Sunday, September 28, 2008

Vista Can't See XP

Yesterday, my friend Vlad bought a Toshiba laptop for personal use and we thought it would be great to play Need For Speed: Underground 2 or Heroes of Might and Magic 5 together, but little did we know that it will take hours of hassle to get Vista to recognize XP and vice-versa.

After hours of researching I noticed many users are experiencing the same problem so I decided to write this post so it saves others time and frustration. Before I begin I'd like to point out that I already had a home network setup between three computers through a modem/router from Bell. Two desktop computers are connected directly by ethernet cable and one laptop on wireless connection.

1. Step one, have all your updates installed and unneccessary applications turned off so you don't have to restart your computer in the middle of operations.

2. Two, use Home Network Wizard on the machine with XP OS (operating system) to setup initial network group. (Start>Control Panel>Network Connections>Set up a home or small office network>follow instructions and setup according to your router or network connections, view examples to help you determine the right option.) Restart your computer once this is complete.

3. Three, on the machine with Vista OS, click Start (Vista icon)>right click Computer>in the "Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings" section click Change settings on the right side of the screen. In the pop-up window, click Change (To rename this computer), under Workgroup: type exactly the same name you specified during step two in Home Networking Wizard and click OK. (If you forgot the workgroup name, go to machine with XP OS, right-click My Computer>Properties>Select Computer Name tab>check WORKGROUP name)

4. Four, still on the machine with Vista OS, click Start>Network>Network and Sharing Center>set as follows:
  • Network discovery - On
  • File sharing - On
  • Public folder sharing - On
  • Printer sharing - Off (unless you have a printer to share on this machine)
  • Password protected sharing - Off (you don't want to be prompted for a password everytime you access your files within the network)
  • Media sharing - Off (you don't need to share all your media at once, you may select each folder separately later on)

5. Five, from the Network and Sharing Center window use the Tasks navigation menu on the left hand side to select "Manage network connections", then right-click your current working network connection and click Properties>select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click Properties, make sure that 'Obtain an IP address automatically' and 'Obtain DNS server address automatically' is selected. Click OK and Close wireless network connection properties window.

6. Six, (still on the Vista machine) click Start>Computer>right-click your system drive (C:) and click Share>click Advanced Sharing button>confirm that Share this folder is check-marked and click Permissions underneath the comments field>check the following in the 'Allow" column: Full control, Change, and Read. Click OK, once again OK and Close hard drive properties window.

7. Seven, technically you should have shared folders on your Vista machine automatically but after reading numerous forum posts it came to my attention that users had to share folders within folders or sub-folders to actually be able and access them, otherwise XP OS will simply show that these folders are shared but restrict access to them. So, click Start>Computer>open C: drive>right-click New, then Folder. Pick whatever name you want, then right-click the folder you've just created and click Properties>switch to Sharing tab>click Share button, then choose Change sharing permissions option>once opened simply click Share and Close folder Properties.

8. Eight, you're almost done. Completely close/exit all kinds of anti-virus software applications you may have to prevent all sorts of port or traffic blockings.

9. Nine, restart your computer one last time.

10. Ten, you are officially done, but lets make sure everything is setup properly. On both machines open Run window (Windows + R), type CMD, in the black pop-up window type "ipconfig /all" (without quotes) and press Enter. Make sure that Default Gateway, DHCP Server, DNS Servers and Subnet Mask are the same on both machines. Only IPv4 Address will vary by last two digits, ex. 192.168.2.XX (its suppose to be that way).

(Note: For those without DHCP enabled you may have to turn NetBIOS over TCP/IP setting manually. To do this, click Start>Network>Network and Sharing Center>click Manage network connections>right-click local connection and choose Properties>select Internet Protocol Version 4 and click Properties>click Advanced>switch to WINS tab>select Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP.)

I used a Toshiba laptop on wireless connection to get the network going, the steps for Ethernet connected computers are exactly the same, if you have any questions, comments or concerts please do let me know and I will try my best to help you out.

