And in fact there were errors like:

Remote file error: Remote server did not respond.

and

Remote file error: Remote file is incorrect size.

I then tried to debug the import mechanism on  wordpress-2.8.6. I found that there was not much of a problem with it.  The problem was actually with the export mechanism.

Here are my findings:

Post attachments are mentioned in the XML within the <wp:attachment_url> tag. The URL for one such picture attachment was something like:

When I tried to put this URL on the web-browser, it redirected to:

While the latter URL seems to be more direct form of accessing the attachments, the problem could be with resolving the relative URLs in wp_get_attachment_url() of wp-includes/post.php

The work around for now would be to perform a replace-all for files.wordpress.com with files.wordpress.com in the exported XML file. I have made sure that only the <wp:attachment_url> tag has such entries.

Hope this helps.

What is it?

Lets start with the abbreviation RSS – Really Simple Syndication. Well, we all quite know what ‘Really’ and ‘Simple’ meant, but what is Syndication? The WordWeb dictionary (my favorite) says:

Syndication – 1) Organizing into or administering as a syndicate. 2) Selling (read Sending) an article for publication to several newspapers or magazines at the same time.

That in all likelihood, made some sense. Did it not? If I publish this post on my blog, would all my RSS feed subscribers receive the article without visiting the blog? Looks like it. Lets explore further.

RSS feed is a standard format of publishing frequently-updated works such as – news articles, blog posts, scraps etc. The content usually circulated via feeds would be excerpts/summaries of new articles, links to new web pages or similar audio/visual media.

Okay! How does it work?

1. Content publishers provide a link or a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier, also called URL) on their websites. For example, the feed URI of my blog looks like this:  http://bharathreddyt.wordpress.com/feed/ and that of a CNN World business page looks like this: http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition_business.rss

2. A user/subscriber needs an application called a Feed Reader/RSS Reader/Aggregator.
These applications would typically be:

• Web-based: Google Reader/iGoogle, My Yahoo
• Desktop-based:
  • Browsers like Mozilla Firefox, IE;
  • Applications like feedReader, MicrosoftMAX;
  • Email clients like IBM Lotus note, MS Outlook Express etc.
• Mobile-based: Google Mobile RSS reader, feedBurner etc.

3. Subscribers would have to supply a feed URI to the Feed reader. The feed reader would retrieve feed content and display.

So, What big deal?

1. No nonsense: Have you ever subscribed to news letters or updates from sites? Have you faced with problems like spam, viruses, phishing? The story doesn’t end here. When you register for subscriptions, you would have to leave your details of identity and mainly your email ID. This could lead to Identity theft. RSS feeds are a way out. You would not even have to provide your email ID. Its the content publishers that give us the feed link and its your feed reader application that get the feeds to you.

2. Unsubscribe Easily: Say, you’re not interested anymore in receiving updates/news form a certain subscription/source, you’d have to send an ‘unsubscribe’ email. And yet, you’re at the mercy of the sender. In case of an RSS subscription, to unsubscribe, you’d only have to remove the feed’s link from your feed reader. That’s that.

3. Feed reader applications generally have features to sort and group similar feeds. For example, say I subscribe for sports news from three different sites and stock updates from 5 different sites. I would have an option to sort them into two categories, say sports and stocks.

4. What more? Browsers these days have built in feed readers. I’ve seen them on Firefox and IE7. When users click on a feed link on a website, they’re taken to a page that displays the feeds for the site and the user is given an option to choose a feed reader of choice. (See the illustrations section below) The simplest way is to choose to save it as a book mark. A folder is created under bookmarks folder and it has links that the feed intends to circulate.

A Brief History

Started around 1995 by Ramanathan V. Guha, an Indian computer scientist while he was working with Apple. He was one of those who conceived the idea of collecting integrating published data and presenting. He developed RDF (Resource Description Framework) which was then the basis of RSS. After quite some fuss over the ownership of the technology, the copy right is currently owned by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Its maintained by the RSS Advisory Board.

Though the technology of RSS feeds isn’t new – the RSS2.0 version was announced way back in 2002 – the usage became popular only recently. One of the earliest adopters of the RSS feed technology was Mozilla Firefox and it was followed by MS Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Opera and several others.

