Cypress AT2LP RC58 Error

The other day, I was trying to connect my mobile harddisk to my notebook as usual. Suddenly, an error message pop up asking me to install a driver called "Cypress AT2LP RC58" otherwise my harddisk is not recognisable.

This really scare the hell out of me, all my data will be gone if I cannot read my harddisk. After some checking and troubleshooting, I found the main reason for the problem.

For some reason, the contents of the EEPROM attached to your harddisk had been changed or disappeared. The hard drive works along with a configuration file stored in the EEPROM which contains your harddrive manufacturer's Vendor ID (VID), Product ID (PID) along with other information regarding the hard disk capacity etc. This EEPROM might lost its content due to a results of power surge, loss of power or turn-off of the computer at the wrong moment.

If this is the case, if you can obtain the VID, PID from the manufacturer then restore the configuration file should solve the problem.

However, if the problem is intermittent - i.e. at times the hard disk can be detected yet it disappear after a short while then there may be another explanation. The casing of the hard disk may be the cause itself due to wear and tear. Or there may be another reason, the USB cable itself. Change the cable and you may just find the problem go away.

Dropbox

I come across this interesting software that I think is worthwhile to share with you out there.







Dropbox is a cloud-based storage application and service operated by Dropbox, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers and share files and folders with others.

While Dropbox functions as a storage service, its focus is on synchronization and sharing. It supports revision history, so files deleted from the Dropbox folder may be recovered from any of the synced computers. Dropbox's version control also helps users know the history of a file they may be currently working on, enabling more than one person to edit and re-post files without complications of losing its previous form. The version history is limited to 30 days. A paid option for unlimited version history called "Pack-Rat" is available.There is no limit to file size for files added via the Dropbox application, but files transferred through the web interface are capped at 350 MB. Dropbox uses Amazon's S3 storage system to store the files and SoftLayer Technologies for their backend infrastructure.

A free Dropbox account offers 2 GB of storage. Users may upgrade to 50 GB or 100 GB by paying a monthly or yearly fee. The total amount of storage space of both the free and fee-based accounts may be increased by up to 3 GB for free accounts by increments of .25 GB and 6 GB for fee-based accounts by referring others to the service.

Windows 7 Screeshots

The following are some of the Windows 7 screenshots so you may know what to expect:

Should you upgrade to Windows 7 ? (from Vista)

Now that Windows 7 are officially part of Microsoft family of products. For those of us who are using Vista (like your true self) or XP (like one of those friends who like to get free advices), should you jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon? To answer that, I will say there are a few issues that you need to consider.

First, let's make this clear: Vista was a lesser product for Microsoft. That's not my opinion, but it is the opinion of Microsoft's general manager of corporate strategy. Many Microsoft fans says about how misunderstood Vista was and how, by Vista SP2, it was actually a good operating system. To me, it wasn't, it still isn't, and Microsoft knows that.

That said, if Vista is working for you, good for you. You don't have a reason to move to Windows 7. the same reasoning applies likewise for XP users.

But if you find Vista's worst five features ticking you off (like I do), then you should consider switching. Personally, I find Vista's UAC (User Account Control) to be a pain in the ass. That sometimes some files takes forever to move or copy irks me no end.

One word of caution though. If you're a heavy-duty user with lots of programs and files, moving from Vista to Windows 7 may take you more than 20 hours. That's not a misprint. This will give you 4 hours of sleep if you intend to babysit the whole installation.

The best upgrade you can expect, according to Microsoft, is just under an hour and a half. Excuse me!! This is for those who install new operating systems and upgrade systems on a weekly basis. I think a lesser people on an average PC can expect to spend most part of the day.

Some people told me with the misleading contention that if you do a clean install — that is delete everything on your Vista PC and then install Windows 7 — it will take far less time. They're right. Installing the operating system alone will take far less time. What they don't mention is that you'll then have to reinstall every application, replace all your files, and reset every one of your settings. This will save time? Yeah, right.....!