Unfortunately, even with all these settings configured we couldn't get a lan game going because Need For Speed Underground 2 requires additional settings adjusted before users are able of hosting or joing lan servers. But, we were able to play Heroes of Might and Magic 5 with no problem.

It came to my attention that after a few restarts default anti-virus software, such as Norton are automatically turned on again and they will block disable your network connection to Vista machine. I suggest you turn Norton off completely or remove it from your computer because its a trial version anyways. If you insist on keeping Norton you may disable it while you use network connection and enable it afterwards or contact Norton support to find out how to set-up Norton application so it doesn't block your home network.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Official iPhone clone from Nokia

Rumors say that the official Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (Tube) with fully sensored navigation control will be released on October second.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Tube characteristics:


  • Supports GSM-network 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS 2100, EDGE;
  • Symbian S60 operation system;
  • 3.2-inch sensor display with 640x360 resolution;
  • 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash;
  • A-GPS and Wi-Fi module;
  • USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 interface;
  • 3.5 mm audio output and Tv-input;
  • 150 MB built-in memory;
  • microSDHC slot;
  • Dimensions are: 111x52x15.5 mm;
  • Weighs 109 g
We're not sure how popular this release from Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (Tube) will be because its too early to decide now, but at the moment mobile market is full of sensore wireless technologies so competition is huge.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Samsung X460: Lighter Than Air

For users that need high-end laptops, compact, super-light and externally attractive Samsung Electronics released a new elegant portable laptop Samsung X460, which later acquired the concept "Lighter Than Air".

This device is available in few different colors and designs and uses Protect-o-Edge case protection. It is built on Intel Centrino 2 processor, has a 14.1-inch screen display SuperBright Flat-LED with WXGA-resolution 1280 x 800 pixels, and happens to be the lightest in its series, weighing only 1.9 kg. The computer itself has a brand new technology called Samsung Silver Nano Technology where a nano silver powder is applied on the keyboard to protect from germs and their multiplication, this will keep your hygiene in top shape when working on the laptop.

Other characteristics:

  • nVidia GeForce Go 9200M GS graphics adapter;
  • Up to 4 GB virtual memory;
  • 320 GB hard drive;
  • DVD SuperMulti Drive supporting Light Scribe technology;
  • Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n;
  • Lan network 10/100/1000 Ethernet Lan;
  • Bluetooth 2.0+EDR module;
  • Intergrated 1.3-megapixel web-camera;
  • Built-in 7.1 card reader;
  • Trusted Platform Module, TPM;
  • Finger-print identifier security;
  • HDMI interface;
  • 6-cell battery, up to 5 hours life time.

No official price or release date has been announced about Samsung X460, yet.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

New pictures of BlackBerry Javelin

No official information regarding BlackBerry Javelin from Research In Motion (RIM) has been released, but an online auction eBay website appears to have one piece of this technology already for sale and this forum all about new Canadian technology already has new images.

According to these images, all interface (audio-input and mini-USB) buttons and sound adjusting settings are located on the right hand side of the smartphone. Comparing with previous models BlackBerry Javelin is well compacted, but this doesn't change the size of QWERTY-keyboard and screen display, although the height of the buttons has been reduced. How well these changes will perform in terms of comfortability is currently hard to tell.

Also, we know that this device has a processor with 512 MHz frequency, HVGA display (460x360 dots), 256 MB flash-memory, Wi-Fi with ACM and GPS modules and a 3.2-megapixel camera.

BlackBerry Javelin official release is set to 2009. Official price is undecided but eBay has it for $2000 solid.

Thermaltake WB200 - water cooling system

For those computer fans preferring water cooling over fans for their desktop systems, Thermaltake Technology suggests a new water block WB200 (serial number CL-W-0182), designed to effectively eliminate leftover warmth from north side of the motherboard.

