Gadgets, web and miscellany
Posts tagged vista
Making stuff work in Vista x64
Feb 3rd
I recently converted my Dell XPS 420 from Vista x32 Ultimate to Vista x64 Ultimate SP1 (Dell shipped me the correct DVD when I asked for the 4th time). Obviously, a lot of stuff doesn’t work out-of-the box, but a little research did wonders:
Alternatives:
- Cisco VPN -> Shrew Soft VPN (64 bit optimized)
- CanoScan Toolbox & Drivers -> VueScan
Optimized for 64 bit:
- 7-Zip
- Firefox (called Minefield)
- Internet Explorer (installed with OS)
- MediaCoder
- Adobe Illustrator CS4, Acrobat 9, Photoshop CS4,
- K-Lite CODEC Pack
- NVIDIA drivers
- iTunes
- Paint.NET
- Logitech SetPoint
Doesn’t work in 64 bit:
- Flash on 64 bit browser (you need to use the 32 bit browser)
- Plugins for 64 bit FireFox (IE Tab)
- Cisco VPN
- Dell drivers that make icons look like the flash drive they represent (i.e., they all appear as Removable Disk, versus SD-card, etc.)
Building a supercomputer
Jun 10th
OK, not really, I got put in charge of maps for the BMFPD, and took it as an excuse to buy a new computer. Here’s some details and my screwups.
First, I went around all the computer retailers, online and brick-and-mortar, to see if I good buy what I wanted in a built-to-order or off-the-shelf computer. I couldn’t.
The criteria were:
- Silent. I live at 7400′, so fan runs faster up here. A silent computer at sealevel isn’t silent at my house!
- Fast.
- Diskless or small hard drive (HDDs come cheap).
- Dolby Digital Live and/or DTS connect for on-the-fly encoding of game audio.
- Serial port, just because. (Maybe a new weather station in my future?)
- Fanless video card.
