Windows 7 Starter Edition

My hand was iching.... Can't resist the temptation to leave my daughter's Asus Eee 900 alone, running Windows XP. I really need to give it a shot and see how Windows 7 is performing on a Celeron 900 netbook (not even ATOM)

Let's look at the spec, nothing special.

Asus Eee 900

- Celeron 900 processor

- 1GB RAM

- 4GB SSD + 16GB SSD = 20GB SSD

- 10.1" LCD panel with 1.3Mp Web Cam

First up, I downloaded the Windows 7 Starter edition from MSDN ;)

I copied the ISO file into my DELL E6400 (Win7 x64) and load it up using MagicDisc; Daemon tool had lost my favour after it started to charge for the software and burried the FREE version deep down in the forum.

Next,... wait a minute. Great. I forgot to bring my USB DVD-ROM drive. Ok, need to switch to Plan-B. I will have to install the OS using a thumbdrive or a mobile hard disk. I have no done it before (via USB storage) but what the heck, I started googling and within seconds, voila, I found this site to be very helpful and started following the procedures after backing up those data in my mobile hard disk. Kudos to the writer, it was just barely 20 minutes and I am ready to rock & roll. My mobile hard disk is bootable and has all the Windows 7 CD contents in it.

Time to change the BIOS of the Asus Eee. I booted up the Asus Eee (make sure it is connected to power) and start playing with the BIOS configuration. I changed the boot up sequence to enable my USB mobile HDD as the primary device to boot up. Once that is done, I just need to save the settings and the netbook will reboot.

The netbook automatically booted up from the mobile HDD and started the installation sequence. The installation was a breeze but again, hindered by the computing power and slow USB connectivity, it really take a long while (appox. 1 hours) to complete the installation. Nothing too fancy or surprise here, it's the same process as per Vista.

Upon completion of the installation, do remember to disconnect or reject the media (in my case, the mobile HDD) before the first restart. It took a couple of minutes before the netbook finally showing the configuration screen (asking for user name and password), once past that stage, you're at the desktop of Windows 7 starter.

I had a quick check and first thing came to my attention was the screen resolution. It is running at 800x600. Asus Eee 900 screen res should be 1024x600 and this requires a quick fix. I fired up the Windows Updates knowing most fixes and drivers shall be available online and as expected, just a moment later, the drivers are downloaded (Intel GM910) and installed, well, not after 2 reboots to get it all installed.

Windows 7 starter is running reasonably well on the Asus Eee 900 now. The CPU usage is constantly hovering around 9%-20% with one IE instance running with a download in progress. However, I had witnessed that the CPU utilization hits over 90% and stayed there when I am installing a driver. This should be normal since Celeron 900 is a single and rather old processor.

Of the 1GB memory that this unit is having, 512kb+ is being allocated as Cache while 640K is available with about 100K Free. I would say, this is rather sufficient for executing those run of the mill applications.

Windows 7 ... finally (part 2)

There are many changes made to Windows 7. It is like a reincarnation of Vista, just that, this time around, it is lighter, fitter and faster. Many key functions are easily available, well, may be one or two levels of menu down, but definitely not Vista that you will need an excavator to dig it out, burying those key functions deep down. In short, user ergonomic is a plus.

My usual applications like Firefox, Chrome, Office 2007 Professional, etc. even the Lotus Notes 8.5 survive in this migration effort. I would say that my experience so far being great and running the x64 version on this DELL E6400 hardware has been satisfying. Next up, I will be installing the Windows 7 starter edition into my daughter's Eee PC 900 running Celeron with 16GB + 4GB SSD and 1GB RAM.

Windows 7 ... finally

I was disappointed when I can't get the Lotus Notes running on the RC1 of Windows 7 as per my previous posting. Well, not anymore. I had been running Win7 with Lotus Notes 8.5 flawlessly for almost 4 weeks (August 13, 2009) since Win7 first available as RTM on MSDN. Lucky me :) have access to MSDN subscription!

I had changed from DELL D630 to a soup up E6400 with all the bells and whistles. Having 4GB RAM gives you the peace you need whenever you fire up multiple apps all the same time. Interestingly, it is not as resource hungry as its predecessor.

Nevertheless, I still face some challenges with the IE8. It keeps giving the application error whenever it feels like it and frankly, I have no clue at all of what causes these errors. But, I have to admit, MS had done a greater job this time. Although the error dialog box appears, it has never even once, closes the IE or a tab or restarting the app. This is a vast improvement from the past.

Symantec EndPoint 12, on the other hand, was barely working as it is not fully updated to support Win7. Win7 keeps alerting the status of SEP although it is working. I can't recall which messsage, but it was reported that ...

