Thursday, July 30, 2009
Windows 7 RTMed
last week, Windows 7 has been RTMed (details here). having just tried playing with the RC builds on my work, there are several new features which seems very alluring to have like native support for ISO image burning. this article lists several good things in Windows7. but will it really sell out? i'm still pessimistic about it but once it starts shipping out the Windows7 lite version for the netbooks, i think it will then start selling. but again, considering the compatibility of old devices/drivers and softwares, many people will stick to the old windows XP for a little while. anyway, let's just wait for it release and go-to-market date. my personal advice however, is to wait....
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Will Windows 7 sell?
our company is currently testing new versions of our products on top of Windows 7, which is scheduled to be released to market next year 2010. this had given me a chance to have a feel-of-use of this new Windows version to be.
my first impression was - "it looks almost the same as Vista". yes, the GUI is based on Vista with some minor modifications like the task bar which seems to be "Mac-like" a bit. for a heavy XP user like me, i think i won't be switching to Windows 7 when it will be released; unless the GUI has be more near XP-tic...
"will W7 do a good sell out next year compare to Vista" had been a topic of discussions with several of my IT related friends. some are pretty optimistic that it will. but personally, i doubt... i think it will follow Vista's path. why? here are my thoughts about this.
1. hardware requirements
compared to the HW requirements of its XP predecessor, W7 has almost the same system requirements for an installation. this implies that if you're an XP user now, your machine might not be able to cater to this OS' needs. some hardwares like audio or video might not have any driver releases for these new OS. so buying the OS alone won't be enough; you'll need to invest on a new hardware also.
2. GUI modifications
one main reason why Vista did not sell to its existing users is that the GUI were largely modified. too much abstraction like the UAC and used-to-there icons and shortcuts were moved to other locations. this had made a decrease in productivity of the existing XP users considering that they have to search where or ask some one. rather than forcing it's users to use the new GUI, MS should be giving choices to users on to which kind of GUI he would like to use - Vista-tic one or XP-tic one... If MS could incorporate it classic XP GUI into W7 as a selectable alternate GUI inside the system, i think many XP users will be moving into W7 gradually - changing its system from XP-tic configuration to W7 or Vista-tic like configuration on a step by step basis.
3. net/mobile pc trend
nowadays, mobile users are increasing with the spread of wifi accessibility on public places. netbooks are getting popular and i think it will overtake the number of desktop and laptop users in 3-4 years from now considering its attractive price! most netbooks however are very limited in terms of system extensibility. Windows ULCPC Windows XP Home EOM licensing was revised to limit the hardware capability of the PC like to only support 1GB of RAM. MS is trying to divert users wanting netbooks of higher capability to buy laptop (now generally is pre-installed with Vista) rather than a netbook. again another strategy to make Vista sell out.
4. new software versions
whenever there's a new Windows version, application softwares relying on the programming interfaces provided by the OS should make sure their application works on that platform. due to the underlying architectural changes, most existing softwares will not work on top of a new Windows OS version. thus if you buy a program which used to work on XP, it might not work on Vista. this implies that you will need to buy new application software versions which are compatible with the newer Windows7 OS platform. in short, you'll need to invest on new software versions too...
so what's the catch! now that you know what kind of new investments are necessary if you'll be switching to a new OS, you better have to think twice before getting one.
if you're not "financially" ready to make a new investment for another computer, OS and softwares, i would suggest that you stick to your current PC until the time of real-necessity arises. this subtle new investment requirement is actually the main hurdle which W7 has to get rid off the way.
my first impression was - "it looks almost the same as Vista". yes, the GUI is based on Vista with some minor modifications like the task bar which seems to be "Mac-like" a bit. for a heavy XP user like me, i think i won't be switching to Windows 7 when it will be released; unless the GUI has be more near XP-tic...
"will W7 do a good sell out next year compare to Vista" had been a topic of discussions with several of my IT related friends. some are pretty optimistic that it will. but personally, i doubt... i think it will follow Vista's path. why? here are my thoughts about this.
