WebHavoc.com

Commentary and discussion on the items that are on this geek's mind

Preview your open tasks in Windows XP

May 18

Posted by Tejas in Software | No Comments

Free Visual Task Tips. Hover over open or closed tasks in your task bar and get the image of whats going on in that program. Really cool. A function that has been on OSX for quite some time. Now on Win Xp and being tested on Vista.

A great download and highly recommended. Click read more to link to the site which is pretty self-explanatory using pictures what it does. It’s a great feature that you wish you’d always had and is priceless for people who keep more than one application open in Windows – which would be almost everyone.

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Modern Day Essential: 2GB Flash Drive under $50

May 18

Posted by Tejas in Bargains | No Comments

These things have not just replaced floppy disks but gone way beyond. I still remember having to carry around a disk that only held about 1.44MB of data. Now you can buy this handy flash drive which will store about 2000 times that much data and it’s smaller than a floppy disk to boot.

I highly recommend everyone who doesn’t have one picking one up as soon as possible, they are extremely handy in this digital age and Newegg.com is an excellent online store to purchase from. I’ve bought many things from them in the past and they are probably one of the best places to buy tech stuff online.

Go get it now while the stock lasts!

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ElephantDrive: Free Unlimited Storage

May 18

Posted by Tejas in Networks | No Comments

Elephant Drive, in association with Amazon is creating a service similar to that of Xdrive. However, they offer unlimited offsite backup free of charge if you sign up as a beta tester!

Although it promises free unlimited storage you have to keep in mind, you are placing all your personal data onto someone else’s servers. I’m sure they have very strict security and access policies but the fact remains is that all your data is out there sitting on a server you don’t own.

It’s excellent for data that is not very personal such as backing up public pictures, maybe some music but I don’t think it’s the best way to go for sensitive personal documents you don’t want to fall into the wrong hands.

For safe, secure and reliable storage you can always go with a USB external harddrive. It’s mobile and you own it…

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Hardware requirements for Windows Vista officially announced

May 18

Posted by Tejas in Software | 3 Comments

Microsoft today revealed the minimum specifications for Windows Vista, in two tiers: “Vista Capable” and “Premium Ready.” And as usual, the emphasis is on minimum.

I was actually, after all the hype, expecting Vista’s requirements to be higher than what was announced. Most people who bought a somewhat decent PC in the last 2 years should have enough CPU horsepower and RAM for the new OS.

One item which WILL require most people to upgrade though is the video card requirements. I’m ok but that’s because I did spend about $400 last summer on an ATI X800XL 256MB card, but nowadays most budget PCs come with internal graphics which won’t do you any good with Vista if you want to see all the special effects.

What I’m curious about is if they’re going to announce separate specs for laptops/notebooks. Not many notebooks out there with 128MB of video RAM!

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My XBox 360 had a “hardware failure” after 5 flawless months!

May 15

Posted by Tejas in Video Games | 5 Comments

Well I read all the posts and articles about people experiencing hardware failure problems with their Xbox 360. I thought to myself, “nah” that’s not going to happen to me.

Sure enough, I got the system on December 12, 2005 I have been playing it since then without a single issue. As you can see from my gamerscoe on the gamercard on this site I have played quite a bit and enjoyed it.

So as I said, the thing has been working flawlessly for months and life was good. Today, I got home and decided to play a little Oblivion before dinner so I started it up and it loaded Oblivion fine. Hit Continue and the game started to load my saved game…then rather than see the graphical goodness of Oblivion I saw a bizzarre graphics corruption that reminded me of my old PC gamer days with video artifacts.

Thinking this was just a minor hiccup, I turned the system off, waited a few seconds and then turned it back on eager to get back to Oblivion.

Then it happened – my worst Xbox 360 nightmare – the dreaded 3 Blinking Lights of Doom. This signal is supposed to indicate that either the system is “overheating” or “hardware failure”. I immediately knew it couldn’t possibly be overheating since it had only been on for like 3 mins before it croaked. Also I had played several long sessions in the past five months when an overheating issue would have presented itself.

That led me to sad belief that my $500 video game console had for no apparent reason committed suicide. Not quite sure what drove it to do this since I had treated it quite well but I guess that’s life.

