Windows vNext – Not really Windows Blue, nor Windows 9, but Windows 8.1

A leaked version of the next version of Windows came out and according to rumors, it will just be an upgrade to Windows 8. Windows 8.1 was said to be offered for free.

Scheduled to be released this year(probably Q3, 2013), it seems to be merely a service/feature pack for Windows 8.

So I guess my question is, will this be just an update on Windows Update? Unlike Apple, Windows often break applications when a major SP/version is installed. I agree that Windows 8 is the fastest client Windows ever, but stability is an equally important thing.

I just want my an option to bring back my old Start Menu. If MS gives that feature on 8.1, then i’m a happy camper.

Pobox vs Forex vs MyShoppingBox vs Johnny Air Cargo – A Review Series (Part 2)

Gone are the days when you only rely on your US relatives trip back home to PH to bring you your designer clothes, newest shoes, electronics and other items. Here’s a review of delivery companies offering forwarding services from the US to the Philippines.

This is the second part of my review of shipping companies that offers delivery services for items purchased from US online merchants to the Philippines.

Company: Johnny Air Cargo(JAC)
Website: http://www.johnnyair.com
Shipping Type: Air
Transit Time: 5-7 working days
Cost: $6.5/lb. minimum of 2 lbs for electronics items + $5(handling fee) + $25(for tablets/phones), $50(laptops). Total of which is imposed 12% VAT.

Pros:

  • Since your package travels via air, it’s fast.
  • Warehouse in east/west coast. Ship your items to New Jersey to save on sales tax from Amazon(Up to July 2013 only)
  • You get email response from them usually in 24 hours. PH staff is quite friendly(I only called them once and I was satisfied).
  • They send SMS notification when your item is ready for pickup.
  • Convenient pickup location, at last for me(Megamall).
  • Safe. I’ve used them probably 20x already.

Cons:

  • @&#^$( Expensive.
  • Computes cost via volume weight. If your item is packaged in a big box, it’ll cost more.
  • No consolidation. Those who order from Amazon should have experienced having their items shipped on multiple packages. If that’s the case you have to pay for each of the box!  Sometimes though, if your boxes are small, they let it pass.
  • You won’t know how much you’ll pay until the item arrives in PH.
  • No item tracking

I won’t reuse JAC if they’re not efficient. I think the fastest I got an item is 5 days. I must be lucky that day and my package arrived at the right time. But on the average, I receive SMS notification on the 8th day since they receive the package. Not bad.

My only gripe is the cost, specially if the online merchant used a big box to package the item.

My Personal Verdict: Use JAC if you can’t wait and need your package the soonest possible time. Also, to have peace of mind on valuable items – I would choose JAC as well.

 

Pobox vs Forex vs MyShoppingBox vs Johnny Air Cargo – A Review Series (Part 1)

Gone are the days when you only rely on your US relatives trip back home to PH to bring you your designer clothes, newest shoes, electronics and other items. Here’s a review of delivery companies offering forwarding services from the US to the Philippines.

This is the first part of my review of shipping companies that offers delivery services for items purchased from US online merchants to the Philippines.

Company: Pobox
Website: http://pobox.ph
Shipping Type: Sea
Transit Time: 4-6 weeks
Cost: $30-$75 + 5% service charge

Pros:

  • Offers different sized boxes, depending on how big your packages are, no weight restrictions
  • Accepts odd sized packages as well, gives you a quote on how much the cost is.
  • Free Item Consolidation, they remove the merchant’s boxes to save space! They can store your items for a maximum of 45 days
  • Online portal to manage your items, status of your box
  • Delivered at your door at no extra fee.
  • If you plan to ship a TV, for a fee you can request to have it powered on once it arrives(to prevent dead on arrival units).

Cons:

  • Slow, specially on busy season(Black Friday sale, Christmas – expect 6-8 weeks.
  • Manual system for payment, PayPal has extra charge
  • Recent news of pilferage by US Customs
  • Maximum insured amount is $200 only

I first used Pobox more than a year ago – when I found an Amazon deal for an Onkyo HTIB(Home Theater In A Box). The shipping experience is pretty straightforward – just let the online shop deliver to their California warehouse. You then provision your expected items on their website, together with their tracking numbers. They update the items when they receive it(usually 2-3 days), then you can advice them to ship at the next ship loading schedule. Remember to request the shipping invoice and pay early as they won’t ship the item until you pay the whole amount. I waited for 5 weeks before I got my package, but I was satisfied as I only paid $80 for a 30KG box! I shipped a total of 4 boxes from Pobox and transit times average is ~5.5 weeks.

Recently, there have been reports of item pilferages from the online communities. Pobox sent an email blast and they said that a company hired by the US Customs was reportedly stealing the contents of the boxes as they are being inspected. There are also speculations that the local staff are the ones stealing when the tracking info shows that the boxes were delivered to a different address or that there’s no one to receive the packages.

