The End of Software Piracy in Malaysia?

If you're using pirated software, watch out!

Here's an excerpt from The Star (August 28, 2008):

Starting Wednesday, users with pirated copies of Microsoft Corp's Windows XP Professional operating system (OS) on machines that are Internet-capable could find their computer displays going black and with no screen icons visible.

There are 8.6 million users of Win XP Pro in Malaysia and about three million are expected to suffer the “blackouts,” according to Microsoft Malaysia.

Ethical and Practical Issues of Using Pirated Software

I never subscribed to using pirated software.  Using pirated software is like using stolen stuff.  Let's ponder about it: Would you own a stolen car?  Would you use a stolen phone?  Why the double standards when it comes to software? Obviously, there are hypocrites amongst some of us, isn't it?

By using pirated software, the hardworking people who made the software is being deprived of their livelihood.

On the issue of practicality, pirated software may bring unknown risks to your PC and even you; some unscrupulous programmer might have embedded a keylogger into the pirated executable and the next thing you know is that your credit card information is in someone's hands.

The "Software is Too Expensive!" Excuse

I suppose that software being expensive is the biggest excuse for using pirated software. Then let's ponder on this point: If one can't afford a BMW, does that give the person the right to steal one?

Thankfully, there are some very good shareware and free software out there. Some of them are almost as good as their commercial equivalents. So, if you can't afford those commercial software products, give shareware and free software a try! 

It's encouraging to see that Microsoft Malaysia has made some of its software more affordable to home users and students.  For instance, students in some institutions of higher learning can now enjoy big discounts on certain Microsoft SKUs.  Recently, Microsoft Malaysia has lowered the price of the retail version of Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition (which comes with 3 licenses for non-commercial use).

Towards Responsible Consumerism

Will we see the end of software piracy in Malaysia soon?  If consumers create a demand for pirated software, then the piracy problem won't disappear overnight for sure. Let's hope that there'll be more antipiracy awareness campaign in the future.

Technorati tags: software piracy

First Experience with Mozilla Firefox 3

I've always been excited over new web browser releases.  I still remember the early days of Netscape where I promptly downloaded each new release as it became publicly available.  Now that Netscape is gone, I've been quite excited over the upcoming version of Firefox i.e version 3.0.

The Browser War

In the mid 90s, Netscape used to rule the browser war until IE came along.  I've been an IE fan since.  However, of late, IE seems to be having some serious competition.  I have all the mainstream web browsers on my main desktop i.e. IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari.  Since I develop web applications, having those browsers for testing are necessary.

I admit, I wasn't too excited over the early versions of Firefox and it wasn't only until the release of version 2 that I took Firefox seriously.  Last night, I've decided not to wait for the final Firefox 3.0 release on June 17; instead, I decided to give Firefox 3.0 RC2 a try after reading that the release candidate is stable enough.

First Observations

The following are some of my own early observations of Firefox 3.

• The new UI is more in sync with Vista's desktop theme;
• Speedier browsing especially with Javascript or AJAX-oriented sites;
• Smarter autocomplete functionality in the location bar;
• Early beta versions of Silverlight plugin will cause Firefox to crash; however, the latest Silverlight plugin (Beta 2) works fine;
• Firebug extension won't work (a new version of Firebug is in development and will work with Firefox 3 but I couldn't get to the Firebug download site at time of writing);
• Consistently consumes less memory than IE7;
• Able to save tabs for the next start on closing down Firefox.

Speedy Gonzales...

I've read of the multifold speed improvements in Firefox 3 and on subjective testing, the statement holds quite true.  This is probably the strongest reason to upgrade to version 3.

So, go give Firefox 3 a try or wait till June 17 for the final release!

Technorati tags: Firefox

Windows Vista Launch Flashback

It's coming to 8 months since Windows Vista was launched in KL.  I thought I share some of the pictures I randomly caught on launch day (Feb 3, 2007).  By the way, the launch venue was Low Yat Plaza.

See more of my Windows Vista Launch Day pictures here!

 

My Vista Experience: The Story So Far...

I bought my copy of Windows Vista Ultimate (genuine copy...mind you!) on May 22 -- just about the time when my then existing Windows Vista Ultimate RC1 copy was about to expire.

My experience with Vista has been mixed.  While I love a lot of things about Vista, some features take some getting used to. e.g. the UAC (User Account Control) feature.  

