CHRISdotTODD

Windows XP (like all Windows operating systems) uses a technique of storing some content of its system memory (RAM) to the hard drive, therefore using less memory for functions that are used less often. So what Windows is doing is keep functions used most often in RAM and "swapping" out less used functions on to your hard drive. Though great in principle, if/when a function is needed that is stored on the hard drive, the system must reload it in memory before it is used, which makes things work slower. This is particularly true when Windows stores central parts (referred to as the kernel) of Windows itself on the hard drive. If you have 256 MB or more of RAM, a simple Registry change keeping the kernel from being swapped to the hard drive can give you some performance improvements. Here's how you do it: Click Start Click Run... Enter Regedit and click OK (opens the Registry Editor) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ M

This is a little 'techy' for my typical blog posts, but I had a heck of a time finding an answer online. I recently got a new laptop and needed to reconfigure my ASP development environment. I kept running into one problem, where my home page displayed ASP code at the top ( <%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> <% var openMenu; ...), instead of executing. Turns out you need to add to the basic ASP configuration to execute ASP code that is in HTML pages. Of course that seems like a no-brainer, but I don't recall having done that in the past. Here's the steps to do this: Go to Administrative Tools in the Control Panel Launch Internet Information Services (IIS) Go to your (default) website and open Properties Go to the Home Directory tab Click the Configuration.. button under the Application Settings section On the Mappings tab, click Add Enter the following information: Executable: c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\asp.dll Extension: .ht

This is a simple Registry setting that will speed up your Windows XP menus. Click Start Click Run... Enter Regedit and click OK Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ MenuShowDelay Change the default value of 400 A value of 0 would open a menu even if you just pass the mouse over it, so try a value of 100 or 200.

I just got a new laptop and was reminded of a common annoyance in MS Office products. The menus never fully display immediately -- you either have to click the arrow at the bottom of the menu or wait a few seconds. There is actually a fairly easy way to keep them expanded all the time. Right-click any toolbar Select Customize Check "Always show full menus" That's it.

AT&T has released new information that they will also start degrading customer network throughput for those that use more than what AT&T would consider average. You can read all the terms of service on the AT&T site . Here are some highlights in order of appearance, followed by my commentary: Broadband access is provided in speed tiers of: (1) 200 Kbps to 768 Kbps downstream (not available for AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet service) (2) 769 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps downstream (3) 1.56 Mbps to 3.0 Mbps downstream (4) 3.1 Mbps to 6.0 Mbps downstream; (5) 6.1 Mbps to 10.0 Mbps (available only with AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet service) (collectively “Service Capability Speeds”)... ... AT&T Uverse High Speed Internet throughput speeds may be temporarily reduced when a customer is using other U-verse services in a manner that requires high bandwidth. This could occur more often with higher speed Internet access products. ... While this performance optimization process w

Microsoft has released their 2nd ad, from their infamous ad campaign to combat Apple. At 4 1/2 minutes, it's certainly different than what we're accustom to from a commercial. I don't think there are as many buried messages as the first ad ; the big message here is Microsoft connects people. "Bill, have you had scallop potatoes before?" confirms a feeling many have about Bill: he's different, therefore he has not experienced the typical American family dinner. "Do we have any more ketchup" and "Nobody told me we were eating" are lines that tries to re-enforce that this is an average family and Microsoft (through Bill and Jerry) are trying to better understand ("re-connect with real people") what it's like to be an average family. "Didn't we have this yesterday?" Bill implies that with Microsoft, you don't have to have the same thing every day. Bill reads a technical story; Microsoft knows technology "Jer

Well it has been a week since Google released Chrome, a week since I've tracked my Internet bandwidth usage, and 5 days since Microsoft released its ads to compete against Apple. Let's take a look and see how each are doing. =============== I wrote a little about Google's surprise announcement of their new browser Chrome last week, highlighting some of its features. One feature that intrigued me was the ability to "tear-off" a tab and turn a browser window into a pseudo application on your desktop. I did just that with my email and RSS reader -- I replaced Thunderbird with a direct window into my Gmail account and replaced the RSS reader with Google's RSS reader. I had looked and tried many RSS readers before settling on Thunderbird, but found that over the last six months that I've used it less and less. I like the Google Reader interface much better than Thunderbird and others and Chrome has made it just a little easier to access it. In addition, in th

Over the last 6 to 12 months there has been several battles between ISPs, users, and the government. ISPs want to choose what type of content can run on their network and how fast it should be delivered. One such example is Comcast's blocking of P2P traffic . During their FCC investigation, Comcast changed this practice, though after being ruled that it was actually illegal practice, Comcast is now challenging the ruling . For Comcast to block just P2P traffic, it had to scan all the activity on your connection to identify what part of the traffic was P2P. In the Comcast ruling, the FCC implied that it would be legal to monitor user traffic so that illegal content could be blocked such as child pornography and copyrighted material. While we would all like to see child pornography and other nefarious activity stopped, this would require the ISP to inspect everyone's content, from banking to love letters to new job applications and everything in between. It would be interesting t

Couple funny lines, but I don't get how it applies to buying anything Microsoft. "Bill, your a 10"

Goodreads is a social network for those who like to share what they read and find new books to read. I joined Goodreads and was able to easily add a dozen books that I've recently read, and provide my rating and review for each. The site is very easy to use. It's easy to find books to add that you've read and books that you want to read. Goodreads is also easy to find other readers with similar interest and ratings on books that you've considered reading. With goodreads, you can start your own book club or join an existing one. The groups can even go a little off-topic, such as there is a group for folks to rate and discuss recent movies they watched. You can also find over 4000 authors who participate on Goodreads, as well as some author interviews. If that's not enough, you can also test your book smarts with general book trivia or triva only from books you've read. Now I'm seeing some value out of social networking... MySpace to keep in-touch with my fa