Illustrations:

When I click on http://bharathreddyt.wordpress.com/feed/, I see a page like this:

After I subscribe to the feed on FireFox, I see a bookmark folder as this:

References:

http://www.whatisrss.com/

http://library.ucsc.edu/science/rss.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed

http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79408

Etiology (study of disease causation) of common cold says there are over a hundred different kinds of viruses that cause common cold. In addition, that is one reason why one cannot ideally gain immunity to common cold.

My laptop is no super man, so she got one too, a bitter cold.

This post attempts to discuss:

1. A few basics of computer viruses.
2. The other kinds (Worms, Trojan horses, Spy-ware, Ad-ware).
3. The Effects & Symptoms.
4. How get rid?
5. How gain immunity?
6. The ‘anti’ ware – a review.

A few basics of computer viruses:

By definition: A virus is a computer program that is designed to cause undesirable effects on computer systems. There can be several such definitions though but the following is a list of features that make a program a virus:

1. Generally a piece of code that implants itself on executable files (*.exe)
2. Self replicating and self propagating – can make copies of itself and systematically spread file to file, computer to computer.
3. Implements intentional damage (read as unexpected behavior of the computer) intended by the perpetrator.
4. Generally require user action to show effect.

Types:

• File Infectors – Viruses that attach themselves to files, usually to .exe, .com and .bat files. Further, there are three groups of viruses of this kind.
  • Group one – Overwriting viruses: They overwrite their code into infected file erasing contents. These are primitive and they can be found very quickly.
  • Group two – Parasitic or cavity viruses: They copy themselves into begin/end/middle of infected files and usually do not change the original function of the original file.
  • Group three – Companion viruses: They do not change the content of files but either replace and rename the original file or make a double of the original file.
• Boot viruses – Every logical drive has a boot sector, a master boot record and a partition table (one per physical drive). Boot sector contains information about the data on the disk, formatting information and a small boot program that is run when you boot your system. A virus affecting this boot program loads itself into memory at boot time and spreads to other drives. Master boot record usually uses a master boot program that locates the starting location or bootable partition from the partition table. Infection to this program might lead to even disk crashes.
• Macro Viruses – we know macros from MS Excel as a small set of instructions that result in a certain way for a certain input. Now this category of viruses are usually written as a macro on an MS office file (a word or excel doc). They propagate with the word docs and infect the office software and files.

Read the ‘history of computer viruses’ here . In addition, a timeline of viruses and worms here

That was a brief of my knowledge about viruses.

We have often come across many other terms that point to malicious activity on computers and networks.

The other kinds (not viruses?):

• Worm: These generally self-replicating scripts propagate over a computer network. Unlike viruses, they do not attach themselves to files. These generally target at consuming network bandwidth and designed to spread rapidly. They are capable of sending huge amounts of spam e-mail!
• Trojan horse: The Greek term Trojan means someone who comes in disguise. You would know better if you saw Troy. In computers terms, a Trojan horse id defined as a malware that generally aims at making a system vulnerable to allow unauthorized access via the network. These generally come packed neatly in the form of photographs, screensavers etc. Apart from allowing remote unauthorized access, these also upload/download files more Trojans without the user’s knowledge.
• Spy-ware: As the name suggests, these are certain things that enter computers as spies to spy! Most basic spy-ware are software that watch, interrupt, log and report user’s interaction with the system. Identity theft and fraud is the motto most often. A basic example would be recording keyboard strokes and mouse clicks and transmitting them to a third party. The info could have credit card numbers, Id/Passwords etc! Spy-ware generally get downloaded from webpages and get installed as ActiveX controls. They make use of flaws in the browsers JavaScript handling capability to get installed. These are capable of changing registry keys and register themselves in place of the normal programs or as associations. These unlike viruses and worms are not self replicating.
• Ad-ware: These are privacy invading software that aim at delivering unsolicited advertisements. They generally come bundled with software (free software/shareware especially!).

The Effects & Symptoms:

The most dangerous of the lot are, I would say, Boot viruses, Trojan horses and Spy-ware.