The Blue Screens

I've been getting frequent mysterious BSODs (blue-screen-of-death) and I couldn't pinpoint on what is really at fault.  Perhaps it's a driver issue, or perhaps it's a hardware issue...I don't know. 

The Vista problem reporting logs did record down the "unexpected shutdowns" but the log details were too cryptic for me to interpret.  I did a chkdsk ... no problem.  I did a RAM test ... no problem.  I checked my motherboard temperature and voltage parameters... don't see any problem there.  However, my chipset fan has been giving me this grinding noise but looking at the chipset temperatures, nothing indicates there's a problem.

Windows Update Problem

Recently, I've been encountering error 80073712 (yeah...go figure!) in Windows Update.  Some googling led me to a few possible solutions but none of them worked. 

I did a scan (using sfc) to check the integrity of the system files and indeed, some corruption had occurred and the errors couldn't be fixed.  I suppose the frequent BSODs might have caused some system files to be thrown into a zombie state.

In-place Upgrade

This prompted me to do an in-place upgrade i.e. upgrade Vista with Vista. I pop in my Vista DVD and after two hours, the upgrade successfully completed.  I got my Windows Update functioning again and all of my previously installed applications seemed to work fine except for one -- Visual Studio 2008 Team System Beta 2.

I uninstalled VS2008 beta and attempted to reinstall it but .NET Framework 3.5 beta failed to install.  So, I went back to scouring the web for possible solutions and I found one. I uninstalled IIS7, installed .NET Framework 3.5 beta manually, reinstalled IIS7, and then pop in the beta DVD and to my relief, the installation went smoothly.

I guess I'll stop here before I start to rant endlessly. :-)

Read also:

• Evaluating Windows Vista RC1 Build 5600

Technorati tags: windows vista

Windows Live Writer Beta 2

I've just installed the latest beta release of Windows Live Writer (WLW). It took Microsoft quite a while (9 months to be exact) to release this second beta.

What's New

There's a new look and feel to this neat blogging tool.  There are now inline spell checking, table editing, ability to add categories, page authoring for WordPress and TypePad, support for excerpts and extended entries, improved hyperlinking and image insertion, Paste Special feature, and new integration and compatibility features.

My Experience

Installation of Beta 2 was a breeze.  There's now a new installer.  My original weblog account settings in Beta 1 appeared intact in Beta 2 (even though I uninstalled Beta 1 from the Control Panel).

As for the new look, it seems to share the same design cues as Windows Live Messenger 8.5 Beta which I also just recently installed.  Changing the color scheme is easy; just click on the brush icon on the rightmost corner of the toolbar and pick a color.

As for the plugins, I installed the Flickr4Writer (for embedding Flickr photos), Insert Video (e.g. for embedding YouTube videos, etc) and the Code Snippet plugin for WLW.  All the plugins seem to work fine.

It's a pity that it's not possible to upload images to Blogger from WLW. It's not so much of a limitation of WLW, but rather, the Blogger APIs apparently do not support image uploading at this time. I'm sure this will change in the future.

I've not really dug into all the new features but if there's something worthy of mention, I'll blog about it more in the future.

Read also:

• Windows Live Write Beta - Take Two
• Test-Driving Windows Live Writer

Technorati tags: windows live writer, live writer, microsoft, blog tools

Windows Live Writer Beta - Take Two

A few weeks' back, I blogged about test-driving Windows Live Writer (WLW) for the first time. I'm quite pleased with the usability as a whole.  The whole WYSIWYG desktop experience feels simply much better than the sluggish web-based blog editing experience.  Here's a screenshot of WLW:

Inserting a map is easy! Click on Insert Map on the sidebar and you can embed a map taken from Virtual Earth in the blog post.

What I like about WLW is the support for plugins. Already, there is a growing community out there writing interesting plugins for WLW.

Inserting photos from Flickr is also easy with the Flickr4Writer plugin by Tim Heuer. You can choose the image size you want and have the image automatically link back to the corresponding Flickr photo page.

Build 145 now has tagging support built in.  There's even an autocomplete feature in the tag editing box.  Also, unlike the previous builds, this build now works with Blogger Beta. 

I'm now hooked with WLW. I like the idea of maintaining different blogs — of different blog engines — from a single desktop application. More information on WLW can be found here:

http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

Read also:

• Test-Driving Windows Live Writer

Technorati tags: windows live writer, live writer, microsoft, blog tools, flick4writer

Microsoft Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 Sneak Preview

I came across this web promo (see picture above) when I was looking up for some information on Microsoft Malaysia's site.  It's the Microsoft Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 sneak preview event! It'll be held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on November 14, 2006. There will also be a Technical Preview aimed at IT professionals.

