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All you need to do is use the code THANKS when you check out and you'll save 25% on anything and everything at StudioPress.com.

This deal ends promptly at 7:00 pm Pacific time on Monday, November 28, 2011. Hurry up and claim your new WordPress theme before the code expires!

I have been using Microsoft Office 10 Beta for a few months now. I can tell you it is the best version of Office. It should be available in stores by June 2010. Microsoft is offering a Technology Guarantee:

Purchase and activate a qualifying Office 2007 product between March 5, 2010, and September 30, 2010, and you can download Office 2010 at no additional cost.

I've never upgraded to Office 2007. I still have the Office 2003. The good part is that when I installed the Office 2010 Beta, I did not have to uninstall Office 2003. These two versions co-exist.

Buy Office 2007 qualifying products today and download Office 2010 for free

This is an update on the previous post How I Upgraded My Sony Laptop to Windows 7 Ultimate.

I am happy to report that Windows 7 is still running flawlessly.

I am also happy to report that Sony has changed its stance to "If your computer meets the system requirements to run the Windows® 7 operating system, your model should be able install and run Windows® 7." Sony still does not provide drivers or support for Windows® 7 for this model but this new stance is much better than "Don't upgrade, just go buy a new laptop if you want to run Windows 7."

As far as the drivers concerned, I have had two issues so far: Vaio update crashes anytime the customer starts. I just get a 'Close this program' notice. Second issue is that I was not able to get audio when I used the HDMI out. This is not something I do often but it would be nice to get it fixed. I have not had time to research solutions to these issues but as soon as I find new information, I'll post it here. It would be nice to hear from you if you know any way to solve these issues.

Well, there is one more thing: Running Windows XP on Windows 7!

I have another copy of Windows 7 installed on my desktop. I have downloaded and installed Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP mode. It is way cool to have your Virtual Windows XP PC running in its own window. Well, it is not possible to do that on Sony VGN-FZ180 because..., surprise surprise, Sony turned of the Intel Virtualization Technology and there is no way to turn it back on. According to Intel Processor ID Utility the CPU supports Virtualization Technology. There is no BIOS option to enable it though. Again, this is not a pressing concern at this time and I have not taking the time to find an updated BIOS or any other solution. If you know a way to enable it, please do so.

Aside from these issues, I can honestly say that Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E is running much better and faster with windows 7.

It sure would be nice to get a new Sony Vaio Laptop with Windows 7 like the ones below, but sorry Sony, this laptop is still doing a great job and I wish you supported the Windows 7 upgrade.

Sony VAIO VPC-F137FX/B 16.4-Inch Laptop (Black) List Price: $1,399.99 Sale Price: $950.00 You save: $449.99 (32%)   Eligible for free shipping! Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Description

Sony VAIO F Series: Entertainment and Gaming PC with Premium Performance Locked and loaded for all-out performance, the Sony VAIO F series laptop in black (model VPC-F137FX/B) is forged for gaming and built for quickness...

Features

• Accessories - Standard Capacity Lithium-ion Battery (5000mAh), AC Adapter, Power Cord; Software Bundle - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter (Purchase a Product Key to activate a full Microsoft Office 2010 suite), Norton Internet Security 2010 30-Day Trial Offer, 1-Year Limited Warranty
• Intel Core i7-740QM Quad-core 1.73GHz Processor with Turbo(R) Boost Technology up to 2.93GHz
• 6MB L3 Cache
• 6GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM (8GB max.)
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive

Sony VAIO TX670P W $55.00 Buy It Now for only: $65.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

New Sony VAIO F Series+i7 2720QM+1080P+8GB+640GB+Blu Ray Drive $1,499.00 Buy It Now for only: $1,499.00 Buy It Now

Sony VAIO S VPCSB190X 133 i5 2410M 4GB 500GB $299.99 Buy It Now for only: $799.99 Buy It Now | Bid now

Sony VAIO Z VPCZ21DGX B 131 i7 2620M 4GB 256GB SSD $2,500.00 Buy It Now for only: $2,500.00 Buy It Now

SONY VAIO LAPTOP W CAM 2GHZ 2GB 160GB HD WORKS $80.00 Buy It Now for only: $110.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

Sony VAIO VPCEG1BFX W 14 Notebook PC White $499.99 Buy It Now for only: $499.99 Buy It Now

Sony Vaio laptop $420.00 Buy It Now for only: $500.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

Sony VAIO VGN TZ298N X Laptop Notebook Ultrabook $400.00 Buy It Now for only: $500.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

Sony Vaio X VPCX115KX B 20GHz 128GB SSD 2 Batteries + Case $795.00 Buy It Now for only: $795.00 Buy It Now

Sony Vaio VGN TT190 64+64GB SSD Running RAID +250GB HDD HDMI 4GB DDR3 WebCam $1,844.00 Buy It Now for only: $2,494.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

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SONY VAIO Laptop PCG 7Z1L Upgraded Windows 7 Office 2010 USA Warranty $369.99 Buy It Now for only: $369.99 Buy It Now

