Frustrating HP Support

I don't think I can build a laptop, so I bought one.

At this moment I have been on the phone with HP for over seven hours, trying to resolve a problem with the built-in TV tuner in a brand new HP dv7t laptop computer. Imagine, seven hours, and there is no end in sight. I've had my sweeties bring up both breakfast and lunch, looks like dinner might be next.

I started at 7:41 am with the general support number and got a woman who quickly gave me a service ticket number and turned me over to Vivek, in India. He's a nice guy, but we spent over four hours together, way more than either of us wanted. At 12 noon, 00:30 am his time, he gave up and asked me to wait five minutes for him to document the problem and then call a "Level 2" support number.

I did, but then got transferred (intentionally I think) to another department, where the nice lady transferred me back. Or so I thought, but after spending a couple more hours with Lloyd, also in India, I discovered that he was also Level 1 and was communicating with HIS support person by text message.

I am almost ready to give up on the tuner and just say that HP couldn't fix it. It has never worked, it's dead as a doornail, and HP just won't put me in touch with people who can figure it out. Right now I'm off the phone, but the laptop is doing a scan for channels, which will come up with zero channels as it always has. Then I have a number to call again. I'll let you know how that comes out.

I can't say anything positive about the HP dv7t laptop until this is resolved. I'm pissed.

PC Phone Home (Do It Yourself)

Some time ago I downloaded an evaluation copy of the for-sale PC Phone Home, and reviewed it here and here. I did not recommend PCPhoneHome in that review, and some of the comments left by readers are quite interesting too. Bottom line - at that time it seemed to be mostly a scam, because even if it did work there was no way to get a response from the company if your computer was stolen. Your results may vary.

I had never done anything with Windows scripts, but I studied up a little, and it turns out that you can fairly easily create a pc-phone-home batch file to be executed by the Task Scheduler at system startup. This batch file can automatically send you an email describing the computer, time of day, IP address, and whatever else you wish to add. No changes to the registry (except those made by the Task Scheduler), no secret code, no risk of a trojan in the system, everything is done with standard Windows command-line commands plus one well-proven, free, open-source SMTP mail sending program called BLAT. The same batch file runs on Windows Vista Ultimate, Vista Home Premium, XP Professional, and XP Home Edition, probably all Vista and XP systems, and even Windows 7, though testing is not complete on Win 7. It will not work on earlier Windows systems, and has only been tested on XP and Vista systems that are fully up to date, SP3 and SP2 respectively.

On my computer, the batch file is called BootMail.cmd. Its weakness is that it may be easier for a thief to find and uninstall BootMail than PCPhoneHome. But that would require a knowledgable computer thief, which may be an oxymoron. And there are things that you can do, like hiding the BootMail.cmd file somewhere in the operating system and renaming it something innocuous like GoogleHelper.cmd. In addition, if there is no network found at bootup, it will not lurk in the background waiting for one to show up. I may add that someday.

Previous experience with Windows scripts and with the Task Scheduler might be helpful to a person installing this software, but they are probably not required. I got by somehow, and you may be able to make some simple modofications and otherwise use the example code exactly as is.

BootMail is designed to phone home at system start, but it could easily be modified to run on different triggers, such as the network coming back up, or a disk error, or any other event that is logged by Windows. There are lots of those, especially in Vista and Windows 7. Of course a user knowledgable in windows commands can also modify the information that it displays. Click here for an example of the email message that it sends.

To make it work:

• Copy the code from this page into a file with a .cmd type extension, e.g. bootmail.cmd. Modify it for appropriate email addresses and user names. See code comments.
• Download the small BLAT program from www.blat.net and put the executables where Windows will find them. See code comments.
• Use the Task Scheduler to set up bootmail.cmd to run at system startup. See code comments.
• Set debug=TRUE at first, until you get it working.

The code looks big, but it's mostly documentation (every line beginning with ::). If you prefer not to do the screen copy, you can download both the code and the example email text in a zipped file here. The files are very small.

What I DON'T know is what to do if a computer is stolen and I do get an email. There is enough information in the email to pinpoint the exact IP address from which it was mailed, but how does a person proceed with that? I guess I'd call my local police, or perhaps better yet the cops at the address where the IP address is owned, as determined by WHOIS. Will the police even care about one stolen computer? Anyone have a better idea?