...cont'd

Greenview, August '2009

又是学校假期，几位钓友就开始手痒。如无意外，这个星期六就会相约去GreenView 一游。
届时，必定有照片分享。

House is ready for handover ... September 2009

Visited the house today with a real estate agent. The sales office lady told me that the house is almost completed and currently in progress of connecting the power utility.

I had a visit to the lower unit of the show house. What a transformation! I was so impressed to see the interior designer had done quite an amazing work in transforming the ugly duckling. Well, to be honest, the lower unit although is a beauty in its own right but not my cup of tea especially after I set eyes on the upper unit. My wife was the one that insisted that we should take up the lower unit. Probably her profession as interior designer, she saw what I didn't see.

Anyway, with the tentatively hand over date looming on the horizon, we are getting excited about it and at the same time, was in a dilema of whether to stay, rent or sell. Only time will tell.

Lotus Notes 7.02 & 8.0 on Windows 7

I managed to get Windows 7 RC1 running successfully on my DELL D630. It recognized all the devices of the laptop with ease and I only need to perform a windows update to iron out the driver issues. It was up and running in less than 40 minutes (including time for me to grab a cup of coffeee, take a peek at the magazines, etc.).

However, I had my first stumbling block when I try to install Lotus Notes 7.02 (later 8.5) mail client. The installer just unable to complete the installation with an error message (will get that message again to share). I had tried almost all the tricks and tips that I can find on the internet but to no avail.

Finally, I had decided to download the Virtual PC and work on the XP mode. I was hoping that the issue only happens in a native Windows 7 environment, but, to my disappointment, it also takes place in the XP mode. Well, I assume that running the Lotus Notes installation in XP mode would shield me from whatever bugs/issues that I may have with Windows 7 since XP is being tested and proven working well with Lotus Notes.

I am still searching for an answer to that although I had read some postings on the internet that cited success attempts in getting Lotus Notes to run on Windows 7, I am suspecting that probably my copy (downloaded from MSDN) is not the same as those who had managed to get it up and running.

Anyway, I would appreciate if anyone can shed some lights on this and help me out!

Thanks a million.

The house is almost ready....

There are significant progress on site with regards to the construction of the property. Looks like it is going to be ready for hand over way ahead of the scheduled date of '2010. All the fixtures & fittings being installed and we can see the workers cleaning up all the units. It has been 3 weeks since I last visited the site and would definitely do so this weekend. We shall post more photographs after the visits.

Wakeboarding @ Tasik Prima

This is a video from YouTube.com that shows wakeboard activity in Tasik Prima where this house is located

Windows 7 and DELL Latitude D630

I had installed Windows 7 into my office Dell Latitude D630 in preparation for my 5-days trip to Australia (Sydney-Canberra). The installation of Windows 7 was very straightforward almost a no brainer. It recognized all the computer's components automatically, admittedly, D630 is rather new uses most of the common and standard stuff (e.g. Intel chipset, etc.), you know what I meant.

The challenges started only after I tried to install applications. First off, I need a DVD/CD emulator, I am a big fan of Daemon Tools but this time, I am out of luck. Daemon tools caused Win7 to BOD (Blue screen of Death) upon restarting the notebook. No luck, I search the internet and bum into few articles that recommended the alternative.

Installing Lotus Notes .... (to be continued)
Installing Microsoft Office .... (to be continued)

to be continued

Coming up ... Swine Flu & IT Contingency Plan

There may be uncountable number of articles exist in the Internet today on Swine Flu and its impact to human health and businesses. However, other than medical advices, no one seems to talk about the role & responsibilities of an IT Manager in this context. This shall bring us to the issue of How do we use IT as enabler to cushion the impact, e.g. ensuring business as usual even in the crisis situation where key personnel or decision maker being down with the flu and quarantined? ... Guys, we are talking about a crisis here! Don't you think it is time for us to switch to our Contingency mode? I will talk more on that later, stay tuned. Signing off from Port Dickson.

MSDN subscriber service (profile error) - download Windows 7 RC

Being a MSDN subscriber, I was eagerly awaiting for the coming of 30th April 2009 when Windows 7 Beta will be made available to MSDN subscriber. Guess what, MSDN loads up the page as usual, but wait a minute, what is going on? Instead of the usual "Manage Your Subcription" link, what I got is an error message (see below) claiming that my profile cannot be retrieved.

An Error Has Occurred

There was an unexpected error while attempting to retrieve your profile data.

You can try to:

* Close your browser and retry the operation again in a few minutes.

* Contact Support

* Read the On-Line Self Help

Reference Id: CFE16446

This error has been logged with the reference number noted above. Please use this reference number if you contact support.

