Month: July 2007

Microsoft released a Windows Vista Performance and a Reliability Pack for Windows Vista X86 and X64. Quoting Start64, it has been released to beta testers yet and shall fix the following issues:

938979 – Vista Performance and Reliability Pack

-Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.

-Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.

-Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.

-Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.

-Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.

-Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.

-Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.

-Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.

-Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.

-Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack

-Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.

-Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
Increased compatibility with many video drivers.

-Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.

-Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.

-Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.

-Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.

-Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.

-Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.

-Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.

-Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

The download links published everywhere are no longer valid but according to NeoWin, the packs are planned to be shipped with the next Patch Day which appears to happen on upcomming Tuesday!

Some of the issues I have experienced myself already like reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed. In my case, the ICQ Toolbar that is shipped with ICQ 6 causes Internet Explorer to crash for me!

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows, update, upgrade, X64, xp
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

Orkut allows now to add feeds and blogs to your profile!
Since Orkut and Blogger are both on Google servers sinnce last year and use the same account system, it automatically detected my bog here and offered me to add it to my profile. Interestingly, yet I found no way how to remove it if I suddenly decide otherwise.

Interestingly, it also added automatically the feed of my blog to the feeds list (however this I can delete if I wish).

Technorati Tags: Orkut, blog
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Since a few days the English homepage from Nvidia appears down for me, strange!

I have tried from different ISPs and PCs.

Maybe they got attacked?

Update: Details posted by a friend:

“Merman wrote: Joerg, I just tried http://nvidia.com and got the same 500 error…

However, going to www.nvidia.com seemed to work…”

I have emailed Nvidia to let them know.

Technorati Tags: nVidia, hardware
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

ICQ6 is out in Bulgarian now (branded), released by Bulgarian ABV. It’s probably also featuring provider related services and functions in its xtraz, just like ICQ 6 German Pro7 and ICQ 6 German Sat1.
Maybe such will also appear sooner or later appear if you use the official English client and live in the matching country Just like it happened in ICQ 5.1

Anyway, it’s interesting that ABV is among the first now since they only did that for ICQ 5 and skipped ICQ 5.1.

If you are interested in the Xtraz, see my SAT1 Xtraz description. Only new in ICQ 6 are:

–Auto Xtra: This one nothing more than a virtual agency for arranged lifts.

–Horoscope Xtra: Read your personal hororoscope or make a love or partner test

Xtraz description by me of the Pro 7 German client

New in ICQ 6 is just the PlanetPopstars Xtra which is a sing comunity that allows to upload your own singing by using your phone or judge the singing of others.

Technorati Tags: ICQ, ICQ6, ABV, Sat1, Pro7, Bulgarian, German
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If you got Opera and Visio Viewer like me, you may experience that, it doesn’t work.

Microsoft descripes it this way:

“Internet Explorer will load the Visio Viewer, which then renders the drawing in the browser window.”

Situation on my side: Instead of IE opening and displaying the file, Opera opens, downloads it and when you click to open it it will download it again and this endless.

If you try to open it from IE7 X64, Opera will start and the same game happens again.

The problem is, that the preset for the Visio file extension is wrong.

So delete the old one for .VSD (setupped as Internet Explorer streaming object) and add a new one with this attributes:

MIME Type: image/x-ieexplore FILE EXTENSION: .vsd
OPEN WITH other application: “C:Program Files (x86)Internet Exploreriexplore.exe”
PASS WEB ADDRESS directly to application

You can and should add the the other file extensions, too!

Tested on:

-Windows Vista X64 Ultimate SB
-Internet Explorer 7 X64 and X86
–Opera 9.22 Build 8801.
-Default browser: Opera
–Visio Viewer 2003.

Technorati Tags: Windows, X64, 64bit, Opera, 9.22, Visio, Viewer, IE7, Visio Viewer
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Opera released Opera 9.22 final today including a lot of security fixes, improvements in speed and stability and more!

Info, download, changelog and yadda-yadda at Opera Desktop Team Blog.

Technorati Tags: Opera, 9.22
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Recently Opera Watch did an interesting interview with the person that is responsible for Opera’s email client M2 – Arjan van Leeuwen.

Here are my wishes for M2:

1) Please allow me to export and import M2 mails without the bugs and improve displaying also (random bugs like no format at display or double subject lines or to/from field, both at import and dsplay emails).

2) I have some emails in which from and to headers need switched orders (was a backup thing when I had problems with my PC).
I imported them but from should be to and to should be from.

3) Additionally for 2) , I want that I an move sent to inbox and vice versa easily.

4) Please fix the email display bug if from field or to field is formatted and gets messed up like

“”My Name”<phpbt”@blahblah.blaj&#62

It confuses Opera.

5) Sometimes emails are not displayed in Contacts view.

Technorati Tags: Opera, M2
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

Since 2 days, ICQ 6 features a Multiplayer Xtraz Games buttons in its message window!
Initially, it featured all the Multiplayer Games we know and love from ICQ 5.1.

However, the fact that you couldn’t connect to Pool properly and once you connected, it wouldn’t display the balls on the table probably forced them to remove them again. (i.e. Pool and all the others based on the same technology).

However, RPS, Warsheep, Zoopaloola and Slide-A-Lama are there and ready to play on just 2 clicks! 🙂

Technorati Tags: ICQ, ICQ6, Xtraz, games
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The ICQ Team recently released the new version of their Knowledge Base, updated for ICQ 6. Unfortnately it also features major error. Like this one spotted here:

They write here that IE7 is not supported which is wrong, because IE7 is shipped with Vista and is delivered by Windows Update for Windows XP SP2, too, so of course it is supported.

Other errors I spotted:

Here, it links to an old list based on the old homepage layout from ages ago.

Also some articles of the Knowldge Base still refer to Xtraz of ICQ 5.1 that never made their way into ICQ 6.

Technorati Tags: ICQ, help, knowledge base, ICQ6
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I have tried something that seemed impossible at first (since Apple does seem to be narrow about contact email addresses or forms for people who are not customers of Apple).

Anyway, I succeeded and asked some questions regarding the iPhone launch in Germany. Here is the reply from Apple coming from a place called “iTunes Store”:

“Dear valued customer.

Apple is not making any statements regarding rumours, software or promotions. In order to protect our customers, Apple abstrains from any kind of statement.
We do not want that our customers are making decisions based on such inaccurate or wrong information. Apple’s opinion is, that in this way all customers are taken cared at best.

Sincerely yours,
iTunes Customer Support
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ww/

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, support
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