Category Archives: Software

What’s new for 2012?

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To start off 2012 Vernon’s Excellent Blog remains ad free, PPC free, and for the time being an outpost of free speech with an Electronic and Software Engineering bent. In anticipation of the new Year and with a Prosperous 2011 drawing to a close, I began the process of forming a new Business Venture “Engineer LLC“. With a portion of my earnings from Contract work, I have formed a new LLC organization to serve as a foundation for the several business ventures that I have been incubating or planning over the course of 2011.

    • Vernon Johnson Engineering Services has been consulting with private Inventors in 2011 to assist in bringing new inventions to life!
    • Spidersource Unlimited is my vision for a provider of Consumer and Technical Software in the mobile marketplace. It has yet to be officially launched as of this writing.
    • dc-johnson.com was created in January of 2008 in response to an inquiry by a Ferrari restorer and as a tribute to my Father’s invention of aftermarket emission control devices for the Automotive “Grey Market” of the United States in the early 1980s. The site serves as a source of information for owners of these now antique Automobiles. Occasionally, a request comes in for assistance to this site which will now be a division of Engineer LLC.

There may be other ventures in the future that will emerge as projects or ventures of Engineer LLC.

The new web presence for Engineer LLC is hosted by Dreamhost. I have been using them for 7 years (ever since I started publishing public web content). This blog you are reading right now is hosted on Dreamhost. If you are considering opening a new web Hosting account, I strongly recommend Dreamhost. Should you choose to use thier services, use the promo code NEWUSER2012 and you will get an additional discount when you create a new account with Dreamhost. Full Disclosure: I do receive a small referral fee for referring new customers.

Vernon Johnson

January 24, 2012

Legacy Applications getting harder to support

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Is it just me or is there a disconnect between what OS and Software vendors sometimes do to alienate their customers.

Example: I have a client who uses a certain major vendor’s application in his business that only runs on Windows XP. Hey this is 2011! They have been promising to have a pending update to Vista then 7 compatibility for nearly 4 years now, but still nothing. The laptop in use to run this app is getting old. You can’t get a new one with XP of course, and the choices for hardware that will even run it are rapidly drying up. After a bunch of research I recommended an XPS L702x from Dell, since by all indications a full compliment of drivers for XP were available for this hardware. OOPS! Well for everything but the NVidia Display adapter, but even with all of the right drivers XP runs like a DOG! ARGGH.

Adventures in IT (User assistance puzzles)

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Part of my work is helping a number of computer users with their “IT Issues”. Most times the request will include the user’s interpretation of what is wrong (“I can’t see the files on the server, I know they are not gone because other people can see them”; for example). In one such recent incident involving a mid to high level user (skill wise), a review revealed that the files (on a Windows server) were actually visible in the Finder window in the user’s MAC, but failed to appear in the user’s “Open File” dialog box in Excel 2011. Bizarre! A check of the file permissions showed that the file that was the intended target had been changed and that user had been “disincluded” somehow. After that was fixed, the files now showed up in the Excel dialog, but attempting to open them caused an error message to appear (something like “the file is no longer at the location specified”). What! Tinker a bit more with Excel 2011 then. Closed it (all the way). Restart Excel and try again. Same error message. But then a new one. Excel crashed. Now all it does is crash when trying to open an existing .xls (older version) file. OK then, check for updates. Doh! “This update is recommended to improve stability blah blah blah”. Things are not always what they seem.

From the Microsoft Windows 7 “Loadfest”…

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Today I am writing from Microsoft’s Irvine office.  It’s the windows 7 “Loadfest”, a Partner presentation on installing, selling and some of the cool new features in Windows 7.   The presentation is hosted by Woody Walton.  I have been using W7 for a while now, and just installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on my Toshiba Notebook (from which I am authoring this post).  I am pleased with the product so far.  I first loaded it onto one of my development systems in February 2009 when it was in beta test. I really didn’t use the beta a lot, but began using it a bit more after updating to the RC a couple months later. As soon as the MSDN RTM came out, I began using the x64 Ultimate version on a regular basis, and have now abandoned (for the most part) the Vista32 Ultimate installation on the same development box. Being a Software/Firmware Developer, my experience includes installing an alternative driver for Microchip’s MPLAB ICD2 Programmer/Debugger device not written for Windows 7 (with favorable results)!   There are some cool new features we are learning of.  Something particularly interesting is the attention they have given to making attached devices like cameras and media players show up with a more intuitive Icon.  For example: your camera is more likely to show up as a camera instead of just another drive.  Right now we are learning about the enhanced security for “Homegroup” environments (an updated version of Workgroup level networks).  Vista computers can join a Homegroup while XP or downlevel OS versions can not.

The infamous UAC (universally hated in Vista) has been changed to allow users to choose from 4 different levels, and a new feature called AppLocker can allow more selective Execution prevention measures.

Here’s a screen capture of my Notebook’s Properties page…

Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Now before you go calling me a M$ $ellout, be advised that the Notebook also dual boots into Ubuntu 9.04 for the gratification of all the Open Source fans out there too!

Tux!