In a business environment, you may want to a clean install anyway. For this, I recommend using WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) and System Center Configuration Manager, once the Windows 7 versions are out to ease your Windows 7 deployment. But, you're still looking at a lot of time. This is no "do it over the weekend" migration for even the tiniest SOHO (small office/home office).

So, should you switch? Is there one single feature that makes it worth while? Honestly, I can't.

But — and this is important — even Windows 7 RTM is much faster, more stable and tends to have less problem with older hardware and software than Vista SP2. So, a single feature? No, there isn't one — but Windows 7 simply does everything Vista does, except better. Make the move. You'll be glad you did.

It is being said all those things that were missed by Vista are being included in this operating system, so Windows 7 is more feature enriched than Windows Vista. So certainly Windows 7 is going to have an advantage over Windows Vista in all aspects.

Let us check on the features of Windows 7 that have been made public by Microsoft Corporation.

Touchscreen Interface: Biggest advantage of Windows 7 over Windows Vista is its touchscreen interface. Windows Vista Ultimate, the most compete Vista, also lacks this feature even. Currently this feature is supported by Apple Mac OS X only. This may the end of the era of mouse.

Quick Loading: Windows 7 is said to be 20% faster than the Windows Vista. It is faster to load and shut down Windows 7 than Windows Vista.


Application Makeover: Applications like Word Pad, Paint and Calculator are given new looks and features in this new touch operating system and users can store Internet Explorer settings on their Windows Live accounts as well.

Enhanced Taskbar: The taskbar is more visual in Windows 7. This enhanced taskbar known as superbar has merged quick launch with buttons and give you easy access to common tasks which is easier than Windows Vista even.

Modified System Tray: You can customize system tray without the need of editing registry in Windows 7. In Windows Vista, you have to control what programs load on startup through Windows Defender but in Windows 7 you can get better control over startup programs by directly customizing the system tray by right clicking it.

Best for Laptops: Windows Vista is said to consume big portion of your laptop battery because of its slow execution and loading times. But with Windows 7, you can get better battery management than ever available.

Better Account Management: Managing accounts in Windows Vista proved to be a big headache. You will get rid of all those security risks in Vista and can get better user account management with Windows 7.

Zero To Sales

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Zero To Sales

View more presentations from Archit Gupta.

SPIN Selling Sales Class Overview

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

SPIN Selling Sales Class Overview

View more presentations from Shaun Holloway.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is fast becoming a buzz word among the computer and internet circle. Just what is cloud computing? After receiving this question from a friend, I did some research and the below is my findings (based o wikipedia and explainingcomputer.com):

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Simply put, user can access data, software application or computer processing power from a cloud of on-line resources. This will allows individuals and organizations to reduce capital expenditure and they can purchase software or hardware as a utility services based on a by-demand concept. It is closely associated with web 2.0 technology.

In this case, there are two major categories:

Software as a Service (SaaS)
This include on-line project mangement software, on-line HRM software or even sales management software such as SalesForce.com. On the other hand, on-line office application is also gaining momentum such as headed by Google Docs and SlideRocket.

Hardware as a Service (HaaS)
Amazon is now offering an on-line computing service called Elastic Computing Cloud or EC2. user can purchase computer processing on-line based on processor power, storage and data transfer speed. Google has also introduced Google App Engine for programmer to develop Google application on-line.

Such service offers the following benefits:
- Elastic - user can reduce or increase purchases based on requiremnt within minutes.
- Flexible - user can choose the specifications on each instance of computer power purcahse
- Inexpensive - there is no dedicated capital investment required
- Reliable - depend on central server computing power of Amazon or Google

With cloud computing, user save time on configuring software, hardware as no software need to be installed on their computer. Yet, he is able to access a much wider range of data or serviec formerly not available or unaffordable to him.

Sharing about Sharein.com

The other day I saw an interesting article introducing about Sharein.com. Upon checking up the site, find that it is an interesting tool that allows one to share links about anything be it video or others to your family, friends and customers. Compare to a conventional process that you need to copy the URL link and paste into your email, write a simple description, key in the email of those whom you want to send to, Sharein is going to make your life much easier because each time you want to send a link to a friend or group of friends this is going to be a safe and simple process.

