Windows speaks your language, but only for a large fee

Microsoft, what is wrong with you? We had guests visiting this weekend from abroad and they wanted to buy a laptop here. We found a great deal on a refurbished HP Pavilion dm4 (i5, 4GB, 14", 500GB for $530) at MicroCenter. THe laptop came preloaded with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). Once we had the machine charged and running at home, the first thing the owner wanted to do is to change the localization to Russian. Not an unreasonable thing to do, in my opinion - the guy speaks Russian and prefers to have his computer be localized to his native language. They all do that, right? I mean, look at an activation sequence of any Apple product - first question is always about the language you prefer. Linux is same, for that matter. Windows - not so much...

Imagine our surprise when we found out that this particular flavor of Windows 7 can not be localized at all! Only Windows 7 Ultimate (and Enterprise editions) are capable of downloading and applying Language Packs. This is unbelievable! Do you know how much it costs to upgrade Home Premium to Ultimate? Take a guess... Keep in mind that Apple charged $0 for next to last major OS upgrade and only $29 for the latest one. Here comes the answer - Microsoft wants $155 for the upgrade!!! Again, this is Windows 7 to Windows 7 - just changing flavors! Seriously, guys? I mean, compare that to the overall cost of the laptop!!!

So what are the poor owners of this useless Home Premium edition to do? Return the laptop and pay the restocking fee? Shell out big bucks to Microsoft just to get something that should be (and is on other OSs) so commonplace as to not even occur to ask or wonder about? Well, not without hitting Google first.

First bit of information - we're clearly not the first people asking this question. Duh! Second - here and there folks talk about attempts at circumventing this ridiculous crippleware. They look scary - regedit is prominently featured in convoluted instructions. But what do we have to loose?

The best instructions we came across are from WinCert.net. The author(s) did a very nice job by providing download links to actual language packs and decent instructions for installation/configuration. We decided to go for it. I'll spare you the details, including sneaky behavior by Windows in trying to hide the .cab file from us, etc. Suffice it to say that with a silent prayer, crossing all fingers and toes and rebooting after a particularly alarming registry change, the laptop booted up with a greeting in Russian. Whew!

What can I say - this was yet another in a long series of experiences which reaffirmed my deepest antipathy for Windows. No, other OSs are not perfect, but at least they "speak" your language!

One day with Lion

Having upgraded to MacOS X 10.7 Lion the minute it became available (as one should), I collected some observations (in no particular order) during the first day with Lion. Here we go:

install from App Store - painless. Getting a semblance of an invoice from Apple - not so painless. Getting it reimbursed - we'll see about that...
natural scroll direction - first thing to get disabled (Trackpad preferences). The idea sounds good in principle, and makes sense on iPhone/iPad, but I am not feeling like going against 20 years worth of muscle memory.
new "scrollers" is the hallmark of Lion's GUI changes. While I do not miss old scrollbar arrows (good riddance!), the absence (until you begin to scroll) of an indicator of whether there's more stuff above or below the window edge is concerning...
"back" in browsers - another preference change to get back gesture-based "back" button activation. How come?
dashboard is better accessible now - that is a good thing
TimeMachine on 3rd party support broken. Awaiting a firmware update from QNAP.
Spotlight triggered a VERY long re-indexing of the drive
2GB of RAM minimum - my older Apple Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" 1.83 is out of luck
dock icon badges with white outline scale down very poorly. Apple, are you kidding me???
dropped Java Runtime (though available for download automatically)
no waking up from sleep on trackpad movement? need to either click (which is weird on new trackpads) or hit a key. ANother unnecessary annoyance.
Citrix "AGAdminService" was taking up >90% of CPU resources - uninstalled here.
TechTool Pro 5 seems to take too much CPU as well - disabled it
Adium's Skype plugin does not work - disabled. By the way, tried new iChat with Yahoo Messenger capability - nice, but I am too used to Twitter feed in my Adium, so will stick with that
new scrollbars do not always get well-positioned in older software - NetNewsWire's left-most panel
Finder preference - new windows default to "All My Files" - I do not think so!
so there is no more ~/Library? Yawza! My Mac is morphing into an iPad right in front of my eyes! Option+Go in Finder to get to ~/Library...
three candy widgets at top left are no longer candy. Too small - ever heard of Fitts's law? And .-+ edge-to-edge on mouseover look ugly! Will try going to Appearance = Blue to get the candy back.
New GrowlMail v1.3 is available.
Mail.app - letterbox is finally native! Nice organization of reply threads. Favorite bar - Microsoft Entourage idea?
dialog boxes pop up a bit too aggressively
WTF did they do with Address Book GUI? Apple, where is your legendary simplicity?
native whole-disk encryption

E-books: converting among common formats and generating Stanza catalogs

Today's post is about e-books - more specifically, getting them from my Mac into my iPhone to be read with Stanza. Here is how:

Download e-books from the Internet. If you like books in Russian, check out WebReading. Please note that books there are in a format called fb2 - these need to be converted into epub - a format recognized by many e-book readers, including iPhone's Stanza.

