For the most I would consider myself an Apple Fan-boy, but definitely not a fanatic. I love all things Apple, except for the high prices on the many cool gadgets. But the one enduring product I love from Apple next to their MacBook Pro laptop line is their Apple iPhone. So here’s the top 6 reasons why I want to upgrade iPhones.

Reason #6: I could use the upgrade

I have an iPhone 3G and while it’s great, it’s starting to show its age. I’m finding my phone runs slower than when I first got it, despite hardly loading any applications on here. And while the iPhone 3Gs wasn’t a huge upgrade from the 3G, the iPhone 4 certainly is. The increased processing power of the new A4 chip alone would be a welcomed changed.

Reason #5: Video

I know they introduced video in the iPhone 3Gs, but HD video and the use of a Final Cut App makes it all the more intriguing. Now I can record HD video clips and make some quick edits to send to friends and/or post up online for the world to see immediately. Don’t have to wait until I get home to do some editing before I post it up! Super cute videos of my daughter, here they come!

Video chatting. OMG, Apple has realized one of my biggest wet dreams! Being someone who loves face-to-face conversations, this is like mobile webcaming without the fuss and muss of a bulky laptop! Think of the potentials! I think phone sex has taken on a whole new meaning and we’ll just leave it at that.

Reason #4: Multitasking

I know this is more of an iOS 4 thing than an iPhone 4 feature, but having the A4 processor powering the needs of multitasking would make multitasking a more enjoyable process. Can you imagine how painfully slow the iPhone 3G or even the first generation iPhone would handle multitasking? This has been a welcomed feature since the inception of the iPhone.

Reason #3: Compatibility

One of the beautiful things about Apple is how smooth it is to transition or upgrade up. If you ever upgraded from an older Apple computer to a new Apple computer, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Your profiles, files, programs, and just about everything is transferred from one Mac to another with everything in the same place! The same goes for the iPhone. When I upgraded from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G, it took less than 15-minutes and everything was in the same place as I had it. Remember the fun the last time you tried upgrading mobile phones?

Reason #2: Super Sexy Look

Like buying a Rolex, you don’t buy an Apple product merely for its reliability or functionality, but also for its looks. Dependable they are, but sexy, attractive, and eye-popping they are more. How many of us didn’t swoon over the first Apple iPhone? To this day, the iPhone is still the sexiest mobile phone, maybe more so than a Vertu. How many of our jaws drop when Steve Jobs first showcased the MacBook Air? What about the iMac? The iPad?

The new iPhone is absolutely gorgeous. The lines and the simplicity, the smoothness, everything is perfect. Because of its boxy design, it should be much more comfortable to hold.

Reason #1: $199 Upgrade

When the first iPhone was released, they were asking $599 for it. It wasn’t until almost a year later before The price was a tad more reasonable at $399. Finally the iPhone 3G could be had, as an upgrade, for $199. Now the iPhone 4, in many ways a completely different phone than the original or 3G/3Gs is available at the upgrade price of $199 also. For my wife, who still has the original iPhone, it’s a no-brainer. For me, it’s also a no-brainer. So what if I have to sign another two-year contract with crap AT&T? I’ve been with them for so long, it doesn’t even really matter anyways.

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3. My Thoughts on the iPhone 3G

© BleepingComputer.com

This particular malware is really annoying as it brings your computer to a grinding halt as well as prevent you from opening up or running any programs easily. So far I’ve only seen this hit Windows XP computers, but I’m sure other Microsoft OS are vulnerable.

Great. So how do we get rid of it? Very easy. Download and install the free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (MBAM) here. Do the quick scan first to get rid of the problem, it’ll ask you to reboot, and then run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware again and do a full-scan to make sure everything is gone. I haven’t found it to be any more or less effective installing and running MBAM in Windows Safe Mode or not. Either way seems to get rid of the virus.

Problem solved.

