Posted in Future Howard, Hardware, Virtualisation on Jul 30th, 2009
Some time ago I posted at length about Sony’s decision to disable the Virtualization Technology features of the Intel chips in their high-end laptops, namely my Vaio Z11.
Well thanks to the sterling efforts of one man and his EFI hacking skills, we now have a solution as this image demonstrates. The image on [...]
Posted in Hardware, Infrastructure, Internet on Mar 10th, 2009
It’s one of those “why didn’t I think of that before?!” moments. BT are selling a device called the iPlate at the moment claiming that for 7 out of 10 people it will increase their DSL speed by filtering out the noise from the bell wire in your master socket. By all accounts it does [...]
I rebuilt my main desktop a few days ago and ever since I’ve not been able to connect to it with Remote Desktop. I click connect from the other machine and the buttons grey out for a moment before they reset. No error message is displayed. Checking the event log shows a number of Application [...]
Posted in Hardware, Tech Support on Sep 12th, 2008
If you close the new Sony Vaio Z series laptop while it is running in Stamina Mode (using an Intel GMA 4500MHD chip) it WILL NOT wake the screen up when you resume from standby.
This video shows my new Sony Vaio Z (VGN-Z11VN) running the XP downgrade drivers version 6.14.10.4953 dated 21/05/2008 from Sony. The [...]
Posted in Hardware, Virtualisation on Sep 3rd, 2008
Update 30th July 2009: See this post for details of a confirmed VT fix for the Z11. I’m using it now!
I love my Sony Vaio Z. It’s a wonderful bit of kit – exactly the power/portability ratio I wanted. It has enough grunt to play the odd game in “Speed” mode while giving 6 [...]
Posted in Future Howard, Hardware, Microsoft, Tech Support on Aug 29th, 2008
I’m rebuilding my new Sony Vaio Z with Windows XP, and as usual there are a load of tweaks I need to make to the OS before I feel “at home” again. Since the fingerprint reader software on the new build has an annoying habit of popping up info balloons on every boot – regardless [...]
Posted in Hardware on Jul 18th, 2008
It looks like my experience of awful customer service from iRobot’s UK service center, Domotec, was an anomaly. Either that or the spotlight of publicity, combined with my emailing a number of iRobot’s senior management caused someone to ensure policy – and warranties – were being properly applied.
I called Domotec’s service number this morning, after [...]
Posted in Hardware on Jul 18th, 2008
I’m lusting after the new Sony Vaio Z Series which doesn’t come out in the US until mid-August, and I’ve no idea when it comes out in the UK. Annoyingly, while the US site allows you to configure your system from scratch – including putting in dual solid state drives – Sony UK limit us [...]
I can’t remember when I first played with a ZX Spectrum. I know I must have come to the party relatively late since I was only 4 when it was released, unlike Chris who was old enough to have one at launch. This weekend he rescued one from his mum’s rubbish bin, complete in the [...]
Having ditched Freeview for signal quality reasons, it’s time to talk about getting the satellite cards to work under Vista Media Centre – something that until MS release the “Fuji” update is not as trivial as you’d think! Vista’s tuning architecture doesn’t understand DVB-S (or -S2), so can’t natively tune satellite cards, so we need [...]