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MS Windows vista claimed another casualty in the effort to finish migrating all of my key software, hardware, and peripherals to the new OS. My Cell Phone.

I could care less where the fault lies, whether it is with Sony Ericsson or if it’s with Vista and it’s new way of doing things. Something that used to work flawlessly on XP, doesn’t even start on Vista. My cell phone, the Sony Ericsson W810i has been my constant companion since I bought it. With a 4Gb stick, a capable camera and it’s ability to watch movies I’m still loving this phone. One thing I missed though with my Vista upgrade, was that I lost the ability to use the PC software that allows for synching of the phone with Outlook. I lost the ability to easily edit and manipulate the contacts list, the tasks, notes, calendar, etc. Not to mention, that firmware flashing cannot be done on Vista.

Sony’s site, says sometime in Q2 the PC software “would be updated. That isn’t good enough considering how long Vista has been out, not to mention how long the world has had to adjust to Vista before it launched. Sony dropped the ball big time. The same site lists September as the expected date for the updated to get, er updated for Vista. What a fucking joke.

So, my options were to wait Sony out (screw that) or find a working solution tonight. The XS channel on efnet probably has some of the most interesting and diverse group of geeks on the net. Time and again I’d hear them bat around terms that go half over my head. One that stuck with me though was Virtualization. Specifically, Virtual PC by MS and VMware by another company.

I disliked the idea of having to use an MS product like Virtual PC 2007 to solve a problem that I truly believe is MS’s fault. (also, the docs for VPC 2007 don’t appear to like Vista Home Premium.. ) I opted for VMware. With a little googling, reading reviews and testimonials and forum threads on people citing it as a solution to their vista woes. Sure enough, a painless install later, a few settings tweaked, and I got to watch Windows XP Pro Corp /w SP2 install in a window on Vista without a hitch. Installed the Sony software and shazam.

/hsdemonz/vmware/vmware21.jpg

I’m now working in Outlook on XP, in a window on Vista. It might be a shitty solution to a problem, but it works. I doubt I’d throw anything huge or intense at VMWare and expect good performance. However, to get past a simple problem, and give me back access to something I need it was in the right place at the right time.

Your Lord and Advisor..

HSDEMONZ

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Wednesday evening started no different than most. I got home from work, called by buddy and made arrangements for him to come over and have some Dinner. We plowed through some home made tacos, then devoured some ice cream cones.

The plan for the evening, was to hit Walmarts and Best buys in the Toronto area until we scored the Guitar Hero II Bundle (game and controller). I’m not sure if national sales figures would show it, but locally, and from my Live buddy listing Guitar Hero II is the new hot product. I logged into LIVE twice this week to find that 30 people on my buddy list were online and playing Guitar Hero II.

While not scientific, that sample to me speaks volumes about the popularity of the 360 iteration of this arcade game. I member laughing at the thought of playstation people playing Guitar Hero. I used ot think to myself who in their right mind would buy a silly looking half crippled plastic mock guitar to play on a console.

My views changed, when I saw a kid playing Guitar Hero II on a demo in Best buy a while ago. I was blown away for some reason. I’m not sure if it was the skill required to handle it (it is a totally different beast than a typical game controller) or if it was the fact that as the kid played on, more and more people were drawn to our area of the store to watch in amazement.

I didn’t have the balls to pick up the demo myself in the store. At the time, I was amongst friends. I did however spend a disproportionate amount of time analyzing everything I could about the unit, the game play, etc. It honestly, seemed like fun. While tunes weren’t exactly my cup of tea, they weren’t rap or pop.. so I figured I could deal with it.

Back to my evening. With dinner done, we hit some of the local stores. Manages to score the bundle easily enough. It was pretty early though, so we decided to contact some friends, and meet up at a local Bubble Tea house in what I call Chinatown north. Nursing some Orange Mandarin teas and passing the time playing with my friends new Fujitsu Notebook/Tablet PC combo unit we manage d to blow a number of hours.

Around midnight, we noticed the time, and tipped our server and made a hasty retreat to the cars. Hopped into my buddies Acura TSX, and sure enough.. the car wouldn’t start. Hadn’t noticed how cold the night had gotten until the car refused to start. I wasn’t dressed for jump starting the car in freezing temperatures. Nor was he for that matter.

He goes to the trunk, and pulls out what looks like a vacuum cleaner. It’s a portable jumper station. He’d used it a number of times to aid friends in the past month, so he’d had plenty of experience with it. While I watched from the relative comfort of the passenger seat he attempted time after time to jump the battery.

30 minutes of effort, frustration, and bewilderment later, he conceded defeat and called for the car service from Acura. A Williams tow truck was sent out.. and an hour later we were boosted and on our way. Turns out either my buddy’s jumpstart toy is doa, or it’s got an unknown issue.

Got home around 2am cold, exhausted, and still a bit wired. I knew I had to get up for work at 5:30am this morning. It was the last day of a shortened work week due to Easter. So, what do I do? Cut into the Guitar Hero II box and play a few songs. Wicked. Finally I crashed after 20 minutes. Managed to drag myself out of bed and off to work on time. Felt like I was on life support though at work.

All day today, all I could imagine was getting home, picking up my Guitar and spending some quality time with my 360.

Hmm.. Now that I’ve taken 20 minutes to get this off my chest, I’m done.

Peace.

UPDATED: with the news that the X-Plorer Guitar from Guitar Hero II works with the PC, specifically on the Frets of Fire clone of GH.. here is a link to grab the PC game..

/hsdemonz/FretsOnFire/FretsOnFire-1.0.225-win32.zip

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A few posts back I mentioned my new fascination with Media Center and with Tv/Media viewing across the network. That Project.. I ended up adding a number of 500GB Hard Drives to the main PC in the home for the sole purpose of enhancing the Home Theatre experience in my home.