Windows Live Mail versus Mozilla Thunderbird

I like Windows Mail, the free mail client on Windows Vista. It grew out of Outlook Express, and finally does almost everything I would want. So, naturally, Microsoft has decided to discontinue it on their next operating system, Windows 7. In fact they will not be providing any email client at all, counting on the user to download something, or on the internet service provider to do that for the user.

Microsoft has developed a new mail client, apparenty based on Windows Mail, called Windows Live Mail. Sorry for the confusion in names, but I didn't cause that, Microsoft did! Users will be able to download Windows Live Mail (WLM) at no cost. But it isn't the same. So I installed Windows Live Mail Version 2009 (Build 14.0.8064.0206) alongside Mozilla Thunderbird 3 (Beta 2). Thunderbird is a free, open-source, collaborative email client developed by people who say they want to provide the "most useful and enjoyable communications tool possible." It's a mature product, certainly as mature as WLM. Thunderbird Release 3 Beta 2 is stable on my machine. The comparison between Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail is interesting.

Windows Live Mail:

THEY DUMBED IT DOWN! Windows Live Mail is Windows Mail with fewer controls. They added a calendar and included it with a large set of other applications called Windows Live Essentials. Here are some comparisons between Windows Mail and WLM:

• WLM supports multiple POP accounts, but each is treated quite separately, with no way (that I have found) to direct mail from all or several POP accounts into a common inbox. This is most inconvenient. I have lots of POP accounts and do not use web-based accounts.
• Further, when a new, unread email does come in, WLM says there is a new one but doesn't say which inbox it is in! Inconvenient and annoying. There is a "Quick View" that can help, but it takes space in the list of accounts, see next.
• The list of accounts cannot be deleted or moved and has way too much space between accounts, so that scrolling to search for an email is always necessary if there are several accounts.
• WLM has no "Send All" command. When you finish an email, it's gone. No "Outbox" unless the send actually fails. This can be good or bad, but I don't like it because I'm accustomed to clicking on Send All to really send it.
• WLM apparently uses yet another type of address book. For sure it does not use the "Contacts" directory used by Windows Mail, though it will import that directory into its book. I'm not sure where the WLM address book is, actually, though I probably could find it if I cared. It will export its address book in only two formats: VCF and CSV.
• The "New Mail" sound file cannot easily be changed. I like a louder one in case I'm not at my computer.
• When I installed WLM it tried to copy all of the mail in Windows Mail into its own file system, but failed. Email POP accounts also did not transfer over. I don't know why.
• Help, like all Microsoft help these days, is entirely web-based. Don't plan on any help without an internet connection.
• The good news is that WLM works and seems quite appropriate for a user with one POP account, or with only web-based accounts, because the list of accounts will be trivial, and there are fewer things to screw up. Too bad Microsoft couldn't include an "expert" button of some kind to make it more configurable for the rest of us.

Mozilla Thunderbird:

I tried both Release 2.0, the current "stable" version, and Release 3b2, ending up with 3b2. Comparing Windows Mail and WLM with Thunderbird:

• WLM and Windows Mail have a "drag and drop" capability, allowing the user to drag an email out of the Inbox, for example, into a normal Windows Folder as a .EML file. I love that feature and use it all the time. Thunderbird does not have that feature. Why would anyone want that? I like to keep all files for a project together, whatever their file types. For example, if I'm planning to run a marathon in Paducah, there will be a folder named Paducah containing an internet shortcut to the race web site (.url), maybe one to the hotel web site (.url), a copy of the course map (.jpg or .gif), printouts of car, air, or hotel reservations (.pdf), and copies of communications (.eml). No need to look in different places for different file types. Thunderbird will correctly display an email in .EML format, and will export them too, but not as easily as Windows Mail and WLM will do.
• Like WLM, Thunderbird has no Send All command. In fact I haven't found anything quite like WLM's Sync command. I admit I haven't missed it though.
• Thunderbird would not import my email messages from Windows Mail. There is a separately-installable extension called ImportExportTools, but it only imported the file structure and not the files themselves. Perhaps it would work better with a simpler file structure than I have.
• Thunderbird would not import POP accounts. But neither did WLM.
• It will export contacts only in LDIF, CSV, or tab-delimited formats.
• HOWEVER, Thunderbird does have a global-folder structure called Local Folders. Any email from any account can be directed into the global Inbox on Local Folders, or the global Spam box that I created, for that matter. This allows me to pull email from any of several POP accounts into one place.
• All three clients have filters that can be configured to redirect or simply delete known spam, or to direct email from specific addresses into specific folders. Thunderbird allows these folders to be global, hence accessible to any POP account.
• Further, Thunderbird has a "Junk Mail Learning" feature that seems to work pretty well, far better than the simple junk filter levels in WLM.
• Thunderbird has WAY more controls than WLM, and more than Windows Mail as well. So it's possible for a user to get things pretty screwed up. The good news is that the most dangerous options have a "restore defaults" button. I haven't needed that yet, but ...
• Thunderbird can include "add-ons," contributed extensions which may add class and functionality for the discerning Thunderbird user.
• Thunderbird won't go away. I hate that about Microsoft - they just want to sell new copies of operating systems, so we (obviously) can't depend on them for continuity.