Boot viruses aim at altering the file organization on computers and they aim at corrupting data and eventually make the computer unusable unless the user goes through re installation. This would cost a lot of time and money! Symptoms: 1. Your system doesn’t boot or cries out ‘”no boot devise”; Drives or directories are go invisible.

File infecting viruses and worms target degrading system performance. Symptoms: Your computer seems sluggish. Inexplicable and unjustified  CPU & Memory usage is a general symptom of infection.

Trojan Horses compromise the user’s integrity and security over networks allowing access to third parties. They might at least install spy-ware and ad-ware!. Symptoms: You suspect unsolicited access to data on your computer. You see lots of ads pop up as you browse the internet.

Spy-ware record and transmit sensitive user data. Symptoms: You just saw your credit cared statement with purchases that you haven’t made, someone probably got hold of your credit card number and even worse, the cvv number and expiry date as well. Your keyboard behaves erratic.

We’ve seen how bad the world can be. Call the police!

How get rid?

In these times, all of us have heard of anti-virus , anti-spyware, firewalls, registery mechanics etc. This one is good, that one has so many features, that costs this much and much more of that.

Yes, we heard some of those right. There are several tools out there to help protect or machines from malice. I recommend that an internet using fellow should have at least one up-to-date anti-virus program, a firewall and a ad-ware/spy-ware removal tool.

That is good if we were just starting to have trouble. But if we’re neck deep into it? I personally would format my machine’s hard drive clean and start afresh. But that isn’t an intelligent solution and at times, for many of us, not at all a feasible option. We’d better obtained the good (see the ‘anti’ ware section) tools first.

Lets get the anti-virus in place. Generally, most anti-virus software have a virus definitions database. This database would contain information about the viruses that have already been detected elsewhere. The definitions also generally come with the appropriate remedy.But installing the ati-virus might not be just enough. While the software might be built with the most general virus definitions but it might not be up-to-date. There are lots of them who are churning out new viruses each day. These virus databases are generally maintained on anti-virus s/w vendor websites. They can either be downloaded in the form of .exe files or the anti-virus software might have an update definitions option, given that you have an internet connection.

It is recommended that you scan the whole system. All of the harddrive and even the external storage like USB harddrives and pendrives.

The antivirus software might detect several infections (viruses, worms, trojans etc.) The s/w generally does one of the following things: Quarantine the infected files/Clean or repair infected files/delete infected files.

Some antivirus s/w wont detect spy-ware and ad-ware. We might need special s/w for that(see the ‘anti’ ware section).

Now that we have cleaned the mess up. We need to stay alert to stay healthy.

How gain immunity?

Update and Scan regularly – Most anti-virus s/w have automatic update feature, where by, they update the virus definitions and solutions automatically from the s/w vendors website. If the s/w doesn’t update automatically do the update manually. Updating isn’t just the only thing. We better did a periodic scan of the system to be sure. Most anti-virus s/w have an inbuilt scheduler that can be configured for a periodic scan.

Although it is not practical that we become completely immune. As human race always saw, the more advancement in health care we did, the more new diseases we got! There always the bad guys  (some of them,great coders) who keep making new viruses.

The ‘anti’ ware – a review:

There are several of them out there, each flaunting more features, promise of more efficient  protection.

Antivirus:

I have started with Norton anti-virus once long ago. Norton comes at a price. It guzzles a load of system resources. After all we need to our computers to do some work for us and not just stay protected running an anti-virus right?

I then tried a few like McAffee, TrendMicro, BitDefender, AVG etc. The latest reviews on these can be seen here.

A few features one might have to look for:

1. Download size for installation file – Some anti-virus software claim that that they have all the features in the world. Sorry, we need only a few good ones. Choose the one that suits your need, the file size would vary accordingly
2. Ease of use (installation and Interface)
3. On-access Scanning – Files are scanned as they are accessed. This helps protect particularly when we’re downloading files. The anti-virus scans the downloaded file just as it arrives.
4. On-demand Scanning – Almost all anti-virus programs have this. Files/folders/drives can be chosen for scan as the user wishes to.
5. Scheduled Scanning – User can schedule when to scan and which area to scan.
6. Script Blocking – Java and VBS scripts might pose with virus-like behavior. This feature helps block such scripts.
7. Quarantine – Infected Files have to be separated before they infect other files. Anti-virus s/w generally put such files in a virus-vault or quarantine so that users wont access them until cleaned.
8. Auto-Clean – Automatically attempts to clean and recover infected files.
9. Automatic Incremental Update – Virus definition updates are automated. And the s/w updated only the latest definitions or those that are not present already.
10. Manual offline update – In case there is no internet connection, we might require to download the virus definitions from an internet cafe and transfer to our home PCs. This feature isn’t generally found.
11. E-mail protection – for email clients like outlook. Most of us wont use this.