1. hardware requirements
compared to the HW requirements of its XP predecessor, W7 has almost the same system requirements for an installation. this implies that if you're an XP user now, your machine might not be able to cater to this OS' needs. some hardwares like audio or video might not have any driver releases for these new OS. so buying the OS alone won't be enough; you'll need to invest on a new hardware also.
2. GUI modifications
one main reason why Vista did not sell to its existing users is that the GUI were largely modified. too much abstraction like the UAC and used-to-there icons and shortcuts were moved to other locations. this had made a decrease in productivity of the existing XP users considering that they have to search where or ask some one. rather than forcing it's users to use the new GUI, MS should be giving choices to users on to which kind of GUI he would like to use - Vista-tic one or XP-tic one... If MS could incorporate it classic XP GUI into W7 as a selectable alternate GUI inside the system, i think many XP users will be moving into W7 gradually - changing its system from XP-tic configuration to W7 or Vista-tic like configuration on a step by step basis.
3. net/mobile pc trend
nowadays, mobile users are increasing with the spread of wifi accessibility on public places. netbooks are getting popular and i think it will overtake the number of desktop and laptop users in 3-4 years from now considering its attractive price! most netbooks however are very limited in terms of system extensibility. Windows ULCPC Windows XP Home EOM licensing was revised to limit the hardware capability of the PC like to only support 1GB of RAM. MS is trying to divert users wanting netbooks of higher capability to buy laptop (now generally is pre-installed with Vista) rather than a netbook. again another strategy to make Vista sell out.
4. new software versions
whenever there's a new Windows version, application softwares relying on the programming interfaces provided by the OS should make sure their application works on that platform. due to the underlying architectural changes, most existing softwares will not work on top of a new Windows OS version. thus if you buy a program which used to work on XP, it might not work on Vista. this implies that you will need to buy new application software versions which are compatible with the newer Windows7 OS platform. in short, you'll need to invest on new software versions too...
so what's the catch! now that you know what kind of new investments are necessary if you'll be switching to a new OS, you better have to think twice before getting one.
if you're not "financially" ready to make a new investment for another computer, OS and softwares, i would suggest that you stick to your current PC until the time of real-necessity arises. this subtle new investment requirement is actually the main hurdle which W7 has to get rid off the way.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Citrix XenServer for FREE!!!
last feb 23, citrix announced that it will make xen server free to everyone! the info leaked out prior to the announcement but it seems to be "leaked off" in purpose. feb 23 is also the day for the vmworld event and having the info posted out in the blog, rumors had spread out to the participants of the vmworld; and stole that day from vmware i guess.
check it out: XenServer
check it out: XenServer
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Google search returns all links as "harmful"
i'm a heavy user of google search. a while ago, i noticed that all the links returned by the search engine were sub-labeled with "This site may harm your computer". clicking on the link will guide you to the google advisory page and you can't go to the site you wanted! it seems that google's server is incorrectly returning the results... maintenance or something going on???
tried searching for the key "Google", and guess what!? it was also tagged as harmful (see pix).
tried searching for the key "Google", and guess what!? it was also tagged as harmful (see pix).
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Weird ethernet issue
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
work resumed last monday after 3 weeks of holidays! sad to say, i was bedridden for around 1 week during christmas due to cough and colds. sigh...
yesterday, i was trying to print out a testcase to our network printer but i kept on getting a network location not found error! i can see a shared folder but not its contents. tried restarting the system (win xp sp3) for several times but to no effect. i checked the event logs but nothing strange in the trace either. then i thought that it could be the network issue as the DNS & DHCP server had just been re-imported into a new virtual host. so i plugged my laptop into a different network segment but still to no avail.
next, i decided to removed my laptop from the current windows domain, restarted it and logged in with the local admin account. then tried re-joining the same domain once again after renewing the ip address but still the result! grrrr... wtf! if i can't make this laptop join the domain, it would be a lot of trouble for me at work! so i tried updating the ethernet card's driver, but still the same issue. i was getting hopeless and decided to run a windows repair using the installer cd. it took me around an hour to run the repair re-installation. tried joining the domain after the repair but still that damn "network location not found" error message dialog kept on popping up! last resort was to reinstall the system but i don't want to as it will surely take me several days to complete the application installation and tune-ups. i was searching for ghost backups if i had (i couldn't remember if i had taken one either.) unfortunately, i found no ghost snapshot images among my backup hdds.
