It has been good to stop for a while and reflect a bit.

The things i like about tech blogging are numerous.

I love technology. I like talking and writing about it and in particular sharing knowledge.

I do appreciate the feedback (comments and e-mails) from the people who contact me.

Several people contacted me wondering if I was perchance trapped under something heavy and couldn’t get to a keyboard.

In reality I was waiting for something exciting to happen in technology…….

Above Left BOE GDP Projection November 2008        Above Right  BOE GDP Projection Feb 2009

The Bank of England’s revision to their published GDP projections between November 2008 and February 2009 seems to have hit in a rather busy news cycle.

I fear people are getting numb to yet even more bad news about the economy and haven’t quite taken on board what these projections are saying.

I’m not really qualified to talk of such lofty things but I do know what was bad is now worse.

Link: http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7883255.stm

I think I need to make a swift return to the world of Tech Blogging its a lot less depressing that the real world.

Thanks to the site visitors here for leaving comments, feedback and helping document solutions to problems for the greater good of everyone.

Extra special thanks go to Chris for some of the design work on the site and for www.1steasy.com for being the best web host in the world ever.

2009 is going to be a radically different year and I suspect I wont be able to donate as much time for updating this site. However I will concentrate of sharing the most useful of information like problem solving tips or hands on reviews of equipment.

The big tech topic of 2009 will be Windows 7 and I will be both beta testing and writing about it.

Have a good 2009

Colin

I am encountering significant problems getting older wireless B & G wireless technologies playing happily with the newer wireless N equipment.

Case1) I have tried 2 Dell Draft N wireless cards (one internal/one external) and cannot get them to work with Draytek Vigor 2800 Routers. They connect but drop the connection. The same card works perfectly with say a Netgear router. So its a Dell Draft N and Draytek Vigor specific issue.

When I have a moment I will see if there is any firmware I can upgrade on the Draytek side.

Case2) BT’s new Home Hub 2.0 is capable of Wireless N, but can cause older B and G cards to not work. Specifically the most popular Intel Wireless ones.

Tech Tip1: On the BT Home Hub 2.0 change the wireless from B/G/N to B/G.

Tech Tip2: Is your BT Home Hub 2.0 is driving you mad the best place for peer support is here. Link: http://beta.bt.com/bta/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=128&start=0

A couple of weeks ago I was very enthusiastic about Google’s Internet browser Chrome.

You only get to know a product by using it and so far I haven’t regretted by move.

There are only some minor niggles from a user point of view.

1) Some fonts don’t render properly, not a biggie for me.

2) Doesn’t work with Pay Pal.

3) Some issues with you tube style flash video.

All of these I can live with.

The one reason I am sticking with Chrome is the ability to drag a browser tab onto another monitor. This feature alone will keep me a Chrome user.

The guys over at PCMag.com have a 4.5 review of the Dell 24″ 2408WFP monitor.

This 24″ Widescreen monitor runs at a native resolution 1920×1200.

I am currently rocking a twin monitor desktop with two displays running at 1600×1200 and 1650×1050. That gives me a resolution of 3250×2250 but the thought of a boost to 3840×2400 is appealing.

Review Link: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2331027,00.asp

Working in I.T. Support I have to think ahead and one problem I needed a solution for was Data recovery for laptop hard disks.

Now if a desktop PC’s hard disk fails you can usually just connect the faulty hard disk as another disk in a working system and recover the data.

However laptop hard disks due to their size cannot co-exist internally in another laptop or PC.

Picture: 2.5″ Laptop Hard Disk

For that you would  need an external USB hard disk enclosure with the correct connections either IDE or SATA.

So for my box of tricks I ordered an inexpensive (£15) Akasa P2 SERIES 2.5″ ESATA/USB EXT (see main picture).

So finally this week the call came in for a user of a Dell Latitude that had dropped the laptop and required their data recovered.

Once the laptop was in my hands I carefully removed the hard disk. In this example it was a SATA drive.

I plugged it into the Akasa hard disk enclosure and connected the supplied power and data cables and the faulty hard disk was now accessible.

Tip: Both the power and data run on USB so there is no external power issues to worry about.

Not only was I able to recover the data but I also ran some hard disk tools that fixed the corrupted operating system and the hard disk was back in working order back in the original laptop.

So £15 well spent.

She can call on one of the smartest Windows dudes on the planet. Her Husband.

Mark is a Microsoft Fellow and heads up the SysInternals division amongst other things.

In a recent post mark tells the story about how the Mrs had a sluggish Windows Vista machine.

If you have a remote Interest in Windows Vista problem solving it doesn’t get any better than a Russinovich tech post.

Link: http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/09/24/3126858.aspx

Microsoft typically offer two Windows operating systems for the burgeoning netbook market.

Windows XP Home and  Windows Vista Business

Now getting Windows Vista Business on this generation of underpowered  netbooks is like going to a car dealer and asking for their slowest most expensive car.  It’s also going to be  painful to use.

Windows XP Home by all accounts runs pretty well but the gotcha is you cannot join Windows XP Home to any corporate environment that has a  Windows Server. Due to the inbuilt limitations of XP Home (that have been in place since XP’s launch in 2001).

So between this rock and hard place netbooks for now won’t be making much impact into the business world and this is just exactly what Microsoft wants.

They want to stave off the Linux onslaught so end users don’t get too comfortable with it, while at the same not eating into their core Windows business too much.

Well Dave Altavilla over at www.hothardware.com disassembled one and has posted video and pictures.

It’s pretty impressive how Dell crammed all that stuff in such a small box.

Link: http://www.hothardware.com/News/Weekend-Project-Dell-Studio-Hybrid-Disassembly/