The NEW WindowsNotebook.com!

Introducing the NEW WindowsNotebook.com!

Google refused to show this blog on my own domain name...

...for as long as I used that domain as this blog's main web address. But, as soon as I remove my own domain name from the blog, it loads up just fine.

The problem is, that domain is as much a part of this blog as the entries themselves. And despite my last few struggles in upgrading to or getting a new system capable of reliably handling the video productions I plan to do for this blog and others, WindowsNotebook.com is my very real plan at sharing what I know and showing off what I and my expertise is not only capable of, but will deliver.

I had liked Blogger because it didn't require that you setup spammy AdWords ads that actually detracted from the content and would even compete with the web page's message.  Plus, they just look bad on any web page.  I have my own professional business services and products I can push if I want to show advertising, thank you.  It was the reason I left the free WordPress blogging platform, they were monetizing my genuine efforts to provide, share and teach with my own original content.

Well, it turns out that even though Yahoo bought Tumblr, they have actually made some good progress in making it usable.  You can now configure a blog so that it won't even show advertisements.  And even though Tumblr does turn your resource links (i.e.: to Amazon or Walmart product pages) into its own affiliate links, you can configure each individual blog to disallow such link spamming.

So, from now on, please check out...

 ...for the rest of what I do with this blog, as I am now armed with a new Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Gaming laptop, have an old Asus and an old Toshiba Satellite that I am fixing.  Plus, I have a lot of reviews to post.

By the way, the links used here all use my short link: https://w3n.us/notebook which is a part of my master collection of URLs that use my own URL shortener, and no one else has access to it. I use it to avoid issues with link exchanges, link spam and quite simply shorten longer URLs, but all links there are safe, as I set them up myself and only point to reliable, trustworthy resources.  Yes, I will have my own affiliate links in the catalog from time to time, but only if I have confidence in the product and the seller.

Thanks Google, but you did not protect my right to blog on my own domain name. This blog has a new home at Tumblr.  -Doug Peters

Windows 10 on a Stick for any HDMI TV or Monitor

Are You Looking for a Really Cool, Affordable & Useful Tech Christmas Gift for a Friend, Loved One or Yourself?

Just plug this little stick into your HDMI port.  Add a wireless keyboard and mouse, or if you prefer substitute the mouse for a touchpad, trackball, virtual pointer.  The result is a complete Windows 10 (32 bit) computer that you can put in your pocket or purse.  It's only the size of a pack of gum.

Want to use your wired keyboard and mouse?  You can, it does have a couple of USB posts, but remember, you will lose them for something else.  Optionally, you can turn your Android or iOS device (ie: tablet or smartphone) into a remote command center with an app like Intel Remote Keyboard, Unified Remote Control, or one of the other many such apps.

In fact, the only cable you really need is the power cord to plug the Windows 10 device in with.  But, you can literally take it with you almost anywhere on the globe, because it has an adapter for outlets all over the world.

One of the USB ports supports USB 3 for fast data transfers, while the other is USB 2.

It comes with 2GB memory and is powered by a Quad-Core Intel Atom Processor which in turn feeds graphics through an Intel HD Graphics chipset.

The networking capability is 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac wireless and Bluetooth 4.0, so there are no limits for networking.

There is a built-in 32 GB Flash drive, and it offers an expandable storage solution through an SDcard slot, so you can actually upgrade the storage as required, and with few limits (unlike a tablet or phone's set storage capability limits).

And as you may be using an HDTV or compatible display for it, why not take advantage of the fact that this thing offers NetFlix, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Hulu and more!

The whole device is an Intel product available now for Christmas, and it only costs $131.46 at Amazon, and Pime members can get it for just $119.99!

Windows 10 on a Stick
($131.46, or $120 for Prime Members)

But, get this, there are actually others available, with upgraded processors, should you require something with some more oompf...

4GB RAM, 64 bit Windows 10 w/Intel Core m3-6Y30 processor, 64 GB eMMC & 3 USB 3.0 Ports 
($395, or $350 for Prime Members)

Heck, I want one.  ;)

CyberLink Media Suite 11

This year, not too long ago, I needed something to master VCDs, DVDs & BDs.  I also needed something that was capable of of viewing Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, photos, graphics and video.  Something that I could use for simple edits if I was using my official copy of Creative Suite on a different computer if I so needed to.

I went out and bought the current version of Roxio Creator NXT.  But I had so many problems with it, as it crashed on me (no commercial software should crash, ever, certainly not on the Windows platform).  So I went and grabbed CyberLink's Media Suite 11 Ultimate.  What an ultimate mistake.