To organize the books on your Mac I suggest the popular Calibre - a free and open source e-book library management application. The interface is a bit unorthodox, but it does the job nicely. Calibre is capable of converting an e-book into a variety of formats, including PDF for reading right on your computer. For my purposes, I converted my e-books to epub.

Next, I wanted to store my e-book collection online so that I can access and download them into Stanza app on my iPhone. I found a free Java-based application that makes that very easy - calibre2opds. This utility scans the Calibre library and generates a catalog that Stanza requires. Resulting files are saved into the same directory as the Calibre library. All that is left to do is to upload the entire directory to a webserver.

Get Stanza app here.

Once your e-book library is online, launch Stanza on your iPhone, click on "Get Books" at the bottom, then "Shared" at the top and finally "Edit." Click "Add Book Source" and use the following URL format: http://www.your-web-server.com/your-calibre-library-directory/_catalog/catalog.xml

Enjoy your e-book collection on your iPhone!

Connect to Remote Desktop Services as Admin on a Mac

So there's an option to connect to a Windows box as administrator with

mstsc /admin

On a Mac using Remote Desktop Connect, type

host_name /console

in "Computer:" filed of new connection window to get the same effect.

Thanks to Remote Desktop Services - Frequently Asked Questions - Administration

VirtualBox Shared Folders with Ubuntu

Basically:

mkdir MOUNTED_FOLDER
id
sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=USER_ID SHARED_FOLDER_NAME MOUNTED_FOLDER

from: valibuk.net Accessing Mac OS X harddrive from Ubuntu in VirtualBox via shared folders

Home Network Topology, March 2010

Home Network Topology, March 2010
Originally uploaded by matveyp

I came across a number of questions about home network topology, and decided to diagram mine and share. I am by no means an expert in networking, so if you have a suggestion or two on optimizing this layout, I would be most grateful.

Internet connectivity is provided by Verion FiOS and they installed Actiontec MI424WR in my basement. I have no objections to it as a router (able to control the firewall, no problems with outbound VPN, etc.), but its wireless is limited to 802.11g and didn't cover the entire house. So I looked for a wireless Access Point and settled on TRENDnet TEW-637AP (that was a over a year ago; I am sure there are other worthy products available now). I turned off Actiontech's wireless and TRENDnet took over - it's been exceptionally stable and I am very happy with it. It is set to 802.11n only.

TRENDnet was wired directly into Actiontech. A bit later it dawned on me that my network was limited to 100GB and I bought an unmanaged Gigabit switch (D-Link DGS 2208) and inserted it between my Actiontech and TRENDnet. I then wired the rest of the network to this switch.

The rest should be fairly self-expanatory. Upper left part of the picture shows my office setup. Note that I use Airport Express in wired mode to stream iTunes to my Logitech speakers (love sound quality!). I have a Network Attached Storage (NAS) box - Hammer Storage myshare. It's a fine NAS box, the only thing that bothers me is that the vendor promised a software upgrade with additional features, including iTunes server, and never delivered. On the plus side, it includes a decent print server and turns my super-cheap HP LaserWriter 1020 into a network printer (1020 is not Mac-compatible according to HP, and they are correct - I make it work but it takes a lot of weird contortions).

Did you notice my Newton Message Pad 2100? Very much alive and well!

Lower right is my AV setup - especially proud of my Mac mini - it is running Boxee and works great. Sound system (Bose LifeStyle 35) is not shown here because it is not on the network.

Not to forget my Slingbox - this amazing little gadget lets me watch my own cabe TV on my computer whenever and wherever I want, and I find myself using it frequently. Two thumbs up!

Also not shown are a bunch of assorted computers that are either not hooked up at all or are rarely used.

Lastly, my iPhone 3G is out of luck because I disabled 802.11g. 3G signal is good around here and I am not finding WiFi connectivity for iPhone all that necessary at home.

What's your home network like?

iPad thoughts

Before reading any media reactions, wanted to jot down some of my thoughts after watching Steve's announcement

• A Mac for couch potato. Hinges on new MacBook Pros do not keep the screen up when trying to use the laptop in the most ergonomic position anyway, so the tablet should be a perfect substitute
• I see it as a "stay home device" - save for using it as a portable video player or a game platform
• Appears perfect for consuming information (text-based, video); likely has similar limitations as iPhone re: data entry
• Communication - without a user-facing camera falls short. Various chats require typing; video-conferencing is far better
• Cons to applications in healthcare - bulky, fragile, limited data entry, though 30-pin connector allows for peripherals
• Mobility factor - seems good to carry around the house, up-to-date WiFi built-in. Larger version of iPod Touch, but at home there's no need for it to fit into a jeans pocket.
• Furthers cloud-based computing - would make sense to keep most if not all data (calendar, address book, bookmarks, RSS subscriptions, video content) in the cloud and sync
• Con - iPhone OS instead of Mac "desktop" OS - introduces limits; encourages more spending at the App Store
• Con - needs a user-facing camera
• If something like Boxee can be built for iPad, I wonder if it could be a contender to a big-screen TV