For my money (they're both free), I far prefer Thunderbird over Windows Live Mail, even without drag & drop. I have already switched to Thunderbird on my Vista x64 system, even though I do have the venerable Windows Mail on it too. But there are other users on my network, people with only one POP account. It may be a while before they have computers with Windows 7 (or beyond), but perhaps I will install Windows Live Mail for them when they do. We shall see.

NVIDIA Driver Update Error 800705B3

This morning Windows Update wanted to install several updates, including one for my GeForce 8600 GT graphics card. I let the updates proceed. All updates installed correctly except this NVIDIA driver. According to Windows Update, the installation failed with error code 800705B3. Microsoft's Windows Update description of the failure is shown at the bottom of this post.

Microsoft has no information about this error, nor does NVIDIA.com. A quick internet search with Google didn't help much either.

My computer runs Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I suppose it's a 64-bit problem - neither Microsoft nor the 3rd party vendors have fully committed to 64 bits yet - it's always the last thing they do when developing software or issuing an update. But I don't know how to fix the update error, 64-bit problem or not.

---

AHA! End run. I went back to NVIDIA.com and downloaded driver version 178.24, the latest drivers for the NVIDIA 8-series running 64 bits. That download was 99 MB, much larger than the Windows Update download for some reason. It installed without error. When Windows Update next runs, we will see whether it wants to try to update the NVIDIA driver again. I expect that it won't.

The NVIDIA.com web site is very easy to navigate, and there is even a tool (beta release) which can figure out which hardware and software you have, hence which driver update you need. I'm impressed so far.

Comments?

HP Laserjet P1005 Review

A few weeks ago my ancient HP Laserjet II (20+ years old) expired, so I looked around for a low-cost replacement. The HP P1005 fit the bill - at that time HP was selling them with an on-line rebate which reduced the price to $49.99 with free shipping, less than the cost of one of its print cartridges. At this writing HP's price has gone back up, but Newegg has them for $49.99 plus shipping. Perhaps others do too. At that price, how could it really go wrong?

So far so good. It installed fine on Vista x64 and the LAN-connected Vista and XP computers, despite some confusion on my part caused by the serious lack of documentation, see below.

I've used it for a couple of weeks now. Unlike the old Laserjet II, the P1005 is absolutely silent until called upon to print something. Then if it hasn't printed recently it warms itself up for a few seconds (HP says 8.5) and prints at a rate of up to 15 pages per minute, four seconds per page, and in a quick test it did print a 3-page document in 12 seconds. Some reviewers have complained about the 62 dB noise, but in my low-duty application right next to my desk it hasn't bothered. It won't interrupt conversation. If others were using it frequently, I would place it farther from my desk or at a different computer.

Features:

• Paper: Letter, legal, postcards, transparencies and "tough" (plastic) paper, #10 envelopes, smaller sizes.
• Up to 15 pages per minute, four seconds per page.
• Good black-and-white print quality.
• About 1500 pages per print cartridge, which cost about $50-$60, or 3 to 4 cents per page.
• Input tray 150 sheets, output 100.
• USB 2.0.
• Win 2000, XP, Server 2003 32/64 bit, Vista 32/64, Mac OS X several revs.
• Small and light, 10.3 lb, hence modestly portable.

It does NOT have:

• COLOR. The biggie.
• Its own networking of any kind, except through an attached computer of course. The only connection available is USB 2.0.
• Automatic double-sided printing. It does have manual double-sided printing, sort of, see below.
• Selectable input trays.
• High duty cycle - 1500 pages per month is the recommended max, 5000 absolute max.
• Any printed documentation whatsoever.

