pdanet for Windows Mobile

Posted by Brad

A recent, rare, Internet outage at my house made me think about a backup Internet option. Since my Moto Q has Internet capabilities, I thought it would be possible to use it as a connection device if connected to a PC.

I first tried using the phone with Motorola Phone Tools software. Unfortunately, the software did not recognize the phone. So I did a search for Moto Q software and found the site everythingq.com. On the site was a program called pdanet which purported to do exactly what I was looking for – using the phone as an Internet connection device.

After unsuccesfully trying to download the software from this site (pdanet has a 7 day trial period), I found the author’s site and was able to download from there along with installation instructions and an FAQ.

The only requirement was Microsoft ActiveSync. After installing both to a laptop, I connected the phone to the laptop so pdanet could install on the phone. The only hiccup I encountered was because I had the USB connection on the phone set to Mass Storage instead of ActiveSync RNDIS.

Connecting with pdanet is simply a matter of connecting the phone to the PC (via USB in this case, although Bluetooth is supported), then clicking pdanet in the system tray and clicking connect. With my connection in a moving car driving on the highway far from any cities, I was able to achieve 213Kbps download / 88Kbps upload on AT&Ts Edge network. When I could get 3G connection, the speed increased to 871 Kbps download / 225Kbps upload.

The software works very well, but I’ve had problems with it seeing my phone or connecting. I think this is more of a problem with the phone, USB connection, and location than the software itself (I had to restart the phone, I am using a VM of Windows XP for this, and driving on highways that are sometimes out in the boonies). I recommend this software – it’s a lot cheaper than buying a dedicated data connector and a data plan.

Vantec SATA / IDE To USB 2.0 Adapter

Posted by Brad

I found this very nice adapter on Cyberguys web site for less than $30. It supports both 3.5″ and 2.5″ IDE and SATA drives. I’ve used it so far on a 2.5″ IDE notebook and I only had to use the adapter. I guess the drive pulled power over the USB connection. The kit also includes an external power brick for IDE drives, with an adapter to support power to SATA drives. The IDE data connections are right on the adapter; there is a SATA data cable that plugs into a male SATA connection on top of the adapter with the other side connecting to the SATA drive.

I have found IDE to USB external adapters useful for copying data from PCs with bad drives or which won’t boot or work properly. It’s a lot better solution than having to connect the drive physically to another PC to copy the data to, which I had done in the past.

I had previously been using two different IDE drive containers from CompUSA for this purpose, but they took longer to setup, were separate, and did not support SATA. The Vantec adapter has turned out to be a nice all-in-one solution and I recommend it for quickly connecting hard drives via USB to another PC. I have not yet seen another solution at this price which offers both IDE and SATA connections.

Firefox 3 Beta 5

Posted by Brad

This is the first time I tried writing a blog from my Moto Q. It’s not too bad for straight text, but anything fancy might take a little extra effort

What I really want to talk about here is Firefox 3 Beta 5. I’ve been waiting for Firefox 3 to come out ever since I discovered the memory leak problem in version 2 and read that they wouldn’t fix this problem until version 3. I decided to jump the gun and try the latest beta version on my Mac. During the install, Firefox scans your existing plug ins, checks if they are compatible, and if not tries to download versions that are compatible. Only 2 of my 6 or 7 plug ins have compatible versions, so I was immediately stuck without some functionality that I was used to. This is one of the reasons I decided to install Firefox on my Mac – I don’t use it much for web browsing, so any problems would be manageable.

After the install, I noticed that Firefox 3 looks just like a Mac application in form and function. I read that the developers did this for the Windows and Linux versions as well. The version I tested was very stable and only crashed after I installed the logmein plug in for Firefox and attempted to connect to a computer. I imagine this was because the plug in is not compatible with version 3. The other thing I noticed was when you type in a web address and Firefox gives you a list of previously typed in addresses, it now includes the web page name above the typed url. This made finding the correct url easier and just looked cool.

That’s about all I saw from a couple of days of using Firefox 3. The beta definitely makes me excited about the new version and I’m sure many plug in issues will be fixed when the final version 3 browser is released or shortly thereafter.

