Windows 7 running on a MacBook Pro in VirtualBox – The Ultimate Sin

I think I’ve committed several sins here. I installed VirtualBox so I could set up a Windows 7 machine. No big deal, I’ve done that dozens of times in the past, but now I’ve done it under the OSX using the Macbook Pro work just gave me. I believe I hear a torch bearing crowd gathering outside the castle walls! Actually, it runs very well, at least so far. I don’t really have anything installed yet, but Windows is quite responsive with just the 2GB of ram I gave it. I need to do browser tests and some of that will have to be done under Windows – curse you IE!! Things are working out pretty well so far. VirtualBox works exactly the same under OSX so getting a machine up and running only took a few minutes. Now, I’m not connecting it to AD or any other MS systems, it’s simply there to connect to the Internet and load […]

A forced upgrade to Windows 8

Because of an foreseen and ultimately catastrophic computer screw up I had to reimage my work machine and start over. To add to the misery of losing an entire day of work I realized I couldn’t reinstall back to Windows 7 and would have to use the new corporate standard of Windows 8. This did not make me happy. Like Windows 7, the install was quite quick (it took longer than normal because this was a custom build that also included Office 2013) and in short order the new OS was up and running. First off it presented me with a cartoon representation of Seattle and the Space Needle. Ok, now what? After starting at the screen waiting for it to do something, I realized this is the new logon screen. I thought it was still installing. Apparently the Ctrl-Alt-Delete that we’ve used since NT 3.1 isn’t there. Ok fine, a different way to log in so be it. So […]

SSD – Not for my OS, but for my frequently used programs

I previously wrote that I wasn’t sure what I should do with my 120GB SSD. Should it run the OS? Should it hold the pagefile? Should it hold the TEMP folder? Well, everyone has an opinion and no one agrees. But I do have an idea. So here’s what I did. The main OS, Windows 7, is on the 3TB Barracuda. The pagefile (all 16MB of it) is on the secondary 3TB Barracuda. The SSD now holds my most frequently used apps. I didn’t put anything as clunky as Office on there, instead I install apps like Notepad++, Firefox, CCleaner, Irfanview, FastStone Image Viewer, FastStone Image Resizer, WinRAR, FocusWriter and XYPlorer. I run these every day and multiple times a day. It makes sense to put them on the fastest drive in the system. And they do start up amazingly fast. I’m sure there will be other small utility apps I’ll install there as I continue to get this machine […]

Curse you power management!!

Ok, help me understand something. When I go into Control Panel and set the Power Options so that my machine is Always On and to use as much power as possible to keep my machine running at full speed with my drives always spinning and my monitor always on, why do my network cards still go to sleep? And further more, who in the hell decided putting a network card to sleep was a way to save energy? Seriously, in the grand scheme of things, what the hell is that accomplishing? I kept noticing my Windows 7 machine would drop network connections. I set it to be on full power all the time. When I forced it to connect to a website, everything would "wake up" and all would be well again. Seems the network cards (Wifi and LAN) have a Power Management tab of their own and I had to disable the option of them going to sleep. What […]

Windows 8, you scare me

I’ve been reading about the upcoming features of Windows 8 and I have to say I’m far from impressed. Now that Microsoft has been handed their asses in the both the tablet and mobile market, they’ve decided to forego fixing the deficiencies of Windows 7 and are overcompensating by making everything touch enabled and mobile ready. That’s a great idea, but I have no use for such things in my desktop OS. I don’t want those damnable widgets I’ve seen on the Windows 7 phone. That is a horrible UI for a desktop. The only cloud feature I need is something as easy and convenient as Dropbox, except more secure. I don’t want everything tied to Internet Explorer. Is the ability to make an ISO something I need to wait for an entirely new OS for? Why can’t I manipulate ZIP and RAR files natively in Windows? Why do I have to use a file manager tool as antiquated as […]