The Technical Preview will feature:

• Exchange Deployment and Operational  Efficiency
• Infrastructure Protection
• Optimizing Windows Vista and Office 2007 Deployment and Management
• Secure Mobile Productivity and Windows Mobile 5

Other highlights:

• On the spot contest
• Mobility smackdown
• Tips and tricks showdown
• Exhibition and solution showcase

I promptly registered for the event even before the e-mail invitation reached me.  Well, it should be one exciting preview!

Read also:

• Evaluating Windows Vista RC1 Build 5600

Evaluating Windows Vista RC1 Build 5600

It's been 3 weeks evaluating Windows Vista RC1 and I'm actually quite happy with it — so far at least. I have seen early builds of Vista in demos, but this is the first time I'm testing Vista on my own machine.

Getting the ISO

Downloading the 2GB+ ISO image took around 12 hours on my local Internet connection. After verifying the integrity of the downloaded file via a MD5 checksum checker, it was straight to burning to DVD. At a burn rate of a little over 2X on a DVD+RW media, it took around 15 minutes for the burning process to complete.

Installation

This is the one thing that really had taken me by surprise. With such a mammoth OS, installation was actually easy and fast. With XP Professional x64, installation took a solid one hour; but with Vista, all it takes was 30 minutes on the same machine — a year-old AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1GB machine, with a Windows Experience Index of 3.3. Windows Experience Index is Vista's built-in machine performance benchmarker.

I used the Vista Beta 2 product key from the DVD set I got at the recent Tech.Ed conference to activate Vista. [This was before the Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP) was re-open to the public.] The Vista version installed is Vista Ultimate.

First View of Vista

This is probably the best part. The new glass-effect UI is indeed a visual feast! I mean I've seen demos and all, but to experience it oneself is another thing. I now have a reason to put my ATI Radeon DirectX 9 128MB card to good use; you see, I'm not really a gamer. Navigating around menus, closing and opening windows actually felt surprisingly snappy. Even the 3D animation felt silky smooth.

Drilling Further into Vista

Except for the RAID component, Vista had drivers for the rest of my PC components. I downloaded the beta version of the ATI Radeon driver from ATI's website to see if the native driver performs better than the default one. Well, to be frank, I can't tell the difference. Maybe, it is a little faster but that's probably a psychological thing. Other than that, my pendrive, MSI Bluetooth adapter, and Creative Webcam Go webcam all worked fine. For my webcam, I installed the Creative WDM driver for XP and it actually worked! I've not tested my USB laser printer though, even though there's a driver installed for it.

Running Applications on Vista

Well, I'm not going to say much about Vista's applications. Some highlights: Instant search from almost anywhere, better photo management, direct to DVD burning, IE7, Windows Media Player 11, to name a few. You can read all the features here.

On third-party apps, I installed Adobe Acrobat Reader, ICQ, Paint.NET, Google Earth and all of the apps worked fine. I've not tested my favorite software dev tool (Visual Studio 2005); from what I heard, there might be issues with debugging and the upcoming VS 2005 SP1 should solve these issues. I shall be testing Microsoft Office 2007 on Vista soon; a Technical Refresh must to be installed to run Office 2007 Beta 2 on Vista RC1.

RC1 (Driver?) Quirks

There are a few operational quirks that I've come to observe:

• At times, after returning from hibernation or sleep, the screen resolution and the single/dual monitor setting did not stay at the previous setting.
• There is a case of stuttering with the sound.

Just nit-picking: Fonts used in some Vista core apps are not consistent — still a mix of old and new. In addition, some of the icons still spot the classic Windows icons e.g. WordPad toolbar. I suppose that will be fixed in the RTM version.

To sum it all...

The core of RC1 build 5600 is quite stable. I haven't had a fatal crash yet. It has the looks, the features and functionality, and to my surprise, the speed. Okay, okay, it feels much more secure too. On the flip side, it's definitely not production stuff —yet— due to some of the quirks I've pointed out; but hey, it's pre-RTM software after all!

Test-Driving Windows Live Writer

I'm writing this post from the new Windows Live Writer — Microsoft's new desktop-based blog post editor that works with most blog engines out there.  So far, everything looks cool.  Perhaps once I get into the meat of the app, I'll have more to write home  about.

