Extend your Vista "Trial" to a 120 Days

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Despite posts, warnings, pages, and articles to the contrary all over the web, Windows Vista does have a trial version. It may be hard to get your hands on a legal copy of the Vista DVD without resorting to illegal means, but once you do, you can legally use it for 120 days – fully sanctioned and supported by Microsoft itself.

Just boot from the DVD, install without using a product key, and start using Windows. When your 30 day “grace period” prior to activation runs out, open up a command wind (Start -> Run -> cmd.exe) and type this in:

slmgr -rearm Continue reading →

AMD-ATi Releases Final Vista Drivers!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Just minutes before Vista goes on sale to the general public all around the world, ATi [[AMD]] has officially released the final versions of its drivers for Windows Vista. They’re out for Windows Vista x86 and x64, and they’re slightly smaller than the beta drivers in download size, though still downright huge (for drivers that is, but still nothing next to the X-Fi drivers) at 40MB.

Our original rant, posted just days ago, was all about just how irresponsible and ridiculous ATi/AMD’s much-delayed drivers for Windows Vista are, so we’re especially happy someone’s done something about it. It may be too late for AMD/ATi to make good with the techie users who’ve been using Vista without real graphics acceleration for months now, but it may not be too late for the home crowd.

Go and get the drivers, we’re downloading them too. We don’t know if they have OpenGL support or not, but they most certainly better – we’ll let you know when we find out.

Hat-Tip: Wally Ballou

The NeoSmart Files on Microsoft.com!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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NeoSmart Technologies has the express honor of being featured on Microsoft.com as a “non-Microsoft blog” with expert information on Windows Vista. Unlike the 7 other names on that list, The NeoSmart Files is the only blog that discusses technology at large, and everything from Unix to Vista to OS X. It’s actually rather impressive for Microsoft to feature a blog on that list that covers Windows Vista along with other operating systems and technologies, and that the reviews aren’t always positive.

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ActiveWin: Windows Vista Review

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Andre Da Costa of ActiveWin has just written a very good and objective review on Windows Vista as it now stands. It focuses a lot on consumer-related features, and is quite lengthy at 28 pages. It’s a very good overview of how Vista has matured over the years, and what this long-delayed operating system really is.

NeoSmart Technologies’ own review (originally released for RC1; less for the consumer, more for the techie) can be found here, as well as a screenshot gallery for the visually-inclined.

Final ATi Drivers for Windows Vista RTM

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Nope, they’re not here; not yet, anyway. Windows Vista is here, and ATi [[AMD]] still hasn’t released a real set of drivers for Vista users. Currently 3D performance on Windows Vista – if you’re using an ATi card – is close to zero, and ATi doesn’t seem worried in the least. In an email from ATi to a NeoSmart Representative, we were told that the final drivers would be here “before the end of January,” and they would have full OpenGL support – but they’re not here yet, and even if they were, it’s far too late as it is.

nVidia has had its drivers out for quite a while now, and even before that, at least nVidia users did not have to suffer from zero OpenGL support. The rumor was, once AMD bought ATi, their customer support and driver divisions would supposedly improve. Well, that rumor has most certainly been debunked now!

Users of ATi graphics cards have crappy Direct3D video acceleration, and no OpenGL support. The default Microsoft drivers provide worse Direct3D acceleration, but they do at least provide end users with 1MB of memory for OpenGL acceleration… What on earth is ATi thinking!?

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CodePlex Downloads and Internet Explorer 7

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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It seems ridiculous, but if you’re interested in downloading source code from Microsoft’s “SourceForge” (aka CodePlex), you’re going to need to use Firefox.

You don’t have to take our word for it. Here’s the download link for Phalanger, Microsoft’s version of PHP for .NET. It’s (stupidly enough), a JavaScript download link, and in IE7, it doesn’t work. So Microsoft’s implementation of JavaScript is broken in Microsoft’s latest browser. Interesting. The JavaScript works just fine in Firefox and Opera, so that’s what you have to use. If you don’t have it, better get installing.

In their defense, Phalanger is a great compiled version of PHP with complete access to the CLR and .NET libraries – highly recommended for anyone on a Windows host!

The Ultimate Plugin Administration Interface

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Let’s assume you have a decent web platform. It may be a CMS, a forum, a blog, a gallery, or a wiki – the point is, it works. And this platform has plugin functionality. Let’s go ahead and also assume that the process of writing a plugin and extending/modifying the functionality of existing code is made very easy by means of well thought-out hooks and filters. All what’s left is the process of installing, updating, and managing plugins on your platform. If there would be an “ultimate” plugin administration interface, what would it be?

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The Stupidity of Multi-Part "Articles"

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Authors of online content seem to just love multi-part articles. Usually they’re guides or reviews, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a big site or a no-name blog: authors just love to leave you hanging. It’s not good “visitor retainment practice” — it’s just annoying and pretentious. It leaves readers with half a thought (which can be far more dangerous than none), and it leaves the author looking like a stupid kind of guy.

It’s one thing when you say “Part 1 of the Mega Vista Review” – you can succinctly sum up an entire section or sections of the topic, completely contained within its own article. But it’s quite another thing when you say “How to play solitaire: Part one, shuffling the deck.” But that’s what most sites seem to love to do, and it’s just plain wrong, on many levels. Most importantly of all, not only does the reader no benefit, but the authors also do themselves no good: that reader isn’t going to come back a month from now to read part 2!

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Auto-Generated DVD Info in Windows Media Center

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Anyone that uses Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center to watch DVDs on his/her PC knows how boring and repetitive it can be to continuously have to use the “Search for DVD Info” feature to get WMP/WMC to download the name of the DVD, the name & length of each chapter, and the DVD Cover. It seems that Windows Media Center has a workaround for this that can make it automatically download that information for you.

There are two key ingredients in order to get this to work: First you need to patch your registry to automate the process, and then you need to get a XML file that ties the DVD’s hash to a key that can be used to retrieve the correct info.

The steps to accomplish the first part are highlighted on The Green Button, and are fairly straight-forward. Those directions also provide the steps you need to create each of the “identification files” for WMC. However, a better way exists.

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"Padding-" and "Margin-" – What’s the Difference?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Many intermediate and begginer CSS designers get confused when it comes to padding and margin values. What’s the difference? They both just shift stuff, so why the different names? Don’t they do the same thing?

Although the behavior of margin- and padding- is very similary, there is one important difference: margin- is on the outside of the element, and padding- is on the inside. What this means is, one will apply the whitespace shift “after” the element begins (padding), and the other will apply the whitespace “before” the element begins (margin). Many times there is no visible difference, but sometimes there is – a big one.

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