Windows Movie Maker

Posted by Brad

I had my first experience with Windows Movie Maker tonight helping my son do a movie for a school project. My impressions of it were that it is a very basic program for easy or quick movie making. One thing that was annoying was that the program was very slow to open an existing project. We ended up with 2 projects because of another annoying thing – I couldn’t put both audio files (sound effects) and a music track in the movie. There is a place for audio, but I think it’s for narration or any voice recording because it wouldn’t let me drop my audio files there. The files went to an area called audio/music. Unfortunately I wanted to do both. But we ended up with only music (Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture, nice gun and cannon effects to go with my son’s Civil War project). The movie turned out nice, being made with pictures of claymation (don’t know if I spelled that correctly). It took us a while to get the animation speed down, but my son was happy with the end product.

In short, don’t expect much from Windows Movie Maker, but it is free (with Windows) and does alright on simple projects. Just go make some dinner if you have to open an existing project or switch between projects.

Creative Labs ALchemy

Posted by Brad

As you may or may not know, Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, removed support for DirectSound and DirectSound3D from Windows Vista, a supposed “gaming” OS. If you own a nice sound card like one from the Sound Blaster line, you suddenly lose hardware accelerated audio and fancy effects like EAX. Microsoft decided that very few people have sound cards in their systems anymore (Did they talk to any gamers before they came to this brilliant conclusion?) so lets let software render such things. Basically this was a big screw over to Creative Labs, the only major sound card manufacturer left. Creative’s answer was OpenAL, “a cross-platform 3D audio API appropriate for use with gaming applications and many other types of audio applications.”

Some newer games support OpenAL natively (you can see the list here) and will run with hardware acceleration on X-Fi cards, but for other games on Vista, you need ALchemy. I read about ALchemy first in Maximum PC in their March 2008 issue feature “51 Tips & Hacks for Windows Vista and XP.” The software’s free for X-Fi owners, but is $10 for Audigy owners.

I just read some reviews of new sound cards from other companies besides Creative in the April issue of Maximum PC, so hopefully this issue can be fixed in Windows in the future if sound cards begin to make a comeback. For now, read more about ALchemy and download the latest version here.

Vista Service Pack 1

Posted by Brad

I installed Vista SP1 today on my main PC. Besides rolling up all previous patches and critical updates, one thing I know it’s supposed to fix is the copy / move files performance problem over a network. Originally, Vista would flash a message about calculating how long the copy / move would take, which could take quite a while if you were copying big files or a lot of files. This appears to have been fixed because I copied 2 files which were together about 3 GB and the time calculation was instant like in the old days, changing as the files copied. There was no slow down in the copy process.

The availability of this service pack is now for Technet subscribers (like me) and mid-March for everyone else. I downloaded both the service pack exe file and an ISO DVD image for both the x86 and x64 versions of SP1; I used the exe when installing on my PC. The install, like most things nowadays with Microsoft, was totally dummied-down: there was only a green bar in the beginning to tell you anything was happening (I actually got more information from my hard drive LED as the green bar stopped for quite some time, but my hard drive just kept going). Also, for once Microsoft was right on target on the length of time for the install – they said at least an hour and an hour is about how long it took. After a couple of reboots and stages 1 through 3 clicking off to 100%, I finally was able to login and received a message that the service pack install completed successfully.

Only other thing of note is that I left my McAfee AV on during the process (I couldn’t disable it for some reason and didn’t feel like wasting time trying) but your results may vary (the service pack install recommends disabling your AV program).

I haven’t noticed any other changes or features, but, to be honest, I’m just glad I completed the upgrade without issue.

Quick Takes – 02/13/2008

Posted by Brad

Finally hooked up the USB hub on my Dell 1907 FP. While I’ve seen many people complain about side mounted USB ports (or maybe it was because some monitors only had these ports) I found them very useful for quick, temporary USB connections. The two ports on the back seem right for more permanent connections that one doesn’t have to change very often, if ever.

I’ve been getting a lot of use out of my SanDisk Micro Cruzer USB key since I put it on my keychain. I always needed to have one of these with me in case I needed to copy something or have some software with me. This particular model has a tough gel covering around the key, and the part that hooks on a keyring is completely gel. Only problem is that I found 2 GB isn’t enough space anymore. I haven’t found any more spacious keys of this particular type yet, so I added my SanDisk Cruzer Micro U3 key also to my key chain. So far it hasn’t been too crowded. This one has a plastic covering, though, with a metal ring that goes over your keyring.