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Since it has been a while since I last used Boot Camp, I had forgotten most of the details and haven’t kept up with the changes. Since Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Boot Camp 2.0 comes pre-installed with the OS¹. When Snow Leopard was released, a new version of Boot Camp, 3.0 was introduced and integrated with the new OS². So what are some of the problems that I experienced with trying to install Windows XP on a MacBook Pro?

Disk Error

Apparently this is a fairly common issue. You go through all the installation steps:

1. Run Boot Camp Assistant in the Applications > Utilities folder
2. Specify a size for your new Windows partition (which in my case was to devote 90% of the hard drive to Windows XP since the people who will be using these two MacBook Pro won’t be using the Mac OS at all) and then the Mac OS creates and configures it.
3. Then put in a Windows XP SP2 CD and click Start Installation, the system reboots and Windows XP installation screen appears and you go through the motions.
4. Once Windows XP finishes installing and reboots to finish the setup, you get the black screen with: “Press any key to boot from CD…” you let that one go and then immediately: “Disk Error. Press any key to restart.” but the system stalls. The keyboard doesn’t work and you’re force to do a hard power down.

Apple’s Knowledge Base support article TS1722 isn’t of much either, I tried it and it didn’t work for me. The big issue is with Step 8:

Format the Windows partition named ‘BOOTCAMP’ before continuing with the rest of the Windows XP setup process. Important:  Do not use the “Leave the current file system intact (no changes)” or “Convert the partition to NTFS” options.

I never got any option to format the Windows partition. By default, Boot Camp Assistant configures the Windows partition to be FAT32. If you select to install Windows XP on that partition you will get the “Disk Error issue”. It doesn’t matter how many times you re-do the steps (I did it 5-times), the same problem arises when Windows tries to do the last setup after reboot. I also tried deleting the Fat32 partition and create a new NTFS partition and got this error message upon reboot:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file.

I also tried three different Windows XP OEM installation CDs, but nothing worked. So what fixed the issue for me? I had to find the “right” Windows XP SP2 CD. When I put that CD in and clicked Start Installation in Step 3 from above, and when it came to select the Windows partition to use, I selected the FAT32, it immediate went to a screen with three options: Convert the partition to NTFS (Quick), Convert the partition to NTFS, and Leave the current file system intact (no changes)! I selected the Convert the partition to NTFS (Quick) and everything worked fine after that. You can read this great thread on MacNN Forums where other people had the same problem with different solutions. Also make sure the CD you are using is a Windows XP full-version with Service Pack 2 or it won’t work.

I Can’t Install Service Pack 3 on a Boot Camp Windows XP!

Try and install the Service Pack 3 add-on and you’ll get this message:

An error occured while copying file osloader.ntd.  Cannot copy file to destination directory.  Click Retry to retry the operation or click Cancel.

According to Apple KB article HT3841, the issue is that “Windows is attempting to write to the first partition it sees to install the update” and the first partition is the Mac OS partition, which Windows cannot write to. This issue only affects Boot Camp 3.0 because of the new feature in which you can access you Mac OS partition from Windows. The fix is rather simple (copied verbatim from Apple KB):

1. Click Start, then My Computer.
2. Double-click on the BOOTCAMP (C:) drive At the These files are hidden screen, click on Show the contents of this folder.
3. Double-click on the Windows folder. At the These files are hidden screen, click on Show the contents of this folder.
4. Double-click on the System 32 folder. At the These files are hidden screen, click on Show the contents of this folder.
5. Double-click on the drivers folder.
6. Locate the file AppleMNT (it is a .sys file) and rename it to something like AppleMNT_keep.
7. Click Start, then click on Shut Down.
8. Click Restart to restart Windows XP.

Then you do the Service Pack 3 installation, which should complete successfully, and then reenable this feature:

Note: Don’t let your computer restart in the middle of this step. Click on Restart Later if you get a Restart dialog.

1. Click Start, then My Computer.
2. Double-click on BOOTCAMP (C:), double-click on Windows, double-click on System32, double-click on drivers.
3. Locate the file you renamed earlier, and change the name back to AppleMNT.
4. Click Start, then Shut Down.
5. Click Restart to restart Windows XP.