before resorting to re-installing the OS, it came to me to try uninstalling the ethernet device and have the system re-discover that new device. that's what i did now and the system properly detected a new device and asked for the device driver installation. i set the location of the driver and installed it. after that, i tried re-joining the domain, 10secs... 20 secs... of waiting; the error message did not appeared! 25secs... at last my laptop was able to join the domain!!! whew. that was a very simple solution at all! i should have done this before trying other things then!!!
really didn't kwow what caused this problem. i had tried looking for traces but got no clue at all... anyway, now that i know; it would be easier then next time!
btw, i saw several posts on forums having the same issue. it seems that most people resorted to reverting the previous snapshots or re-installing the entire OS. i hope that this will also serve as a reference to you if ever you'll encounter the same symptoms of trouble...
work resumed last monday after 3 weeks of holidays! sad to say, i was bedridden for around 1 week during christmas due to cough and colds. sigh...
yesterday, i was trying to print out a testcase to our network printer but i kept on getting a network location not found error! i can see a shared folder but not its contents. tried restarting the system (win xp sp3) for several times but to no effect. i checked the event logs but nothing strange in the trace either. then i thought that it could be the network issue as the DNS & DHCP server had just been re-imported into a new virtual host. so i plugged my laptop into a different network segment but still to no avail.
next, i decided to removed my laptop from the current windows domain, restarted it and logged in with the local admin account. then tried re-joining the same domain once again after renewing the ip address but still the result! grrrr... wtf! if i can't make this laptop join the domain, it would be a lot of trouble for me at work! so i tried updating the ethernet card's driver, but still the same issue. i was getting hopeless and decided to run a windows repair using the installer cd. it took me around an hour to run the repair re-installation. tried joining the domain after the repair but still that damn "network location not found" error message dialog kept on popping up! last resort was to reinstall the system but i don't want to as it will surely take me several days to complete the application installation and tune-ups. i was searching for ghost backups if i had (i couldn't remember if i had taken one either.) unfortunately, i found no ghost snapshot images among my backup hdds.
before resorting to re-installing the OS, it came to me to try uninstalling the ethernet device and have the system re-discover that new device. that's what i did now and the system properly detected a new device and asked for the device driver installation. i set the location of the driver and installed it. after that, i tried re-joining the domain, 10secs... 20 secs... of waiting; the error message did not appeared! 25secs... at last my laptop was able to join the domain!!! whew. that was a very simple solution at all! i should have done this before trying other things then!!!
really didn't kwow what caused this problem. i had tried looking for traces but got no clue at all... anyway, now that i know; it would be easier then next time!
btw, i saw several posts on forums having the same issue. it seems that most people resorted to reverting the previous snapshots or re-installing the entire OS. i hope that this will also serve as a reference to you if ever you'll encounter the same symptoms of trouble...
Friday, December 19, 2008
UFO exists...
several years ago i saw what it seems to be a UFO but wasn't sure about it coz it was nighttime. today (12/19/2008) at around 2:30pm, i was looking out the by the window from our office meeting room and i enjoyed the view of a bright sunny day from the 23rd floor building. while enjoying the view, i saw what it seemed to be a flock of birds (many of them, maybe more than twenty) playing and hovering in the same place. (usually we can only see a flock of birds during winter when they're migrating). at first, i thought they were just birds playing with each other, but after several minutes, these black flying things just disappeared off my sight just like bubbles!!! that's the time i realized that what i was seeing weren't birds but rather UFOs... this is the 2nd time i saw such objects which made me now confident that these things really does exist!!! do you believe in UFOs too?!
location: tokyo area
date&time: 12/19/2008 between 2:00 - 2:30pm
observer's location: kasumisageki common gate tower 23flr
location: tokyo area
date&time: 12/19/2008 between 2:00 - 2:30pm
observer's location: kasumisageki common gate tower 23flr
Friday, November 28, 2008
string/message resource dumpers
im currently working on software testing field with focus on localization. im under the product maintenance department and responsible for delivering hotfixes and rollups (service pack) for the Japanese, Spanish, French and German. with our testing process, i have to check on the resource strings and message tables of the localized modules; and have to avoid any regressions like strings getting reverted to english strings due to integration or build issues. formerly, we used to check on the resource strings manually by using Visual Studio or Resource Hacker. however, this had become time-consuming and pretty require great amount of effort on the tester; having all modules opened and checked one by one. this is where the search for alternative tools started.