Many of today’s anti-virus programs have these features but most of them come at a price. I looked for freebies!

AVG topped the charts previously. Now here is the order:

1. Avira AntiVir
2. Avast
3. AVG

My favorite today is Avira AntiVir. Light on resources, easy to use, fast update.

Then, thats not it, we need a personal firewall too.

Firewall:

Again there are a lot of them. Windows firewall is quite quirky I heard. I’ve tried Zone alarm probably one of the best to date. Its a freeware.

Feature of interest:

1. In-boundprotection – Alerts and warns about connection attempts from outside.
2. Out-bound protection – Programs and web pages that are beign used currently on your machine attempt to connect to the internet for various reasons. This feature provides alerts and helps you configure access.
3. Program access control – to specify which all programs need to go online and which all want to but still need not as per the user’s choice.
4. Stealth Mode – When online, your computer constantly receives and responds to information requests from other computers. In stealth mode your computer will not respond to the flow of queries unless you opt to override.

And then the Spy ware?

Anti-spy ware:

Generally the anti-virus s/w and the firewall should be enough as they have anti-spy ware already. But then a separate and efficient program wouldn’t do any harm.

Ad-Aware is my favourite. Download its free version. It also updates the definitions and has features that one would expect of an anti-virus program. It scans for spy-ware and removes them.

For more info, go through resources here.

Well, thats a lot of work! Keep safe keep your systems happy. Hope the post helps. Please leave comments.

There are all kinds of speakers. Some are pleasant to listen to, some have great content to talk, some bore you to death, some stutter, some make you feel you want to listen more. This post intends to talk about those of us who use too many – ah, aa, you know, well, hmm, basically, and, actually, but, so, etc. – fillers they’re called. We tend to fill our sentences with these words and phrases, usually when we change idea to idea, and most often to keep the talking going while we think of the next part of the sentence. This might not be much of a problem as long as we think its okay! But think again, won’t we sound better and clear if did away with these fillers and used the right words? Yes, that is going to require a lot of effort and conscious practice. As an example, let us compare these two sentences:
“This morning aa I’d been to this place, mm, you know the supermarket round the corner, so, things were thrown around basically all over the place, I was actually stunned.”
“This morning I’d been to the supermarket round the corner. I was stunned to see things thrown all over the place”. The second sentence was not only precise and clear but also left an impression that I knew very well of what I wanted to say, as I was saying it.

I happened to play the ‘ah-counter’ today at the Toastmasters Club at my office. Ah-counter is someone who makes note of the ‘fillers’ (like the ones in the title of this post) that the participants use as they talk during the club’s session. Ah-counter doesn’t just count the fillers but also notes down the instances where the speakers repeat words and phrases to fill gaps between parts of sentences they speak. “I was standing at the counter, and …and I saw this person approach with an axe in his hand.” The ‘and’ was repeated.

Towards the end of the Toast Masters session, the ah-counter reads out the report. The participants wouldn’t otherwise realize that they usually use so many ‘unnecessary’ words to form sentences while they talk. The aim of pointing out that they use fillers is mainly to bring  awareness, so that, the next time they talk, they would take care they would have to ‘ah’ a little lesser. What does the ah-counter get? Toastmasters.org says this role is to improve listening and observation skills. But I feel there’s some more. The ah-counter also becomes conscious of his/her own fillers. After all the ah-counter can’t commit the mistakes that he/she pointed out. And also, after all, isn’t it easy to find mistakes?!!

What do you take away from this post? Next time you talk to someone in English, try to figure out how many fillers you use. Its funny, there will be quite a few. Its fun too.

