Linux for spare

I have tried to use my little Nokia n800 tablet to blog in the past and find the lack of physical keyboard to be ultra annoying. I honestly haven't given the handwriting recognition a chance at all, so I may try that, but my experience is that it is never 100% and not easily edited/corrected like typing with a keyboard. Meaning, I don't type 100% accurate either, but it's a synch to hit and even hold the backspace button and re-type something.

The on-screen keyboard of the n800 is great, but you can't touch-type or type really fast with it because you have to sort of hunt and peck with the stylus. I've also tried the full-screen finger keyboard on the n800, and while this makes life better for typing, it is still less than perfect and has it's own flaws.

My desktop PC is by far my favorite device to use for everything having to do with computers, but it is a "desktop" and sits in my office in the basement. So, I'm essentially anti-social to the family when I'm down there. I have an old laptop that my mother-in-law was using and the HDD got fried... so it sat for a while until I figured I'd try it as a Linux install for blogging and internet browsing for upstairs. It has a really nice screen with higher than usual resolution (1400x1050) and lot's of other goodies. My one worry is that it may not be long for this world because the fan seems to be on it's last leg. At any rate, I dropped a 100GB HDD I had sort of lying around and got Ubuntu 8.10 installed on it in a snap. We'll see if it can last a while for me. If not, I may try and pickup a used one like this for cheap.

Hopefully, this will allow me to browse and blog with greater ease. I think I would love an Asus EeePC, but I can't see shelling out that much for an ultra-small laptop. If all I am doing is browsing the web and blogging/twitting with it, then it doesn't have to have a lot of horsepower... but screen size and resolution make all the difference in the world for those things.

Plus, I kind of wanted to keep Linux in my life in ways... so this can help with that.

Vista Tweak 6: Adding Games to the Vista Game Folder that are not added automatically | H1DD3N.R350URC3

****EDIT*****
Upon looking at the location described in the article, my registry information does not look the same. It is similar, but there are many of the values missing, and one that is not in the poster's image. That is "RatinsInfo" and has a whole mess of GUIDs and such. It would appear to me that MS may have changed this info in the registry with Vista SP1 possibly.
****/EDIT****

Vista Tweak 6: Adding Games to the Vista Game Folder that are not added automatically | H1DD3N.R350URC3: "Vista Tweak 6: Adding Games to the Vista Game Folder that are not added automatically"

It kind of bugs me that some games make it in here, while others do not... and dragging the games EXE into this folder does nothing more than create a shortcut to it... the other information on it doesn't auto-magically show up like a "supported" game.

It's only a slight annoyance really, but when I was trying to figure out why I found this post on how you can kind of hack it to manually put that info in. I doubt I'll go through the trouble of all this because it's not that big of a deal, but thought I'd share if anyone really needed to do this.

Bottom line on what I found out is, only certain games will show up and download information and performance ratings in this folder. Not sure why it can't get any game that is reviewed by www.allgame.com since that's apparently what it uses for it's info.

The one that was bugging me is "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" not showing up. I mean, this game came out well after Vista and it is reviewed on www.allgame.com as well. It's also an extremely popular game! "Call of Duty: World at War" shows up, and that's what made me look.

FOXNews.com - Flying Car Prepares for Test Drive - FOX Car Report

FOXNews.com - Flying Car Prepares for Test Drive - FOX Car Report: "Flying Car Prepares for Test Drive"

Sign me up!! Now I just need to get my pilot license. ;-)

Windows 7 Quick Launch - Where'd it go?

Live Search QnA - Windows 7 Quick Launch?:

"Just add the folder '%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch'
as a Toolbar."

I started using the Windows 7 Public Beta as my main OS, and so far I have to say it is *really* solid. I've been going through the steps of installing all my applications I use, drivers, etc, and I noticed the QuickLaunch toolbar to be missing. A quick search found the above link and there was a gentleman by the name of Geoffrey on there who had the solution. For whatever reason, I still like to use the QuickLaunch bar for odds and ends. It's just so much easier to me to have a quick list of apps or things I use often.

My true test for whether or not Windows 7 will cut it for me was to try some gaming. I just installed LOTRO (Lord of the Rings: Online) and it played as well as on my Vista install. I will install and try Call of Duty 4 tomorrow and make sure that runs as well too.

My PC hardware is in need of an overhaul. My CPU and RAM are a bit long in the tooth and are proving to be my bottleneck in just about every case. I will hopefully be able to do that if I get a tax return... but we'll see.

Look back here for more updates and opinions on Win7... It's too late for me to try and capture it all now... need to get some sleep. ;-)