I want to wish the visitors of www.ramonddevrede.nl a happy and healthy 2012!

¡Quiero desear todos los visitantes de www.ramonddevrede.nl un próspero 2012!

Ich will alle Besucher des www.ramonddevrede.nl ein glückliches Neujahr 2012 wünschen! 

I want to wish all visitors of www.ramonddevrede.nl a happy christmas!

¡Quiero desear todos los visitantes de www.ramonddevrede.nl feliz navidad!

Ich will alle Besucher des www.ramonddevrede.nl eines glücklichen Weihnachten wünschen!

Multitasking OFF…

The first month of 2011 did almost come to an end. Time for publishing a blogpost

I’m sure that a lot of people have new resolutions… which eventually will not be achieved because we are more human than we ever will admit.

I only have 1 resolution. The title did already spoiled it : Multitasking off.

My resolution is doing all things really focussed. Only do that ‘thing’. Sounds easy to do but in real life it’s difficult to achieve.

Checking email during lunch. See a facebook alert on your mobile. Getting a direct message via twitter from a dutch famous guy (actually was a woman)… all nice but it’s still disstracting.

So whatever you are doing, doing it with full attention.

Albert Einstein said it well : “Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

You can do things simultaneously but in this way you will miss a lot or even worse the point what it’s all about.

Because of that it’s my resolution in 2011… multitasking off… Attention focused on 1 thing at the same time.

I also found it funny to read in 2010 about piracy. While reading the news regarding 1 million visitors of the dutch cinema movie ‘New Kids’ and the 1 billion US$ of selling from the computer game Call of Duty shows that people are willing to pay if they get (for them relevant) products.

Apple announced they had 10 billion downloads from their app store. Of course people keep downloading or copying illegal programs. Jailbreaking is legal in the USA and even with this handicap Apple managed to break those kind of records. Sony is jumping crazy to fight piracy and take away consumers features. Microsoft announced that they embrace homebrew software. The world is changing. Companies better be prepared for the fast changing behavior of consumers. Look what happened to newspapers and traditional TV broadcasting companies… and what will even happen in the near future.

For this occasion I recorded a short movie with my mobile :

In little companies I see lack of good backups. They never check if the backup actually runs or is usable. Cutting costs on good maintenance is the issue.

I want to focus today on the normal computer home user. 10 years ago a home user had nothing important to do with backups. Occasionally a document and that was it.

Nowadays it’s different. Most families have at least 2 computers or notebooks in their home while this number is higher when they have more children in their family.

They all have their own passwords, documents, etc… but what do they backup at the moment?

In real life I see that they DON’T backup. They backup NOTHING. That surprised me a lot. People have the idea that harddrive will never fail and always will work. They don’t think about the possibility they can stop working in a second.

The photo and video files they have are GBs on data. I even know some families where they already have TBs on data. I have at the moment 5 TB on video (FullHD videocamera) and photo files. A good friend of me even has 16 TB on data and he told me recently it’s almost full. How are you suppost to backup this? What can you do as home user or little company?

The most easy solution is buying an external harddrive. A 2 TB external USB harddrive costs around 100 euro. Not expensive if you ask me. Harddrives have weakspots. If you really have important data I would recommend you buy 2. Maybe for your situation 2 x 1 TB is a safer option than buying one 2 TB. Be aware that 2 x 1 TB will cost more than one 2 TB.

If you  buy an extra large internal harddrive you can also consider mirroring. When one harddrive fails the other takes over the operation. Disadvantage is that notebooks in most case don’t give you the possibility to add an additional harddrive, this solution can only be applied on normal desktop computers.

You can consider to buy a NAS (Network Attached Storage) solution. With a NAS you can connect harddrives to your network. Most of the NAS solutions offer RAID, RAID is necessary to do mirroring, like mentioned earlier. A NAS solution can be bought for 100 euro.

You can archive photos on a DVD. A single layer DVD can hold 4.5GB which are a lot of photos, a dual layer can hold even 9GB. Video files archiving is more complex. Especially if you use a videocamera which records in FullHD. You will notice the many GBs are used for recordings. You will have to archive those files on a harddrive. You can consider a Bluray writer (25/50 GB), but the GB cost is expensive.

If you really want to archive everything good you have to think about a tapestreamer. Be aware with large capacities they are expensive.

Take care of archiving you most important documents, photos and video file. Edit and publish on DVD your most important videos as soon as possible. Making a copie of a DVD is easily and fast done.

How are normal users able to know which are the possibilities and impossibilities of the devices and applications they use on a daily basis. Not to mention want to buy.

For me it started in the 90′s… U.S. Robotics had a modem on the market which gave the users the option to run a firmware upgrade so features could be added. Short after the first features even new speeds were possible via upgrading. Now this is more common than you can imagine. Almost all devices have some kind of upgrade system.

The reason for this is that manufacturers can release their products faster on the market. They can correct minor mistakes, often called bugs, or even add new features. Nowadays updates are also more published in the news because many times a new version implies a solution for a security issue.