And problem solved.

How Do I Create A Boot Camp Windows Driver CD?

With Boot Camp versions prior to 3.0, you had an option in the Boot Camp Assistant to create a Driver CD that had all the necessary drivers for Windows. With version 3.0, they changed that and now you insert your Mac OS 10.6 Installation CD when in Windows and it will install all the necessary drivers for you.

Windows XP on MacBook Pro Full-time

So I’m not entirely sure how well this will work out, but I imagine it can’t be any worse than a PC running Windows XP. I’ll report back with problems I notice and observations as time goes on.

1. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1656
2. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3777

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Configure Windows 7

These directions are copied verbatim from the Microsoft site and reprinted here for future reference. These directions will work for Windows Vista also.

1. Open System by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security (System and Maintenance on Vista), and then clicking System.
2. In the left pane, click Remote settings. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
3. Select one of the “allow” options under Remote Desktop. For more information about these options, see What types of Remote Desktop connections should I allow? [Note: To be able to Remote Desktop into a Windows 7 machine from a Mac, you need to select "Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop (less secure).]
4. Click Select Users.
5. In the Remote Desktop Users dialog box, click Add.
6. In the Select Users or Groups dialog box, do one or more of the following:
   • To specify the search location, click Locations.
   • To specify the types of objects (user names) that you want to search for, click Object Types.
   • In Enter the object names to select, type the user name that you want to search for.
7. When you find the correct name, click OK. The name will be displayed in the list of users in the Remote Desktop Users dialog box.

Connect via the Mac

Make sure you’ve installed either Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Client for the Mac or CoRD, which is what I use. I’ve used both, but I prefer CoRD for its simplicity and easier GUI.

Type in the IP Address or computer name and connect.

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3. Windows 7 Enterprise On A Netbook

I knew early on I was not going to upgrade to Windows Vista on the netbook given the resource hog that Vista is, but when Windows 7 was announced, I was interested; more so when I learned that Windows 7 would be designed to work better with netbooks than Windows Vista.

© Flickr user 200ok

So once I acquired my copy of Windows 7 Enterprise, I immediately upgraded my home computer, a Dell Studio XPS 435MT, from Windows Vista 64-bit Home Edition to Windows 7 64-bit Enterprise Edition (more on how that’s working out in a future post). The second computer upgraded was my Asus  Eee PC 1000H. I figured a netbook would be a good test to see how efficient the latest and greatest operating system from Microsoft would run. My reasoning was that putting Windows 7 on a fast computer wouldn’t make much difference, but putting it on a more limited resource computer would show how well the operating system works with limited resources. And here’s what I found so far:

Windows 7 Setup Time Is Fast

Turns out that it is not possible to do an upgrade if you have Windows XP installed. Instead, you have to do a clean installation. I’m amazed at how fast Windows 7 installed on my netbook taking a little less than 30 minutes from when I launched the installer to when Windows 7 was up and running on my netbook. I have to say that the Windows 7 installation is probably by far the smoothest and pain-free of all the Windows operating system installations I’ve done, hands-down based on installation on two other desktop computers.

Hardware Support

I had read a few online articles that there are some issues with driver support for such things as the LAN card which I think is because they were using the beta version. I actually didn’t have any issues. I think this is one of the best new features of Windows 7 is the huge library of drivers it has built-in. I remember how much of a pain it was with Windows XP, that if you forget to write all your drivers prior to a re-installation, you could spend hours searching for the correct drivers for your devices (DriverMax is a great software to use before reformatting as it downloads all the installed drivers).

I found this site that has Windows 7 drivers for the Asus  Eee PC 1000H along with a good installation guide. You can download the various drivers individually or the zip from that site. After I installed Windows 7 Enterprise, it seemed like Windows had all the drivers for my 1000H so I haven’t really installed any of the drivers from that site. You should note that the person was using Windows 7 Beta, which at the time may have needed those drivers. The best thing to do would be to go to Asus Support website to download official updated drivers from there. The trick to get the Windows 7 drivers on the Asus website is to click on Eee Family under Windows 7 supported product models which will take you to another page. Select your Eee PC model (I selected Eee PC 1000H/XP) and it will give you a list of drivers to download.