What else? Hmm aaa.. well.. you know… that is all!

The posts there don’t just show the photographs but also explain the context and the content.

You could navigate to the next photo by clicking on the right half of the photo, to the previous photo by clicking on the left half. Or you could also click on the < or > arrows to navigate.

Please leave a comment if you like the photos. Please leave a comment if you hate them to the core. Please leave a comment even if you have nothing to comment!

http://photopic.wordpress.com

This might have happened when the Automatic Updates upgraded my XP OS to SP3.

The calculator application is generally found on the start – All Programs – Accessories menu. Or one could launch the application just by typing ‘calc’ in the start – Run command.

I went online to find a way out to fix the missing calc app. Many articles presented one of the following three ways:

1. Reinstall the Accessories by Control Panel – Add or Remove Programs – Add/Remove Windows Components. One would have to insert the Windows XP installation CD for that.
2. Open the folder called ‘i386′ in the XP installation CD, search and locate the calc.exe, mspaint.exe files, copy them to C:WindowsSystem32 folder. Then open the C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersStart MenuProgramsAccessories and paste a short cut for each of them. Test by launching calculator, paint from the start – All Programs – Accessories menu. Also try typing ‘calc’ in the start – Run command; try the same with mspaint.exe
3. Copy C:WindowsSystem32calc.exe and mspaint.exe from a friend’s machine and paste in the same location on your system.

But I would prefer the following two methods:

1. Download this simple application called AccRestore and run it to restore all the windows XP accessories. This restores all the Accessories including MS-Paint and System Tools that might have gone missing.
2. Alternatively, if you want to use this opportunity to install calculator that includes a scientific calculator and a unit converter, download ‘Calculator Plus’ from Microsoft here. Install it. Go to the folder where it is installed, generally c:Program FilesMicrosoft calculator Plus. copy the calcPlus.exe, paste it in C:WindowsSystem32 folder,  rename it to calc.exe. You can paste shortcut in C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersStart MenuProgramsAccessories if you want to launch calculator from there. Voila, we can now run the calculator from the run command by typing ‘calc’.

Learning: You can launch any application xyz.exe through start-Run command if you have a copy of xyz.exe in the C:WindowsSystem32 folder.

Thanks for reading. Please contact if you need any specific information.

The next big challenge was to install the drivers that ran on XP. This was tough as Dell did not support any other OS for m1330 than Vista. Here is a list of the individual drivers and their download locations.

Note: Pleas verify the compatibility before you download the drivers.

I recommend installing drivers in the following order:

• R153997 MOBILE CHIPSET.
• GRAPHICS -

If you’ve not bought your m1330 with Nvidia graphics, the correct drivers for Intel graphics card can be downloaded using the Intel® Driver Update Utility. This driver happens to be GRAPHICS INTEL® GM965WIN2K_XP1437.

OR

If you have the NVIDIA graphics card, obtain the drivers from here – NVIDIA GRAPHICS Driver.

• R141246 MOMORY CARD READER.
• R155246 ETHERNET CONTROLLER.
• R151336 BROADCOM NETWRK UTILITIES.
• R174291 WIRELESS MINI CARD.
• I found two drivers for the integrated webcam, R173082 WEBCAM (recommended) OR R160323 WEBCAM.
• R155586 TOUCHPAD.
• The audio driver did not install that easy! Extract both the following drivers (say, to C:\DellDrivers) and then from Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> device manager, locate the PCI device with an yellow flag beside. Open its properties and update drivers. Select the folder where you extracted the audio drivers to. This should do the trick. Let XP decide the best drivers. R171789 SIGMATEL AUDIO and R153908 AUDIO.
• R127314 BLUETOOTH (recommended) OR R161378 BLUETOOTH.
• R156915 FINGER PRINT RDR.
• R165094 DELL QUICKSET.

Installing all of the above listed drivers should give you a grand start to using XP on your Dell XPS m1330. I have personally experienced a huge improvement in performance and a hassle-free computing.

Please feel free to post a comment if you need any assistance in this regard.

Hmm.. so I set out to find out how to get my laptop running Windows XP. That was quite tough. I had to do a lot of research and still couldn’t get it all fixed in one go. So, this guide.