Here are some examples of devices :

1. Television (Sony v1.730EA)
2. Mobile phone (My Sony Ericsson X1 runs Christian’s ROM version 5.721 with SPB Home Shell version 3.5.5)
3. Tablet (Apple iPad version 3.2.1)
4. Multimedia player (Playon!HD Mini, beta v7.00.21r4312)
5. Playstation 3 (version 3.31, since a while 3D support)

The TV can now since the upgrade support CI+ modules which my cable provider Ziggo uses without the need to purchase a new TV. My mobile phone is more than 1.5 years old but thanks to the new ROM upgrade it has the newest applications and features like the modern phones have. My tablet is able to connect to newer WiFi networks since the upgrade and applications are running faster. The multimedia player supports new video formats. My PS3 can now play 3D games, twitter and Facebook without the need to buy a new console.

Ofcourse there is a limit on the new features. On a certain moment the device will hits its limit. It can not process the data fast enough, then it’s time to replace the device. Upgrading does lengthen the life span of your device, not doubt about that.

If you compare versions in applications you can see it’s a real mess. Maybe you are surfing via Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 or FireFox 3.0, this website is currently running on 3.0.1 of WordPress and I can continue for hours and hours. Techies can keep track of this, but normal users can’t. A worse administrator doesn’t do it. Companies with this kind of administrators are often victim of hackers, hackers use a lot of time the known security holes of old versions of software, they call them exploits.

Here you see some examples of Kinect, new games and the new XBOX360:

Read here the official announcement from Microsoft on the E3 and the video in full quality.

I know Henk since my childhood. He owned a Commodore Amiga, like I did at that time. I met him because he was a friend of my father.

People who experienced problems with learning to do computer stuff did sometimes hear me say. Come on. It’s not that hard. My friend Henk is 80 years and he can manage it, that’s right. He did. Sad to write in past time. Henk is no more.

Since a few weeks he had Windows 7 correctly installed on his computer with some tips and hints I gave him. He had to know the difference. Fantastic to see this.

I can remember one time he had a complaint filed with Apple because the sync-program between his iPod and Windows did not function well and now and than his collection was erased. Always funny moment when the people asked him his age. If he called me those moments gave me a big smile on my face. He actually knew more about it than the young nerds who were working at the helpdesk.

He was delighted on gadgets. We shared that interest…

We could have a good discussion… because on some issues we were not having the same thoughts and ideas but always did we respect eachother opinion and feeling.

Henk, Rest In Peace…

The most important advantage of 64 bit versus 32 bit is that you can use more than 3.5 GB in your system. If your computer at the moment is equipped with 4 GB you can only use 3.5 GB for your system and applications. With 64 bit versions either Vista or Windows 7 you can use above 4GB.

Your processor has to have 64-bit capabilities.

I have tested several versions especially with the focus on speed. Windows Vista and Windows 7 were tested in 32 and 64 bit on an AMD Turion64 X2.

My focus was looking for difference between the feeling of speed and working speed.

Editting a Full HD 1080p recording with adding 3 effect in Adobe Premire Elements 7 (32 bit version).

I did a surprising conclusion.

I had expected that Vista 64 would give a power boost, but this wasn’t true. I had Windows 7 32bit installed. The editting went without delays. The system was able to monitor the recording without sound stuttering.

Weird was this problem is known due to slow harddrives. The harddrive cannot cope with the stream. On the desktop computer I don’t have this problem due to faster harddrives, on the notebook I have. The weird part is that I was able to edit easier and faster on Windows 7 32bit than on the fast desktop pc.

I would have expected Vista 64 should perform the same or better than Windows 7 in 32bit… End conclusion is that Windows 7 is really faster with the same hardware even on 32 and 64 bit… On this ‘old’ notebook I have a preference for the 32 bit version because I can’t upgrade to more than 4GB. Also some drivers and programs cannot deal well with 64 bit yet. But it is really well compared to Vista 64.

I’m sure the next computer will be 100% certainly Windows 7, 64 bit edition…

First you have to stop the service : Office Software Protection

Then run x:\Windows\System32\OSPPRUN.exe (x can be your C: or other driveletter you have installed windows on)

You will have a prompt.

Enter these command followed by an enter like shown below, go to next step

>Initialize (enter)

>Open (enter)

>GetInstalledSkuIds (enter)

   0. 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a (deze is het ID van Office 2010)

   1. 26adec89-edf3-4adc-a3fc-c865f1a9f71f

OK.

> GetInstalledAppIds 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a (enter)

   0. 59a52881-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663

OK.

(You will get something that looks like this)

> GetLicensingStatus 59a52881-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a (enter)

SkuId            = 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a

eStatus          = SL_LICENSING_STATUS_IN_GRACE_PERIOD

dwGraceTime      = 1D 23:37

dwTotalGraceDays = 30 days

hrReason         = 4004F00C

qwExpiration     = 2010/10/31

OK.

(What you are now going to do is set AppID and SkuID for Office 2010 to enable again 30 days before activation. That gives you another 30 days to test. Mostly the IDs are the same, if not please copy and use yours

> Rearm 59a52881-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a 1 (enter)

OK.

>close (enter)

>Initialize (enter)

>open (enter)

You can enter the command below to check out how many days you have left (See dwGraceTime): 

> GetLicensingStatus 59a52881-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a (enter)

SkuId            = 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a

eStatus          = SL_LICENSING_STATUS_IN_GRACE_PERIOD

dwGraceTime      = 29D 23:37

dwTotalGraceDays = 30 days

hrReason         = 4004F00C

qwExpiration     = 2010/10/31

>quit (enter)

You are able to use it again for 30 days. Have a lot of fun with testing Microsoft Office 2010…