Called Microsoft at 1-800-4-MYXBOX and the guy took my info down. The process is that they will send an empty box (upto 3 days) to me, I return it (? days), they fix it (2 days) and ship it back (upto 3 days) – so all in all we’re looking at like 2 weeks or so to get it back.

What a pain and very dissapointing that something like this could happen without any type of warning.

The only silver lining in this ordeal is that my warranty was supposed to expire 4 days from today so had this issue happened next week, I’d have to pay money for this nonense.

I’ll report back on the process and how long it takes.

BE WARNED if you have an Xbox 360 – it can happen at any time so enjoy it while you can

Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) Missing Features on Low-End Version

May 9

Posted by Tejas in Video Games | No Comments

psxlogo1.jpgSony probably didn’t want anyone to find out until closer to launch but thanks to the wonderful interweb, the cat is now out of the bag.

The “budget” $499 PS3 system apart from having a smaller HD (20 vs 60GB) than the “premium” $599 PS3 actually has several other features missing including HDMI output! WTF? What happened to true-HD? What good is BluRay without HDMI..apart from HDMI, the $499 system also doesn’t have WiFi or a Memory Card Reader.

Read More (Pricing)

Also as if that wasn’t bad enough, the PS3 new controller (which to me looks identical to the current PS2 Dual Shock) doesn’t have any type of force feedback which although Sony attributes to causing interference with the gyroscopics (motion detection) is more likely due to a copyright issue they recently lost.

Read More (Controller)

Personally, I would rather have Force Feedback over motion detection and I sure as hell am not paying $599 for a PS3 that probably won’t ship with any games. What do you think?
Also as with the Xbox360 (which I do own) initially the stores will be selling bundles so you’re looking at close to $1000 for a decent starting system. More than likely, I’m guessing Microsoft will drop the price on the Xbox360 before the PS3 launches making the price gap even more.

Windows Mobile 5.0 System Processes Memory Consumption

May 8

Posted by Tejas in Cell Phones | 2 Comments

One of the main problems with Windows Mobile 5.0 devices is that they don’t have a lot of RAM available to users so you can’t run a lot of applications at the same time, and on top of that some applications aren’t good about returning the RAM they use after they’re done.

RAM in Windows Mobile 5.0 works in the same way as RAM on a PC. It’s volatile storage which means that if power is lost everything in it is erased. It’s used to load running programs and store info temporarily. Windows Mobile 5.0 devices also have ROM which can be compared to a hard drive on a PC and is used for persistent storage. So essentially, much like a PC whenever a program runs on a Windows Mobile 5.0 device (for the most part) it is copied from ROM to RAM and then executed. The code then remains in RAM until it is done and then it’s supposed to free that RAM for something else – except it doesn’t always seem to happen too well. Keep in mind, releasing this free RAM and memory management in general is the responsibility of the application NOT Windows which is why things get messy with third-party apps. 

In any case, I am very much in love with my Cingular 8125 which runs Windows Mobile 5.0 but I got frustrated with the constantly vanishing RAM so I sent an email to the Windows Mobile Team blog, who actually work on the development of the system.

This a great email response from Mike Calligaro of the Window’s Mobile Team. Its pretty self-explanatory.

What do you think? Is Mike’s explanation valid? I think if what he says is true that we need to pick up our pitchforks and go after the OEMs such as HTC for sticking us with a paltry 64MB of total RAM…most of us start with only about 22MB available after a soft-reset and if 10MB+ is “supposed” to be used by the OS then we’re left with 10MB or even less.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

—–Original Message—–
From: Me
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 8:15 AM
To: Windows Mobile Blog Team
Subject: (Windows Mobile Team Blog) : WM 5.0 System Processes Memory Consum=
ption
Importance: High

Hi,

I would normally accept OS memory allocations and system process memory foo=
tprints as a necessary evil but something just does not seem right.

I have a HTC Wizard device running the latest AKU2 ROM (OS 5.1.195 Build 14=
847.2.0.0)

I start off with about 22MB of free memory after a soft-reset and now after=
using the device for about 8 days, I’m consistantly floating around 7-8MB =
free.

I ran Task Manager (similar to MemMaid) which looks at running processes an=
d memory footprint. Guess what I found….the top 4 memory hogs are ALL WIN=
DOWS MOBILE 5 SYSTEM PROCESSES!!

