Today I finally got my check from the big Microsoft Settlement, for a nice $159.24 USD. Money from Microsoft?! Let me explain.

Back in January 2002 I purchased a full copy of Microsoft Windows XP Professional from http://shop.microsoft.com/ (no longer in existence). I purchased it because I was a member of the Windows XP Release Candidate program since July of 2001 and I had used and enjoyed Windows XP RC1 and RC2. By January, I figured it was a worthy purchase. I paid around $289.00 USD for it. I knew it was a lot of money, but I paid it anyway.

Recently, a class-action lawsuit had been brought against Microsoft claiming that the operating systems it sold were excessively overpriced. The class included, to my suprise, myself and all other individuals and companies that purchased ANY operating system directly from Microsoft between November 10, 1995 and August 30, 2003. I had heard of it because I recieved a rather lengthy packet of information via snail mail earlier this year, I think somewhere around February.

In any case, at that time Microsoft was offering a settlement which the lawyers for the class agreed to, and were waiting for the judge to approve it. The packet I got in the mail basically told me this, and that unless I wanted to seek more from Microsoft, to do nothing and wait for a check.

I did, and here it is. $159.24 USD, or 55.1% of the price I paid for Windows.

WooHoo!

My laptop's hard drive needed a wipe, and so it got what it deserved.

I found a really cool prepared CD image called The Ultimate Boot CD which is a... bootable cd... choc full of nice system utilities, most of which are disk utilities. I used that to write zeros across the entire drive. Then I used Ranish Partision Manager to create a nice FAT-32 partition and format it as such. Before people get in my face about this issue, I am done with NTFS on my laptop. I am so used to running intense programs on my desktop that I need to squeeze every ounce of power out of my laptop to get at least some of the applications running right on there. FAT-32 is faster than NTFS, so on it went.

Installed Windows XP Professional, upgraded it to SP1, installed and configured all the hardware drivers and essential utilities, then installed Nero 6. I did a thorough CHKDSK, then I defragmented the hard drive.

For the first time, I did something that I always said "I should really do this" to myself when I wiped my hard drive and installed from scratch: I burned a complete, clean hard disk backup on to CD. This way, if I ever feel the urge to blast my laptop's hard drive again, all I need to do is a quick format and then install the backup.

That's not all. I have just finished installing most of the software I will ever use on the laptop (basically, lots of games, media players, and DVD decoding software) except for Microsoft Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2003 (as these are the largest and buggiest software packages). I am doing ANOTHER thorough CHKDSK and then another defragmentation. This time, I will use Nero to create a series of hard disk backup DVD images that will be saved to a shared folder on my desktop. After that, I will have a complete system ready to go on a couple DVDs, most of the things I will need will already be installed and setup properly, and it will be a matter of a half hour to go from start to finish rather than 2 days.

For the past two weeks I have been using webmail clients exclusively for both my Drexel accounts and my new preferred e-mail account on my own server, AquaFlask.com (remove "NOSPAM" if you intend to use it). I actively use at least two different computers, my laptop and my desktop, every single day, and by switching to webmail I don't run into problems like differing address books and similar issues like I used to with Outlook or Eudora.

But by far, the most significant effect using webmail has had on me is the fact that I am now almost automatic in my deletion of unnecessary e-mail. Before, I would let e-mail pile up in my inboxes whether I wanted the message or not. For some reason, using webmail has made it easier for me to get rid of stuff I don't want.

Whatever. I think that the switch has been well worth the effort.

I have finally done something I have been meaning to do ever since I got my memory key. I have moved the My Documents folder to the memory key so that I can transfer things inside it (like Halo save game files) between my desktop and laptop... without doing anything except plugging the solid state drive into an available USB port.

Not only have the files themselves been transferred, but anything attempting to use the My Documents folder in the future (like many document scanning programs, and (again) Halo (which, by the way, does not let you change where it stores the player profile data)) will go to my newly created one on the key.