This post aims at giving a short but definitive guide to get a Vista-running-laptop to run XP, and yet retain Vista (after all we paid to buy the laptop with it!), i.e. setting up dual boot.

Step-by-step:

1. Getting the XP installation to include the SATA drivers (it won’t generally include)
2. Installing XP on a separate partition of the hard drive.
3. Setting up dual boot. i.e. to be able to use both XP and Vista.
4. Finding and installing the right XP drivers.
5. Finishing up.

The first piece of knowledge that came to me when I set out on this task is that, the XP installation CD that I have cannot install XP on a system that runs a SATA hard drive. So I would have to do something about it. That is, I would have to include the SATA drivers into the installation.

There are other ways to get this working, like storing the SATA drivers on a pen drive and sticking it in when XP installation asks ‘for third party drivers press F6′. But I personally prefer creating an XP installation that includes the SATA drivers so that I would be at ease re-installing XP later, easily.

Getting the XP installation to include the SATA drivers:

You would need:

• The XP installation CD.
• SATA drivers provided by the manufacturer. Usually provided on the manufacturer’s website. Download SATA driver for Dell XPS m1330 here – R200174.
• nLite, a  freeware application. Download here.
• A blank CD.

Download and extract the SATA drivers to a folder on your hard drive. Say to C:\SATA

Copy the XP CD to a separate folder on to your had drive. Say to C:\XP

Install & start the nLite application.

Choose the location where you copied XP. Click next and Choose Integrate-drivers. On the next screen choose ‘multiple driver folder’. Provide the location where you extracted the drivers to. Select the appropriate driver and click OK. Apply the changes on the next screen and towards the end you would be left with the XP installation with integrated SATA drivers in the same folder where you copied it initially (C:\XP).

Click on the following visuals for a better idea.

Once this is done. We have the installation that has SATA drivers, but its still on the HDD, and it needs to be burnt on to a bootable CD, and you’re done!

The nLite application is capable of making a CD image file from the installation folder (C:\XP).

Start the nLite application. Make sure that the same installation folder is selected and you choose before(C:\XP), and click next.  Select ‘Last session’ preset and click next again. On the ‘Task selection’ screen choose ‘Create Bootable ISO’. On the next screen set mode to ‘Create Image’ and click Make ISO. Lo..we have the .iso file that we can burn to a bootable CD.

Use any CD burner application (I recommend Nero) to make the ‘XP Installation with SATA drivers’ bootable CD. Voila! we’re ready to install XP. The best part is that we would not only be able to use the bootable CD to install XP on the laptop now, we would be able to do it any number of times later.

Installing XP on a different partition:

Before installing XP, we would have to download EasyBCD, a utility to setup dual boot after wards. Download it here.

Now that we have a bootable XP CD, we can go ahead an install it. Though you could install two different Operating systems on a single drive, in different folders but it is always safe to install them on individual logical drives . But most of the laptops that we buy these days wont come with a partitioned hard drive. There are several utilities with which we can partition the hard drive. Here are a few utilities that you might want to check out:
Paragon Partition manager.
Segate Partition manager.
Windows Vista disc management.

I would recommend using the XP partition utility which is already on the XP bootable CD that we have just made. Guide to use this utility here – Disc Partition using Windows XP installation.

Once the partition is done, install XP on the second drive (D:\). Don’t be astonished when you install XP and reboot, you’d not be able to boot Vista. You’d only be able to boot XP.

Setting up dual boot:

Restore Vista boot-loader:
Install EasyBCD and launch it. Choose the ‘Manage Bootloader’ option. In the ‘Bootloaderinstallation options’ section, choose ‘Restore Vista bootloader’ and click write MBR.

Setup dual boot:
Restart your laptop. This time, it boots directly to Vista. While in Vista, install EasyBCD and launch it. Choose Add/Remove Entries. Notice the windows vista entry in the ‘Manage existing entries’ section. In the ‘Add an Entry’ section, choose windows and in the version dropdown, choose ‘Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3′. Choose the drive in which you’ve installed XP (D:\) and click ‘Add entry’.

