October 2005 - Posts
I stumbled across this page at HP today. It lists ScanJet scanners that “will be supported later this year”, and also those models that won’t be supported at all. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00367175
Apparently even those that will be supported (at some still rather nebulous time in the future) will have only basic support initially.
Charlie.
OK, by now we all know that drivers can be a bit of a nuisance for x64 Edition. So, before I actually went out and spent the money for a new NIC, I did a bit of research, and it appeared that the new D-Link DGE-660TD Gb Ethernet CardBus NIC would work with the built in drivers in x64 Edition for my Ferrari 4005, primarily because I’ll need a second gb NIC for running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition. I was a little worried because I couldn’t get direct confirmation from D-Link about the chipset used , but I plugged it in and it immediately recognized it as a RealTek 8169/8110 family NIC, installed the drivers, and there it was. It Just Worked. How nice.
The point of this? Well, besides saying some nice things about RealTek who have been great about drivers, it’s also to point out that doing some research up front will save you LOTS of pain with x64 Edition. There are good products out there that have drivers. But if you do the research first, rather than complaining after you’ve already spent your money, you’ll save yourself a lot of pain, and the rest of us a lot of annoyance. We love to help, but we also appreciate it when you do your part.
Charlie.
The list of patches released today is here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms05-oct.mspx
For Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions, there are 5 patches of note: 1 moderate, 2 important, and 2 critical. The two critical ones, MS05–50 and MS05–52 affect DirectShow and IE6, respectively.
Please evaluate the patches released today and apply them as expeditiously as possible on all affected systems.
Charlie.
OK, I know this has nothing directly to do with Windows x64 Edition, but if you really appreciate good sound, you’re going to love the Shure E5–C sound isolating ear buds. They’re not cheap, even from Amazon — they’ll cost more than your portable music player, for sure. But plug these in to your Acer Ferrari and you are prepared to have a music and DVD experience that is simply awesome.
They take a bit of futzing when you first get them to figure out which set of ear buds actually feel the best and give you the best sound, but once you get that sorted (and the answer may be different depending on how long you plan on having them in that day), you will experience a sound quality and detail that is simply beyond anything you’ve experienced unless you have a very, very expensive sound system. The level of detail, clarity and purity of sound is refreshing. And the world simply drops away. (Do NOT use these while you’re driving or jogging – they really are too isolating. And they block more external noise than my Bose QC-1s, while providing none of the really annoying distortion of the Bose.)
These are headphones that beg for a really good quality sound source. All those MP3s ripped at 128Kbps are just not going to cut it – you’re going to want to start using Windows Media Lossless, and who cares how big the files are! So put a pair of the Shure E5–Cs on your Santa list.
Charlie.
Released October 4th:
“This DirectX SDK release contains updates to tools, utilities, samples, Documentation, and runtime debug files for x64 and x86 platforms. This release also include a public pre-release of Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation tool and Managed Direct Code for Beta 2 (2.0 CLR).
It also continues to include the DirectX 9.0c Runtime and Redistributable.
For additional information please see Microsoft DirectX Developer Center along with reviewing the Readme for last-minute updates.”
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1C8DC451-2DBE-4ECC-8C57-C52EEA50C20A&displaylang=en
There is a publicly available beta of the new Microsoft shell and scripting language code named Monad, available at: Microsoft Download Site.
Monad is an exciting new language and shell environment that finally promises to make this old line, hard core, UNIX scripter give up his Korn shell. Think of all the things you used to do in UNIX, but now instead of manipulating text streams, you’re manipulating objects. This is actually a really hot new language and shell and I can only hope we get a chance to have the released version sooner rather than later.