copied the wordpress folder so that it will be here once it is installed. So browse to here to create a new database. You need to name it, create a user name for it & a password for the user name. So under “Create new database” you enter the name you want to assign it, I just called mine wordpress, then you just click on the create button. Since it will automatically take you to that table you just need to go to the “Privileges” tab & click on “Add a new User”, set “User name” to the user name, set “Host” to local in the drop down, Hit the Generate button next to “Generate Password” to assign a random password to the database with the third field showing you it in clear text, you will want to either copy it watching case or copy it to the clipboard. Then under that make sure that “Grant all privileges on database” is selected, next to “Global privileges” you want to click on “Check All”, then you just have to click on the “Go” button. Now you want to go here to start the install, click on the “Let’s go!” button, set the MySQL, database name, user name, & password. You can leave the database host with the default of localhost also if you want you can change the “Table Prefix”, I never install more than one install to the same database as I don’t want to ever deal with that. Then hit the “Submit” button, than if you got the details right you can click on the “Run the install” button, it than asks for a “Blog Title” & “Your E-mail”, on my personal blog that I posted this my “Blog Title” is “Joker”, the “Your E-mail” is the e-mail address that the admin account will be assigned, If you leave the “Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati.” option checked when you click on “Install WordPress” you can just export from the USB install & than import it on to your web host. After waiting for a time assuming you have your php.ini set to allow it to run long enough you will be told that the user name is admin & what the randomly generated password is.
  5. If you want to follow good protocol you will go here to get a custom set of constants which are used since version 2.6.0 of WordPress. You then add it to the wp-config.php file in about lines 45 through 48. This isn’t as important on a portable install but it is still a good idea

When I installed XAMPP Lite it only took about 2 hours to install, it asked the same questions that was asked for the regular XAMPP install. I didn’t time how long it took to make the change for XAMPP Lite so that it doesn’t use any drive letters.

I also learned something else during this install. If your drive is slow enough you will have timeout issues after you enter the “Blog Title” & “Your E-mail”. I got this after I changed the max_execution_time to a ridiculously high 999999. The php.ini file is located in “G:\xampplite\php”.

The final total for XAMPP Lite, Platform Only & WordPress installed uses 167 MB. I’m not testing how much space is ultimately used with any other combination as that takes way to long to do.

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blog Internet Microsoft TCPIP Windows Xbox Zune

More on the Zune 4.0 & related stuff

Well I just made another large post on the Zune forums about the issues I’ve had with the 4.0 software & other related stuff. It made me realize I forgot to mention another issue is they seem to be abandoning the pre Zune HD hardware. It looks like they are going to only be releasing apps for the Zune HD which means back when “Larry Hryb, Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson” said that were doing XNA for the Zune that they dropped support for the originals or they are taking the back burner, IE the apps in the Zune Marketplace are only for the Zune HD at the time of this post with no indication of that ever changing. I really want to know which it is & why. I figure part of it is the new device has a much more powerful processor but beyond that I don’t see a reason why they would do that.

This is one of those issues I’d just like them to address as to what their plans are. I like having my expectations set as that makes me happier.

Oh I just thought of another issue that I’ve had with the Zune software for some time why do we only have unrated, broken heart & heart. I like the way that Netflix does the rating system better. Unrated, Not Interested, or a 1-5 star rating. I guess in the case of the Zune software that sort of arrangement would make more sense. Then we would have something like not rated, broken heart, or 1-5 hearts. That makes more sense to me then the current broken system. One more thing I don’t care that to someone else 1 star means a different thing to them since no one has said this is what they mean in the software. I think that is something else that Netflix has done better 1 star = Hated it, 2 stars = “didn’t like it”, 3 stars = “Liked it”, 4 stars = “really liked it”, & 5 stars = “Loved it”. So if you would just say what you think the different stars mean like they did you would have less confusion as you would have set the expectations of everybody. I remember back when I was trained to do support for Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition that one of the key points to making the customers happy was setting expectations.

Also does the software have to keep all the past downloads listed. The only way I’ve found to clear that list is to close the software. One more thing I just remember why after I finish a video or a piece of music does it still want to play it again & keep switching between showing that & the downloads at the same time in the area it used to in prior versions if you finished watching or listing to a single podcast episode just stop saying you are playing what ever it was you just finished. I like it showing when I’m playing but after I finish I want it to go away like it used to.