Technorati tags: windows live writer, live writer, blog tools, microsoft

Installing Windows XP Professional x64

This is the day I braved myself to install WinXP x64 on my Athlon64 desktop machine. It's a weird situation because there will be a few things I'll have to do without. For instance, I can't attach my existing Acerscan flatbed scanner or even my Creative Webcam Go as there are simply no 64-bit drivers for these devices. Oh well, at least for now, I'll keep these devices tethered to my trusty old Pentium II/W2K machine.

These are the drivers I used to set up WinXP x64 on my AMD64/ABIT KV8-MAX3 machine:
- VIA VT8237 SATA RAID driver
- 3COM 3C940 NIC driver (unofficial)
- Realtek ALC658 sound driver
- AMD64 processor driver
- ATI Radeon 9550 video driver

In slightly less than one hour, I've got the new OS installed. Everything looks and feels the same as before (as compared with XP Pro 32-bit) but wait a minute...there are two versions of IE -- 32-bit and 64-bit! And under Task Manager, 32-bit process names are tagged with "*32". There are now two program files folder i.e. "Program Files (x86)" and "Program Files". I bet there are more differences under the hood but more of that later.

Got my XP x64

After a month-long wait, I finally received Windows XP Professional x64 Edition at my doorstep. *GRIN*

Preparing for 64-bit computing

Yes, I finally took the plunge and ordered Windows XP Professional x64 Edition via Microsoft's Technology Advancement Program. To be eligible for the program, the x64 machine must be purchased or built between March 31, 2003 and June 30, 2005. International shipping charge is US$22.

Avalon and Indigo for All!

Taken from Chris Anderson's blog:

"Avalon and Indigo March CTP is now available for anyone to download!
Get it while it's hot!"

Can Thunderbird fly?

Having been an Outlook Express (OE) user for years, I'm tempted to look into alternatives. Although I have big brother Outlook installed on my PC, I've not made the switch because I rather have something simple, lightweight, and snappy to use. (I only use Outlook for synchronizing certain info stored on my PDA.)

Hence, I decided to take a look at Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 e-mail client today. Installation was a breeze. I did an import of my OE inbox (though only partially) and it worked as it should. One of the things I long for in OE is the 3-column layout as found in Outlook 2003. Thunderbird offers such a layout but it's not exactly the same. Outlook 2003 offers a better view of the message list pane in 3-column mode.

Images in some HTML messages are not loaded. This is a good privacy measure and there's an option to turn on the images. Thunderbird is a tad bit slower at loading individual messages compared to OE. This is probably due to Thunderbird having to do more work in the background to provide a more secure environment. Thunderbird features an adaptive junk mail filter which I haven't had the chance to thoroughly test out yet. Application loading is also slower than OE. There's also color-coding of message headers for different message categories (like in Outlook). Oh yes, Thunderbird offers Print Preview which OE doesn't. There's also an integrated RSS reader and newsgroup reader -- pretty cool.

Well, my impressions are good for a version 1 product. Though it didn't really fly, it definitely felt more secure. Best of all, it's free! On whether I'm making a switch from OE, I think I'll have to play with Thunderbird a little more. We'll see. ;-)

Panther unleashed!

Dropped in at the Orange Club in the heart of KL for the "unleashing" of Mac OS X Panther. Well, I must say that Apple has some pretty impressive stuff here. Panther's windowing system a.k.a. Exposé was especially awesome. Exposé lets you instantly see all your open windows at once, then switch to the right one. Oh...there was free flow beer and that cool mousepad!

Microsoft Office System launch in KL

Attended the Microsoft Office System launch and breakout sessions at PWTC. Here's an amusing trivia: I had a pleasant surprise as I went up to my car after the event and found a little card on my windshield wiper saying that my car had been given a free wash. Can you believe that?

Office 2003 Workshop

Went for a free one-day workshop of Office 2003 on invitation by Iverson. The workshop focused on the new features in the latest version of the productivity suite.

Where's my office?

I've been using OpenOffice.org on my home PC for the past few months but I found it not fitting to my requirements. It's sluggish and it doesn't exactly export documents correctly to Microsoft Office (MSO) formats. MSO format compatibility is important to me because my workplace uses MS Office. Guess what? I got myself a copy of Microsoft Office XP Professional -- the real thing. That solves it! :-)