Everyone who has paid any attention on the Internet knows that Windows XP has been cracked, hacked and rendered completely activation free.  But Microsoft denies this fact.  Why? Because they don't even want to acknowledge the fact that piracy in Asia and other overseas markets costs them much more in lost sales than all the illegal copies in the US combined.

Microsoft doesn't acknowledge this for a simple reason, they have no clout in China.  It's a lost game.  So as a result, they turn to Draconian measures directed against their loyal US customers to try and make up some of the difference.  They allow wholesale pirating overseas, while forcing regular US customers to suffer with a system that can be extremely inconvenient.

Don't expect MS to change either.  They know where the money is, and who they have jurisdiction over.  And if there's one thing MS always does, it's go for the money.

                                         Dr. John

The Inquirer

Wired

ZDNet

How many of you have a motherboard with a fan on the "Northbridge" of the chipset?  Quite a few.  And how many of you have computers that make a loud buzzing sound when you first turn them on?  Probably quite a few as well!  Often the buzzing will subside after a minute or two. 

What's the deal? Well, motherboard makers have been including some pretty darn cheapo fans on their motherboards, and it doesn't take long for the bearing to dry out and start to make a ruckus. After a minute or two of operation the fans usually warm up and quiet down, but the initial cacophony seems out of place in a $2000, high-performance rig. So what's a quiet lover to do?

It's actually quite simple, and you can fix it in about 10 minutes.  Get out your old (probably really old) can of 3 in 1 oil.  No olive oil, please, but any machine oil or light lubricant should work.  Unplug your computer, open it up, and lay it on it's side so you are looking down at the motherboard.  If cables and whatnot block your access to the chipset fan, move them out of the way.  Now peel the label off the center of the fan.  It's usually easiest to grab the sticker where the wires connect to the fan.  With the sticker removed (you can save it to replace later), carefully put one drop of oil on the center spindle. If you get oil on top of the fan housing, you'll need to clean it off with some alcohol and tissues. Now plug the system in, and turn it on just until you hear the beep, then turn it off again.  This is just to let gravity help get the oil down into the spindle in the center of the fan.  Now you can clean off any excess oil, and replace the sticker.  If the sticker has lost it's stick, you can use any other sticky-backed paper or tape. Cut a circle and place it over the center hole in the fan to keep dirt and dust out.

The end result is a perfectly quiet chipset fan.  How long will this last?  Don't know, but it should last several months at least.  Ahhhh. Silence really is golden!

                                         Dr. John

Well here is a story worth a few good laughs for all you gamers out there.  Analysts are telling Intel and AMD to stop making faster processors, and make CPUs more "user friendly" instead.  The logic?  No one wants faster PCs, they just want friendlier machines!  "Good morning Dave... would you like some coffee?  One lump or two?" 

Well, it ain't gonna to happen. First off, CPUs aren't user friendly or unfriendly.  That's the job of the operating system.  Next, PCs may be faster than they used to be, but wait until the next round of Direct X 8 games comes out.  They will bring a 1.9GHz Athlon and GeForce 3 card to their knees at the highest graphics settings.

Plus correct me if I'm wrong, but right now big computer projects have to be farmed out to be processed on multiple machines because current computers aren't powerful enough.

So what's really going to happen?  MHz will continue to rise, and multi-CPU systems will become the norm.  Within a year, Dual 2GHz Athlon systems will be cheap to buy, and much faster than current systems.  So hang on to your hats, because the analysts were wrong again!

                                         Dr. John

EBN

So... you "accidentally" surfed over to www.XXX.com, and your system just hasn't been the same since? You decide it may be prudent to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows XP.  Thank goodness for that "restore CD" you burned when your system was just perfect.  You pop the CD in and re-install XP, and what does it say?  

"This copy of Windows must be activated with Microsoft before you can log on. Do you want to activate Windows now?"

You only have one choice Pilgrim, if you want to continue that is: and that choice is... YES.

The "Activate Windows" dialog box pops up.

