Great Windows Weather Gadget

I still have Vista on my notebook PC, it works fine for what I want and I liked the weather gadget that was in the side bar. If you dragged the gadget out of the sidbar it grew bigger and and gave you a forecast for 5 days. This weather gadget worked well I thought and I had no need to update it.

We recently got a HTC Desire mobile phone and the sense interface is great. The front scree with the clock and weather looks fantastic. I have found a Windows version of this Clock/Weather gadget. It is called HTC Home. It workd well, doesn’t slow my PC and looks just as good as on our HTC Desire. The animations look pretty but I wish they didn’t animate quite so long, 5 seconds would be plenty.

I did find that although you have a choice of two places it can get it’s weather information from – Accuweather and MSN –  one was not very accurate, strangely it’s name suggests it is accurate. Remember I am in Australia so maybe they are better in the US, MSN seems fine. Give it a try and see what you think www.htchome.org/en/

Non Destructive Partitioning For Windows 7 and Vista

A short time back I bought a small pocket hard drive – just a Western Digital 320GB USB version. The idea was to fill it with some music and movies and have it plugged into the Sony PS3. The idea was fine, I put the videos on the HDD and plugged it into the PS3 Slim but it didn’t see anything.

The problem I discovered was that the drive was formatted NTSF and I needed Fat32 that the Sony PS3 recognises. Windows 7 and Vista have basic HDD tools but I was not able to format the drive with out losing data.
So I searched for disk partition tools that can reformat and resize non destructively – that is, I can leave the data on it and not lose anything. Nortons version is probably the most known but has not been updated for ages and does not work above XP (don’t try it , it corrupts the disk in Vista, Win 7). To be honest I did not find many at all. I ended up finding a neat Free Partition Magic Alternative that works with Vista and Windows7 including 64bit versions. It is called Partition Wizard . And it is completely FREE!

Of course this is a program that hardly anyone ever really needs and if you do it is probably only once or twice. I installed, used it as I needed than uninstalled it. Being free is fantastic because I did not want to pay for something I would only use once. They do have a Bootable version that I could have used instead, I wonder how easy it would be to have a USB bootable version? If you need a Vista or Windows 7 version of Partition Magic then this is the one tool I recommend.

Out Now, Windows Vista Service Pack 2

I have just turned on my Toshiba notebook at home and it popped up saying a new Windows update is available (I don’t have it on auto as I like to see what the updates are). Anyway, the update is 343.9MB , wow big, and it says it is Windows Vista SP2, yes service pack 2.

I haven’t heard any rumours about another service pack coming up for Vista. I wonder if it will improve performance, probably not because they would want Windows 7 to look the best when it comes out soon.

Well it’s downloading now, 12% complete, so I will see what has changed and if it has made any difference for me.

Anyone out there knew there was a Vista SP2 coming out now?

Dell Adamo Notebook Out Now For Australia

I am not sure how many people have heard of Dell computers amazing looking Adamo notebook PC, I only heard of it the other day. Dells release date is today and you can have a look at it on their Adamo website. I think it is pronounced Ah Dah Mo.

The notebook looks amazing, made of milled aluminium like some of the Apple notebooks and super thin – thinner than Apples Air PC !wow! A 13.4 inch HD screen that is flat glass to the edge, a fair number of ports and includes adaptors to use them (no extra cost I think) – eSata is great, my Toshiba has it and I connect my External HDD to it (and it can be used as a normal USB if needed) and the whole thing only .6inches thin (the air was a fat .76 🙂 ) .

The packaging is very iPod like and a first I would think for notebook marketing, I am betting others start doing it soon. The outer faces of the aluminium are an etched finish and look superb. A backlit keyboard with nice scalloped keys, I wish my current notebook had backlit keys, including my Netbook. Dell say the Adamo will get about 5 hours on the battery, not bad if true.

There are a few photos around but not many, I have taken stills from the Adamo video and it’s in black and white. Actually the computer will be available in two colours as well, Onyx and Pearl (black and white really).

The price will be around $1,999 US, not sure about Australian prices for the Adamo, hope it is not too bad as I would like to buy one if it is cheap enough with the Australian dollar as it is.

Leopard: 300 New Features, 300 New Bugs

Funny stuff from Mary Foley read the whole article and the crazy comments as well. I know I sound like an anti-Apple guy at the moment but I am not, I am more anti-fanboy. I think both OSX and Vista are fine operating systems.

I hope you like the leopard bug photo 🙂

….Apple advocates are doing the unthinkable: They’re complaining publicly about a new Apple product release.

Even typically staunch Mac backers are admitting that Apple’s new Leopard operating system is not perfect. It might even be as problem-prone (if not more so) as Windows Vista. Could Leopard go so far as to drive some switchers into Vista’s arms? Sounds crazy, but who knows….

Sneaky Microsoft Update changes settings

The other day (well last week), using my PC at home as usual, I got notification that there was an update for my Vista Premium – I only have it checked for Notification and not to download or install and only for Windows Update.

I checked what the update was for and found that Office Update(I think, maybe, it’s called Microsoft Update)  was enabled and ready to download a tonne of stuff. I checked the Update setting and it had been changed to include all Microsoft stuff (Office) and was set for Full automatic downloads and install – not what I had it before.

It seems that maybe, Microsoft has pushed another (or maybe the same one) Update silently without users permission and it has changed these settings.

Not a nice thing to do Microsoft. I thought it was strange but just set it back to how I want it and forgot about it but now I have read that others are reporting this as well and Microsoft has replied saying  “no, it’s not me”! Too many saying it has happened to just say”not me” I think.