As far as mastering Blu-ray discs and DVDs with PowerProducer 6, it is a poor excuse.  You have to save your work at every opportunity, because it also crashes, a lot.  You don't have the opportunity to do audio/voice/music over video, ever.  The customer can't edit photos or video from the program, even though I have their software, CyberLink PhotoDirector 4 and CyberLink PowerDirector 11 installed as a part of the Media Suite 11 Ultimate bundle package.  I also can't seem to import projects such as slideshows from PowerDirector.

The only time Adobe CS or Microsoft Office crashes is if my computer has been on for a weeks and I am running out of memory from running too many programs.   Since I reboot one a day, that is not a problem.  Hell, I have freeware that doesn't crash.

So, not only do these programs not work together, but they don't even work well as stand alone programs.

As far as PowerProducer goes, if you save often enough and reload your work with each program reboot, you do have very basic controls over producing a CD-R, DVD-R or BD-R.  But these are basic controls on the level of iDVD, perhaps simpler.  It is a very rudimentary program.  I haven't gotten my produced VideoCD to play in any CD/DVD player.  The DVDs I have burned do work, but they don't sit at the main menu at all.  Instead, the DVD starts after the main menu animates one time.  I find that strange, very strange, and I do not care for it at all, I am always fiddling with remotes trying to get the TV to the right input on time, before the "movie" starts playing automatically.

Now, when I insert a new Bluray or DVD, I expect it to simply play the disc movies or take me to the main menu without even asking.  But it doesn't.  Not even close.  I have to say, use PowerDVD and play the file.  But then PowerDVD comes up, and it just shows me a play button.  What?!  So, I not only have to click play, I have to make it full screen.  Once I am part the menu and the movie is playing, playback is herky-jerky at best.

This never had happened before.  But I did a fresh install of Windows 7 and my old Intervideo player that comes with my laptop doesn't install into Windows 7, only Windows Vista.

Obviously, the BD/DVD/CD playback and mastering is the main reason I purchased this suite.  But I whole heartedly regret it.

The rest of the programs are kind of useless to me.  I have Photoshop, Premier, After Effects and Soundbooth.  So I don't use them.  I wanted  complete BD/DVD/CD control from flawless payback to complete mastery of the movie disc.  All I wound-up with, is crap.

I thought having the bonus program of CyberLink PowerBackup 2.6 would prove useful, but no.  I paused a backup because it was taking forever and I needed to get some things done.  Once I was ready for the program to finish the backup I hit the 'Resume' button and nothing happened.  After a few seconds, the 'Resume' button unghosted and I could select it again (over and over).

Does anyone have a program they can recomend that will playback Blu-ray discs flawlessly like mine used to?  I have an Intel Core2 Duo P8400 @ 2.26 & 2.27 GHz, 4GB RAM, a fresh 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate install  with Service Pack 1 (and it is set for automatic updates).  I can not upgrade to Windows 10 because of my NVIDIA graphics driver (NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT is proprietary, by Sony).  My LCD display is 1080 HD and I often use it with my Smart TV as a monitor through the HDMI output.

The only other problem the computer has is that the bluetooth drivers have warnings on them in device manager, but I usually keep the wireless off since I have gigabit ethernet (as opposed to wireless N).  I'll resolve the Bluetooth issue seperately.

I bought this laptop (or "notebook", since it does get too hot to hold in my lap) PC with the idea that it would last.  As far as I am concerned, the only thing it doesn't have that I would like is USB 3 and more RAM.  But it has been a work horse and although I do want to upgrade one day, I just want to get this thing working for now because I am currently inbetween jobs and need this thing working flawlessly again so that I can rely on it again.  But I do not want to reinstall Vista and start all over from there.

I had upgraded to Windows 8 at one point, but I couldn't stand it.  Funny that Windows 10 won't go.

Nevertheless, shoot me an email, holler at me in hangouts, or just reply to this blog if you have a better solution than what I have.  I need something flawless, something that just works, that I can count on.  This is my PC, movie machine and sometimes TV.  I need it everywhere I go, and right now it needs a few last pieces to work right, all the time, for sure.

But only give me a recommendation if you have had experience with a program that works.  Not an idea that you heard about something.  This just has to work, all the time.

Windows Portable Handheld Commercial Scanners

Retailers are often using a handheld PC they use to scan UPC bar codes.  The ones I use all seem to be Windows CE based.  We use the scanners to check prices, availability, product information, back stock stockroom location, and connected to a portable printer we may print out new price tickets or mark them down with clearance tickets.

Now, I know that this is old technology.  We have been using these slow-ass time wasting devices for at least the 4 years I have worked the store.  So why the hell even use them?  Once a ticket is scanned it will usually take a second or more to spit out a printed ticket.  Obviously, these are not multiple processor machines.

But why doesn't business recognize what a piece of crap this system is and replace it immediately?  