Sony VAIO VGN CS215 Laptop Notebook $250.00 Buy It Now for only: $350.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

GREAT CONDITION Sony Vaio VGN NR220E Win 7 100GB HD 15GB RAM 16GHz Dual Core $250.00 Buy It Now for only: $350.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

Sony Vaio VPC F115FM i7 Nvidia330M Steam Dirt 3 controller GREAT CONDITION $659.99 Buy It Now for only: $659.99 Buy It Now

Sony Vaio E Series Laptop $410.00 Buy It Now for only: $460.00 Buy It Now | Bid now

SONY VGN TT17GN Blu Ray Full HD Vaio Laptop $1,022.36 Buy It Now for only: $1,183.95 Buy It Now | Bid now

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Yesterday I received my Windows 7 Launch Home Party package. I posted the photos of the package on our House Party home page.

Yes, the Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition was in the party package.

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E Laptop. Sony's eSupport site indicates:

Information about upgrade and support for Windows® 7 for the VGNFZ180E VAIO® model will be available when Windows® 7 is officially released by Microsoft. Please check back then for further information.

Hey, I will be hosting a Windows 7 Launch Party on the day Windows 7 is officially released. I need to be able install it way before then.

I am posting this using my Sony Vaio Laptop that is running the Windows 7 Ultimate I received in my House Party package. Here is how I upgraded my Sony laptop to Windows 7:

I really did not want to take the chance of losing my Vista setup and decided to first clone my hard drive and install the Windows 7 upgrade on the new hard drive. I have been thinking about upgrading my laptop's hard drive anyway. Sony laptop owners take note though: You may void your warranty if you replace your laptop's hard drive. Read your warranty first. If you follow the steps I followed, you will preserve your current hard drive in its current condition and you can swap it back in if something goes wrong.

I had already purchased a Fujitsu MHZ2320BJ-G2 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive and a APRICORN EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL 2.5" USB 2.0 Hard Drive Upgrade Kit from my favorite online shopping site:

Here are the simple steps I followed:

1. Deactivate any DRM software like iTunes.
2. Turn off the computer.
3. Take the old hard drive out.
4. Put the new hard drive in the laptop.
5. Put the old hard drive in the Apricorn's external enclosure and connect enclosure to the computer's USB port.
6. Turn the computer on, put Apricorn EZ Gig II CD in the DVD Drive and boot from CD.
7. Select the Clone Hard Drive option and follow the prompts. Make sure to check Typical Upgrade and clone your hard drive as is even if your new hard drive is larger than the old one. You can resize the partitions later. Be carefull in checking source and destination drives. Remember: Your source drive is your old drive that is connected to the USB.
8. The process, in my case, took about three hours. At the end I disconnected the Apricorn external drive and took the EZ Gig CD out and rebooted to my new hard drive.
9. Final step is to put the Windows 7 DVD and start the upgrade process.

I am happy to report that the Windows 7 upgrade process is painless. My computer did not freeze in the process and it did not take long.

All my programs, including Lotus SmartSuite which supposedly had compatibility issues in Vista, are working without any problems so far. All my settings, documents, pictures and favorites are intact. Wireless connection did not require any adjustments.

I have a better laptop with a larger and faster hard drive and a much better operating system.

Apricorn EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL EZ Upgrade Universal Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit List Price: $39.00 Sale Price: $34.48 You save: $4.52 (12%)   Eligible for free shipping! Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Description

Universal Hdd Upgrade Kit F/ All Notebook Computers Pata & Sata

Features

• USB 2.0 external hard drive enclosure for Windows 2000 and XP
• Backup software compresses data to less than 1/2 its original size
• Password protection for backup images
• Includes data transfer utility for Windows, USB aux power cable, USB cable, and quick start guide
• 3-year limited warranty

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This is exciting!

Official launch day for Windows 7 is October 22, 2009.

Thousands of people will be hosting Windows 7 Launch House parties starting October 22, 2009. I am one of them.

I am a confirmed party host. As a guy who declared Windows 7 Rocks after trying the Release Candidate back in May, I am excited.

Still working on the details of the party. This is going to be good!

Here is the link to my party site: http://houseparty.com/party/188530

Microsoft made Windows 7 RC available for download. You can get it here.

Way back when Windows Vista Beta became available, I did write a blog post titled "Vista Sucks". It was a huge hassle to install Windows Vista. Although it improved a lot with a lot of tinkering and Service Pack updates, Vista is not my favorite operating system. After I downloaded, burned on a DVD and installed on my trusty desktop computer in less than 40 minutes without a single error message and test-drove it a few hours, I do believe Microsoft Windows 7 deserves the "Windows 7 Rocks!" headline. It may still to early for the final judgment but so far I am impressed with Windows 7.

Its been a long time since we had any contests on Blog Oh! Blog. To add to your winter happiness, I am announcing a mega contest where everyone gets a chance to win not one, not two, but 10 Super Premium WordPress themes made by the coolest theme designers from all over the Internet.

