Category: Computers

Media Servers for a PS3

PS3
The PS3 is probably the best, and reasonably priced, Blu-Ray player on the market. Now that the HD format wars are over, it was time to get a Blu-Ray player

All the Windows hype about the “Media Editions” of Windows was never very clear. Apparently the Media Edition contains the features necessary to serve various files to the other entertainment systems in the home. Music and video players can play files from your desktop harddrive via these servers. Now with a new PS3, Media Services is becoming more useful. It will be interesting to play photos and videos from a server. The PS3 only has a 40GB harddrive and the file management features of the PS3 are very primitive.
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Virtual Audio Cable 4 – woops, an unsigned driver

Vista requires signed drivers. I found out the hard way a few weeks ago when I installed a demo version of Corel Photo Album 6 that ignoring this error can be very troublesome. I have found out the hard way that you must uninstall any programs that install unsigned drivers before you reboot. Vista refuses to boot when there is an unsigned driver. Recovery requires that you boot with the recovery disk and then do a system repair. This is a very nasty and time consuming fix. You can use a System Recovery after the uninstall, but do not reboot before you attempt this.
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Vista x64 Hall of Shame

Here is a list of products that do not support Vista x64. This is shameful for several reasons:

  1. Vista is the currently shipping OS and x64 is the “Ultimate” expression of that OS.
  2. Vista x64 is the second generation of x64 OSs, so it is hardly brand-new and the requirements for supporting the system are well known
  3. Most medium to high end systems are x64 capable.
  4. Most high end system support as much as 4GB of memory.
  5. One can only make use of 4GB of memory with an x64 edition OS. With an x86 edition one only can address 2.7 or 3.5GB of memory depending on the hardware available. See this Alienware Support post.

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