My Personal Verdict: Use PoBox for bulky and heavy items! There is a risk, no matter how small it is to have small items stolen. So don’t use it for small, expensive items like watches, jewelries etc. Consider also the cost of your purchase as they only have maximum $200 insurance per box(Take note! per box, not per item). I would use PoBox to ship speakers, strollers, oversized toys etc. Transit times is fairly long, so I suggest do not follow up until you’ve past 6 weeks from the date your box departed US.

Windows vNext – Codenamed Windows Blue

Since last week, news from the rumor mill talks about the next iteration of Windows 8, code named Windows Blue brewing up. Today, a Microsoft job posting kinda confirms this rumor with specific reference to the term: Could someone from MS HR spill the beans for this supposed to be secret project?

We’re looking for an excellent, experienced SDET to join the Core Experience team in Windows Sustained Engineering (WinSE). The Core Experience features are the centerpiece of the new Windows UI, representing most of what customers touch and see in the OS, including: the start screen; application lifecycle; windowing; and personalization. Windows Blue promises to build and improve upon these aspects of the OS, enhancing ease of use and the overall user experience on devices and PCs worldwide.

Windows 8 for me is an an optimized Windows 7 if you only talk about performance. However, it’s not just performance that make sense for most of us. The highly risky decision to combine touch with traditional desktop interface did not give Windows 8 the needed user acceptance for majority of us, but I trust that this will improve over time.  I hope Microsoft release OS updates just like Apple does on OS X, with significant increase in user experience and performance at a very reasonable price. I think Windows 8 price is not justifiable at this moment.

With rumors of the Microsoft VNext less than 3 months after Windows 8 was released, i would think MS is releasing an upgrade within the year. Would they listen to us? Well, your guess is as good as mine. :)

windows-blue-black-wallpaper1

 

Fix: Evasi0n jailbreak, crashing Weather app

The long awaited untethered IOS 6.x jailbreak finally arrives. Team Evad3rs released v1.0 of the jailbreaking utility to the public today.

The first time I tried to jailbreak my device, I ran all native iOS apps on my phone and noticed the weather app crashing when executed. The simple fix is to update evas1on installed on your phone! Here’s the simple steps.

  1. Open Cydia
  2. Under the Changes tab, you should see an upgrade to evasi0n 6.x untether. The latest version is 0.1-1.
  3. Try the weather app again and it should run now.

There you go!evasi0n_header_2

Fix: Acer Aspire One D255 Freezing Issue

The other day, my brother in law brought in his year old netbook that freezes randomly when being used. The symptom is while casually browsing the net, the screen and mouse will freeze and the only way to recover is to reboot the machine by holding the power button.

The netbook is an Acer Aspire One D255, an Atom based netbook with 1GB of RAM. Upon using the netbook for a few minutes, I encountered the freezing problem and just like any techy guy would check the following:

  1. Memory – i used Prime95 to stress test the CPU and memory and to my surprise the system did not freeze!
  2. Overheating – i checked the back of the netbooks for heating issue and found the heat not that bad.
  3. Bad OS – i usually pick this as a last resort. Normally, i think freezing problems are hardware related so I skipped this possibility for later.
  4. Drivers – I checked Acer’s website and all the drivers are updated. Also checked Windows Update and all updates have already been installed.

The last thing i noticed is that when the system freeze, I am actively using the touchpad. So what I did was use a USB mouse and tried to reproduce the problem. It’s been more than 2 hours and the netbook has not frozen since!

It seems a good enough workaround, but I’ve got one more thing to try. I checked on Acer’s website and noticed that the netbook is running on a BIOS a couple of version from the latest. I installed the latest version of the Aspire One D255 from here. Note that you have to be sure you are using the same model of the netbook before you apply the fix! Just download the zip file, extract it and run the Windows version of the BIOS patch. Reboot the machine and off you go!

I disconnected the mouse and lo and behold, the freezing problem was fixed. Sure enough the BIOS update resolved the issue as I’ve asked the owner of the netbook the stress test for the day and problem has not surfaced since.

TLDR:  Fix to Acer Aspire One D255 random freezing issue are:

  1. Do not use the built in mousepad, instead use a USB mouse.
  2. Upgrade to the latest BIOS.

AOD255

 

Fix: Logitech G930 Power Button Issues

Logitech G930 is one of the best wireless gaming headset available in the market now. I got the chance to purchase mine when it was on sale on Amazon almost a year ago.

I’ve got nothing but praise for this wireless headset. My only gripe is  its power LED. As a wireless headset, this one has a power button which has a few seconds delay turning on the power LED after you initially pressed it. This is very annoying as you don’t know if you pressed the button right so the usual reaction is to press the button again, which therefore turns the unit off!

