August 2008 - Posts
Old timers here will know that I simply love Dave's Quick Search Deskbar (DQSD). And that there was a semi-custom solution to running it in 64-bit that I used. Well, with a lot of hard work and persistence, we now have 64-bit support built into the mainstream of DQSD. Whenever we build a new version, we'll be building a 64bit version side by side. YIPPEE!
The installer is still a batch file that has my hands all over it, though with a lot of excellent suggestions from Kim Gräsman, it is cleaner and a bit smarter. But it works, and appears to be smart enough for general use. So please - go download it and check it out. It's one of those little things that the more you use it, the more useful it becomes, and at some point you'll wonder how you lived without it. For example, I wouldn't be able to read my newspaper funnies any more without it (since the local paper has only a dismal selection). But now, with the comx search? I get the latest version whenever I need it. :D
Direct download link is here:
http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/dqsd/dqsdx64-4100-beta.zip
Update: Thanks to Carlos, on the microsoft.public.windows.64bit.general newsgroup, we've identified a bug in the batch file installer. Please extract the files to a temporary folder on your system drive (C:\ normally) and run the install from there. The fix for this will be in the next beta drop - it's already committed. And yes, a really dumb error on my part, if you're wondering.
--
Charlie.
A few days ago, I wrote about FabulaTech's USB over Network solution. I'd just installed it and started using it, and I was moderately impressed. It solves a very real problem for those of us looking to do more virtualization of our environmets now that Hyper-V is a released product. (And especially since we'll shortly have an RTM version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, SCVMM, that works with Hyper-V.)
Since that initial install, I've had a chance to use USB-over-Ethernet a bit more, and I'm completely impressed. The driver signing issue isn't as bad as I first feared - it's signed, but unfortunately not by a signing authority that is recognized by Microsoft. This means you'll need to acknowledge two rather scary red windows during the client install, but it will go through without issue if you tell it to. I've also had a conversation with Andrew Scott, the PM for their USB over Ethernet and USB over RDP products, and he assures me that they are accutely aware of the driver signing issue, and are working with their signing authority to get it resolved. Hopefully, they will.
All in all, after a several days with the product, we remain convinced that it is a very viable solution to a problem we think a lot of us are going to have - how to have full-on, fast, USB devices in virtualized machines. Someday, Microsoft will provide this functionality in their virtualization solutions. And VMWare already does to some extent, though I've heard that it's not always as robust as it might be. But for those of us implementing Hyper-V today, who need a very real solution today, USB over Ethernet is it.
Charlie.
As anyone who has known me for a while will tell you, I can be qute passionate about applications I really like. Well, one of those little gems is an opensource project called "Dave's Quick Search Deskbar" or DQSD as it's commonly known. When I first moved to x64 some three years and more ago, the current version was 3.1.9.1, and it had been the same for quite a long while. Which was fine, it still worked, though there were some annoyances in XP SP2. But i simply didn't work at all in x64, since it's a pure Windows Explorer addon. This was not something I was willing to live with, so I contacted the current maintainer, Kim Gräsman, who turned out to be a Microsoft MVP at the time. IAC, I offered some hardware and my limited expertise to see if we could get a 64-bit build, and we did - Kim did the compiling by logging in remotely to my 64-bit machine, and I wrote a crude little batch file installer. And all was well, for a while.
Then Vista shipped, and my DQSD was seriously unhappy again. I could get it to load, but it was an ugly blue blob on my dark Vista taskbar. So, again, a couple of us played around with CSS files that controlled the look and feel, and we got that solved.
But meanwhile, the DQSD Developers List got active again, and a new version was released that solved some lingering problems with XP SP2, and just generally behaves better. And since it's a solid, stable release (4.0.0.6), Kim has built an automated build process that includes a 64-bit version as part of the normal build. Whoopee! Finally, we're in the mainstream here. Of course, there are still some gotchas - for one, since DQSD uses an installer that doesn't understand 64-bit, the installer is still my batch file. Though it has gotten quite a bit more sophisticated and robust, thanks primarily to some changes from Kim and some better modularizing and error checking. We've added automatic Windows version checking, integrated the Vista colour scheme loads, and cleaned up the registry changes. Expect to see a public build in the next few days, and I'll be posting a link, here and on the 64-bit newsgroup.
Finally, a thought - DQSD really is the best seach add-on I've ever used. It integrates into my daily life, without getting in my way, and it has a wealth of possible searches. But I think it really needs to move off the task bar and onto a widget/gadget for the Vista Sidebar going forward. And it needs some more cleanup of searches that have either outgrown their usefulness, or have been broken by web site changes. But with all that, still one of the first things I load on a new machine. And it's FREE. So, thanks again to all the folks who have contributed to it over the years.
Charlie.