The block weighs 95.5 grams, made of full copper, dimensions are 40 x 40 x 8.6 mm. This device has Enhanced Universal Clip for universal holding, few specially designed Rotational Hose Connectors, supporting tube 3/8 diameter and is built to use Brazing Technology, completely eliminating any kind of liquid leaks and continuing life. The device is recommended with use of BigWater Series, including BigWater 375 and BigWater 745 for best results.


No official price has been announced.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Server Motherboard ASUS KFSN5-D for AMD chips

ASUSTek Computer press-service announced the release of a new KFSN5-D motherboard for server systems and powerful working stations, like PIKE (Proprietary I/O Kit Expansion) and Flex-E (Flexibility of PCI-E), thanks to which motherboards functionality expands even further (optionally allowing the use of special platforms for expansion ASUS PIKE 1064E, ASUS PIKE 1068E and ASUS PIKE 1078).

Motherboard is based on SSI EEB 3.61 form-factor with 304.8 x 330.2 mm dimensions, also nVidia nForce Professional 3600 logic system, built-in two Socket 1207 slots and supports quad-core processors AMD Opteron 2300 series (Barcelona), as well as dual-core chips AMD Opteron 2200 series. On top of all this, other technical characteristics:

  • Sixteen DDR2 Registered ECC slots with 64GB overall capacity, working on 533/667/800 MHz frequency;
  • One PCI-E x8 slot, three PCI-E x16 slots, one PCI slot and one PIKE slot;
  • One IDE-connector and six SATA2 ports with RAID 0/1/0+1/5 support and JBOD;
  • Integrated XGI Z9s with 32MB video memory;
  • Back panel includes one PS/2 port, one VGA port, two RJ-45 ports and two USB ports.

The cost and official release of ASUS KFSN5-D is still unavailable.

Oklick Z-1 Mouse - Russian Tool for Cyber-sportsman

Oklick presented a new mouse specially designed for gamers. Oklick Z-1 is built with highly sensitive sensor, that allows adjusting "on-the-go" (from 400 to 3200 dots per inch). Packaging includes 7 weighted add-ons, installed in special cylinder underneath the mouse. With its help you can manually set the weight of mouse for your own preference.

Also, Oklick Z-1 has a wide wheel, allowing it to scroll vertically and in horizontal direction, two additional buttons under the big thumb with three different settings. The frame has a built-in identifier that shows which profile is currently activated.

The main and cool part about Oklick Z-1 is the built-in memory which saves your settings even when the system is offline. The frame is built from plastic and few cuts on the side.

Oklick Z-1 was picked by the official World Cyber Games 2008 Russia Preliminary championship.

The End of The World: has been rescheduled for October

Technology has, is and always will be playing a huge role in our daily lives. But this is where physics, chemistry and top of the line technology including scientists and professionals gathered together for big step into something good or bad.

These last few months everyone has been talking about physics, protons and other complications. On September 10th, we managed to live through a beginning of 'new era' - thats exactly what scientists call the trial launch of the Huge Hadron Collider (or as I'd like to call it, 27 kilometer Ring of Death). Massive accelerator, rumors about sci-fi effects have been going for months now.

Someone assumed that September 10, 2008 will become the last day for humanity - because the test itself holds a true black hole which has the potential to destroy the earth. Another theory - that collider will corrupt time and we will all end up in middle age times. Ain't that exciting?

Although, well educated people that have experience with physics are saying that this test isn't big of a deal. Some of them assume that the whole setup will produce an 'error' or simply won't start, meaning unsuccessful trial attempt. One european scientist mentioned that collider's results or effects may be compared to two mosquitoes colliding against each other in a huge forest.

Today, the accelerator wasn't at its full power. A pack of protons travelled through the ring (circumference of which is 27 kilometers) clockwise and counter-clockwise. The experiment was controlled by thousands of computers and scientists. This test allowed physics to prepare for the "Big Bang" adventure, which will happen officially on October 21, 2008. Although, we don't think that all scientists, specialists and professionals working on the project are suiciders or killers deciding to finish with humanity once and for all.