Use EasyBCD application to change the boot options like default OS and the time out at the boot menu. Do this in the Manage Bootloader section.

Restart your laptop. Oh oh! did you not see the boot menu? Now boot into Vista if you want. I would want to use XP!

Have fun, yeah its sure fun to see your laptop perform lot better while running XP.

Installing the right drivers:

After you install XP, setup dual boot, the next challenge would be to find the right XP drivers for your machine.

Laptops that come with Vista generally wont find support on the manufacturer’s site for windows XP. Its tough but it aint any impossible.

If you have a Dell XPS m1330, you could check out this post XP drivers for Dell XPS m1330

Finishing up:

An Antivirus, a Firewall and all the XP compatible software that you need. This gets you ready. Please go through A review on Viruses, Antiviruses and Firewalls- for a brief introduction to various types and categories of Mal-ware, and a review on anti-virus S/W and firewalls.

Please comment on how helpful this post has been. Happy XP

PS:
On the same lines as this post, I’ve written ‘Install Windows-7 on a vista laptop’. Please check that out as well!

If you don’t want too much detail, you can scroll down to the ‘Now here is how‘ section for a quick guide. Or you can read on at leisure!

To start with, let’s look at a few reasons why we chose the Western Toilets to replace the Indian ones:

1. Why not Indian? The Indian toilet requires the user to squat to empty his bowels. That might not seem to be a problem really, we’ve been doing it ever since and it’s more natural. But, having to assume this posture gets very difficult and painful particularly as we age and our knees start hurting. On the other hand using the Western Toilet is as simple as sitting on a chair. Well almost!
2. Installation: Most often, at least in the cities, what we call the ‘bathroom’ isn’t just a place only for bath but it includes the loo too. The Western Toilet occupies (at least hypothetically) lesser space than its Indian counterpart. While the latter has to be installed on the floor requiring special arrangement in the flooring in addition to the drain arrangement; the Western one needs a proper drain and that’s all. There isn’t much of a difference in the way the flush is connected to both though.
3. Maintenance and aesthetics: The Western Toilet generally comes with a lid which means not only better looks but also, if it isn’t in use for a while, dust is kept off. Not just that, the toilets are generally not too separated from the bath area and occasionally when the bathing soap bar slips off our hands; it inevitably lands in the pit of the toilet, you have lost at least one soap in that fashion haven’t you? The soap can’t be retrieved for one, but there is a chance of the toilet drain getting blocked. Isn’t the Western Toilet with the lid better?

Those are a few reasons why slowly people moved to using the Western Toilets. But yet, there a lot of us who are reluctant to use them, reason might simply be that we don’t know how to use them, or it’s embarrassing to ask and find out. The Western Toilets don’t come with a user’s guide!

Okay. Before we see ‘how’, lets look at ‘what‘. We’ve seen them at least, if not used them. Haven’t we? Apart from the pot arrangement to sit on, the Western Toilets come with a few other things.

• Lid for the pot, we’ve already discussed about.
• A supporting seat (lid-with-a-hole) that covers the seam of the pot; this comes in between the lid and the pot; it provides for better seating as compared the bare pot which usually has a thin seam.
• A flush tank behind. Wont talk much about it in this context though it has quite a bit of mechanism associated!
• A toilet paper roll holder, of course with toilet paper roll.
• An optional hand-tap for washing.

The Indian version & Western - The lids, the seat, the hand tap assembly and the hand tap

Now here is ‘how‘:

Without the hand tap: The usual case, most Western Toilet arrangements we see wont have the hand tap; instead, we see either a bucket + mug or just a mug under the tap. So how wash with just a mug? This is the big question this post primarily attempts to answer.

• Finish your potty (essentially the thing that you went to the pot for, in the first place).
• After you finish, move yourself a little forward, just enough to allow for your hands to move behind you.
• Take a mug of water in your right hand; take it behind you (you’d have to use some imagination eh!) over the pot, so that you’d be able to empty it into the pot.
• With your left hand wash it off pouring water out of the mug.

With the hand tap: As you could already imagine, use the hand tap instead of the water mug.
With the toilet paper: I would say “Save paper”.