Is the MSDN server being overwelm with the large number of request for downloads or simply put, priority is not given to ASIA subscribers? Reading the On-line Self Help is not helping anyway, instead of telling you to fix your problems of not able to access your subscription, you're being told how to fix your File Transfer Manager issues with your IE or Firefox. Interesting huh?

Wait a minute, while writing this blog posting, habitually, I clicked on the Refresh button of my IE that has the MSDN page loaded with the error message, guess again, the page loaded successfully and everything back in order. I had just signed in with my Live account and waiting for the page to load.

Alright, off we go... I am in. First up, let's download Windows 7 RC (x64) and soon, to be followed by x86. I will continue the blogging in the next 24 hours after the Win7 being downloaded.

What I intended to do is to try running it on my daughter's ASUS Eee 900... let's see how it performs and obviously, my office notebook, a DELL D630. Just hope that 2GB RAM is sufficient to get Win7 up and running...

More on that later... signing off @ 1:33am (1st May 2009) - Labour Day - for those who works with passion and live everyday to the fullest!

Rise of Puchong Watertown

This article was published in The Star newspaper on September 8, 2008 in the "House & Property Malaysia" section. For your reading pleasure, please visit here.

Greenview, Pulau Ketam - August '2008

安排了蛮久的这一趟钓游终於在这一天实现了。清晨6:30am就被我老婆给叫醒了 (这趟钓游是她同事所安排的) ，梳洗后才弄醒今天会跟我们一起去的俩位宝贝女兒（六岁/四岁），最小的女儿才一岁，只好麻烦岳母代为看顾。为了这一趟，我还特地乘跑了钓具店一趟，买了新较和女儿们的轻型钓具，花了好些银子，但是，为了让她们有个美好的回忆，还是值的。为了不让人久等，我们就快手快脚的将用具搬了上车就出发了。


一路顺风，四十分钟后，我们就在巴生的码头会合了其他的同事。为了提高今天的上钓率，乘渡轮还没到，我就跑去码头附近的鱼村去买活虾，那知道竟然忘了带电动气泡机，算了，即然买了就让这些活虾听天从命吧！


先放些照片。



在巴生码头等待渡轮的到来。





穿橙色衣帽的就是同事的儿子，中了很深的钓鱼毒。





左边绑辨子的是同事的女儿。中间的肥婆和穿白衣裤的女孩就是我的两位公主。





老婆的同事和她的男友。





另一同事和家人。





两个小瓜对这陌生的环境很好奇。





吉胆岛上的餐馆。





在鱼场派来的船上。风浪大了一点，海水各泼了上船。弄湿了美眉们。





老大。





老二。





同事的女儿。





途中所见。应该是个庙吧。





渔家。





Greenview 养鱼场要到了。





当天的海潮高涨（大潮），所以只钓到小鱼。我们花费了很多的时间在服侍这些小孩子，帮忙挂饵，脱鱼钩，放线，等等等等。但是其中的乐趣，非笔墨所能形容。特别是当小孩钓到鱼时的兴奋和惊张。








开工啦。








还是女娃们会享受。

















老爸要记得帮我串鱼饵哦。。





三个女娃又有新搞作。





爸爸，爸爸，快来帮我，有东西拉我的鱼杆。





盲拳打死老师父，新人好运气，给她用apollo拉上了一串的gelama





养鱼场一景。





各位观众，我在现场为您报导。小孩队赢了老人帮不只一个马鼻而是整条巷。





我也拉上鱼啦。





哦，还有一尾魔鬼鱼，难怪费了好大力气才能把它给拉上来。





痴痴的等，你到底在哪里？我总有一天等到你。钓鱼可是培养耐心的好办法。





一部份的鱼获。大都是小鱼。结果都用来喂养鱼池里的大鱼。





老人与海。





小钓手终於上了一尾金鼓（有斑点的鱼),才不至於输给一班女娃。





从养鱼场回到吉胆岛途中看到的漂亮钓点。下一趟，我们这几位老人家就要试试用假饵在这里钓一钓。
_________________
*** madgelama.blogspot.com ***

最后进行编辑的是 许老大 on 星期四 八月 21, 2008 4:44 pm, 总计第 3 次编辑

Roof Deck View video posted

The show unit (Part 2)

Continues...

The family room next to the master bedroom, again, lake view.

Master bedroom, view from entrance, again, lake view.

Master bedroom, view from the window towards the entrance. On the right is the walk-in wardrobe

View of the master bedroom's walk-in wardrobe

Simple layout of the attached bathroom

Stairs leading to guest rooms

The guest room facing the playground

The bathroom

The yard where you can do the laundry

Room #2, ample of space for kiddies

The room is facing the playground

Room #3, also facing the playground

Stairs leading to the roof deck area

View from the roof deck area

Another view from the roof deck area