GearWERKZ TechBlog

Before I get into what I've been into this week, I just want to show some props and give my host provider a shout-out. I have been with Hostmonster a skosh over one year, and my time with them has been nothing short of excellent. The 'WERKz has been in existence in one format or another for some 10 years. In that time I have been with 3 host providers. The first was utterly abject from jump. The 2nd grew long in the tooth, initially offering excellent customer service, and then sliding into complacency. If you have been coming here for some time, I reckon that the number of times you come to the site to find it unavailable are few and far between. I know because I check its availability just about every day, and typically several times a day. Hostmonster provides both the backbone for the main site, as well as my email and some of my other online services. I can not even recall so much as an email blip in the last year. Kudos to you HM; and here's to another great year ahead.

Now, on to what has been going on in the batcave.

Follow up:

First of all, I am hanging out at Panera Bread for a little blogging time. I am working from the Acer Aspire Timeline 4810T, in the Ubuntu partition. I have been a little cranky with the Acer's performance this week (again, when using it in the Ubuntu OS). My web surfing experience in Firefox has been spotty at best, and there have been some wonky episodes with interaction with my home network. I suspected a slightly wonky LINUX driver/Acer HW interaction. Switching to Opera as my browser has made things a little better. That combined with watching my first video on the Acer's LINUX partition (an MPEG4 encode of an episode of the Discovery Channel's "How It's Made"), has lead me to a "smile's up" outlook on the Acer as I continue through the weekend.

Most of my computer time this weekend has been spent in a vigorous effort to move my entire workgroup over to Windows 7. I have migrated all of the Windows-based machines over to Win7 successfully, with only the Acer remaining. Not a big deal, as it was the last machine I submitted my request for my free upgrade for. While I am entitled to a free upgrade to Windows 7 on the HP 2730p EliteBook, I wound up ordering a separate license for Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. When I registered for my free upgrade, HP could see that I had Windows Vista Business 32-bit installed, and so that is all they would send me. Despite the fact that my TabletPC actually came with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Vista Business 32-bit, and Vista Business 64-bit. Oh, well, not a big deal. I have Win7 Pro 64-bit installed and the 2730p is positively humming along now. It was the right call.

Most of the installs went down without a hitch. The only thing bugging me now is that on the Fujitsu U820, I have been unable to get the hardware buttons and keys on the laptop chassis to work. While some of the buttons are not important, I would like to have the functionality of the light, the display rotation button, and the scroll keys. These are buttons I actually use and I consider the Fuji as not giving me the full functionality that I want without them operable.

I had some time slated to get some gaming time in on the Gateway P-6860FX, which would have marked my first opportunity to observe gaming performance in a Windows 7 environment (since the official release). Unfortunately, my Playstation 3 crew threw a wrench in that plan, so it will be a little while longer before I can comment on my own perception of gaming in Windows 7.

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