Its easy, and if you have a memory key and like carrying your work around with you, here is how to do it:

1) Pop open Start menu
2) Right click on My Documents
3) Click Properties
4) Change the target location to whatever you like (perhaps your memory key?)

Piece of cake.

It even asks you if you want to transfer all of your My Documents files to your new location. I did, and now every program that insists on stuffing its data into the My Documents folder will now do so by my own design :D

So take that, Microsoft, for attempting to make me need to copy my Halo profiles over and over again. You can take your poor design and sit on it.

I am experiencing a problem with my input devices that seems to occur during specific operations. What happens, in the situations I will describe later, is that the movement of the mouse cursor (indeed, the ability for the software to react to mouse movement) becomes very choppy in its movement. It does not ignore the mouse movements, it just takes a very long time for the movement to be recognized by the software and displayed, and the display is very choppy. (Think a 2fps playback of a video designed to run at 29.97fps). There are other problems that occur with the choppy mouse movement, but the movement itself is the only common thread I could find.

I have found that this occurs in the following situations:
1) Frequently, when I right-click on items in Windows Explorer to initiate the context menu. The menu fades in very slowly, the mouse movement becomes very jerky, and the CPU runs at somewhere between 95-100%.
2) Intermittently, when I am playing Unreal Tournament 2004. Every minute or so, the mouse movement as well as keyboard movement fail to register anything with the software for about 5 seconds. The game itself continues to run at good speed, and if my previous input was a continuous effect, like walking forward, it will continue to do so until the software regains contact with the input devices.
3) Often, when I am playing Warcraft. Not Warcraft 2, not Warcraft 3... but Warcraft 1, the "Orcs and Humans" one. Once about every minute, the mouse movement becomes very jerky and slow. It only stops being this way if I stop sending mouse inputs, and only after it has slowly finished displaying those mouse motions on the screen. The keyboard input is not affected, and gameplay speed is not affected.

It happens other times, but those are the more annoying of the instances.

I designed my desktop to be used with Linux, and I have only switched to Windows XP out of necessity. I did not experience any of these problems at all while I was using Linux. It was only when I switched to Windows that these problems first appeared.

Points of interest:
* This problem occurs no matter what is running in the background. I have, at one point, completely terminated all processes that were not essential to the functioning of the operating system. However, the problem still prevailed
* The problem is not due to my particular choice of mouse. I have tried several different styles of mice and the problem occurs with all of them.
* It does not matter how old or how new any of my device drivers are. I have utilized several video, mouse, and sound card drivers issued by the hardware manufacturers, chipset manufacturers, and even by Microsoft's Windows Update. The problem persists with any of them.

My system:
* Generic 500W power supply.
* First International Computer AU13 motherboard.
* Advanced Micro Devices Athlon XP 2700+ processor.
* nVidia GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128MB 8x AGP video card.
* Logitech MX700 Wireless Mouse with Base Station, PS/2.
* Generic 1.44MB floppy disk drive.
* Seagate 60GB hard disk drive.
* Western Digital 40GB hard disk drive.
* Generic 16x DVD-ROM drive.
* Cendyne 52x USB CD-RW drive.
* Windows XP Professional operating system, with every available update applied.

I would appreciate any and all feedback, and even notes about people who have experienced similar problems. If you do make a comment about how you are dealing with a similar issue, please post with that your hardware and software specs so that we can "compare notes".

Thanks!

John W. Trainer IV
cobalt27x@aquaflask.com

I have recently discovered PearPC, a portable PowerPC emulator for x86 machines. I thought it would take much longer for someone to effectively emulate a PPC architecture that could run Mac OS X, but a group of dedicated programmers did it!

I spent the 3 hours time to acquire the PearPC package, unpack a 6GB formatted disk image, and install Mac OS X 10.3.4. I was in awe at how well everything worked out. I even managed to get TCP/IP networking up and running, and a network bridge hop away from Internet access over my LAN.

I will probably delve into what can be done with this fantastic emulator in a few weeks. For now, though, I have a small screenshot... [ppcwin.jpg:click-me].