Venu Anuganti Blog

Its been a while I played with Windows Movie Maker. Even though I did used it extensively on Windows XP last year when I created few DVD’s without any problems. But today I started using it on my Windows Vista, Ultimate edition and noticed that the application keeps crashing (in the sense it stops responding) for every possible operation that I perform. Even for a basic cursor movements, when trying to play any video, when I tried to click on a photo or when I tried to import some pictures, it stops responding. Only option for me is to kill the application and reload back.

This happened when I wanted to make a new DVD with few recent videos from the camcoder along with recent photos. But no luck so far to continue further even after playing it with for 2 hours. Good thing is, I could atleast able to import the video to AVI format from my camcoder without any problems. Looks like time for me to start using Windows XP version of this; which seemed to be much much better and I never noticed a crash or time to play with iMovie from Mac to see how it performs. I am still wondering why this happens to me, as Windows Movie Maker is one of the key feature and improvement in Vista. Also, it does not support the photo preview within the application.

Most of the developers run virtual guest operating systems as part of day to day development. The host OS could be either Windows, Linux or Mac, and guest could be Windows or Linux. I currently use both Parallels 4128 and VMWare Fusion on my Macbook Pro with Bootcamp Vista partition. Even though Parallels still didn’t work for me (thanks for the comment from Archy from Parallels team, but that hint also didn’t work for me), so I use VMWare Fusion to boot my Vista.

Here is the list of problems that is keep bothering me by both the virtual machines along with the Bootcamp. I wish if they could escalate them in the coming versions.

1. When the Vista did not had a clean shutdown, the subsequent boot leads to Windows Recovery Error Console with different boot options, but BootCamp under dual boot, does not respond to any of the keyboard keys (or in other terms, keyboard is not activated). This makes the recovery console to boot to normal mode and has to wait for 28 secs as one can’t change anything. There is no such problem when running under VM. So, it might be a bootcamp issue.. I use version 1.3, so thats the latest one from Apple. You get into this Recovery Console Boot options menu only when the OS did not had a clean shutdown.
2. When running Vista directly without any VM using Bootcamp, I noticed that when the battery goes down, there is no indicator or pre-alarm to indicate low batter level. I do have the right configuration for battery alerts. Not sure why they are not working. The laptop simply powers off when the battery goes to 0%. Not sure if its a problem with the Bootcamp or Vista.
3. When I have the Vista OS running under VM, when the OS goes to stand-by or sleep mode, the VMWare or Parallels does not recognize this and instead thinks the OS is still running. Only option for me is to exit and start the VM, which makes the OS to boot back from the scratch but not from the stand-by mode. When running under Bootcamp, this works as expected. I think these tools should recognize this and provide a way to recover from stand-by or sleep mode.
4. VMWare Fusion, when the guest OS is running; doesn’t accept or recognize global host OS keys. This will be handy when one uses virtual desktops so that the VM can be in one desktop and regular Mac OS on another one and can toggle to them easily. Right now, I have to move the mouse to the upper top and get the VMWare menu to be displayed; then it starts recognizing the global keys for the host OS.
5. When connected to external display, the actual boot is not displayed on external monitor; and it only displays when the actual OS starts booting. This makes it hard if one wants to control which OS to boot.
6. Support for the snapshots for the bootcamp version of OS could be a great addition.
7. Support of Unity feature from VMWare Fusion for the bootcamp Vista OS could be another addition. I heard it works for XP. Not sure if Parallels coherence works with Bootcamp Vista.
8. Macbook should be smart enough to turn off the primary display by recognizing the external display unless its in mirror mode.
9. Bootcamp, VMWare and Parallels should recognize the Windows Vista and automatically provide a way to remap the keys in guest OS (particularly the Delete key)
10. Finally, but not least; Apple should make iSight to actually work on Windows instead of just the driver by providing a nice UI.

As suspected earlier, Dell has finally announced additional product line to its small business called ‘Vostro‘. This is indeed a good sign and long pending activity from the DELL. So far; the only option was Latitude and Precision models and now they have Vostro. Vostro seemed to be reasonably priced and they are below Latitude and which can make the sales to pitch and can help lot of small companies to opt Dell.

I already found couple of good reviews on the Vostro-200 desktop, but yet to see cnet review on this.

As currently I use Macbook pro with Windows Vista under boot camp; I would like to see an alternative in coming weeks (because I boot to Mac OS only for Terminal, so having a laptop PC is much better). If I get a chance, I might buy Vostro 1400 notebook for day to day development in comparison to Macbook pro because:

• It is 14.1 inch screen with 1440X900 resolution (same as that of Macbook pro)
• It is just 5.39 pounds (same as Macbook pro)
• It allows up2 4GB
• It has Wireless-N Wi-Fi
• It has 4 USB ports (Macbook pro bas only two)
• It has full-sized keyboard (I hate the key alignment in macbook pro, especially delete, and all arrow keys)
• It has much better battery life than Macbook pro, if I opt for 9-cell 85WHr Li-Ion Battery
• It has 8-in-1 media memory card reader (Macbook pro does not)
• It has ExpressCard/54 slot (Macbook pro has ExpressCard/34)
• It has S-Video out (Macbook Pro does not)
• It has only 15-pin VGA video connector (Macbook pro has DVI with DVI to VGA connector) (Wondering why Dell didn’t add DVI as default one, unless I missed it, because most of the small business might have external LCD connection)
• One-touch access to calendar, contacts and files in seconds with Dell MediaDirect (not sure how it works)

Lately I started using Google Docs to keep track of my TODO and couple of important files, as online version allows me to access and edit the documents at anytime from anywhere. Even though when I download the doc file back to my PC and when I open with Microsoft office, I see the alignment of pages are gone. Which is kind of annoy.

Coming to the actual problem, when I do not have the brower window in maximixed mode, and when I open the document (especially the XLS, spreadsheet) then it opens to fit the browser; that is good..but when I maximize the browser; the doc window does not auto scale to the browser; and with the recent release; it seemed to scale; but not 100%…and when it maximizes; the horizontal scroll is totally missing; which makes document un-editable beyond what it appears on the scrreen, unless you close and reopen it. Also, even when you resize, the document goes to its original state without the horizontal scrolling.

I am wondering, why Google did not even test this feature as this is supposed to be a basic feature that everyone uses it directly or indirectly, unless they didn’t tested this on IE7/Vista. The images below shows the problem in maximized and resized mode of IE7.

Today I received a snail-mail from Dell, which had a 4-page publicity on Dell’s Small Business telling, “We believe: On July 10, small business will finally get what it asked for”..and all other tag lines for “We believe” stuff without indicating what it is.

Dell also has the similar stuff online teaser with 20 different teaser taglines. I am still not sure what it could be, but guessing it could be a big product line announcement or something in similar lines. If thats the case, I am more than happy to see a new business laptop models from Dell; which can actually compete with Apple Macbook series.

I am curios to see what Dell will announce for SMB on July 10th.