After installing the application in your browser, each time you find an interesting website you would like to share with your friends, you just have to click on the sharing button and you will immediately see a panel you can then use to send the links to. The link will then be sent to your friends' or customers' emails or Twitter or Facebook accounts as a message complete with title and brief description. Just visit sharein.com to find out more.

32 bits vs 64 bits

There are so often that we heard people mentioned about 32 bits OS and 64 bits OS. A lot of people ask me what is the difference between the two. After umpteen times of answering that, I finally decided to put it on below.

A 64 bits OS is optimized to run program that made full use of 64 bit processor whereas 32 bits OS or 32 bits program does not made use of the power 64 bits processor provided for.

To explain things further, a 32 bit processor can process 32 bits of information per clock cycle, on an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ at 2.4Ghz there are 2.4 billion clock cycles per second. A 64 bit processor can process 64 bits of information per clock cycle, effectively doubling the speed of the processor. In the real world you won't see a double in speed because there are other limiting factors to speed such as hard drive, memory, and motherboard architecture speeds. You should see a very noticable increase in speed with 64 bit operating systems and software. Computer systems running 32 bit processors can only handle 4Gb of memory. However, Microsoft Windows OS may not display the full 4GB.

64 bit processors can handle 16 exabytes of memory (that's over 16 billion gigabytes). Not a big deal now unless you are working with very large files, such as large video files. As a side note, Unix and Linux already have well developed 64 bit Operating systems as 64 bit processors have been around for a while, just not for the desktop world.

Customizing AutoCAD 2010: Keyboard Shortcuts

The following is an adaptation of an article from MyCADSite.

Everyone knows that the strength of AutoCAD is that it can be easily customized to suit the individual user requirements. This tutorial will show you how to create your own shortcut key. All the shortcut keys are actually stored in acad.pgp file which will be loaded when AutoCAD is started. Once you have Express Tools installed, you will have a tool called ALIASEDIT that be used to edit the acad.pgp file easily. Acad.pgp file is an ASCII file and you do equally a good job with a Notepad editor.

Type in ALIASEDIT and you will see a dialog box pop up. Press the Add button.
















In this example, I have created a shortcut for MATCHPROP which is usually MA. (You notice that M & A are located are opposite sides of the keyboard.) Since N is not used for anything yet, I am using it as the shortcut key for MATCHPROP. Press OK after that.

Now press Apply for the changes to take effect. A dialog box warning you that you are about to overwrite your acad.pgp file appears. Press yes, since we are sure that we did the correct changes.








Press Yes and you will see a message pop up that you have saved your changes and that your current AutoCAD session has been updated. You can now use the shortcut key you just added.

Cannot Add Network Printer - Part 2

After I had changed the workgroup and tried to add a network printer a second time, the printer list is displayed and I tried to click on the desired network printer. Yikes! It give me another problem. the error message says that my local print spooler is not running hence no permission to connect to the printer. I believe many people also faced the same problem. At least some of my colleagues faced the same problem before.

To reactivate your Local Printer Spooler:

1. Click on Control Panel, then select Administrative Tools. From here, you can access Computer Management.














2.Select Service and scroll down to select Print Spooler.














3. Select Automatic for the Startup type. Select Stop and Start again to restart the service.















4. The new Print Spooler status should be as shown.





5. Add the network printer again. Voila! now it works nicely.

Cannot Add Network Printer - Part 1

The other day I was facing a problem that I cannot add a new network printer. I am using Window Vista 32 bit. I have tried to add a printer by browsing for network printer. It just does not shows the printer list at all. Then I realise the problem. My network workgroup has been set to a wrong workgroup. After I change my workgroup to the right one then the printer list show up nicely.

To change the workgroup setting:

1. Access the System from Control Panel.

2. Scroll down to display the Computer name, domain and workgroup settings.

3. Click on the Change settings.

4. Click on the Computer name tab and change the Workgroup name.

5. Restart the computer for the new settings to take effect.