So in reality it doesn’t matter which apps you are running from third-parti=
es because it’s WM5′s own system processes that are killing your memory.

Here’s my top 4:

GWES.exe – ~3MB

Filesys.exe – ~ 2.5MB

Shell32.exe – ~ 2.5MB

Device.exe – ~ 2.0MB

Total = 10MB!!

VoiceCmd also takes up about 2MB and the rest of my apps/plug-ins take up

—– Reply to Original Message—–
From: “Mike Calligaro”
To: Me
Sent: 5/8/06 4:43 PM
Subject: RE: (Windows Mobile Team Blog) : WM 5.0 System Processes Memory Co=
nsumption

These numbers feel about right to me. It takes code to run an operating sy=
stem, and code uses RAM. All of the processes that you’ve listed below are=
system processes.

GWES is the windowing system. A large number of the system bitmaps are loa=
ded into GWES. Bitmaps (pictures) take up a lot of space. Also, every app=
lication that creates a window causes GWES to allocate space to manage that=
window. Font data is also loaded into GWES. The more fonts used, the mor=
e space GWES will use.

Filesys is the file system. It is equal parts Microsoft code and OEM code,=
but 2.5M feels about right, especially if you had a storage card inserted =
when you took that number. It is the file system that stores data in inter=
nal flash and storage cards. Because flash is considerably slower than RAM=
the file system uses a chunk of RAM as a “cache.” When you want to write =
something to the flash, the filesys will store it in the cache and let you =
get on with your business quickly. Then it slowly writes the data out to f=
lash. A sizeable chunk of the RAM you’re seeing is used by these caches. =
An OEM can configure how big the caches should be, but this is a tradeoff b=
etween RAM usage and performance. If you use too little RAM, the device wi=
ll go too slow.

Shell32 is the user interface of the system, including the today screen. A=
ny today screen plugins you have are loaded in Shell32′s space, as is the b=
ackground image.

Device contains all of the device drivers on the system. Device drivers ar=
e the code that make the hardware work. Without them, your device is nothi=
ng but a hunk of plastic. Device contains, minimally, the Display driver, =
backlight driver, audio driver, keyboard driver, battery driver, usb driver=
, camera driver, Bluetooth driver, wifi driver, and cellular radio driver. =
Remove the display driver, and your screen wouldn’t work anymore, etc. Al=
though all of these drivers are written by the OEM, running more than ten f=
undamentally important pieces of code in 2M seems reasonable to me.

Mike

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Review (XBox360)

Mar 28

Posted by Tejas in Video Games | No Comments

OblivionCoverSo there have been some really good games out for the Xbox 360 recently such as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW), Burnout Revenge, etc. However, one that just came out recently cannot be considered as good, not even excellent but dare I say it, revolutionary.

RPGs have been around for ages, I remember playing Final Fantasy 1 on the original Nintendo (NES) – wow that makes me feel so old. The concept behind most RPGs (role-playing games) is that you take on the role of a character that moves through a certain world and performs certain quests. Along with this, there is the concept of leveling up which can be thought of gaining expertise in certain areas based on your character’s focus,etc. All in all, RPGs tend to be extremely immersive or at least try to be as it is a very important part of delivering the experience that you are in this other world interacting with virtual characters.

While other games including the most popular RPG franchise Final Fantasy do a stand-up job of immersing the player in their worlds, I have to say apart from its other strong points that the ability of Oblivion to completely immerse you in its amazing world is what makes it one of the best games of all time.

I’m not here to make long reviews, there are plenty of dedicated websites that will do a far better job but I’ll touch on some major points and link to some good detailed reviews.

From the moment you take control you are fully immersed in the world of Tamriel and it is VERY difficult to leave – which is why I was up until 4AM playing the first day I got the game.

Graphics - best graphics on Xbox360 by far (better than GRAW). Framerate is fairly consitant although there’s a small amount of slowdown at times but it doesn’t effect the gameplay. You are usually so involved in the game that framerate issues rarely cause you to groan, in a perfect world it would be smooth all the time but, oh well.