Think about it.  In one night we might have anywhere from 6,000 to 17,000 pieces to mark down, but we literally have to scan many times more.  Even if no ticket is required, the devices are still pathetically slow as you wait on what to do next.

6,000 peices to mark down means that I am wasting at least 12,000 seconds scanning everything if I am scanning all the clearance products for further additional markdowns.  12,000 seconds is 200 minutes wasted, every single night that we do mark downs.  Now, times 1,000 stores and the corporate entity has just wasted over 200,000 minutes, at bare minimum,  3,333 hours where its employees could be getting more done, or doing other things.

3,333 x 8.50 (min wage) = $28,330.50 of wasted labor every night there are price changes.  And we usually have price changes every couple of weeks or so.  Sometimes, there are so many products to scan, it takes 2 nights.

And our corporate leadership fails to see how pathetic this system is, anyway?

But, that's not the half of it.  There is an official ignorance about product life.  Batteries go dead and no one replaces them.  I put a sign on a battery saying "Dead Battery" and someone takes the sticky note off and puts it in the charger, but it won't charge because the battery is completely dead and useless.  I change the sign to "Useless Battery" and they rip the sign off and put it in the charger, still.

Because of this ignorance, batteries don't get recycled and we wind-up with more dead batteries than we have good ones.  This means we spend up to an hour trying to find a battery that works with our handheld PC scanner.  Of course, it is more complicated than that.  Some batteries will work in certain PCs.  So nothing gets thrown out or recycled, and no one knows how to combat this.

Then, when you connect a printer, the PC has to be able to work with the printer.  Sometimes they don't work together and you have to trade out printers once you have a PC and printer comination that works.

We tell management about all these issues and more (scanning a QR code by accident freezes-up many of the PCs, and the QR codes are placed right next to the UPC codes), and yet no one does anything.  This is a pathetic set of circumstances, and I am quite honestly convinced that my corporate retailer loves frustrating its employees with poor pay, poor equipment, unreal expectations, no real benefits and complete ignorance.

Ignorance is not bliss.  It is stupid when it is preventable.  Especially in a corporate environment.

Replacement for Windows Explorer Copy Function?

A replacement for the Windows Explorer 'copy' funtion?  HELL YES!

You may be asking why anyone would want to replace Windows Explorer, it is the actual foundation of the User Interface.  Well, the problem is that Windows Explorer is not even close to being stable to do rudimentary tasks such as copying files, which is a vital part of any GUI based OS.

Long gone are the days when files were small.  Now we are copying large galleries of digital snapshots and video between our smart phone and our PC, or top our family share and back-up cloud hard drive.

But if Microsoft's Windows Explorer is constantly restarting, we can't even copy 25 or 50 GBs of stuff.  Heck, My old Windows Notebook has been upgraded to a hybrid 1 TB internal hard drive and its almost full.

But I don't want to simply backup this drive to the cloud, I want to setup the cloud hard drive to allow my family to copy all their photos, video and documents to it, as well as have it available as a central software archive repository.

But every time I copy stuff over using the provided Windows Explorer user interface, once logged into the network drive window, I select a directory to copy in the source window and drag it to the destination directory on the cloud hard drive only to return a day later to have a dialogue window asking me if I still want to copy a file without all of its properties.

First, this WD My Cloud network hard drive was supposed to be Windows Compatible.  I am extremely disappointed that it isn't.  When I copy something, I expect it to copy everything, including the properties right down to the creation date and the date the file was last modified.  So this is an issue I need to address with Western Digital, for sure.

But the fact remains that the WD My Cloud 3TB ethernet hard drive came with no extra software aside from some added drivers.  So I only have Windows to accomplish this task, and yet everytime I click 'Yes' to go ahead and copy a file minus a few properties, Windows Explorer fails and restarts, loosing my place where I was in the copy and not re-initializing and re-instituting the task at hand.

These WD My Cloud hard drives have been out there an awfully long time, now.  You would think that this problem would have been solved long, long ago.  After all, in order to access your gallery and files through the cloud, it needs to be there.  So every one else had to copy their stuff over, too.

Now, I will say that I am a professional web designer.  I am also an amatuer photographer, videographer and animator.  I do have a large stash of imagery.  But I am only copying 25 to 50 GB directories, one at a time. These are not 1/2 TB backups.  And the whole idea is to have easy access to the original file in the first place.

So now begins my search for a Windows Explorer replacement, as I cannot simply replace the copy command, it is Windows Explorer itself that is constantly failing and restarting and screwing up my life, wasting all my time.  Heck, I've had the drive for a week and haven't been able to get it working with my system, there is no included software, no mention of downloads (though after some research I found a download for backup and a few utils), and the little documentation that there is shows no special software requirements in the first place (Connect both PC and My Cloud directly to router via Ethernet for optimal performance and then copy your data to your My Cloud device).

