If your firewall is blocking the online registration of KMS (Key Management Service) for Vista/Server 2008, then you need to activate it offline by calling. The US Number is 1-866-740-1256, but there’s a trick: The IVR system will ask for your Installation ID in “groups”, but in Server 2003’s KMS console (slmgr.vbs) you are given one long string. If you don’t pause at the right time, the IVR will get hung up and tell you “please only give me the group X”. The grouping magic number is six, so just stop between saying each six numbers, and imagine the dash between them :).
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QCharts is my stock charting program of choice. I don’t use it for actual trading, just for technical analysis and historical research. I believe it’s the best out there in terms of flexibility and feature set. It’s defiantly not the fastest, coolest, or cheapest out there, but it gets the job done.
Initial setup: (picture here) I have a year-old $500 HP/Compaq from Best Buy. Single AMD proc, single core (a year ago on QCharts 5.x there was no multi-threading so you wanted the fastest processor, not multi-cores). Since then I’ve added:
- Bumped up to 3GB of RAM
- Added a GeForce 7300 GT PCIe to replace mobo video (dual monitor capable)
- Added a GeForce 6200 PCI (dual monitor capable)
- Plugged in 4 21″ Samsung SyncMaster 204B at 1600×1200. Turned them portrait to increase the vertical space and allow seeing all 4 in my field of vision (and fit them on the desk). Also great for web surfing.
- Added 2nd Hard Drive for storing data and pagefile
- Wiped 1st Hard Drive and installed Vista Business x64
- Installed 6.0.2 as my main QCharts (with 5.x still as a backup, mostly for 233 chart historical research and feature comparison)
This setup aught to show you that you don’t have to spend $3-5k for a “stock computer setup”. Just get multiple video cards (preferably by the same manufacture) and plug them in. We’ve got a monitoring workstation at work with 5-6 monitors and just keep shoving in the PCI graphic cards. Vista/XP will do the rest.
Issues with this setup
- Vista is MUCH slower in video refreshes, even with Aero turned off. Maybe this is NVIDIA’s driver (using 12/2007). It’s laggy, but still useable.
- Not sure if it’s Vista, or the fact I’m running x64, but QCharts crashes on exit. I run it in XP SP2 compatibility mode
- Running Aero not only slows it down, but crashes the video driver (likely from running two cards, or maybe the portrait mode enabled on all 4)
- Vista doesn’t yet have nView Desktop Manager (due out this spring)
- To using charting during US trading hours (something I don’t normally do) really needs a newer dual core CPU. With 200 ticker symbols on 6.0.2 I’m 50-100% CPU during day w/o doing anything but “watching”.
Just a matter of time before the shell replacements started rolling out for Vista. I used to be a big Object Desktop and Stardock fan and tried many of the others out there, but stability and performance were always an issue that kept me on it full time.
Here’s a new one in private beta, likely commercial but is taking on a near replica of OSX look but with vista colors (at least by default). I only have screen shots to judge it by at this point until an open beta appears.
If you know of another shell/GUI replacement for Vista please make a comment. Thanks.
Ms. iTunes Store, I enjoyed our long 4+ year on-again off-again romance, but I need to end our relationship. No more emaling me about the new hotness you want to sell me, no more fighting to ensure I only use you on 5 computers. I’ve found that for audio, polygamy is OK, and brings me more happiness and less fighting.
Amazon is my new lady. Yes she’s younger, cheaper, and more willing to please me; with such tricks as one-click “Preview all” for albums, $7.99 albums, and my favorite position: the “256kb/s MP3 files” which auto imports into iTunes.
I remember our first date, Ms. iTunes Store, where I was nervous and slow-to-click through your cold-war-era interface. I’d had tried other’s like Ms. MSN Music on the corner of IE and Media Player Ave., but I wanted a more complete relationship. After coming to terms that you were the best relationship at the time, I eventually bought the iPod’s you were sellin’ on the side. Even though the first one wasn’t free the 2nd iPod was better, and I was then fully hooked to your software and hardware.
Then I starting seeing Audible.com on the side for my spoken word addiction, rather then using you as the middle man between us. This provided me more action for the same or less price, and your sister iTunes and your iPod’s never knew the difference. I still needed you for my music habit, but all that work to get your DRM and DRM-less AAC files into MP3 left me looking for another provider.
Now I’ve found your replacement Ms. iTunes Store, and Ms. Amazon is it. Sure I’ll still see you on the side a few times a year for that obscure offering that 70% market share gets you… but baby your prices and your file formats are legacy, and you’d better start playing nice with all the pimps who are growing tired of your conditions and small payouts to them. Remember, it is ultimately those pimps that control you, and not your fantasy of the other way around… and they really dig Ms. Amazon.
Sorry.
A few years ago I created a flickr account like everyone else but saw it as more of a social focused photo site, and didn’t stick with it as a serious picture organizing tool. Now, I moving back to flickr “for good” from Picasa (which I moved to from flickr, which I moved to from gallery hosted at fishbrains.com, which I moved to from …. sigh… ).
Paid for a pro account, 25 bucks for year for unlimited upload and storage… A deal for photo sharing AND backup tool. My family has gotten to the point of storing email in the cloud only… I’m now trying to be comfortable with pictures in the cloud only. I will still keep a memory card backup before uploading… but after my total import to flickr I won’t use a fat client to manage photos locally with a huge folder structure, and all that propitiatory metadata. I got burned last year on Picasa (which is still a great photo mgmt app for a single PC) because it stores data like tags, groups, captions, etc in a local db that isn’t accessible across pc’s. Now I’ve been using Windows Live Photo Gallery which stores data in the photo (I guess) but it’s not storing in it EXIF from what I can tell. Multiple PC’s DO see the metadata. So I’m using Windows Live Photo Gallery to upload to flickr, which yields a better experience then using the standard flickr uploader to bulk edit before import.
So far, I’ve found upload slow (I’ve got 2MB upload and it takes about 20 seconds per 6MP picture), but the flickr features are worth it. The partner and software intergration list is awesome.