Hardware

The day has come when Microsoft officially started to talk about the next version of Office 2010 clients and SharePoint Server 2010 (no longer Office SharePoint Server). We have since some time known that SharePoint 2010 will be supported only on a 64-bit platform, just as Exchange 2007. The new stuff revealed yesterday (as preliminary) are that not only is 64-bit required, it will only be supported on the Windows Server 2008 64-bit platform (including R2) and it will require that you have SQL Server 2008 on a 64-bit platform. There are some other interesting facts that you should check out also in the post (and on about 1.000 other blog posts), but this post is not just about these news.

Wow, two heavy-weight Windows Mobile phones; Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 and HTC Touch Pro. In a few months I am ready to get me a new phone. I currently use the HTC TyTN, which has been a very pleasant ride (except for the glitching screen right now, to many drops…). When Sony Ericsson announced XPERIA X1 in march I got so excited and decided to get me one as soon as it hits the stores. Today HTC announced that they will continue their Touch series with the HTC Touch Pro, another sweet dream! So which one will be mine?

A couple of weeks ago I bought the Belkin N1 Vision router and was really impressed with the design, usability and performance of it. This was until I tried to connect to my work using a Cisco VPN - it just did not work! The specifications for the router states that it has VPN support; IPSec pass-through and PPTP. On other routers I have seen methods to enable/disable IPSec pass-through in the router configuration, but I could not locate it in the N1 setup utility. After some googling I found out that this is always enabled on the N1 Vision, duh - guess not!

I am really keen on gadgets and devices and have for some time had troubles with my current wireless routers so today I acquired a brand new Belkin N1 Vision wireless router. The reason for choosing this one was many but one of the most important ones was the WAF, Wife Acceptance Factor. Since it is placed central in our home the router must be good looking and that is exactly was Belkin N1 Vision is.

Recently my laptop (DELL XPS m1210) has been really sluggish and I have had several BSOD’s when I have been working with it. I try to keep it pretty optimized and up to date so it will behave nice. I think I’ve read most of the optimize Vista articles and posts and I always keep track on which processes and services running and how much memory is used etc etc.

Apple just released their new version of Max OS X (10.5) called Leopard, which of course has a real neat user interface and really cool experience - the Apple trademark. I have seen a lot of people moving on to the Mac platform the last years, but then we talk about personal and niche users and so far the Apple OS X share is about 4% compared to XP’s 80% and Vistas 8%.

The Windows Media Center Components Database is now live! MCE components is a site which targets Windows Media Center self-builders with help to choose components and to see how the components work together. To help build the database you can add your own system and grade it to help others out. There are currently about 100 systems entered into the database and it will keep growing, as long as you help out. When you are adding your system you will rate it, on a scale 1 to 5, in stability, noise and performance. You can also enter your Windows Experience Index stats, if you are using Vista.

NVIDIA has relaunched it’s driver section and now includes a tool that you can use to scan your machine for the correct NVIDIA graphics driver. To find the correct driver head over to the NVIDIA Driver Downloads section, and either choose to automatically find your driver or make a manual search. The manual search works fine and I find the correct driver directly for my GeForce 6600:

If you have an Ahanix computer case (in my case an MCE 302-SA) with a Samsung VFD and have upgraded your HTPC system to Windows Vista you may have found out that the VFD does not work nor does the drivers available from the Ahanix web site. But to your rescue there is FrontView for MCE by Media Center Magic. FrontView is an alternative to the default drivers for numerous LCD and VFD displays (CrystalFontz, Samsung, SilverStone etc) optimized for Media Center experience and with a highly customizable interface.

Yesterday NVIDIA released a new set of beta drivers for Microsoft Windows Vista, v 158.18. The drivers supports the GeForce 6, 7 and 8 series (not the mobile ones). Apart from a number of bug fixes and improvements (to the NVIDIA Control Panel, improved WMV playback quality and 3D performance) the new interesting feature is the PureVideo HD support. But there are numerous things for NVIDIA to fix, jus read the Release Notes.

NVIDIA is continuing thier path to a great driver for Windows Vista. A week ago they released ForceWare 100.65 which is a WHQL certified driver, it does not contain anything revolutionary but is stable (that’s pretty good enough right now). Yesterday NVIDIA took another step forward with a beta of ForceWare 101.41 which is the driver we all have been waiting for since the launch of Vista, four months ago! Performance is better, flat panel scaling is fixed, reduced flickering when using Aero and lots of more stuff. In a few weeks we should expect a non-beta.