Things that are lame:

• Printed Documentation: none. HP has apparently given up on solving the multiple-language problem and just doesn't include any printed material except how to unpack it and how to find your local HP office anywhere in the world. There is a CD-ROM with no instructions on it which, if you play it, gives information on installation. It's a bit obtuse but we got there.
• Manual Double-Side Print: It prints the first side of all pages, then instructs you to re-insert the stack and push the GO button. But on the P1005 there is no GO button or any software button to click - maybe you need a P1006 or P1500 to get that. The workaround is to briefly lift the lid to the printer cartridge and set it back down, after which the backs of the pages will print. But HP doesn't offer that solution - you have to get there by trial and error. They may offer a downloadable fix for the software, but I've checked and not found it.

Despite those minor issues it's a mighty good printer for the price of $50. Probably for the regular price too. It's very suitable for home use or for a small office, but for color you'd need an inkjet as well.

Made in Vietnam.

8 GB RAM

The "new" computer has 4 GB of RAM, which is a lot, but I have disk paging turned off, and Windows Vista has warned me more than once that I was down to 15% of memory remaining. In each instance Googe Earth was running, but I like Google Earth and I'm sure that other applications will come along which can also benefit from gobs of memory. That's the future of computing.

Furthermore, the exact memory that I used for the first 4 GB (G.Skill 4 GB dual channel 800 MHz) now appears to be out of production by G.Skill (technology moves along) and is on sale at NewEgg. It works perfectly and has a Windows Experience Index Subscore of 5.9, the highest possible. So I ordered 4 GB more, which is all that my Intel DP35DP motherboard is rated to handle. Full up.

But I got an unpleasant surprise at boot time. While my nice new home-built computer had routinely booted in about 60 seconds with 4 GB, from power-on to display of the desktop, it now took over three minutes, sometimes almost four. Yikes! Why would that be? Memory test: no problems. Swap new memory with old: same problem with 8GB, no problem with 4 GB. Huh.

Google provided the answer. The Intel DP35DP BIOS had two software bugs, one affecting only boards with 8GB and running in 64-bit mode, and the other affecting boards with 8 GB and no disk in the DVD drive. Either way I had a problem, but either way the fix required only a simple download and "express" installation of updated BIOS. Now it boots up in 60 seconds with 8 GB, as it darn well should, and the Windows Experience Index Subscore for memory is still 5.9.

Before	After

Mozilla Sunbird Calendar Works Great!

Better than Microsoft's Windows Calendar.

Here are my specifications for a good calendar system:

• A nice application window with several views, including day, week, and month;
• Compatible with on-line calendars such as Google Calendar;
• But it must continue to work when there is no internet connection;
• Calendars sharable within my own network;
• Reliable pop-up reminders of calendar events; and
• The same application should work on all of the computers on my network.

After I discovered Windows Calendar on my new Vista 64-bit machine, I set it up with several different calendars, moving all of that information off of an older machine which I then shut down. It sort of worked, and I found it useful, but with these issues:

• It only worked on my Vista machine, not on XP machines, so I couldn't use it to maintain a central calendar accessible from all machines.
• It was unreliable, in two different ways:
  • Reminders did not work unless Windows Calendar was running, regardless of the setting of the option called "Reminders should show when Windows Calendar is not running."
  • Windows Calendar didn't always start when Windows started. That meant that I couldn't depend on reminders, period, because I can't depend on myself to notice whether it's running every time the computer restarts.
• Setting an appointment (event) for later in the current day was quite awkward: As soon as I clicked on New Appointment, I would get an immediate "reminder" because the default time for the reminder was prior to the current time. The reminder had to be dismissed before any other information could be entered into the new appointment. Yuck - don't they ever try their own software?
• After a new event was set up, there was no way to know whether it had been published. No final "save" command or "appointment saved" acknowledgment.
• HELP on Vista Calendar is worthless. Clicking on Help gives one page of instructions for doing those things that are patently obvious anyway. There is no overview, no explanation of the difference between an "appointment" and a "task," no instructions for keeping the calendars in a folder of MY choice (one that will be backed up frequently).

Windows Calendar isn't a bad application, but it isn't good either. It's Microsoft.

A quick Google search produced Mozilla Sunbird, an open-source cross-platform multi-language calendar which runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, and a few other systems. It resolves most of the problems mentioned above:

• It works on both Windows Vista and XP;
• It has been quite reliable so far although, as with Windows Calendar, Sunbird must be running for reminders to work;
• It's much easier to set up a new event, especially on the current day;
• There is no question when the new event has been published.