my requirement was that i needed a command line (console)-based program which i can specify the binary path and it would print all the strings and message table resources inside it if there's one. i was able to find one but only dumps the string resources and not the message table. i gave up later on and started creating the tool on my own. i called it smrdump - string & message resource dumper.
details:
smrdump.exe is a command-line program which uses Win32 APIs for enumerating the resource libraries. since the product of our company only are available in English, Spanish, German, French and Japanese, these are the languages currently are supported by the tool. if the optional language parameter char is not specified, the default language will also be dump. default language will depend on the system where you are running the program. i will post the separate version which is language-independent and will dump all resources on all available languages.
download location:
you can get the smrdump binary here: SMRDump.exe
usage:
$>smrdump [binaryFilePath] [optionalLanguageParameter: E,J,S,G,F]
example:
here's a example dump i took using one of Citrix binaries.
dumping resources for all languages:
$>smrdump "C:\Program Files\Citrix\System32\resource\ja\ctxsbxmsgUI.dll"
***********************************************************************
* [module]: C:\Program Files\Citrix\System32\resource\ja\ctxsbxmsgUI.dll
************************************************************************
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:1520]
1 分離環境レジストリ イベント
2 分離環境ファイル イベント
3 分離環境オブジェクト イベント
4 Windows インストーラの試行
-2147450879 分離環境 %1 のアプリケーションがサービス %2 をインストールしようとしました。このサービスは使用可能になりません。
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1033
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:2516]
1 Isolation Environment Registry Event
2 Isolation Environment File Event
3 Isolation Environment Object Event
4 Windows Installer Attempt
-2147450879 An isolated application in isolation environment %1 attempted to install service %2. The service will not be available.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1041
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:1520]
1 分離環境レジストリ イベント
2 分離環境ファイル イベント
3 分離環境オブジェクト イベント
4 Windows インストーラの試行
-2147450879 分離環境 %1 のアプリケーションがサービス %2 をインストールしようとしました。このサービスは使用可能になりません。
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1031
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:3004]
1 Isolierte Umgebung - Registrierungsereignis
2 Isolierte Umgebung - Dateiereignis
3 Isolierte Umgebung - Objektereignis
4 Windows Installer-Versuch
-2147450879 Eine isolierte Anwendung in der isolierten Umgebung '%1' versuchte, den Dienst '%2' zu installieren. Der Dienst steht nicht zur Verfugung.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1036
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:2808]
1 Evenement de registre d'environnement d'isolation
2 Evenement de fichier d'environnement d'isolation
3 Evenement d'objet d'environnement d'isolation
4 Tentative Windows Installer
-2147450879 Une application isolee dans l'environnement %1 a essaye d'installer le service %2. Le service ne sera pas disponible.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1034
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:2812]
1 Suceso del registro del entorno de aislamiento
2 Suceso de archivo del entorno de aislamiento
3 Suceso de objeto del entorno de aislamiento
4 Intento de Windows Installer
-2147450879 Una aplicacion aislada en el entorno de aislamiento %1 trato de instalar el servicio %2. El servicio no se encontrara disponible.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
dumping resources for specific language:
$>smrdump "C:\Program Files\Citrix\System32\resource\ja\ctxsbxmsgUI.dll" J
***********************************************************************
* [module]: C:\Program Files\Citrix\System32\resource\ja\ctxsbxmsgUI.dll
************************************************************************
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1041
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:1520]
1 分離環境レジストリ イベント
2 分離環境ファイル イベント
3 分離環境オブジェクト イベント
4 Windows インストーラの試行
-2147450879 分離環境 %1 のアプリケーションがサービス %2 をインストールしようとしました。このサービスは使用可能になりません。
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
caveat:
there are some module which might be loading other modules at runtime. sometimes, if these kind of modules cannot find and load these necessary binaries, smrdump won't be able to handle the errors like invalid access.