Luckily the headphone has a mic light. This light is on(red) when the mic is mute – so it automatically lights up when you recess the mic boom up to mute the headphone(so its like a power LED in this case). I use this light to know if the headphone is turned on correctly since it does not have a delay unlike the power button. Take note that you have to disconnect the headset from the USB charger. Reason is, when the headset is connected via USB the mic light is always on even if the headset if turned off.

So if you have this headset and have issues turning it on. Don’t worry, its just the power LED. Just monitor the mic light instead so you don’t have to wear your power button by constantly pushing it.

TLDR: Instead of using the headset’s power button to check if its turned on, use the mic LED instead. The LED turns on instantly compared to the power button that has some delays.

gaming-headset-g930

 

Fix: SuperDrive blocking CD/DVD discs from getting in.

Have you ever experienced your Mac Mini not allowing you to insert a DVD? It basically blocks the  DVD when it is halfway inside. Normally, the DVD should be sucked in at this position, however in this case, you’ll feel something blocking the DVD from inside the drive itself.

I almost gave up as I’ve tried almost every solution I can find in the net. I’ve resetted SMC, resetted the PRAM, pushed eject for 5 seconds, run drutil to eject, nudge the DVD using my fingers, etc. etc.

I was desperate, so I tried to find out what’s blocking the damn DVD. I used a thin piece of plastic(old credit card) and inserted it to the DVD slot, close to the right side. I chose this side since this is where i felt the DVD disc is having some resistance. I nudge the credit card left to right a few times and felt something inside the DVD that gave way. It seems to be a part of the DVD that got stuck and won’t retract, thus resisting any DVD. When that part moved, I heard the familiar Super Drive sound which I’ve not heard from my mac ever since i’ve got this issue. When I inserted the DVD, true enough it went in. I hope this works for you too. :)

TLDR: To be able to insert a DVD to a mac that’s blocking any media you insert on it, put a thin piece of object(ex: credit card) to the right side of the slot DVD. Move it left to right until you hear a thing snap out. This will unlock a stuck piece of a drive that’s resisting any media.

macminizipper

 

How to Restore Specific Time Machine Volumes

I have a circa 2011 Macbook Pro with 2 disk drives. If you are not aware, you can replace the DVD drive with a DVD Drive Caddy so you can use it as a disk drive instead. Doing so allowed me to have a 120GB SSD drive for my MacOS drive and the original drive as my data disk.

The other day, my data drive reported an I/O error when copying a rather huge file(around 8GB). At first I thought it was my destination USB flash disk giving up, but upon closer inspection, it was my data drive starting to fail. The drive itself has given me a hint a few weeks back, when it started producing those squeaking motor noises. I guess it started to fail at that time and begin producing bad blocks.

Before I replace the disk, of course I need to backup my data. I used a 500GB external USB drive as a temporary Time Machine backup. It successfully backed up both of my volumes(MacOS and Data).

Now here’s the messy part. Time Machine does not allow you to selectively restore a volume. My SSD drive hosting MacOS is fine, its just the data that I need to restore. So here’s what you need to do:

  1. After you replaced the failed data drive, you will not be able to login to MacOS using your account. Reason is, you’ve moved your User Profile to a different volume, so if its not there, login will fail. However, you can login using the root account(you enabled root, don’t you?).
  2. Insert your Time Machine backup and locate your most recent backup. Restore the specific volume to the new drive.
  3. Make sure the new drive has the same name as your previous volume.
  4. Reboot. You should be able to login again. Some profiles you need to recreate, like in my case, Dropbox asked me to reinstall!

tm2

F3 US Visa Status

Two years ago, I helped my uncles(actually my wife’s) on processing the requirements for their immigrant visas. They were petitioned by their mom, now based in Hawaii on an F2 visa category(Unmarried Sons and Daughters). Two of them was able to leave mid 2010, while the youngest was not as lucky, as the visa schedule retrogressed after he was interviewed.  He waited for another 6 months and was able to leave the country last year.

Last Christmas, another uncle(on my family side this time), opened up a conversation with the rest of the clan that they’re already processing their visas to the US. When I got the chance to talk to my uncle personally, he mentioned that he and his wife are on an F3 visa category and their priority date was April, 1994. Wow, that was almost 2 decades of waiting!

Since I had some experience processing immigrant visas from my wife’s relatives, I asked my uncle how’s the visa schedule for the F3 category. I’m a bit surprised he is not familiar with the online US Visa Bulletin, and rely on calling the US embassy hotline to check their visa status.  Right there and then, I checked their visa status and was sorry to break the bad news that their priority date is still 2 years behind whats being processed that time.

Last week, he gave me a call and asked me to check for any progress. It seems that from the last 8 months, there is no movement on the dates.

It seems it will take a while before my uncle can migrate to the US. The December 2010 visa schedule retrogression has not yet recovered and who knows when can people like my uncle can get their long awaited visas.