Chronicles of a Wandering Mind

I have been having problems with the Dell Inspiron 1505 laptop for a while. Hard drive has been giving signals of a failure, and OS had become so cluttered with numerous applications I have tried last 2 years. Inexplicable hard drive trashing despite 2GB RAM was really getting to nerves and slowing me down.

A reinstall of OS and essential apps would have solved some of the problems but the initial install was painful due to number of drivers that had to be added etc. The laptop comes with loads of junk/trial software and a clean install was unexpectedly difficult. I couldn’t risk any downtime during reinstall so I kept postponing it.

At the end, I ordered a new, faster (7200rpm) hard drive and decided to try Windows7 beta with it, fully expecting to revert back to XP. Happy to say Windows 7 exceeded expectations and was much better at recognizing all the hardware. In addition, with XP I had to use VMWare images for number of applications that required Windows Server 2003, since they did not work with XP. With Windows 7, they Windows 2003 compatibility mode solved this problem.

My definition of a good OS have somewhat changed throught the years. I want an OS that handles the hardware seamlessly and won’t do much more than that. Windows 7 does handle the hardware nicely. The search interface to launch apps is a winner! within minutes I got used to doing everything from going into folders to running apps without touching the mouse using the search box.  It’s really well done.

Security is a pain in the ass! It’s going to take me a while to learn how to disable various automatic stuff, firewall configs, etc. I can’t imagine a non-technical user dealing with this stuff. It’s crazy complex. I can’t imagine helping someone over the phone, etc. to get software installed. There are so many things where things can go wrong in the name of security.  I am an administrator and I’m still getting “you don’t have sufficient access rights” messages. WTF? If I don’t have the rights, who does, NSA?

When I started installing the applications I use, I’ve noticed that majority of them are free applications, if not open source. I have mixed feelings about this. Does this mean that desktop software market has essentially disappeared and not possible to charge for software anymore? Apparently I’m not paying for them. The least I can do is to list and thank the creators. Here is the list in no specific order:

• Firefox Despite continuous annoyance with memory usage, browser of choice. I use it with delicious, firebug, greasemonkey, read it later, add-ons. Eliminated a lot of add-ons, some of them will likely make it back in time as I need them. Haven’t decided what to use for tabs yet for example.
• Sun JDK So easy to take it granted. Java VM is such an invaluable technology. Thanks Sun!
• OpenOffice Encore, kudos to Sun. It’s amazing that we can get this for free.
• Skype I live in Skype, use it 24/7 both in professional and personal life. Who would have thought that we can have video conferencing for free.
• Putty much more than an SSH client. What would I do without tunneling getting me though security hoops?
  
• VLC Media Player It just works, doesn’t install bunch of crap on your PC.
• WinSCP scp and ftp. Like putty, it’s an essential tool I would be hard pressed without it.
• Digsby my current/recent multi IM/social networking tool.
  
• Crimson Editor My text editor for quite some time. works very well. thanks!
• JungleDisk I’m a paying customer using it to backup files into Amazon S3.
  
• Mozy Backup solution for my PC, works well enough.
• Synergy What a gem! Use it to control other PCs in the office from a single keyboard/mouse.
• DynDns another free service/software, essential to work with others when you don’t have a static IP.
  
• iReasoning Mib Browser these guys have great SNMP libraries. They make the mib browser available as a free tool. Works well.
• Groovy my favority scripting language
• Active Perl Perl is still must have in my work. Active Perl distribution made installing Perl on Windows a pleasant experience.
• Picasa I still prefer desktop photo organizers. Picasa from Google is pleasant to use.
• RealVNC VNC is part of the essential tool in the arsenal of a remote worker.
• 7zip works with different compression file formats nicely. another essential tool.
• Adobe AIR, Acrobat Reader & Flash Player Adobe is yet another great tech company providing number of great technologies over the years that have become defacto must have tools.
• Jing Project After using the free version for a while, I’ve become a paying customer when they offered the Pro version. Use it all the time for screenshots and screencasts.
• VMware Player. Another essential tool for development, support, testing, etc. In addition, it has become a key enabler for me to create clean environments to connect to different client networks.

So there it is.  Overall, it feels like I got a new laptop since everything changed and works faster. Now I need to figure out how I can save this state of the laptop so that I can come back to this clean state if necessary.  Hoping that Retrospect, the backup software that came with the external USB drive will help with that.