for questions and suggestions:
if you have any questions or any suggestions, just add a comment on this post.
my requirement was that i needed a command line (console)-based program which i can specify the binary path and it would print all the strings and message table resources inside it if there's one. i was able to find one but only dumps the string resources and not the message table. i gave up later on and started creating the tool on my own. i called it smrdump - string & message resource dumper.
details:
smrdump.exe is a command-line program which uses Win32 APIs for enumerating the resource libraries. since the product of our company only are available in English, Spanish, German, French and Japanese, these are the languages currently are supported by the tool. if the optional language parameter char is not specified, the default language will also be dump. default language will depend on the system where you are running the program. i will post the separate version which is language-independent and will dump all resources on all available languages.
download location:
you can get the smrdump binary here: SMRDump.exe
usage:
$>smrdump [binaryFilePath] [optionalLanguageParameter: E,J,S,G,F]
example:
here's a example dump i took using one of Citrix binaries.
dumping resources for all languages:
$>smrdump "C:\Program Files\Citrix\System32\resource\ja\ctxsbxmsgUI.dll"
***********************************************************************
* [module]: C:\Program Files\Citrix\System32\resource\ja\ctxsbxmsgUI.dll
************************************************************************
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:1520]
1 分離環境レジストリ イベント
2 分離環境ファイル イベント
3 分離環境オブジェクト イベント
4 Windows インストーラの試行
-2147450879 分離環境 %1 のアプリケーションがサービス %2 をインストールしようとしました。このサービスは使用可能になりません。
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1033
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:2516]
1 Isolation Environment Registry Event
2 Isolation Environment File Event
3 Isolation Environment Object Event
4 Windows Installer Attempt
-2147450879 An isolated application in isolation environment %1 attempted to install service %2. The service will not be available.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1041
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:1520]
1 分離環境レジストリ イベント
2 分離環境ファイル イベント
3 分離環境オブジェクト イベント
4 Windows インストーラの試行
-2147450879 分離環境 %1 のアプリケーションがサービス %2 をインストールしようとしました。このサービスは使用可能になりません。
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1031
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:3004]
1 Isolierte Umgebung - Registrierungsereignis
2 Isolierte Umgebung - Dateiereignis
3 Isolierte Umgebung - Objektereignis
4 Windows Installer-Versuch
-2147450879 Eine isolierte Anwendung in der isolierten Umgebung '%1' versuchte, den Dienst '%2' zu installieren. Der Dienst steht nicht zur Verfugung.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1036
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:2808]
1 Evenement de registre d'environnement d'isolation
2 Evenement de fichier d'environnement d'isolation
3 Evenement d'objet d'environnement d'isolation
4 Tentative Windows Installer
-2147450879 Une application isolee dans l'environnement %1 a essaye d'installer le service %2. Le service ne sera pas disponible.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1034
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:2812]
1 Suceso del registro del entorno de aislamiento
2 Suceso de archivo del entorno de aislamiento
3 Suceso de objeto del entorno de aislamiento
4 Intento de Windows Installer
-2147450879 Una aplicacion aislada en el entorno de aislamiento %1 trato de instalar el servicio %2. El servicio no se encontrara disponible.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
dumping resources for specific language:
$>smrdump "C:\Program Files\Citrix\System32\resource\ja\ctxsbxmsgUI.dll" J
***********************************************************************
* [module]: C:\Program Files\Citrix\System32\resource\ja\ctxsbxmsgUI.dll
************************************************************************
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[language]: 1041
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[message block:1 size:1520]
1 分離環境レジストリ イベント
2 分離環境ファイル イベント
3 分離環境オブジェクト イベント
4 Windows インストーラの試行
-2147450879 分離環境 %1 のアプリケーションがサービス %2 をインストールしようとしました。このサービスは使用可能になりません。
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
caveat:
there are some module which might be loading other modules at runtime. sometimes, if these kind of modules cannot find and load these necessary binaries, smrdump won't be able to handle the errors like invalid access.
for questions and suggestions:
if you have any questions or any suggestions, just add a comment on this post.
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