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Darth Scarlett

After noticing that my Laptop was not Spinning down its HDD, I decided to investigate, a quick google and on the first page I found a useful page: Power Management - Ubuntu Wiki . After going through the guide, I noticed that my Harddrive was spinning down very quickly. After a bit of experimentation with different settings for the spindown time, I realise that the issue was with the APM settings overriding the spindown setting. The solution was use a setting of 128 to 255 and the HDD will spin down according to the spindown setting - anything less than 127 (lower values = more power saving) and the spindown setting is ignored. I assume this is something specific to my HDD. Another change is that I have enable control of CPU throttling,

The result of these changes is that I am getting 15 to 30 more minutes usage time on battery (was approx 2 hours before).

If your wondering where I have been, well, I apart from a summer vacation touring the South of England, I have been migrating slowly to Linux. The distribution I have currently chosen is Linux Mint. I think this is a more polished and stable version of Ubuntu, but not just that, but its default configuration is closer to how I prefer things to be configured.

I am still considering using Debian Testing, but am waiting to for Lenny (the current testing) to be released to see how long it takes for the new testing to stabilise.

So this is where the problems start. First delay was waiting for my new HDD to arrive for my laptop. After waiting a week for my HDD, I then suffered my next problem it was my Windows machine corrupting the Linx Mint livecd ISO download, not just once, but twice ! This added a few more days delay.
The next delay was that the livecd kept locking my laptop up. After 3 attempts on different nights I managed to get Mint installed. So about 3 weeks in and I have Linux Mint installed, but my laptop is still freezing. I download and run the Ubuntu 8.04 livecd and suffer the same problem, I work out its a display issue as the machine does not lockup when xorg is not running, so I create a new bug report on launchpad: Dell C400 (i830) freezes in Hardy. This take some more time to resolve and whilst this issue is ongoing, I then require a new laptop battery and I aslo decide to add a bit more ram. So eventually I get a stable Laptop and my new HDD decides to fail and make impressions of an angle grinder, so whilst that is being returned, I have reinstalled Mint on my old HDD, about 1 month on and I finally have a stable Linux install !

http://www.mstsoftware.com/en/Products/mst-Defrag/mst-Defrag-new

I've been running this for a few days and so far seems 100% stable, well worth testing, especially with the generous 60 day trial.

The main new feature is the command line tool which can be scheduled using the built in windows scheduler.

This is great, because it gives you the option of both the proactive and the scheduled defrag, which is a unique feature.

The proactive mode is great at defragging actual files, but I found it does not do space consolidate very well, by creating a regular schedules you can over come this weakness as the scheduled manual defrag does.

Hopefully they have worked to fix the issue of defragging difficult to defrag drives as reported by Donn Edwards: http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/2007/07/great-defrag-shootout-xix-mst-defrag-20.html , then this could well become a favourite of mine.

Windows XP reaches its sell-by date in a few days (with the exception of XP Home "either June 30, 2010, or one year after the general availability of the next version of Windows"). default.mspx

Mainstream support ends 4/14/2009. That's only 10 months full support left ! Extended support ends 4/8/2014. Which is security fixes only, no new versions of browsers, media players or support for newer products (eg though, doubtful, next version of office might not support XP due to using a Vista only feature that will not get backported to XP).

Even with XP SP3 only recently been released, Microsoft clearly states: "When support for a product ends, support of the service packs for that product will also end." default.aspx?scid=fh%3Ben-us%3Blifecycle&LN=EN-US&x=20&y=10#Service%20Pack%20Support

Will XP's extended support be enough for those who want to continue using XP ?

Will people who intially dismissed Vista, consider upgrading to Vista in the near future ?

Or will people who do not want to or cannot (eg people with ultra portable and sub notebooks) use Vista yet, hold out with XP until the next version of Windows is out in 2010 ?

Or will people start migrating away from Vista to Mac or Linux ?

I have always been a fan of Linux, and if I wanted to move to Linux 100% tomorrow (I am currently happy with XP though). I have 3 personal machines that do not meet the specification to run Vista and have no need to upgrade them to anything faster, so upgrading to Vista is not an option. So I still need to decide to keep XP until Windows 7 comes out or move at-least partially to Linux.

Computerworld has some insight into this topic, http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9070119

Windows XP was massively popular, Vista is in the Shadows, but IMHO will provide a good stepping stone towards Windows 7, which will be more popular that Vista, which Windows 7 will build upon (and be 100% compatible with).

Windows XP has been a very popular OS, it managed to successfully build on the rock solid Windows 2000 and replace the lack-lustre Windows ME in one fell swoop. XP SP2 offered a significant improvements to further improve the reputation and popularity of Windows XP. Read Features_new_to_Windows_XP - Wikipedia, to find out more about about what was new in XP.

Windows XP managed a reign of approximately 5 years before Vista was finally released.

Vista has not met expectations on many levels, slipped release dates, number of features dropped, poor release reception, manufacturers complaints about lack of support to get drivers ready for launch, then compounded by other bad press Microsoft has had around and since Vista launch. Read Windows Vista - Wikipedia for more information about Vista.

Its not all doom and gloom for Microsoft though, XP is still their old faithful, by the time Windows 7 is launched, Vista will have matured and as Windows 7 will be 100% Vista compatible people will have far less fears about upgrading. They have the foundations laid with Vista already, being able to spend time on optimising, GUI etc should make for the OS Vista should of been.

Microsoft has learnt from its past mistakes about releasing information about planned features and is being far more tight lipped, which should help to minimise the negative publicity that occurred during the development and release of Vista. Windows 7 the story so far and Windows 7 - Wikipedia both have more details about Windows 7.

My arm is feeling a lot better and am back to blogging.

I have been working on an updated version of my gallery code for YACS, I had hoped to get it complete in time for integration for the next big release - YACS 8.6 Macnana, but progress was slow and I missed the deadline. For now I will be concentrating on supporting the website, I shall be moderating the next English chat session on the 19th June and spend some time with documentation. Next week I shall be spending some time testing and helping to bug fix YACS 8.6 Macnana. One test will be to setup a dedicated blog on www.moneytrafficblog.net and serve as a great way to kickstart the www.moneytrafficblog.net project.

This week I will finish putting together my Windows defragmentation tool review and also posting some comments on why I think Windows 7 will be a massive success.

I thought I would share a photo of myself with my broken arm and my little daughter Scarlett, 5 months old. In a week my pot is coming off and I am hoping for some better sleep and be able to type more comfortably.

Me and Scarlett

Emule 0.49a was released on the May 11th 2008.

The new features of eMule 0.49a include Kad improvements ( obfuscation, better NAT, flood protection), changes to the messaging system (Captchas), GUI improvements (ability to save searches, search filtering of shared files) and the usual bug fixes and tweaks.

You can download Emule from the official Emule site. Download Emule 0.49a