Hijinks Inc.

Category: Microsoft

  • Windows XP SP3 hits Windows Update

    It’s no secret that you could’ve grabbed a copy of SP3 off Microsoft’s server anytime in the last three months with nothing more than a simple registry hack (although up until this last week it wouldn’t have been a final release).

    Gone however are the days of registry hacks, as Microsoft has released SP3 into the wild via Windows Update. As far as updates go, this one is pretty unexciting. Though I did notice a small boost in performance on most of the computers I installed it on.

    This will certainly come in handy for anyone who builds/programs PCs, as now you don’t have to download 94 critical updates each time you install a fresh copy of XP, instead you can grab all those updates crammed into one download, copy it to a flash drive and save yourself a few hours work.

  • Vista Vs. XP

    I’ve often wondered just how bad Vista really is on system performance, so recently when I purchased a couple of Acer laptops I decided to install XP on one and leave Vista on the other for a few tests. Basically I’m just running Geekbench and a battery life test, nothing crazy.

    For the battery test, I merely pointed the browser to a URL set to auto refresh every 30 seconds and disabled all power saving features.

    Both computers are the follwing:
    Model:     Acer Aspire 4715Z
    Processor: 1.73GHz Pentium Dual Core
    RAM: 2GB RAM

    [ Vista ]
    First, I ran Geekbench. The system scored a moderate 1911, but of course the system shipped with a bunch of bloatware, so in the interest of fairness I removed all the pre-installed software and ran Geekbench again, it then scored 1922.

    The battery life gave out after 1 hour and 45 minutes of doing nothing but browsing the internet, that’s pretty sad.
    [ XP ]
    Running Geekbench on XP with no drivers installed, resulted in a score of 1939, only slightly higher than the Vista machine.

    After installing all the drivers and re-running Geekbench I ended up with a much more statisfying score of 2168. Not as large of a difference as I expected, but still a noticeable improvement.

    The battery life saw a huge jump though, ending with 3 hours and 14 minutes while browsing the internet.

  • Hard drive problems

    wdfdesktop_se_aajs.jpg

    Greetings, and thanks for reading my first post as a Hijinks Inc. author! My name is Jared, and I hope to be posting fairly regularly, but I have a busy schedule, so we’ll see.

    My rant today is about my computer, which apparently lacks the capacity to be scanned by Ad Aware or AVG without hanging. I have a 160GB SATA drive partitioned for my operating system and programs, and an additional 500GB SATA drive for storage. I figured since it always hangs while scanning the C: partition on the 160GB drive, that there was something wrong with the 160GB drive. I tested my theory by loading a fresh copy of XP Pro on an 80GB ATA drive, thus running on a completely separate hard drive on a completely separate controller, and it still hanged while scanning the C: drive. I then proceeded to un-plug the 500GB storage drive and then it scanned fine.

    What’s confusing me now is why it hangs when scanning the C: drive when it seems that the 500 storage drive is the problem. Or course, then I thought I’d figured it out, so I plugged the 160 back in, kept the 500 un-plugged and assumed it would work, but this time it hung. So now there’s either a problem with both drives, or it’s having a problem with the fact that both drives are over the magical ‘137GB’ mark.

    What’s really weird is that it’s successfully scanned with the newest 8.x version of AVG when I scan manually, but when it runs the scheduled scan, it hangs for like 20 hours.

    I’m stumped, irritated and tired, so we’ll tackle this one another day. Was that too negative? Probably, but it’s truth, and I think the truth is what we need a lot more of in this world. 🙂

  • Looking For XP Drivers For Your Acer?

    Let’s say you just picked up that sweet Acer Aspire AS4715-4053 notebook for $499.99 at Newegg, but it’s not living up to your expectations due to Windows Vista. Good news! It’s a little known fact that Acer still provides XP compatible drivers for most of their machines, not all but most. So if you happen to be looking for Acer drivers, try their European support site.

    I checked and they do offer XP drivers for the Aspire AS47150-4953.

    [ Drivers and Utilities (Acer EU) ]

  • Samsung Q1 Ultra

    I’ve been going back and forth and whether or not I should buy a UMPC. Now one could argue that I don’t need one, and they’d be right… but I can dream!

    If I did buy one, I think I’d go with the Samsung Q1U-V. The base specs are decent for a UMPC (especially for its price of $799)… Intel Processor A110(800MHz), 7″ WSVGA screen, 1GB DDR2 400 RAM, 60GB 4200rpm hard drive, Intel GMA950 graphics card, and Windows Vista Home Premium (which I would replace with Windows XP Tablet Edition). Full specs are located after the jump.

    Samsung Q1 Ultra

    In the end I opted not to purchase one, mainly because between my laptop and my iPhone I already have enough gadgets to cover my computing needs. Though I might reconsider getting a UMPC if the HTC Shift drops in price drastically.

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