Ahmedabad Live..

I really miss my city.. Anyways, just 15 more days to go.. will touch base Ahmedabad once again for couple of weeks !!!

Stay tuned..

Bill Gates speaking at Stanford..

The Bill Gates Stanford Speech

Stay tuned..

Want to sync iPod through latest version, download 65.60 MB update !!!

I dont understand what do they put in an update such that their compressed setup package for update comes for more than 65 MB.. I doubt if people at Apple understand the word "redundancy".. (I mean they should have removed files which are not updated in this release and should not include them in so called 'UPDATE' LOL..)

And if you want to know about a frustrated user like me, even after downloading this whooping 65 MB, it will give you a small n sweet message-box saying 'Update could not be applied, please retry later!!!' No saved copy of update (they save it in temp folder, and would delete the package as soon as you dispose the notice message-box!!)

What an amazing software engineering example!!

Stay tuned..

What will you say, at least give correct examples, Google!!

I remember that day when google released Page Creator with 100 MB of online space (today SkyDrive gives 5 GB for free thats another story!!) but since that day I have few of my important files stored there, I went there to download one of my file and saw a link to create new site and thats how I ended up on following URL..

Just take a look at above page, do you see something conflicting?

Well, I saw on 0.25th millisecond after this page got rendered!! Let me give you a hint, look at the examples that Google has given (http://eve.googlepages.com and http://frogs.googlepages.com).. Both examples are less than 6 characters long.. And they are also sorry about the same thing..

Seems like outsourcing is also done at Google (may be image generation part was outsourced and they did not know validation code [business rules, in formal words].. LOL..)

Or may be Eve is close friend of Sergey or Larry and have got special access!! LOL..

Stay tuned..

Blog Ranking.. Search engine competition..

I just checked on live search, I did not find my blogspot blog (which is on Google!) and on Google Search engine, I could find my blogs.msdn.com (which is hosted by Microsoft) blog on second page.

Both of these blogs

• http://jigar-mehta.blogspot.com
• http://blogs.msdn.com/jigarme

Are highly ranked (at least I checked last week, and they are pretty good, coming on first page on keyword search "Jigar Mehta")

What is going on.. As a user, I expect to find information I am looking for, it should not matter where it is hosted, or whose page is it.. Bad thing..

Stay tuned..

What I like in my laptop.. A feedback...

So, after using laptop for two weeks, here is the feedback..

What I like in my laptop...

• Keyboard : My laptop keyboard is really awesome.. I was wrong in thinking I cant get that much speed on laptop keyboard, infact, my speed on laptop keyboard is even more than that of desktop (due to flatness of keyboard and very shallow key depth-ness).. I love typing on laptop keyboard..
• Sound Quality : Dell Inspiron 1525 has got EXCELLENT speakers (in-built), its even better than my desktop speakers.. (I selected powerless USB laptop speakers for my desktop but its not as good when it comes to quality..)
  • I have also got wireless (blue-tooth) headset along with laptop which, I have not used much (not got chance yet!) but it also looks good.
• Speed : I really did not expect this much speed on laptop.. its blazingly fast.. I love working on laptop for processor intensive tasks (like compiling a huge project of loading it in VS2008)..
• On board Media Player control : I really needed this on my desktop TVSE keyboard.. listening to music and clicking on pause or mute button on winamp or media player at that time (those small small buttons, aah!!) is really difficult.. but on my laptop, I just touch the pause/mute button just above keyboard and it glows nice blue LED and music is already stopped..!!! I love that feature..
• Screen brightness control : Fn + Up/Down key increases/decreases the brightness of my laptop display (which also matters a lot in battery power it consumes), I love this one click feature to increase/decrease the brightness, I dont like glowing screen all the times (except I am watching the movies)
• Battery life : When I decided 9-cell battery, few people gave advice 'Do you really need it?' and now, when I see the battery life of my laptop with 9-cell battery (appx. 6 hours, isnt that amazing? I can fly to Jammu from bangalore and come back still would have battery left for checking emails without starving for socket!!) To those friends, Yeah, I was looking for 9-cell battery.
• Webcam - Face Tracking : I love this, very creative feature..