Robert Scoble is writing about that the analog TV will be turned off (Turn off analog TV? It’ll never happen) in two years and that he thinks this is not going to happen. This is exactly what’s happening in Sweden right now, by the next few months the last analog terrestrial broadcast is turned off. I think this is great except for that almost every TV has analog recievers and you therefore have to buy another box, with a new remote etc etc. Thank god I’m using a Media Center computer :-), anyone have any suggestions for a good HD Ready dual digital-TV tuner card compatible with Windows Vista?

 NVIDIA has released a new beta of the ForceWare Graphics Drivers Release 100 (100.64) for Windows Vista (32 bit and 64 bit), which is one step forward in their new official plans for a functional Windows Vista driver. According to the Release Notes there are still a lot of missing features, a lot of known issues and only a few small fixes, since the 97.46 WHQL driver. If you experience any kind of problems please go to the newly established Vista Quality Assurance program by NVIDIA and report any problems with the NVIDIA drivers. Please submit any kind of NVIDIA related problems you have on Windows Vista so we can get working drivers for Windows Vista.

NVIDIA has been struggling with the drivers for Windows Vista and this has not gone unnoticable and they are even facing a possible class action. NVIDIA has now publicly released their plans for the ForceWare drivers for Vista. In short here is what we can expect: February - new WHQL certified drivers, probably not anything fancy or new about this one, big thing is that they will probably work fine March - new drivers with new features. TV output and HDTV support including overscan - finally!!! April - new drivers that targets DirectX 10 SLI support and support for H.264 decoding. May - new drivers again, what will be in them is not announced Let’s hope they can keep this time schedule - they are already late…

NVIDIA has released ForceWare Release 100 as a beta for Windows Vista, mainly to support the 8800 graphics cards but it works with all the 6/7/8 series. The Release 100 contains an updated NVIDIA Control Panel which contains new functions for scaling the display so finally I can use 100% of my plasma screen. So far it has been working fine, except for when you once have made your settings do not enter the Control Panel again cause it will the revert to default or faulty settings!

Thinking about the environment is a high-priority nowadays and I stumbled across an interesting article on how we could save money and possible preserve the environment - Black Google Would Save 3,000 Megawatts a Year. The point in this article is that a CRT monitor uses up to 15 watts less power with a black screen instead of white, and as you know power costs money and affects the environment, mostly, in a negative way.

When trying to install the latest NVIDIA ForceWare (97.46) drivers for Windows Vista RTM I ran into some troubles. First of all I downloaded English version which should be installed on a english Windows Vista Ultimate. This did not work at all. The setup exited and said nothing has changed - do you want to reboot? Then Windows Vista popped up an error dialog stating that I needed to download a fix for Age of Empires - duh!

Finally, NVIDIA WHQL ForceWare Release 95, version 97.46, is available for Windows Vista RTM (build 6000). It’s available for download at the NVIDIA website (x86 and x64). I have not yet tested it but the Release Notes states that support for overscan/underscan is not implemented in this release - not good, this is what I was expecting from this release, there are multiple things in the control panel not yet implemented (as they were in Windows XP). There are some bugs fixed and I hope the flickering when switching from the Desktop to Media Center is gone.

It has gone several weeks since the launch of Windows Vista and I am still waiting for a non-beta release of the NVIDIA ForceWare drivers! What are you guys doing? Are you waiting for the release to the general public in January? On the NVIDIA website only drivers for RC2, from october 17th, are available. These drivers do not contain the functionality to fine tune my plasma TV, nor does the standard drivers in Vista, like it can be done in Windows XP.

Yesterday I abandoned my streak of Sony-Ericsson mobile phones which started many years ago. In fact it started when I was studying and working for the summer at one of Ericssons mobile phone assembly lines with the GH-688. Since 1996 I have been using them, except for a short period when my employer forced me to use a Nokia. I was choosing between upgrading my Sony-Ericsson P910i to a Sony-Ericsson P990 or the HTC TyTN. After some consideration I went to the mobile phone store and made a deal with the salesman.