Snowulf

For those that haven't been following along at home, we've been doing an entire series of netbook related posts. Today's posting is about what software we enjoy using on our Netbooks, specifically Windows compatible software (after all we did just talk about installing Windows 7). Most of the software here is probably going to come across as "run of the mill" to tech-heads, but I'm also taking a small bit to explain WHY I think it is good to have on a Netbook.

• Firefox - I'm a big fan of open source software, but more to the point I really loathe Internet Explorer and love my Firefoxy. On top of my love for it as a browser, Firefox has a lot of extensions and communicability. This is really important because you can make Firefox better fit the Netbook screen size. In other words, you can make the UI tiny and have as much space as possible for browsing (critical when you screen is only 5" tall). The next blog post in the series will be about Optimizing Firefox for Netbooks.
  
• The Combined Community Codec Pack - CCCP is the best all around media playing package I know of. I'm a big fan of Media Player Classic, which they package as one of the two players in the CCCP. MPC has one feature that I find critical for Netbooks, the ability to boost the volume (In MPC - View > Options > Audio Switcher > Check "Normalize" and "Regain volume" then drag the "Boost" slider up as needed > Ok). I find that with some environments (say a car) and some video files - even with the volume all the way up (in Windows too) it just isn't enough - this is where the Boost comes in. At the current version, if you use MPC on Windows 7 to watch anything with Subtitles, it wont work unless you follow this fix.
  
• Skype - Since we use Skype at the office, it is a requirement for me to have it. That being said, Skype is useful for even the part time users, because of its excellent VoIP to POTS services. Translation: You can make damn cheap calls to and from anywhere in the world. If you make a lot of calls, Skype has many subscription plans. Even if you don't, it is only $0.021 per minute to call the US, which is cheaper than most people pay for long distance inside the US. Now keep in mind if you are in San Francisco or Sydney, it makes no difference to Skype - as long as you can get on the internet. Also for those really long trips Skype has Video Chat, which works well since most Netbooks have webcams.

Continue reading "Netbook Friendly Software" »

A while back I got an Eee PC 1000, which I've talked about a number of times. At first I installed Ubuntu 9.04 on it, but after a while I got bored and decided to give Windows 7 a try. While I prefer Linux servers, my desktop machines tend to run Windows, mainly because it can run the software I need for desktop machines - like Photoshop & games. Granted a Netbook isn't going to be a machine for Photoshopping, but you get the point. After a while of playing with my netbook, John got jealous and decided he had to have one for himself. He got his Eee PC 900A and installed Windows 7, which he just covered in the previous blog entry (something I probably should have done, but never got around to doing). If you're playing along at home, you've got Windows 7 installed on your netbook, but it isn't necessarily running as well as it could be. There are a few easy things you can do to "optimize" Windows 7 for the netbook experience.
Continue reading "Optimizing Windows 7 for Netbooks" »

At our office we use OpenVPN for our VPN needs. This was a change I made a few years back, taking us away from Windows PPTP. It has proved to be an interesting experience, because things do not always "work" on the client side. This is most apparent when dealing with Windows and/or 64-bit computers. It becomes even more fun when the boss wants OpenVPN on his Vista 64 machine. Up until recently it simply wasn't possible because there were no compiled 64-bit versions. Ok, that isn't entirely true, I could have downloaded the source code and compiled it myself but... uh... no thanks. Anyways the boss requested this again recently and I actually endeavored to make it work.

First thing you need to do to get OpenVPN on Vista 64 bit running is the latest 2.1 series download. I downloaded and installed rc14 (incidentally rc15 didn't work), though as of this writing rc18 is available. The first item on their "major new features" list is "Windows Vista-ready on both x86 and x64." So you should be able to just install the 2.1 RC like you would any previous version. Vista will complain about unsigned drivers, but what's new (go ahead and hit accept). After that, drop all the proper files and certs into the \config\ directory and you should be good to go. I'd like to note that previously I've needed to include the line "route-method exe" in my .ovpn config file, in order to get proper routing in Vista. I would guess that this isn't needed any more, but I continue to use it. Your Millage May Vary.

Also, for you gogetters: I am running OpenVPN 2.1 rc16 on my Windows 7 (32bit) powered netbook. It works just perfect, though I still use the route-method line mentioned above. At some later point in time I will experiment without it and see how it runs (Editor's note: What could possibly go wrong?). Since Windows 7 is mostly Vista (rather, what Vista should have been the first time around), I don't expect to have any issues with using OpenVPN in Win7, so long as they stabilize it for Vista.

I've also discovered in the writing of this blog post that very recently OpenVPN has changed their website all around and is now very commercial. This makes me very sad because it seems like they are trying to obfuscate their open source roots. I predict a fork in the near future.