Three choices appear before you:

1. "Yes, let's activate Windows over the Internet now."

2. "Yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Windows."

3. "No, log me off."

You chose 'yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Windows.'

Response: 'Generating new system ID:'

Step 1: "select your location (keep scrolling... because the United States, Ukraine and UK are near the bottom of the alphabetical list)."

Step 2: "call any number below to speak with a customer service representative toll-free number"

(don't bother with the "remind me later" button, it doesn't do anything but kick you out).

You call the phone number and get a pleasant artificial voice.   She wants your number.

You use your phone's keypad to type in a really big, (think of Ed Sullivan, "Reeeealy Big") 50 digit number.  No fat fingers allowed folks!

The pleasant artificial voice will give you a 42 digit number to enter in pleasant, 6-digit segments.  

If you enter the numbers correctly, you're done! If not, press the star key. 

Hey, Bill... that wasn't so bad... was it?

                                           Dr. John

Here we go again folks!  The pre-Christmas upturn in hardware prices.  According to EBN, SDRAM prices have doubled in a week.  The reason?  Possibly that when memory maker Hynix was in big financial trouble, many SDRAM makers dropped prices below cost to try and finish Hynix off (thus removing one big competitor).  But Hynix found financial backing, and the competitors had to bring their SDRAM prices back to the realm of "meager-profit". Will prices keep rising?  Nobody has the faintest idea.

                                           Dr. John

You know the routine.  A new version of Windows comes out, you buy it and install it, and then the troubles begin.  Having a little problem with Quake III dropping to the desktop?  No sweat, just get the XP patch here. Or maybe you are getting a "your computer has been disconnected" error message while trying to use 'Remote Assistance'?  No problem, just get the patch here. Perhaps your Pentium III notebook with XP installed hangs when you try to use the modem?  Not to worry, you can get the patch here. 

Starting to notice a pattern?  Well it's a pattern we have seen before, particularly with the rollout of Windows 2000. And you know the solution!  Don't install new Microsoft operating systems until millions of other poor slobs figure out all the bugs and glitches first.  No reason to be a free beta tester for Microsoft at your own XPense, especially when you know that other more daring persons will do it for you.  But if it's already too late (I wasn't thinking specifically of you Ed!;), then it's time to play some patch up.  The hunt is on for XP patches!

                                           Dr. John

For all those folks out there who I told to buy AMD stock right before the Hammer series of processors was set to be released....  you can relax and speculate about other stocks for another.... YEAR!

According to reports, AMD has pushed the release of it's 64-bit processor family, including the Sledgehammer (up to 8-way systems) and Clawhammer (dual-CPU systems)  back to the beginning of 2003.  For those of you who are locked in small rooms with artificial light, and have lost all sense of time, it's not even 2002 yet!!! The Clawhammer might make it out in December of 2002, but that's not much solace for the speed demons of the computer world.

This is not particularly good news for AMD, who has been struggling to keep up with Intel processors in terms of MHz ratings (despite being faster processors even with lower clock speeds). Perception goes a long way when selling processors, and a slow 2GHz machine sounds faster than a fast 1.5GHz machine.

The thought of having to wait more than a year, when we had been hoping to start seeing the Hammer series by next Summer, is hard to accept. But this gives Intel lots of breathing room to get their 64-bit junk to market.  

                                           Dr. John

The Register

A story at The Register suggests that system builders in the UK (and everywhere else, no doubt) are having trouble with the transition to Windows XP.  Based on our XPeriences with all Windows upgrades, this one certainly isn't worse than the others.  In fact, the rollout of Windows 2000 was one of the roughest ever.  But XP has it's issues as well, and that is to be expected.

                                           Dr. John

So how did InfoWorld get it so wrong? (See Nov 2nd story below). I have no idea what they were doing over at InfoWorld, but The Tech Report sets the Windows performance record straight.  Windows XP actually beat Windows 2000 by a tiny margin in some tests, and was certainly not 40 to 60% slower!  Considering that XP has much more eye-candy, and more useless baggage with all it's bundled software, it's surprising that it is not slower than 2000.  Based on the benchmarks, it's safe to say that both versions perform nearly the same overall.  And I trust the results at The Tech Report far more than those from InfoWorld.  

