Posts

Posted on

Throwing In The Towel

I am officially throwing in the towel on Vista. It just got to frustrating to handle, it was so unstable that anything could bring up a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). I cannot blame Microsoft entirely on this one. But what I can say without a question is that NVIDIA & Apple should be thrown in front of an oncoming bullet train. They were the two companies that made my life miserable the most with Vista. NVIDIA’s role in this nightmare was not being able to deliver stable drivers for their motherboard or video chipsets. It’s not like this new OS was sprung on them out of nowhere. The final shipping version of the OS has been available for enterprise customers since November. They have been receiving a lot of flack about the current state of their drivers from their faithful fans. I just couldn’t stand my system sitting idly and then all of a sudden *BOOM* blue screen. Or my raid array being broken every couple of days and having to wait for it to rebuild. Enough is enough, I’ll give it another 3 months or so before I attempt to install Vista again.

Now onto my gripe with Apple, can someone say iTunes? Is Steve Jobs insane enough to think that by holding back on a version of iTunes that works on Vista, it will make people jump ship for Macs? Enough already iTunes worked better on Beta versions of the OS than it did on the retail version. Their latest release of the software that supposedly fixes Vista compatibility still crawls like a dog and is still not recommended for x64 versions. God to import several MP3s took about 15 minutes for processing alone.

Last night when I had the latest crash for no reason whatsoever, I had to have a little reality check. Was there any benefit at the moment to running Vista over XP? The answer was a resounding ‘NO’, not even close. Besides all the eye candy there is not much else being offered as a benefit at the moment. I could however list all the negatives, the biggest one being lack of drivers. So back to XP I went and quite frankly my system runs faster under XP then it did with Vista.

Posted on

Netflix: Watch Now

I logged into my Netflix account today to find that I am one of the lucky ones to get access to the new service early. The new service shows up as a new tab on your account webpage. I didn’t go thoroughly into the movie offerings, rather I chose one off the main page that I liked. My choice was ‘Black Rain’ and I wasn’t disappointed at all at least not with their service. I will get into what went wrong several times afterwards. The first time you launch a movie you are asked to install the Netflix software on your system, which is automatic once you agree. The movie is then queued up and you are asked to obtain the play rights for the file. After you hit yes and hit play the movie then queues up for play, which happens pretty quickly. I think from the time I hit play to the movie actually playing was a matter of 3-4 seconds. The image quality was excellent, better than I expected. I am fortunate enough to have a fat pipe (30mbs down) and thus could stream at the highest settings. You have options on the main page to select the level of quality for those who might be bandwidth challenged. Below are links to several articles that discuss the service in more detail.
Gizmodo: Hands On the Netflix Download Video Service: Thumbs Up
Hackin Netflix: Breaking: Netflix Launches “Watch Now” Downloads
I almost forgot, the problem I had was with Vista constantly crashing if I fast forwarded through the movie. I am not chalking that one up to Netflix rather to Vista and the lack of any really stable drivers for the hardware I am running. You would figure if you had top of the line components they would have stable drivers. Not so as many of the NVIDIA faithful have found out the hard way. Driver status for NVIDIA hardware is just plain pitiful at the moment.

Posted on

What A Weekend

What a very crazy weekend it has been. I was getting ready to head into the city on Friday when my wife walks back into the door about 20 minutes after leaving for work. It winds up we had a good rain that night that froze into a sheet of ice. Needless to say she took a pretty big spill when she slipped on the sidewalk. I wound out canceling my city appointments and drove my wife to the hospital to be checked out. She didn’t break anything, thank god. However, she did need to have her arm put in a sling and have collar put around her neck to brace it.
Saturday I went into the city to update the firmware on the firewalls at one of my clients as well as install a couple of rack mount UPS. My wife joined me to keep me company even though she was in pain and not feeling too well. The firmware updates went smoothly. By the way Sonicwall is my new choice when it comes to firewalls, they have a terrific complete product offering. I then moved on the UPS. All was well until I unboxed both UPS to find my supplier forgot to supply me the network interface cards for them. That didn’t make me happy and does not bode well for my supplier. He will get an earful on Monday morning. Word of warning folks, do not attempt to rack mount UPS alone. I forgot how heavy these beasts are. I was able to get them in alone but I am paying for it the now, my back is killing me the day after. Continue reading “What A Weekend”

Posted on

Japanese RV?

I was on my way back from a vendor meeting in New Jersey when I saw this on the turnpike. Not sure what it was but I would guess it’s a Civic RV. I had to share this picture with everyone.

Civichouse

Enjoy!

Posted on

You Call This An Enterprise Firewall?

I have implemented various firewalls through out the years, but I can say with confidence that the Symantec lines of firewalls are the worst I have ever used. Well at least the 1620, but the entire line utilizes the same software which seems to be the underlying problem. I was installing two units in a failover configuration for an insurance company I service as well as a media buying firm. Both were being setup using content filtering with user authentication against their Active Directory. That’s when I came across a bug that dumb founded the Symantec support desk. Evidently there is an issue with having different levels of content filtering depending on which Active Directory group a user belongs to. I couldn’t believe that no one else has come across this bug before. They bumped this up to their global support group and to the developers. Three days later they still couldn’t give me a fix even though they were able to replicate the problem in their own labs. The real fun part was when I was informed by the support tech that Symantec was ceasing selling their hardware firewalls. That was enough for me to pack up the units and move to a Sonicwall solution for both clients. We have been extremely happy with the Sonicwall solution thus far.