Had another encounter with DEP last night. I was trying to install the CD that came with my new Moto Q (more on this soon) on my Vista machine, but DEP didn’t like setup.exe on the CD. I tried a few different things, but finally had to completely disable DEP to install the software. My encounters with DEP have been ridiculous, and instead of protecting me from some threat, have only irritated me by preventing me from installing legitimate software. I am now 0 for 2 with DEP and recommend disabling it if you run into problems installing normal software and cannot overcome these problems within DEP’s configuration in Windows.

Dell Ultrasharp 1907FP

Posted by Brad

I decided to replace my 17″ Samsung 712N with a bigger flat panel, not because there was anything wrong with the Samsung (it has worked flawlessly for 3+ years), but because it just seemed smaller after I moved my old PC to it from a 21″ Samsung monitor. At first I considered buying a 24″ for my main PC and putting the 21″ on the others, but I am not a big fan of wide screen monitors (most are not vertically tall enough and look goofy, and I think monitor makers have just gone ga-ga over watching movies on your PC or something. How many people actually do this on a regular basis?). I also could not find one with which I was completely satisfied.

So I considered going to a 19″ “regular” flat panel – same resolution as a 17″, but everything’s bigger. Unfortunately, these are damn near impossible to find at retail (somehow I found a regular 17″ for my father-in-law at Best Buy recently for the office mixed in amongst a bunch of wide screens by accident, I guess). While buying some new PCs for an office, I checked Dell’s monitors since a lot of them get high ratings. I knew I wanted an Ultrasharp since these are their high-end models. I picked the Ultrasharp 1907FP and was not disappointed.

The monitor is very bright, yet easy on the eyes. It has vertical height adjustment for positioning, as well as VGA and DVI connectors. It also has a 4 port hub built-in.

Having used it for a couple of months now, I am very happy with my choice. 1280×1024 resolution is a lot easier on the eyesight with the larger screen size and this monitor’s brightness is comparable to my Samsung 213T (yet much brighter than the Samsung 712N), making it easier to switch views between monitors without losing focus.

I would recommend this monitor to anyone looking for a sub $300 monitor that is large, but not too large, and not widescreen (which does not mesh well with all of those old games I play).

Data Execution Prevention

Posted by Brad

I recently had a nasty encounter with this feature which is designed to prevent viruses or malware from damaging your computer by preventing them from executing. In order for this to work you need a CPU and an OS that supports DEP.

My particular issue occurred while setting up a new PC. I found a good deal on an E-Machine at Wal-Mart ($300 for PC with 512 RAM and XP) which I thought would make a nice workstation at one of my wife’s offices where I just had a computer go down. Everything went great until I got to the printer setup. The setup actually went fine, but I could not print anything, DEP kept shutting down explorer. The printer was a 4 year old Canon printer / copier which had its own software along with the driver. No amount of adding program exceptions to DEP would make it work…this became very frustrating. After a little Googling, I found some info on how to disable this feature if you happen to have trouble like I did:

In Windows XP, check the boot.ini file. You will see a parameter on the OS line “/noexecute=” with a value following it, typically “OptIn” (the default setting). Change “OptIn” to “AlwaysOff” (no quotes) and restart. For a detailed description of DEP and Windows XP, see Microsoft KB article 875352.

In Windows Vista (which I am adding for the sake of completeness), things are a little different since there is no boot.ini file (like everything else in Vista, I don’t know why Microsoft couldn’t just leave well-enough alone). Here’s the basics:

  • Go to the command prompt.
  • Type bcdedit.exe/set {current} nx AlwaysOff and press Enter.
  • You should see a message saying that ‘The operation completed successfully.’
  • Restart the computer.

For more detailed instructions on this, see John Barnett’s Windows Vista Support DEP page.

In summary, DEP, like everything trying to protect you and your PC, is not perfect. Try your best to work with it, but don’t be afraid to shut it down if there are no alternatives to getting a program to function.