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen, you can upgrade to XP without a performance hit.  Of course your wallet will take a hit, but that's a different matter altogether.

                                           Dr. John

The Tech Report

Got computer questions? Or maybe answers to everyone's computer woes? Or just wanna shoot the breeze? The message board is back online!

Our server went down again for the second time in as many weeks.  But like a persistent bad dream, or a regrowing hang-nail, we are back again. The old server, having done it's job well for 3 years, has gone the way of 8-track tape players. 

For those of you wondering if you had been sucked through a micro-worm hole and transposed back 3 years to the time of the Celeron 300A, don't worry, that was just a short walk down digital memory lane.  Ahh.... those were the days... Well, not really, but you're supposed to say such things. 

                                           Dr. John

There is a nice review of the Athlon XP1900+ at the Tech Report. Coupled with a new KT266A-chipset motherboard, this is one fast x86!

The Tech Report

Scott at the Tech Report points to an InfoWorld analysis of Windows XP, and the results are as expected.  As with all previous Windows updates, XP is noticeably slower than it's predecessors.  The sluggishness is highly significant, and is of course, intentional.  Microsoft and Intel would just love to entice you into buying all new hardware along with your new operating system.  

Considering that Microsoft just got handed nearly a free ticket in their anti-trust case, you can expect more software bundling and bloat-ware crippling in future MS operating systems, so it's not going to get any better.  Makes me almost long for Windows 98SE.......

                                           Dr. John

InfoWorld

According to news stories that are starting to leak out, Microsoft and the Department of Justice may have reached an out-of-court settlement.  Not much information is available yet, but what has been said seems to indicate that Microsoft will be getting off very easy.  The remedies discussed so far are that Microsoft would have to make public some of their source code for Internet Explorer.  They would also have to allow computer manufacturers more leeway in how they set up the operating system on the computers they sell.  Finally, Microsoft would no longer be able to give special deals to computer manufacturers who do Microsoft's bidding.

The scuttlebutt on the Web is that the 18 states which joined the Department of Justice in the antitrust case against Microsoft are very leery of this deal.  In fact, if they do not feel that the remedies are sufficient punishment for Microsoft's antitrust activities, they may go it alone and continue the antitrust case in the absence of the DoJ.  Everyone expected the Bush administration to be very easy on Microsoft.  However, I'm not sure that anyone predicted the remedies would be this mild.

                                           Dr. John  

CNET

Memory manufacturer Samsung has announced that it's new 300 mm wafer fabrication facility is online and producing 0.12 micron 512 MB DDR DRAMs.  This is interesting news to me because Samsung has been solidly behind Rambus for the last two years.  The fact that they are willing to put money into a new memory fabrication plant for the purpose of producing DDR DRAM suggests to me that Samsung is not making enough money by concentrating on Rambus production. All this at that time when other memory manufacturers are losing money or on the verge of bankruptcy.

Apparently Samsung has a significant degree of confidence that DDR DRAM has a bright future, or they would not have invested so much money in a new plant.  It looks like Micron is about to get another big competitor in the DDR arena.

                                           Dr. John

Silicon Strategies

The folks who make Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software continue to struggle under bankruptcy.  However, this has not deterred them from producing a new version (6.0) of their award-winning speech recognition program.  When asked about the Company and its new software one analyst said, "what you are looking at is the walking dead".  Probably not what the company executives wanted to hear.

Despite the company's troubles, they still have approximately half the market share for speech recognition software.  But if things continue their downhill slide, IBM will certainly emerge as the winner, since their recognition program (Via Voice) represents the only competition for Dragon Naturally Speaking.

Dragon Naturally Speaking version 6.0 should be available in November.

                                           Dr. John

CNET