What I dont like,

• Operating TouchPad : Though, I am getting used to this animal, I still dont like it very much.. I have other things to do with my fingers, afterall..
  • I am going to solve this problem by getting a Microsoft Wireless mouse pretty soon.
• Weight : My laptop is not light-weight (may be because I have put in many action movies and complex project source.. just kidding.. ) I wanted larger laptop screen, so, that may have contributed towards weight..
• Dell Systems (not scalable/portable) : I have this software complaint for Dell, they gave Media Direct(tm) feature [a dedicated partition for that] and only one data partition (160 GB whooping partition) which I hated. So, without having idea of potential problem, I just went ahead and broke the partitions into two which damaged the media direct partition and I am no more able to use Media Direct feature!! For those, who dont know what is Media Direct, its functionality to enable you watch movies (DVD and VCD I guess) without booting the operating system. Media direct is a very small scaled operating system in itself which can read the DVD/CD format and render the frames on screen (something like DVD player) and media direct boots instantly (just a special button above keyboard and you're watching the DVD).
  • Talking to Dell Representative on this teaches me that if I had to create partition, I had to create that from Media Direct DVD itself, because their ROM are designed to load media direct first.. Bad design I would say.

As of now, above are the points I could recollect regarding feedback, will add more if come across..

Overall, I am a very happy Dell user as of now, and love my laptop..

BTW, my home machine somehow got the knowledge that I got laptop and may be it thought (dont call me crazy, how can a machine think.. Ask Dr. Michio Kaku) I no more need himself, and my dekstop monitor stopped working (it shows me ghosty black blurred image of output display without any colors..) so, yet another LG dissatisfied user.. I need to get it repaired.. I still cant live without my desktop (at least I have to transfer the data, damn it!).

Stay tuned..

Where are XP drivers for Dell Inspiron 1525 ??

As you might have read in my previous blog post, I have installed Windows XP on the laptop, but immediately after installing XP, question comes, where are the drivers to make my Alps Touchpad, Integrated WebCam, Sound, Wireless Network, Ethernet and Graphics drivers??

I needed the drivers to make my devices work properly.. Started searching and found them at some forum!.

You can download them from here,

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Intel Chipset Utility For Windows XP

Description: Intel Chipset Utility for Win XP
Size: 2048 KB
Download:R166187.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 AHCI Sata RAID Controller Driver For Windows XP

Description: Intel AHCI SATA RAID Controller Storage Manager Driver for Win XP
Size: 327 KB
Download:R182441.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Sigmatel Audio Driver For Windows XP

Description: SIGMATEL STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio Driver for Win XP
Size: 8052 KB
Download:R180044.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Card Reader Driver For Windows XP

Description: Ricoh R5C833 RDriver for Win XP
Size: 2756 KB
Download:R166188.EXE

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Conexant Modem Driver For Windows XP

Description: Conexant D330 HDA MDC V.92 Modem Driver For Win XP
Size: 1831 KB
Download:R167368.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Creative Labs Webcam Driver For Windows XP

Description: Creative Labs Laptop Integrated Webcam Driver For Win XP
Size: 6256 KB
Download:R165116.EXE

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Dell Touchpad/Pointing Stick Driver For Windows XP

Description: Dell Touchpad / Pointing Stick Driver for Win XP
Size: 3815 KB
Download:R180045.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Dell Wireless WLAN Driver For Windows XP

Description: Dell Wireless 1395/1490/1390/1505 Wifi WLAN Driver For Win XP
Size: 92025 KB
Download: Dell_multi-device_A17_R174291.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Intel Wireless WLAN Driver For Windows XP

Description: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Wifi WLAN Driver For Win XP
Size:58241 KB
Download: Intel_multi-device_A12_R164255.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Bluetooth Driver For Windows XP