Taking into consideration all stories about the end of the earth, planet Earth managed to survive this day and hopefully samething 40 days from now.

Official website: http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/
More images at: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/Photos?ln=en

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Dual-core Intel Atom will be available at the end of September

Only weeks left before dual-core Intel Atom 330 and related products will be released. English manufacturer Tranquil PC announced a home server, called T7-HSG Home Server, heart of which happens to be the one and only Intel Atom.

Atom 330 processor is built on Diamondville architecture. It uses 45-nm techprocessor and has two Atom 230 cores, located in one of the chips. Frequency remains the same 533 MHz, thanks to HyperThreading technology operating system will be able to see Atom 330 in four logical processors.

The main T7-HSG Home Server which will cost around $530, happens to have Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard built-on 945GC chipset. Has only one DDR2 slot with 533/667 MHz frequency, allowing up to 2 GB of RAM, built with GMA 950 graphics core, two SATA-ports, Gigabit Ethernet port, and up to eight USB 2.0 ports, four of which happen to be for T7-HSG Home Server. According to Tranquil PC, it only takes 33 watts for power usage, but system productivity is very very 'high'.

This piece should be available on September 30th of 2008, although Tranquil mentioned even then only a limited supply will be available for quite some time before mass production begins.

Other than T7-HSG Home Server, Tranquil PC plans to announce a media center some time in the future, built with tv screen DVB-T, HDMI-output, and 2 TB disk capacity.

Microsoft knew about Xbox 360 defects before it was released

Almost every single Xbox 360 owner came face-to-face with major component defects. Initially from the manufacturer almost every single console had serious hardware problems. We can't say that Microsoft wasn't any happier than their consumers because they spent around $1.15 billion dollars for exchange and repair.


Now, Dean Takahashi from VentureBeat says, Microsoft new about the defects with Xbox 360 from the start (before the release), but didn't want to delay the release date so that competition like PlayStation 3 and Wii to jump ahead and release their consoles first. Information source is not official but the journalist is sure the data is legit. Because of the decisions Microsoft made they weren't able to progress their product further as they wanted to.

Due to bad quality Xbox 360 lost any kind of advantage over PlayStation 3 and Wii. But, recent drop in price for Xbox 360 Arcade in United States lower than Wii, will push the project a few steps further.

Expensive and cool laptop from ASUS N10

Laptops traditionally are mainly differently only because of their size/portability and low cost, although it seems that ASUS doesn't agree with that fact. According to their new 10.2-inch display N10 model, engineers managed to squeeze in 1.6 GHz processor Intel Atom N270, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS, Wi-Fi, web-cam, special finger identity function and a slick keyboard.

Technical specifications are stunning and the price is quite high - almost $849. This baby works on Windows Vista Business operating system. Unfortunately, the release date is still unknown.

New iPod nano 4GB for $150

Last conference Let's Rock in San-Francisco, Apple presented their new version of iPod nano. As we expected the design is slightly modified. Designers went back to the original bigger casing but smoothed out the edges which makes the nano look a little futuristic. Dimensions are 90.7 x 38.7 x 6.2 mm. Weighs only 36.8 gr.

The device has 2-inch display with resolution 320 x 240, from 8 to 16 GB flash-memory. Supports a variety of popular music and video formats: AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4. Battery lasts from 4-24 hours. As previously, the wheel is used to navigate around the menu. Recommended price for United States is $149 (8GB) and $199 (16GB).


Sunday, September 7, 2008

Express-look: first portable quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX9300

Well, here it is ladies and gentlemen. Finally the first portable cpu that has been sitting in some desktops for quite a while now, you can take this speed anywhere you like. Switched to 45-nm techprocessor allowing to create a processor TDP which won't cross the line.