The 360 as a Media Extender, the Modded Original Xbox with XBMC, and the Main PC with Vista, MCE, and a TV card and those HD’s are now the centre of the Home theatre we are now enjoying with much more regularity.

The Modded XBOX and XBMC, has been a cornerstone of our viewing habits pretty much since XBMC launched. We’ve been enjoying my MP3 library streamed that way for years. With the recent additions of MCE, and Later Vista with MCE built in that improved somewhat. Add in the recent purchase of that TV card I spoke about previously, and you’ll now see the home theatre is more or less complete. MCE is recording no less than 2 programs or movies per day for the wife, used in place of a VCR.

The MCE experience, has been a good one. It’s hard to imagine a PVR like situation that is simple enough that the wife not only understands it, but now enjoys it. Maybe too much, as it’s become second nature for her to fire up the 360, hit LIVE TV, and hit record.

So with us now enjoying more TV, and more media all around we now find that the always on PC is now a bit irritating noise wise. When I first built this main PC, it was designed to be a workhorse, and was never built for stealthy silence. A big ass LianLi case houses a huge ATX board, 1200Gb of drives, and 10 fans all included. It was a tornado to say the least.

So now onto what prompted me to make this post.

Yesterday, I went out for my weekly sushi, but it turned out we wanted to do something different so just went for Chinese. Afterwards, we hit a local BestBuy, and then the bank. I was pleasantly pleased at the bank, to see for once everything I had hoped to clear, did. So with money in hand and time to blow (wife was taking the kid out for the day so I was off the hook) we decided to make a day of it and crossed the city looking for electronic gadgets for us big boys.

The search for Wii’s and Wii Remotes and Nunchuks had us go all over the city of Toronto. Eventually, we ended up at a store I’ve been meaning to visit call Tigerdirect.ca. Not a bad place. Like anywhere else, they have some deals and they have some shit I wouldn’t touch if you gave it to me.

While there though, we saw something that gave me pause. The word “Fanless” stood out. It was a huge Copper Butterfly Heatsink with 8 heat pipes and NO FAN. I remember the old days with the 386 and having a large heatsink and no fan. They used to be so quiet. I miss those days. I spent the better part of an hour investigating all the cooling and silent option the store had. I ended up walking out of there with the 600gram butterfly Heatsink, and a fan control for the front of the case.

During the night I sat down, and read the instructions that came with the heatsink. Glad I did too. I’m not a noob to pc building, worked for almost a year in a PC store assembling units. Anyways, had I not taken the time to carefully read all the documentation, I would have missed one important instruction specific to my motherboard/AMD 939 chip combo. Turning of the FI Error option in the Bios of the PC. (since replacing the stock AMD Heatsink and Fan combo with this butterfly would leave the PC with no fan plugged into the CPU/FAN connector on the motherboard, the PC would likely not boot or it would halt.)

So, with the PC pulled out from under the desk, disconnected from it’s spider’s web of cables, and now on the Kitchen Table I began the process of surgically removing the stock heatsink and fan which I had installed 2 years previous. You wouldn’t think it, but that fucking thing did NOT want to come out. I disengaged the retaining clip on the one side, only to find that the arctic silver I had used on it had virtually bonded the heatsink to the chip. Next up, the other side, was clinging to the plastic clip as if it knew it’s life and usefulness was about to come to an end. I honestly had to wrangle with it for what seemed like 20 minutes.

So, with the old shit on the table, I proceeded to carefully clean the chip surface, then applying some OCZ thermal goodness. Applying the Butterfly was a cinch. I put the system back together, and fired it up. To my relief, it booted fine. Basic temps appears to be 3-8 degrees higher, but all within acceptable ranges. So, with a modest increase in temps, I managed to reduce the noise output of the system by about half.

I didn’t do a DBa check, but in my non-scientific testing, it’s far quieter than what it was under load. Awesome. Next, I tackled the rear fans. They are all standard TT fans, and they are workhorses. It’s was time though to take some control over them, as for the most part they are overkill. The Vantec black fan control, with 4 knobs that control 4 fans was slick, stylish, and fit right into my setup. Plug in one molex to power the 4 units and poof, instant gratification.

With two simple mods, I managed to put a huge dent in the noise output of my beast. I should have been happy with just that, but given it was late or early depending on your perspective and I still had some energy, so I took a look at my Video Card.

While I didn’t have any mods or replacement components for the Wraparound Heatsink/HeatPipe/Fan combo that is stock on my video card, I had noticed it used a fairly standard 3 pin connector for the fan. With the PC on, under load, I touched the video card heatsink (probably not the brightest idea). The top of it was cool to the touch. The bottom was a bit warm, and the heat pipe was pretty warn but still safe to touch. I figured what’s the worst that can happen if I unplugged the tiny fan that is built into that massive wraparound heatsink? So I unplugged it. The top got warm now, but still safe to touch. I decided to put the box to some stress tests and the heatsink never got too hot.

This morning, I found SpeedFan. I hadn’t realized it was recently updated to work on Vista. I assumed, like so many awesome apps before it, that vista likely broke it. Lucky for me it worked. I have a reasonable method now for gauging the temps of the components that no longer use fans. Sweet.

Next up, I remembered that the front of the LianLi had 2 TT fans as well, connected to the front electronics. There is actually a 3 way switch, that I’ve always had on HI. I set it to low as well.

So, 6 TT fans under direct control, and now set to low, the video card fan actually disconnected, and the CPU fan and heatsink now replaced with a fanless solution I’m now relatively quite happy with this impromptu and unplanned weekend project. If I do anything else, it will be to look for a near silent or fanless power supply. (and possibly put the video card fan on a control so I can turn it on, off, or anywhere in between.)

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