Mega Contest - Win 10 Premium Themes worth $700

Those are pretty cool WordPress themes.

Even if you do not win, a visit to jai's blog is well worth it. He has great looking free WordPress themes available for download.

Last week I had to put together a site in a few hours that would contain videos, mp3 files and a simple contact form.  Considering the lack of time I decided to use WordPress to put this site together.

Step One was to pick a theme that I can quickly make it look distinct without spending much time. I found the Options theme by Justin Tadlock was perfect for the job. I have not studied the documentation and not even using most of the options available but it was a good choice since it fit the project.

Step Two was to add some static pages. One was a location page where I wanted to use Google Maps Plugin for WordPress I mentioned here before. Unfortunately it only displayed the map as a gray rectangle. Figuring that it was due to style sheet issues and not having time to go through it, I opted to use the iframe embed of the Google Map which worked perfectly.

I also wanted to have some documents available on this site. I like scribd and the ipaper format so I went ahead and got the WP IPaper Plugin. It did not work at first. Since I really wanted to have the IPaper version of documents on this site, I decided to spend a little more time to troubleshoot which led me to discover that the plugin works only if you do not put the access key in quotes. Cool!

It is time for the videos and I realize what a hassle to embed videos in WordPress... Well, after a quick search online I came across FLV-Embed Plugin. Since I already had FLV copies of videos available this plugin was a perfect choice.

To have the mp3 files embedded, the clear choice was Audio Player WordPress Plugin.

When it came to deciding on the contact form, I quickly scanned and tried a few plugins promising to accomplish this task effortlessly. Finally I decided to use cforms II. It is easy to understand, install, use and customize. It does the job!

In less than three hours Swift299Gas.com was up and running thanks to WordPress and all these theme and plugin authors who make them available.

Microsoft has done it again!

If you enjoyed the pain of upgrading Vista get ready for another wave of pain.

A week ago I downloaded the Vista Service Pack 1 and ran the update on my Sony laptop which halted at boot. Tried the safe mode and saw crcdisk.sys as the last entry when the computer halts. A quick search about crcsisk.sys revealed that others had the same problem and some had to go through re-installing vista to fix it. Scary stuff... Luckily I had made a set of recovery disks and a quick system restore solved the problem of not being able to boot.

So I waited for Vista Service Pack Update to be delivered by Windows update. Today, after prompting I let the update go through again. Call me brave or stupid... Guess what? My laptop halted at boot with an error message about acpi.sys being corrupt which required another recovery disk repair and rolling back the update. This is ridiculous.

Here are the results of search about Vista Service Pack Problems on Yahoo. This is scary stuff.

I just can not understand this blunder by Microsoft that is called VISTA... How is it that a new OS upgrade demands more memory, more computing power, more money to get these things and runs slower? How is it that by upgrading to a new OS you end up dumping some of your peripheral hardware because there are no drivers available? How is it that when it is time to update this new OS, it halts your computer? How can a multi-billion dollar company make such a blunder?

Six months ago, it was nearly impossible to find a new computer with Windows XP. They are easier to find now. We just ordered two with XP professional loaded from DELL.  And I heard Microsoft will discontinue Windows XP. Unbelievable! I think Vista offers a great opportunity to enter the Computer OS market for a company who can put together a reliable, feature-packed, compatible linux distro. I also hear Vista runs better on MAC. How Ironic! You got Apple building computers with INTEL chips and making them capable of running Microsoft software while Microsoft trying to turn Windows into a Mac look-alike with all the useless eye candy. First thing I do with a computer loaded with Vista is to turn off all that Aero stuff.

I hope computer and hardware manufacturers start putting some pressure on Microsoft to get its act together because their tech support lines will be getting a lot of calls after this Vista Service Pack 1 start going through the Windows Update.

UPDATE Jan 9, 2009 >>>

After I re-imaged the my hard drive to the original setup, I went through the Vista Service Pack 1 update without a problem by following the instructions on Sony Support site:

When using the Windows Update utility, the installed Microsoft Hotfix KB948343 may block the installation of the Windows Vista® Service Pack 1 (SP1) update if the following drivers are also installed:

Sigmatel Audio Version 6.10.5511.0 (or earlier)
Intel Graphics Version 7.14.10.1322 - 7.14.10.1403
UPEK finger Print Version 1.9.2.99 (or earlier)

If you are experiencing this issue, you will need to download and install the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Stand Alone KB936330 update from the Microsoft Download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b0c7136d-5ebb-413b-89c9-cb3d06d12674&DisplayLang=en.

IMPORTANT: The Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Stand Alone KB936330 file size is 434.5MB, and may take a while to download.

Incoming search terms:

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Well it worked! Followed the basic upgrade instructions and everything went without a hitch as it should.

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

WordPress 2.5

First Impression: Admin area looks a lot cleaner.

I will be posting about my experience with WordPress including the plugins and themes I use and recommend.