In my personal experience, I have come across people who did terrible things to clean up after using the Western Toilet. Some thought they could qualify to join the great ‘Bombay Circus’ if they practiced washing up after potty on the Western Toilet. Some did not use it at all, and you know what that meant! I thought this write-up would help.

Lets not be satisfied with just this amount of knowledge about the innovation called the Western Toilet, lets go a little further.
Here are a few tips for it’s installation:

1. Choose the right most area of the ‘bathroom’ to install the Western Toilet.
2. Install the tap in such a way that it is easily accessible by your right hand, without requiring you to move too much.
3. Arrange for enough room around the pot to allow for comfortable movement of your hands around.
4. Install a hand tap. A good one comes for around 500 Rupees. The hand tap comes very handy, while you wont have to wet the floor spilling water from the mug.
5. If possible, arrange the flush tank lever (you press it to flush the pot) such that it comes under your right hand instead of it being behind and inaccessible when you’re seated.

A few more:

This is simply how, and how not

 

If he can, so can we!

I hope this post made an interesting read. Please leave your comments and suggestions.

Have pleasant loo-goings!

When someone says “I have a 2 em bee pe ess connection, you see!” he probably doesn’t know what it really meant (well, that is the case with most of us!).  Its perhaps hip to be mentioning that you’ve a faster connection than someone else. But tell you, these numbers are debased. Unless you know what it really means, you can easily get carried away.

Lets get to the bottom of it then. To start with lets see what MBps and Mbps really are and what they’re used to represent.

MBps – Mega Bytes per second

Mbps – Mega Bits per second

Bfore going any further, lets get to the basics:

1 Byte = 8 bits or say 1B = 8b. Please note the convention that the word Byte starts with a capital B, while byte is in all lower case.

Similarly, 1MBps = 8Mbps.

From the history if we can quickly recall, we have almost always mentioned digital data storage as Bytes(B), KiloBytes(KB), MegaBytes(MB) and so on. So, Byte is a unit normally used for digital storage space. For example a normal Mp3 file occupies 3.5 MB of memory on my hard drive. Well, that’s that.

But then, when networks came into usage, or rather, with the advent of the Internet, we began talking of network speeds – speeds at which data traveled over networks. This is when we measured the data in bits. We said, thousand bits per second. Thus came the Kbps, and then Mbps. This in Telecommunications lingo is called ‘bit rate’.

This gives us some insight, but there’s still a lot of confusion.

The following might help

The confusion is because we’ve often seen data transfer speeds both in terms of MBps as well as in terms of Mbps. For example most browsers show speeds in MBps while they download files.

Download speed as shown by Mozilla Firefox is in KBps or MBps.

The wired LAN or Ethernet is capable of speeds near 100 Mbps which means 1,000,000,00 bits per second. Or the same when expressed in MBps looks like 95.37 MBps.

We will see how to calculate this in a while. Before that, it would be better if we establish for ourselves which would be the unit/term (MBps or Mbps) we would want to use to measure data transfer speed in. I feel we should go by MBps.  I came to this conclusion that MBps would be appropriate because, it is established that we would measure data on our computers in MBs (and not Mbs) and therefore, we would always be scouting to know ‘how much time would it take to download a file ‘x’ MB in size?’.

As an example, say I’ve to download a 3MB file, and I have a 1MBps connection. The download should ideally take 3 seconds. Even in the practical scenario (where several speed defining parameters are involved), it should not take not more than 4 to 5 seconds. This analogy seems easy as I have a 1MBps connection.

Say in case I have a 1Mbps connection, and I have to download a file of 3MB. How much time would it take? Lets calculate.

1Mbps = 1,000,000 bits ps

1Mbps = 125000 Bytes ps ( 1,000,000/8 )

1Mbps = 122.07 KB ps ( 125000/1024 )

1Mbps = 0.1192 MB ps ( 122.07/1024 )

i.e., my connection is capable of 0.1192 MB in one second. How long will it take to download 3MB? 25.2 seconds (3/0.1192). So, practically, it should take around half a minute to one minute for the download.

Isn’t calculating speeds in MBps better?

Next time you see an Mbps number, quickly divide it by8 to know the approximate MBps!

Hope this explanation made some meaning!

Thanks for reading