Audio – Patrick Stewart cameos as the Emperor and all in all the other voice acting is superb, lots of variety and NPCs sound like you expect them to. Best of all, they have attempted to put some emotion into the characters faces as they talk so as they talk you can see them be serious, jovial, sad, etc. A very important and nice touch.

Value – Literally hours and hours and hours (some report minimum of 60) of gameplay bottled up inside this game, making it possibly one of the best values for the Xbox 360. Lots of side quests and other things (Arena, Guild contracts) you can do. Also for the true hardcore fan there’s always playing over with a different race, class, sign,etc which changes the whole experience. Trust me, this is the best $60 you will ever spend on a video game.

Gameplay – It’s so immersive, anything you want to touch/take/steal you can, including a single apple on a table or a bottle on the floor. I haven’t come across a part yet where I feel I should be able to do something that I haven’t been able to which is truly outstanding. I will most likely replay the game as a thief because it seems there’s a ton of stuff you can steal and then trade on the black market, etc. – right now I’m playing it through as a “good guy” but still.

All in all, I can’t say enough good things about this game – it was definitely worth the wait and I’m glad they took their time with it.

If you’re a RPG/adventure fan this is a MUST – don’t even second guess it. Even if you’re not an RPG/adventure fan, you’d be a fool to let this gaming jewel pass you by.

GameSpot Review (9.6 / 10)

IGN Review (9.3 / 10) – This will open a top bar from GameRankings so you can go to other reviews of the game too.

HTC Wizard (Cingular 8125) Registry Tweaks

Mar 28

Posted by Tejas in Cell Phones | 2 Comments

Cingular 8125One thing that I HAVE been spending a lot of time with recently is my new Cingular 8125 – based on the HTC Wizard. You can read the review on my site to learn more about it.

The thing is since I’ve had the device, I’ve started to really enjoy it more and more for the simple reason that *gasp*, it’s Windows. Granted there are several problems with Windows in general, biggest ones being security and stability BUT one of the advantages of having a Windows OS on your PDA/handheld device is the familiarity you automatically have with its functionality.

The Windows Mobile 5 devices have among other similarities with its big brother Windows is the registry. A tree data structure that provides a central location for both system and application components. Where there is a registry, there is flexibility – sounds corny, but I didn’t mean it to.

Many adventorous people have slaved away at finding all kinds of goodies from editing that lovely registry and I’ve decided to post links to the best resources I could find.

What You Need:

A registry editor software. Windows Mobile 5.0 does not come with any type of registry editing software because frankly users are not supposed to be snooping around and messing with stuff in there.

Some potential candidates are:

  • Resco Explorer 2005 – This costs $ BUT it is my favorite and highly-highly recommended. It not only gives you a very friendly registry editor but an amazingly versatile file manager AND a Today screen plug-in to monitor system resources. The only reason you shouldn’t get this is if you’re just trying to make this difficult on yourself
  • Total Commander – This one is free and I haven’t tried it but I believe it serves its purpose quite well. I have heard this one is not for those who are not as technical as they would like to be but hey, it’s free.
  • PHM Registry Editor – Older app that is also free but again, nothing comes for free so the interface is not as user-friendly as Resco.

Download one of the above apps and install it onto your Cingular 8125 (or any HTC Wizard based device).

Before we get to the good stuff, I have to put out a disclaimer like everyone else does, that making changes to your registry can be potentially harmful to the device and can lead to (rarely) a corruption of data or having to restore your device to the original factory state (called a hard reset).

Where To Get The Info:
Now to the good stuff. Here’s a link to an amazing site called xda-developers.com. They have a page up with most if not all of the tweaks that are really important.

HTC Wizard Registry Tweaks at XDA-Developers.com

Happy Tweaking! I’ll post more stuff about my Cingular 8125 as time goes by including more tips, tricks and recommendations for software.

Inactivity as a result of my wife being ill

Mar 28

Posted by Tejas in Personal | No Comments

Funny that the last post was all about getting back on top of things and posting more frequently but since then, sadly, my wife has been ill and we’ve spent most of our time focused on helping her get better. She just had surgery yesterday and she is doing better, hopefully she won’t have any more problems as a result but the next few days will be part of the painful recovery she has to go through.

In any case, I’ve been too distracted to really spend much time on here and post anything but once she gets better, I’m looking forward to posting more on here.