In the Centrino 2 announce, Core 2 Extreme QX9300 was presented, first quad-core mobile solution for laptops. You will get acquainted with this processor through ASUS G71V laptop built on recently announced Intel platform and GeForce 9700M GS graphics adapter.



Core 2 Extreme QX 9300 should work on 2.53 GHz frequency, but the screenshot shows otherwise, this is because its for show purposes and the frequency is only 2400 MHz. Yorkfield core, techprocessor 45-nm, 1066 MHz and 12 MB cache second-level, at $1038. Its hard to imagine how much the ASUS G71V will cost itself in difference.



During a live platform presentation in Kiev (Ukraine) an interesting outcome was provided by Sergei Shevchenko, specialized in Intel technologies. During the presentation of Core 2 Extreme QX 9300 Sergei Shevchenko launched FineReader application containing 108 pages for reading. Using only two cpu-cores the document was opened within 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Once all four cores were put to work, the request was completed within 1 minute and 28 seconds.



After the official presentation the public was allowed to run a few tests themselves, a lot of volunteers rushed to try out the new laptop. Multi-stream wPrime was launched first, in 32M the result was 16,521 c. Lets point out, that overclocked to 2836 MHz mobile processor Core 2 Duo T7500 could only show 27,740 c, which is the world record for this processor. Working on 2.53 GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9300 can take 15 c during that test.


Unfortunately, PiFast results weren't so satisfying for low frequency and because the application itself doesn't support quad-core processors. The result was 36.18 c. Approximately the same result was demostrated by Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5 GHz).


Something that wasn't available a while ago is going to be released to public quite soon. Once you get your hands on this quick piece of technology you'll take advantage of new application and games, since game designers took immediate interest in quad-core processors once they came out and future games will be based only on quad-core systems.

Gaming Wheel: Defender Extreme Turbo for PC/PlayStation 2

Defender company presented another piece of hardware for racing games which may be used on PC as well as on PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles. Thankfully to specially designed form you may place the wheel on any kind of surface or even on your lap. We're not sure how comfortable that will be but it sure saves desktop space.


You may adjust wheel height and angle as you wish, the bottom has a soft rubber surface for better grip and additional number of selective buttons, 8-switch for camera view. Hand break and manual transmission has been designed separately for easier reach and convenient placement.

Technical characteristics:

  • USB, Sony PlayStation 1/2;
  • 10 buttons + two switchers;
  • 8 camera positions
  • Vibration sensitivity;
  • Supports Windows 98/2000/ME/XP/Vista, Sony PlayStation 1/2;
  • Weight - 4 kg.

Google is 10 years old

On September 7th, 1998 two 25-year old graduates from Standforth Universtiy (Sergei Brin and Larry Page) launched Google. It was the beginning of today's number one successful internet projects which became the internet core in the past 10 years.

As we all know the first company office was a garage in north California, rented with friends and Larry's girlfriend. Google co-workers spent five months working in the garage. First Google employee became Craig Silverstein, which is currently the technological director.

Rumors about new search engine using brand new faster and simple algorithems came flying around quickly, so Google rapidly gained its popularity. By the end of year 2000, search engine already served over 100 million requests per day.

In that same year (2000) for the first time website got its first ad (notice) - Google began selling online keywords and in the result paid links appeared. This earning strategy to this day earns Google large sum of income.

2001 became a well-known day for the company, part of the workforce became the director Eric Shmitt, former Novell director of Sun technologies.

2004 is well-known because Google launched its new Gmail application, and 2006 has whole two new reasons: one Google bought YouTube, and second Google.com beat Yahoo.com for most visited sites and became second after Microsoft.com.

Last year Google made another great investing by purchasing DoubleClick company, which costed $3.1 million dollars. Lastly, the most interesting event this year is the launch of Chrome browser that was presented last week.

Today, Google has over 20 thousand employees and the company is worth around $150 billion dollars.