Description: Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module (Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR) Driver For Win XP
Size: 98839 KB
Download:R161378.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Marvell Lan Card Driver For Windows XP

Description: Marvell 88E80XX 10/100 Ethernet Controller Lan Card Driver for XP
Size: 21552 KB
Download:R180046.exe

Download Dell Inspiron 1525 Intel Graphics Display Driver For Windows XP

Description: Intel GM965 VGA Graphics Display Driver For XP
Size: 17579 KB
Download:R180043.exe

So, downloaded it (Thank god, my broadband was working fine without any driver!!) and installed on my system.

Stay tuned..

How do I extract file from Virtual Hard-disk (VHD)?

Recently, I had to extract a file from the VHD. While searching for software that can extract files out of VHD file, I found WinImage.

WinImage (though, not a free product) can open VHD files and let you extract the content (NTFS partitions are read-only, FAT32 it can even write into VHD!! Pretty impressive!!)

Stay tuned..

Setting up Dual Boot on Dell Inspiron 1525 with Pre-Installed Vista

The laptop has come Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed, which is not so much useful for my regular development activities because not all tools and SDK that I am using are compatible with Vista yet!! Sad but its true..

So, after getting the laptop, the first task was to setup the machine for my regular development environment.. which includes my favorite operating system Windows XP (I just got new license for XP last time when I visited Redmond)

But I think, I can say one thing.. Installing windows xp on a pre-installed windows vista machine is just difficult. The main reason behind this is, boot record format/mechanism change in windows vista.

Boot.ini is no more significant for windows vista. Vista stores boot information in another format which can be manipulated using bcdedit.exe.

I really struggled for 7-8 hours (including installing XP for 2 times because of messing up with boot record.) Finally got VistaBootPro and changed the boot record using that. The most important thing is, one might get "\ntldr missing" or "\ntldr corrupted" when selecting to boot Windows XP.. Dont worry, you have everything setup properly in windows xp, its just that ntldr and another .com file are missing. Copy those files marked as hidden and system from vista drive to XP's drive (in my case XP was on D drive and Vista was on C drive).

After that, both OSs were working fine, but it took me significant debugging/troubleshooting, guesswork, and my 7-8 hours.. but a good learning experience.

Regarding laptop, its a good piece with 5.8 hours of battery life (when fully charged!).. 9-cell battery is paying off..

Stay tuned..

Want to login in your Hotmail/Live account using Information Card?

Here you go,

Associate a card on your machine (create a new one if you dont have already) with your hotmail account, and forget about entering password every-time you login, yet more secure..
https://login.live.com/beta/managecards.srf

PS: You need Windows Vista or .NET Framework 3.5 installed for information cards to work. To check if your system is capable of using information cards by going to start->settings->Control Panel, check if you see "Windows CardSpace" applet there..

I enjoy logging in using information card..

Stay tuned..

Want to use Google Desktop? Get 1.7 GB Virtual Memory first..

Search.. search.. search.. Give me more memory...

What can you do about it? Restart the process every few hours!! Or else, move to Windows Desktop Search..

Stay tuned..

Finally.. Sticking laptop to myself for the rest of life!!

I still remember the days when I used to hate laptops.. I've always had an opinion that laptops are not good.. the main reason behind that was, I was not getting 60 WPM on laptop small keys!!

But finally, as they say, "Time teaches you things and changes your opinions!!".. Just placed an order of my first laptop.. and after a long discussions, and lot of research, have chosen Dell Inspiron as my first laptop.. It is taken for a special use this time (which I am not going to blog about.. ), lets see how much do I get hit by upcoming budget..

Yes, as you might have thought, feedback on the laptop and more stories associated with it, are on the way.. !!

Stay tuned..

Google Desktop.. An expensive application..

I was just thinking what does Google desktop do with 29,320 handles (kernel mode objects!!)...

Now, I know why does my HDD stay busy in doing paging all the time!!

Stay tuned..