It does NOT have a help file, however, except an on-line help which works with Mozilla browsers (Firefox) but not with Internet Explorer. The people who do Mozilla must really hate IE! Maybe I'll install Firefox and take a look at that help file someday. And who knows, maybe I'll like Firefox.

Getting Started with Sunbird:

Here is the web page for downloading Mozilla Sunbird. Installation on Windows was uneventful on my systems.

Sunbird supports two kinds of calendar files: (1) Its own internal data base, not accessible from other computers; and (2) iCalendar (.ics) files, a standardized format in which each file is a separate calendar, accessible from other computers if located in a shared folder. Sunbird will create the first kind of calendars, but it will not conveniently create the second kind, unless I've missed something.

I have a main computer (the one I built) and a laptop, and others in my family also have computers, so I needed sharable iCalendar files. Here is how I created all of my calendar files:

• Some of my calendars already existed in Windows Calendar, so I simply "published" those to .ics files in the folder of my choice.
• For the rest, I created an empty file with the extension .ics in a folder of my choice as follows:
  • Right-clicked in that chosen folder, clicked New, then Text Document.
  • Renamed that file "calendarname.ics," where "calendarname" is the name I wished to give that particular calendar. When Windows asked if I really wanted to change the name extension, I answered Yes.
• In Sunbird, I clicked File, then Open Calendar File, then
• Navigated to the file I created, clicked on it, and clicked Open.
• That calendar then appeared in my calendar list, so I added events, and also edited the calendar's properties.
• I actually deleted the default calendar called "Home" because there was no need for it.

Why would anyone want more than one calendar?

Because (1) It may be convenient to organize calendars by topic or activity, e.g. one for taking medicine (daily reminders), a different one for business appointments, and yet another for repeating things that don't change, like birthdays; (2) With several calendars all displayed at once the calendar window may get quite busy, so it may be helpful to be able to temporarily suppress the information from one or more calendars to better view the other calendars; and (3) Some of the calendars that show in my window may belong to someone else, from another computer on the network or from the internet, such as a calendar of US holidays.

Examples of calendars that appear on my Sunbird window:

• Medicine reminders;
• Business and other appointments - anything that may come up;
• Repeating events such as birthdays, backup reminders, tax payments; and
• US Holidays.

To make Sunbird ALWAYS start up minimized at bootup on XP and Vista:

Windows XP:

• Put a shortcut to Sunbird on the desktop so that it will be handy. If there is not a shortcut there already, click the Start button, then go to Programs, then Mozilla Sunbird, RIGHT-click Mozilla Sunbird, drag it to the desktop, and click "copy here."
• In Windows Explorer, navigate to c:\Documents and Settings, then User (whichever user wants startup at boot), then Start Menu, then Programs, then Startup.
• Move the Sunbird shortcut from the desktop into Startup.
• Right-click the Mozilla Sunbird shortcut, click Properties.
• Change "Run:" from "Normal Window" to "Minimized." Click Apply. Click OK.

Windows Vista:

• Put a shortcut to Sunbird on the desktop so that it will be handy. If there is not a shortcut there already, click the Start button, then go to Programs, then Mozilla Sunbird, RIGHT-click Mozilla Sunbird, drag it to the desktop, and click "copy here."
• In Windows Explorer, navigate to c:\Users, then User (whichever user wants startup at boot), then AppData, then Microsoft, then Windows, then Start Menu, then Programs, then Startup.
• Move the Sunbird shortcut from the desktop into Startup.
• Right-click the Mozilla Sunbird shortcut, click properties.
• Change "Run:" from "Normal Window" to "Minimized." Click Apply. Click OK.

That will do it - anything in that Startup folder will be started at bootup, and you have told Windows to start it minimized. Reboot and try it out.

Remaining Problems:

Help File: Neither Windows Calendar nor Sunbird has a useful help file built in. If you use the Firefox browser, then you may have a help file for Sunbird - I haven't tried it.

With both calendars, reminders will not work if you close the application. If you use reminders, then DO NOT EVER click on the X in the upper right corner of the window. Minimize the window instead. I hope to find a fix for this issue in Sunbird. I'd also like to move it from the main taskbar to the notification area (system tray), though I think this is a bit beyond my expertise at the moment.

Comments are invited.