Sgs1620

Posted on

The Day After

Wow, I never thought I would have received the attention I did for the PS3 rant that I wrote. I basically wrote it to vent my frustration I was having with my new PS3. Kotaku picked up my rant because they were having similar problems. From there it was picked up by a couple of other sites and then someone submitted it to Digg. It went front page on Digg in about an hour and then all hell broke loose. I was getting about 100 unique visitors every minute or so. After all was said and done I had over 50,000 hits to my site. I have heard a lot about the Digg effect taking down sites. I have to thank 1and1.com, which is my hosting company. My site never buckled under the strain of the quick increased traffic.

For those that commented on Digg about the story. I am in no means a Microsoft fan-boy. I just call it like I see it. I own all three systems the Xbox360, PS3 and the Wii. The 360 thus far is my favorite and the Wii is a blast to play. Rayman: Raving Rabbids is by far my favorite thus far on the Wii console.

The one thing that looked odd with some of the comments were as if they were made by people on the Sony payroll, trying to do some damage control. Then there were those that were definite PS3 fan-boys. No matter what was written in the press or how bad a personal experience they had with the PS3, they were able to come up with some illogical reason why it was great. For example:

Exactly .. that stuff is enough to warrant it’s first year of existence without any good games.

Everyone has their own loyalties to certain manufacturers and that is fine. I was just voicing my opinions on my personal experience wit the PS3. To quote Dennis Miller “That’s just my opinion, I could be wrong!”

 

Posted on

PS3 WTF?

What the hell was Sony thinking when they released the PS3? Did they really think they had a superior product compared to the Xbox 360? Remember last year when Kazuo Hirai, President/CEO of Sony made the comment that the Xbox 360 was actually Xbox 1.5? I guess in those terms the PS3 is actually Playstation 2.1. Here is a company that had an entire year to watch what its competition (Microsoft) was doing and doing right. Besides having the right mix of hardware for its console, Microsoft also had a beautiful well thought out interface (Blades). To top that off their way of building a community of gamers through its Live service is top notch. One place to interact with all your friends and online acquaintances. Through Live you can message, voice/video chat, see what all your buddies are playing and easily join them or send them an invite to a game you are playing. Network capability came after the PS2 was launched and always felt like an after thought to any online game that was written for it. Where as the 360 was built around the network capabilities of the unit. You would think that Sony would have figured out that this is what made the 360 what it is today. Either the designers/developers have never played with a 360 or just don’t get the online multiplayer community at all. Multiplayer online once again takes the back seat on the PS3. I was surprised to see how basic and archaic their online multiplayer interface was or better yet complete lack of it. What I mean is if I play with someone in one game and enjoy playing with him and add him to my buddy list it is only good for that one game title. I cannot find that user in another game title. Better yet from the main menu I can’t find any buddies what so ever. Get a clue already, I hope they are getting bashed in the head over this by other consumers enough for them to stand up and make the necessary modifications to their system to allow buddies to be seen in any game title as well as the main interface.

Continue reading “PS3 WTF?”

Posted on

Vista + Zune = NOT!

There are a lot of mixed reviews out there for the Zune. So I decided to purchase the Zune and give it a try for myself. I walked into a local BestBuy and took a look at the unit and it wasn’t too shabby looking especially the brown version. I had to inform the salesperson that they should remove the Plays For Sure tag since it is not. I get home unpack the software slip it into my workstation and off I go. First couple of screens went fine, then it checked for updates. Then to my amazement I was greeted with Vista is not a supported OS check back later. Check back later? Didn’t Vista go gold last week, didn’t they have a ton of downloads for the Betas. Maybe it’s just me but the people picking this thing up are mainly geeks in the know since there hasn’t been a huge media blitz as of yet. So wouldn’t it be wise to have support for Vista out of the box or at least downloadable by launch. There is no indication if there will be any support soon from their site so looks like I will be returning the unit. My other choice is to wipe my system in order to use the unit. I think not!!!!!
Bad move Microsoft another plus for Apple since iTunes runs under Vista.. get a clue will ya.
http://www.zune.net/en-US/meetzune/software/OS_not_supported.htm
Zunevista

Posted on

PlayStation 3 Release Nears

Well we have seven days left before some of the chosen are graced with their new PS3s. I know I will be one of them perplexed with placing my unit on EBay or playing it. I will probably choose the later. It seems that all that good weather in California makes people crazy, it seems as of yesterday several people started a line at a Burbank, CA Best Buy store for the PS3 release. Kotaku has a picture of the super hardcore gamers / campers at that location. That just ruins it for everyone else that planned on waiting overnight for the unit. It only take one nut to force everyone else to call in sick for the week so they can stand in line behind him. Hopefully the campers have some sort WiFi available, this way they read the full PS3 manual that sony just posted while they wait and wait and wait and wait…

Enjoy:

Best Buy Line: http://kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/ps3-campers-already-in-line-at-best-buy-213422.php

PS3 Manual: http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/index.html

Posted on

Off To The Show

I’m in the city and done for the day. I am going to venture down to Broadway and 45th and find a Pub to have a couple of drinks before I see a show. My wife will be meeting me to see “A Chorus Line”. I will let you know what I thought of it when I get back home this evening. Today starts my Broadway season, it’s the time of the year I see alot of shows. I pefer the city when the weather is cooler and the air is crisper.
Ciao