In my search, I ran across an article which offers extensions for Windows Explorer, including a couple of replacements.  I won't list the source article, because most of the crap offered included malware or unwanted programs.  Good Lord, you have to be careful these days.

One of the copy utilities that was safe is TeraCopy.  It specifically addresses the issue that I am having with speed and where Windows Explorer chokes on copying large amounts of data.  Errors can be recovered from, copying paused and resumed.  Why isn't this a standard Windows feature?  Duh!  Microsoft, shame on you.

https://codesector.com/teracopy

I highly recommend it.  I went and purchased a license for the pro version right away (about $21 USD at the time).

There are some other options out there, but most of the others require you to replace Windows Explorer, and I just got it to display all image thumbnails correctly (including Photoshop image files) with the Fast Picture Viewer Pro Codec (which I also purchased because it works so well and does exactly what I need).

http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/

With these two utilities I hope I have upgraded Windows Explorer enough so that it is finally useful again.  The best thing about these programs is that they aren't bloatware by any stretch of the imagination.  And even though Fast Picture Viewer doesn't aid in copying, at least you can find the right Photoshop/Illustrator image file that you want to copy when you are working on more than one.

So for now I will stick with my enhanced version of Windows Explorer.  But there are replacements for it, as well.  Still, I think these are super oversights by an extremely inattentive and clueless Windows graphic user interface software development team.

It does make me wonder what a Windows Explorer replacement might offer.

UPDATE March 26th, 2015:
I have uninstalled Teracopy because I was still experiencing issues.  However, these are all the same issues, which means that the original issue appears to be a network one.  So I intend to either reinstall Teracopy or try a Windows Explorer replacement, but I think I have to fix my network issue before I will be able to change the system again.  That means that I am now saving up for an AC router.  However, the Fast Picture Codec keeps working beautifully and I wouldn't dare uninstall that.

Welcome to Windows Notebook

Welcome to Windows Notebook.  At one time this domain hosted all sorts of helpful articles about Windows and then it was demoted in the search engines because they weren't original articles.

So I set the domain name aside a while.  I think it's been years since I actually used the domain name. Now I am using my Windows Notebook less because I am using my Android tablet more, but I am still using my Windows machine a great deal because I need Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and many other creative productivity programs that simply are not available on the Android platform.

Windows 7 has finally become a thing of beauty.  But I do have issues with it.  I can't yet rely on it. Still, I do have a great deal more issues with Windows 8 than I do with 7.  In fact, I upgraded this machine I am typing on now from Vista to 8 at first, but was so upset with the operating system that I purchased Windows 7 Ultra, then reverted back to Windows Vista and upgraded all over again to Windows 7.

Now, Microsoft is apparently going to make Windows 10 a free upgrade to both Windows 7 and Windows 8 users.  But, what happened to Windows 9, by the way?

You will probably find that I have more gripes than answers if decide to continue reading this blog. It just strikes me funny that after bullying half of the world Microsoft has squashed the Amiga (very purposely), BeOS, it expands into the hardware market with possibly some of the best mice, 2nd best keyboards, one of the two best consoles and one of the three very best phone and tablet platforms, we are all expected to feel chummy and lovie-dovey with the 800 pound gorilla that had previously destroyed my life several times as an Amiga animator, as a Video Toaster videographer, and left me with the taste of blood in my mouth after being knocked around so much.

So, I am not actually a fan of the OS that spurned me with the big blue screen of death.  I am miffed why I can't get the system to copy 50+ GB of data from one drive to another network drive without crapping out and restarting still, to this day, in Windows 7.

I don't understand why Microsoft still uses so many resources and doesn't share them.

I am miffed why Microsoft does things the way it does and survives.

So this blog is sort of going to be a learning experience.  I learn something everyday.  But most of the time I am laughing at the strange things that go on with Windows.  I mean, it can backup a whole hard drive if I use a certain backup program, but if I dare try to use the OS copy function within Explorer to copy a directory over it craps out?  What sense is there in that?

So I will be looking at the Windows Notebook with great bewilderment.  I just do not understand how Microsoft gets away with what it does.  Like, it was fined billions, so it works a deal to give its overstocked older useless software to assist inner city education systems... a win-win because it is unloading all sorts of obsolete software that it can't sell to anyone.

This is the kind of crap that Microsoft gets away with everyday while us little guys try to do great work and make our customers happy by doing good work and delivering projects on time. Yet somehow Microsoft always wins.  The Commodore and the Amiga have been completely written out of computer history.  That takes muscle, to change history and warp the truth thusly.

So I am not a fan of Microsoft.  But I do watch them and laugh.  So maybe this will be more of a humor blog than a help to anyone, because I will be seeking answers for myself.