Runs Very Well

Originally I was skeptical at how well it would run on a netbook, but felt better after reading some positive user experiences with Windows 7 and their netbook. Two sites reported getting a 2.3 on the Windows Experience Index, which I think is quite good for a netbook, unfortunately for me, the best score I managed was a 2.0. Here’s the breakdown of my hardware: Intel Atom 1.60 GHz processor, 160GB SATA hard drive, 2 GB of RAM, and the Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset video card. This is my Windows Experience Index breakdown:

So my Asus EeePC 1000H scored the lowest on the graphics card, which I figured it would being the Intel built-in on express video card. In the real world, the netbook runs just perfect for my needs. I can watch my Anime videos on battery power with no jerkiness or pauses. I’ve yet to try Hulu steaming, but I’m sure that will work fine as well.

One of the Best Wireless Managers

One of the cool new features I especially like about Windows 7 is the new Wireless Manager. It’s very easy to use, especially on limited screen sizes such as netbooks. You click once on the wireless icon and up slides this little window with all the wireless networks detected allowing you to easily connect, disconnect, and switch among wireless networks without having to go to another screen. I’ve always found Windows XP’s Wireless Manager to be a pain in the ass with having to open a whole new window to select your wireless network. And then when you have to enter your 128-bit encryption key without being able to see the key is just the final nail in the coffin. With Windows 7, you select the wireless network you want and enter in your key with the choice of exposing or hiding the key as you type.

Battery Life

So far I have not noticed any vastly difference in the battery life on my Asus EeePC 1000H running Windows 7 versus Windows XP. Some people have noticed as much as a 30-40% difference in battery life, but for me it seems to be about the same. Obviously battery life is affected by many factors such as screen brightness, how much processing the processor is doing, how much RAM is being used, how often the hard drive is accessed, whether the hard drive is a solid-state drive (SSD) or a SATA drive, and so forth. I usually get about 2-2.5 hours on a full charge watching my Anime videos or surfing the web.

Conclusion

So would I do it again: install Windows 7 on my netbook? Most likely. There are a number of new cool features of using a new OS such as Windows 7 and quite frankly, I’m getting tired of the blandness that is Windows XP although it works quite well. I can’t say that Windows 7 runs faster than Windows XP, but for all the additional added features, I think it’s worth the cost of a little bit of speed. I definitely like the new Wireless Manager and the other cool new features of Windows 7.

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C:\>perl example.pl

I would constantly get berated by Windows with:

'perl' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Turns out the solution is:

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties (or go to Control Panel > System)
2. Once the window appears, click Advance
3. At the bottom of the window, click on Environmental variable button
4. Another windows appears, and in the System variable list, look for a variable called “PATH” and click “Edit”
5. You will see something like: %SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;…and it may have other entries depending on what has been installed on your system, but what you want to add in front of it is:
6. c:\www\perl\bin; (or where the perl.exe file is)

Now you should be able to run:

C:\>perl example.pl

and get:

C:\>perl example.pl
Hello from ActivePerl!

Credit belongs to alucard01 from Apache Friends Forum. The post can be found here.

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Adam photographing Landon as he is taking a picture to show dust.

The five different technologies it takes for Adam to do this are: Eye-Fi SDHC card, Verizon USB727 EVDO modem, Cradlepoint CTR-350 Mobile Router, BixNet 5V Li-Ion battery, and a SmugMug/Flickr account. Larry Gonzales and Jeremiah Njoroge from Eye-Fi were on hand to answer questions and explain how the Eye-Fi technology works. From what Adam was showing us, it seems to be a very cool concept especially when the need of getting images on the web as fast as possible is very, very important. Using his Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II shooting wit small JPEG (4 MP equivalent files of about ~1 MB) he was able to burst off a number of shots and have them appear quite quickly in his SmugMug account. Even at the medium setting, the images took no more than a few seconds to appear. Quite impressive. One thing to note is that the Eye-Fi does not support RAW, only JPEGs will be uploaded. The Eye-Fi SDHC is a very impressive invention. I had, at one time, considered getting one for my 1D bodies and after Adam’s demonstration, I’m tempted again.

