First off, I didn’t waste the entire weekend. We did have a nice outing Saturday to Wendell August Forge (Berlin, OH) and Lehman’s Hardware (Kidron, OH).
On to the wasted time . . . Following the iPad experience, I began to wonder what I’d been missing on the PC side, since I started using Linux exclusively a couple years ago. So I restored Windows (Vista 
) to my laptop. The larger hard drive I installed a couple months ago leaves plenty of room for Windows and Linux to coexist, after all. That took the better part of a day in all, and I did experience the frustration with my computer becoming overwhelmed by the early background work that Windows does — installing voluminous updates, creating restore points, scanning for viruses and spyware, and issuing those annoying (“are you sure you want me to proceed”-like) warnings.
Anyway . . . that’s behind me and Windows is running relatively smoothly. I can do most of what I could do in Linux with only minor sacrifice of speed and flexibility. Plus I can do the few things that I couldn’t – iTunes, Google SketchUp, Netflix streaming, and Kindle reader. This is not to say that there were not close cousins to each available in Linux.
Now for what I learned:
First, the security suite offered by Time Warner (CA Security Suite) is a pain. The firewall was overly restrictive and conflicted with Windows built in firewall. It prevented me from logging into my own sites because it wouldn’t allow cookies from the scripts used on the sites. The anti-spam and anti-spyware components added two more levels of background activities (downloading updates and scanning files) on top of that needed for the anti-virus component. I uninstalled the CA firewall and turned on the Windows firewall. Since my email systems already do anti-spam, I uninstalled the CA anti-spam. I also uninstalled the CA anti-spyware, which I think I can do without by being careful about what sites I visit, what I download, and how frequently I purge cookies — plus Window is still warning my about every software install. The computer seems much happier without these items.
Next, I noticed that my satellite TV receiver showed up on my network. I’d connected it to the network as an alternative to connecting the phone line — the latter was less convenient now that we’re using Vonage. Anyway the receiver showed up as a “Directv MediaShare Renderer”, and that piqued my interest. After some investigating, I found that Windows Media Player could interface with the receiver to share photos, music and video to the TV over my home network. Photos and music worked right off. Video, on the other hand was more trouble, because it required an MPEG2 encoded file and most of my fires were AVI or MOV or WMV. Conversion was going to take forever. THEN I found a program called “TVersity Media Server” that organizes content and transcodes the videos on the fly. The program has a free and a PRO ($40) version. The free version handles all my media files and YouTube. The PRO version can handle Hulu, RSS media feeds, and more. Also, it appears the same MediaShare is available on ATT Uverse DVRs. And it sounds like with the DVRs you can also watch recordings remotely on the PC. FLASH: TVersity appears to work with the WII also.
OK, to summarize . . . I spent a day an a half to learn that (1) I can make my PC run Windows almost as well as it ran Linux and (2) I can look at media files on my TV instead of my always-handy laptop. Damn that really does does sound like a waste of time! I apologize for wasting your time telling you about it. That’s all . . . until next time.
Tags: blah blah, Computers, Ohio, Spring, Technology
