Brennan’s Blog

I finally purchased an XBox 360 just over a month ago and I immediately started having problems. The screen would freeze at random points and I would have to restart the console. I figured it was just a problem with the games I was playing and that software updates would fix the problems. But when I did connect the console to my home network to get updates from Xbox Live the problems continued. Since the problems were sporadic it took a while to see if the problems remained or if the updates helped at all, but over the next few weeks it froze up many times. It became so frustrating because a few times it failed to save many checkpoints which caused me to redo levels that took me a long time to complete. I decided something had to be done about this flawed hardware and I planned to return it to the store. Later I would get a new one once Microsoft fixed the flaws. By this time it was past the 30 days that Best Buy allows for returns and they refused to do anything about it. If you buy a new Xbox and it locks up just once, return it right away or at least exchange it. Maybe you will get lucky the second time around.

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I have seen a few blog entries related to boosting performance while using Visual Studio recently. The newest entry is by Scott Guthrie. He makes a similar point so what I suggested last year. The hard drive speed is very important. However, I would like to point out some additional details to augment what Scott is suggesting.

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Apple has released iWork and it can open and export documents that are completely compatible with Microsoft Office. I remember as a part of the anti-trust ruling several years ago that Microsoft had to release technical details about their protocols and file formats to their competitors. Perhaps this is a result of having that critical documentation.

Also, I read recently that virtualization is taking another big step. Apparently there is at least one project that is designed to virtualize a single application at at time, so I could potentially run Notepad on a Mac without running a full virtual copy of Windows. It is not clear exactly how this could be possible, especially with a much more complex application like Visual Studio, but I am looking for a way to get away from the buggy experience I have been getting with Dell and Vista.

The new computer that I ordered from Dell has been a nightmare. It is a Dimension C521 with an Athlon 64 processor and 4GB of memory. What I got a was a Vista 32 bit installation with Vista Home Premium which cannot run Virtual PC due to licensing limitations. Vista 32 bit can also only address 3GB of memory so the extra 1GB is being ignored completely.

So what is the logical thing to do? I installed Vista 64 bit Ultimate Edition so that I could run Virtual PC with all 4GB of the memory I purchased. That was a mistake. When the Vista 64 bit installation does the final reboot I kept getting the blue screen with a strange error that I learned was due to the BIOS not supporting more than 3GB of memory. The system booted fine under Vista 32 bit because it safely stayed within those bounds. To correct the problem I spent some time chatting with Dell technical support over the issue and eventually they pointed me to a BIOS update for this apparently known issue after sending me a computer with 4GB of memory and an older version of the BIOS which has this problem.

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A new computer from Dell is on that way that will easily run multiple virtual environments and finally allow my laptop to go portable again. The new computer is a Dimension C521 with an Athlon 64 processor. That is the one with a small form factor. But since it has a 64 bit processor I am not limited to 2GB of memory like my laptop so I bumped it up to 4GB. The new computer is also a dual processor which could be helpful with how I intend to use it. The best part is that I got it all for under $1000 which I did not think would be possible with that much memory.

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A couple of weeks ago I had a problem with my USB drive. As I copied large files (over 400MB) the USB connection would fall and drop the drive. To cope with it I created the Slow Copy Utility which worked a couple of times, but it is still not reliable. Someone suggested to me that changing the USB cable may fix the problem, and I tried that. And I am happy to report that it works! The cable that came with the external drive is the one that was failing. Now I can reach my 500GB SATA drive where I have copied tons of my data, including the ISO files I have pulled down from MSDN.

Due to my problems with copying large files over a USB 2.0 connection I created the SlowCopy Utility. (Offwhite.SlowCopy.zip) It is a command-line utility which takes a source and destination filename as well as an optional chunk size (MB) and wait time (seconds). I was able to copy that 2.6GB MSDN ISO file off my external drive successfully with this utility when a direct copy was failing after a few seconds. I did it with 100MB chunks with a 2 second wait. After 100MB it sleeps for 2 seconds which allows the buffer to clear before copying more data to the destination file.

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A word to the wise, do not use a USB drive enclosure. It is fundamentally flawed and I will explain why.

So, I am having one of those days. Nothing seems to be working as it should. I read blogs via Rojo.com which has been flaky as usual but lately it has been offline a lot lately as they have added more "features" which only serve to make it suck more and more with each release. I am also using MSDN heavily lately and some of the documentation pages on there cause a Server 500 error. It normally goes away after a while but it is persisting today. It is annoying because the problem is becoming more frequent. It has been buggy ever since they added the new community content wiki. So anyway, I had to get to the MSDN documentation in another way.

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I have been using 2 external drive enclosures with 350GB drives but as I add more movies and music and virtual PC images to the drive they have gotten pretty full. Today I ordered a 500GB drive and I was going to order it from CDW but I ran into some trouble. Since I moved this past year it still had my old address associated with my account. I thought that was OK since most sites give you a way to specify a more current address during checkout. That was not the case. I dug around and found the "address change request" form which allows me to request the change, with some sort of delay. It seems there is no way for me to pop in and make an order and be on my way with CDW. So I looked elsewhere.

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I have been watching the prices of LCD TVs the last couple of months. The prices are dropping. Late this summer a friend pointed out that Tiger Direct had the Olevia 37" going for under $1000. Now after the rebate, it comes in at $650. I have not heard of Olevia before, but he says the picture is great.

I plan to get a flat screen which I can hang on a movable bracket on the wall so I can position it depending on where I am sitting. I may be on the couch or at my desk, so I would rotate it as needed. But would I be crazy enough to hang a 37" or 42" LCD on a bracket?

What I may end up doing is waiting till after January to put together the home theater. My guess is all the new wireless components will be out by then and I will be able to assemble a next generation home theater with just the monitor and remote in the living room.

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