Real World Computing

We've had it easy these last few years. You could just upgrade Microsoft Office and not have to worry about file compatibility or about your macros not working.  I was just beginning to relax. Unfortunately Microsoft never relaxes and the latest "innovations" extend past the annoying ribbon interface (I've been using it for over a year and I still consider it annoying) to clobber both file formats and macros. The File Format Problem The file format problem is easy to fix. First of all, I've changed our defaults to save in Office 97-2003 format.   There's no sense in our company posting files for public consumption in a format that they can't read. In case you're wondering where to change this, click File, then Options and click on SAVE. If your fleet is still using Office 2003, you can download a compatibility pack which will enable it to read the new office formats. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=3 64 Bit API Dec...

The 8.0 Client In previous years, I'd have jumped onto the new Notes/Domino within six months of release. This time however, things have changed. First of all, there's the fact that the whole Notes 8 client is a rewrite using eclipse. It turns the 18+ year old product into a version 1.0 again - at least for a little while. My first attempts with the Version 8 client showed that the system was so slow that I could make coffee faster than it could start - and I mean proper plunged coffee, I quickly realised that you could gain some massive speed improvements by turning off the anti-virus program - great... but is that really a good idea? After a while of having both 7.0.2 and 8.0 on my PC, I found myself using the older client pretty much exclusively. 8.0.2 and Hard Drive Concerns Ok, so there was an 8.0.1 but I blinked and it passed on by. At 8.0.2, I decided to give things another go. First of all, I tried installing the client on my PC. I had almost no space at all left on ...

Installing Domino 8.0.2 Yesterday, we did some tests on Domino 8.0.2. I wasn't expecting any real problems given the ease of the last few Domino upgrades - up to 7.0.2. I guess I was wrong. First of all, the initial attempt at installation failed with one of those non-specific error messages. I rebooted the server and tried again - no problems. I've seen this problem a few times though - it's something to do with the JVM being held open on Windows Server 2003 even though Domino itself has been closed. Upon starting Domino, I chose not to upgrade the designs of the databases. Ideally you should not upgrade the designs until your last production server is on at least the same "major" version - in this case, 8.x. I then did a bit of testing. As usual, I found no problems. Domino is one of the few systems I know which can be upgraded and tested (albeit roughly) in 15 minutes. The Problem Then I found the problem. Our most critical database refused to render web ...

This post is probably not strictly on topic (being less serious than usual) however I have just prepared a whole heap of links for someone else and figured why not share them. There are two things that I want to cover today; Obtaining the remakes of old games for free (full game Remakes). Running old games under newer systems (Engine only Remakes). I have a preference for adventure games so while will be covering action games as well, I might be a bit biased. Remakes of old Games A lot of the open source project's have been recreating the old DOS games for free. You can usually find these by typeing the name of the game and the word "remake" into google. I'm going to provide some direct links to save a bit of searching - the links may move over time so if this post is old by the time you read it, try searching. King's Quest 1 and King's Quest 2 http://www.agdinteractive.com/ King's Quest 3 http://www.infamous-adventures.com/index.php?page=kq3vga The Hitch...

Normally, I wouldn't be using this blog as a platform for a quick rant about a gaming platform - I tend to keep it computers as much as possible but there's a post on DVD Bits that's really got my gander up. It talks about the cut-down Playstation 3 being released in Australia for $700. As the article says... "This shaves $300 off the current RRP, but also removes backwards compatibility with Playstation 2 titles ; takes out the multi-card reader (for your Memory Sticks, SD cards or Compact Flash) as well as 20GB of HDD space. On the plus side, it is still a Blu-ray player, and may be one of the cheaper and more reliable options." Now I'm a big fan of backward compatibility. One of the reasons why I felt that Microsoft's XBox deserved to fail was because they don't provide adequate compatibility with their own product. The article goes on to say that "Sony has confirmed that the 60GB model will only stay on shelves as long as stock lasts....