Wedding photography was mentioned as a good candidate, but I disagree as you probably don’t want your raw, unedited images available; not the best way to make a good impression. I think the better candidate for this technology would be photojournalist who don’t alter their images at all. This certainly offers a whole new level of live blogging: live photobloging. To read more in-depth on this and Adam’s thoughts, check out his blog posting [link to post]. Check out Adam’s live photoblogging session at COBA on his SmugMug [link]. The only complaint I have about this whole setup is that it is expensive. The equipment alone cost about $200 and the Verizon wi-fi plan is $60 a month, so the cost can add up quickly.

Sensor Cleaning

J.C. Dill and Landon were discussing their favorite method of sensor cleaning: Dust-Aid Sensor Cleaner. They swear that these have produced the best results in their continual endevaor for a clean sensor. This is the product they use exclusively for their Canon EOS 1D Mark III, Canon EOS 1D Mark IIn, Canon EOS 5D, and Canon EOS 20Da. The neat thing about the Dust-Aid Sensor cleaner is that it does not use any cleaning solution so thus won’t leave smear marks. I do have to say I am a bit scared of doing my own sensor cleaning, but after their demonstration and seeing the results, I’m sold. The Dust-Aid also seems to be the least scariest of all the other cleaning methods such as the Artic Butterfly and Visible Dust System. It is also the cheapest at ~$27.

Seem really good, I may end up purchasing one of the Dust-Aid to try since both my 1D bodies have collected some noticeable dust and it is starting to take a lot more time to clean out in Adobe Lightroom.

April K. Tse and Shootsac

Canon EOS 40D with Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM in Shootsac.

April brought her Shootsac to show me. An interesting “hip-pack” concept to store/carry your camera and lens without it looking noticeably like a camera/lens bag. The Shootsac is created by wedding photographer extraordinaire Jessica Claire. You can wear it one of two ways: as a purse or around your hip.

It’s designed to carry 3-6 lenses and is quite portable and made of neoprene. It seems you can only carry 3 pro lenses at most or risk breaking the seams or your back from the weight.

I can’t say I’m terribly impressed or would want to get one, but that’s just me. You can also purchase different front flaps so you can change it as often as your mood or outfits. The Shootsac isn’t cheap at $179 and neither are the front flaps costing anywhere from $30-$60 depending on the design.

COBA Pictures

You can see all the pictures from COBA at my SmugMug [link].

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1. Go to the Start Menu and select Run to open a Command Prompt
2. Browse to the MySQL bin directory. I had to do

   C:\>CD "Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 4.1\bin"

   Keep in mind that your directory structure might differ from mine depending on how you installed MySQL. Also you may have to do a few “Clear Directories” (i.e. “CD\” or CD..) to get to the base of C:\>.

3. Type in:

   mysql -u root -p

   and enter in your root password when prompted.

4. If you logged in successfully, you should see:

   mysql>

   and if not, then you will get something like:

   ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'blah'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

5. Enter in

   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'USERNAME'@'IP' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';

   What this will do is create a new user with ROOT privileges, so be very careful what account you are creating. If you are just using the root account, then replace USERNAME with root. And just so we are clear, USERNAME is the account you wish to create or use. IP is the physical IP address of the computer you wish to grant remote access to. If you enter ‘%’ instead of an IP number, that user will be able to remote access the MySQL server from any computer. PASSWORD is the password you wish to create if it’s a new user or the existing password of an existing account. And yes, you need to use the single quotation.

6. And finally, you want to run this last command:

   mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

7. To exit, just type:

   mysql> quit;

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