Blogs revisted - Corrections, additions, and updates from Technobabble
Here are some updates, changes, and additions to past technobabble articles.
Media Center
I stand corrected, the Mac version of the logitech keyboard is CHEAPER than the windows version. I guess I was just lazy and they had the Windows version at Target! Also, check out the remote management hack - being able to quickly control your media center from your laptop comes in handy too. It’s also fun to confuse people trying to watch TV.
Windows Disk Cleanup
I’ve recently installed XP on my Eee PC and have had to really slim down my installation. There are tools desgined to shrink Windows down by removing non-essential parts - but I like to look for less destructive, better ways. Another solution I’ve come up with is deleting temporary and backup files left behind by Windows Update. In your Windows directory, look for folders like $NtUninstallxxxx$ - usually with the dollar symbol. You’ll see hot fixes, security updates, and even the service packs if you update Windows from sp2 to sp3… this can easily eat up a gig or so. These are not the updates, they are actually the backups of what was there before hand - so if you need to uninstall and update - you can. I’ve never had a problem with a Windows update breaking something. If it did, I think I would know within a day or so. Again, do your own backups.
Eee PC
Like I mentioned, I put Windows on my Eee PCÂ - mostly just to see how it handled. Just as when installing Linux on the Eee PC it’s important to minimize disk activity to the SSD with Windows as well. My machine has a few gigs of RAM so it’s not a problem to disable swapping. I don’t know how XP would behave with 512mb and no swap, you might run into problems running larger apps. You could consider implementing “poor man’s readyboost” in other words, dedicate space on an SD card for swapping. (Granted the whole issue is swapping on flash memory) But if possible, don’t use virtual memory on it. And System Restore needs to go.