Ken's Tech Note

While I was trying to learn (and re-learn) Linux, I came across this good article which contains a tool to create a LiveUSB OS. I was a long-time user of SuSE OS. From its early day. It is good to see it grows and became an even more mature Linux distro.

I come across this great article on integration of Dreamweaver and Photoshop using "Smart Object" and "Copy and Paste". It is indeed a time-saver for web page production. Watch the video .

After testing Windows 7 (RC) for a few months, I received Windows 7 RTM through the Microsoft Partners Program. It is a great program to join with benefits for software developers (for a fee). Windows 7 is reasonably good at compatibility. The only problem I had with Windows 7 so far is PCCW Netvigator Everywhere. The modem made by Huawei does not have driver for Windows 7. Research on internet yielded no answer but shared frustrations of many people. I believe this will be solved eventually by Huawei (not PCCW). On my D430, the performance is reasonable and is better than Vista Basic that comes with the machine. One thing that worth mentioning is through the repeated installing, formatting and re-installing, I start to use a tool called UNetbootin . Absolutely a pleasure to use. Read the full instruction and install Win 7 from a USB.

I tried to update my Intel-based Mac's Windows partition with the latest SP3. But it complained it did not work properly. A search in Google yields the answer . Turns out the hardware architecture has a compatibility issue. Adding an entry in the registry fixed the problem.

The Dell Latitude D430 is a solid worker bee but the Vista Basic installed on it is not. Over time, the operating system becomes slower and slower - it takes approx. 7 min. for a complete boot from start. This becomes a good reason to install the new Windows 7 (RC) to see if performance is improved. This is a good weekend pastime. The installation was done from an external USB DVD Writer (generic brand) and installation is a breeze. All hardware was recognized saving a lot time trying to reinstall drivers. I hate driver installation because sometimes we need to install in a particular order to get things work. (Dell Recovery/Driver CD does not have an automatic installation scripts that would install the drivers.) But again this is not an issue because all hardware was recognized - even the Security (Trust Computing Platform) After basic installation, I have installed some key software that makes the laptop capable of doing some real work. 7-zip AVG Free 8.5 K-Lite Mozilla Firefox + Th...

See how the CBS "60 minutes" reports the story on dealing with Conflicker. Watch CBS Videos Online

From time to time, I receive email with attachment "winmail.dat". This is because the sender is using Microsoft Outlook. It encodes attachment into a proprietary format ( TNEF ) making other e-mail clients fail to display the content correctly. Interestingly, this includes Microsoft Outlook Express. A quick Google research solves the issue. Thunderbird - use an add-on called Lookout . It decodes winmail.dat automatically in the background and put the attachment in the attachment pane. Mac OS X - use TNEF2.0 which is a free decoder written by Josh Jacob. Windows - use freeware Winmail Opener .