Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"512-byte sectors have been the norm for decades. The 512-byte size was itself inherited from floppy disks, making it an even older historical artifact. The age of this standard means that it's baked in to a lot of important software: PC BIOSes, operating systems, and the boot loaders that hand control from the BIOS to the operating system. All of this makes migration to a new standard difficult."

Upgrades apparently does not a faster computer make. In order to keep up with our insatiable need for storage and to squeeze every last bit out of hard drives, manufacturers are making changes and these changes will negatively impact Windows XP machines. I am sure there will be plenty of people saying that you should no longer be using XP, but if someone has a computer that does everything they need it to, why upgrade? At least when your hard drive dies, and there are bound to be some computers out there that have 9 or 10 year old disks that are on the brink of failure, you will have a very good excuse to get a fancy new computer instead of just replacing the hard drive! I suppose this is the price of progress. In order to get more out of our systems, we need to keep everything current. I still have a few XP machines laying around, mostly because the cost of upgrading the OS is not worth it, but as much as I enjoy the aging OS, there will come a time when I must learn to let go.

"It looks to have all started in an HP Mini 1000 that had been modified to use a 1.6GHz VIA C7 processor and for the tablet portion a 533MHz Samsung Arm core chip. Check the video below for a closer look at this amazing device!"

Developed by III, an organization in Taiwan, the Hybrid HP Mini is another stab at the modular concept for computing. At its heart is a modified HP Mini that runs Windows XP. However, you can remove the screen which becomes a tablet that runs Google Android. Try and recall the very old idea from IBM called the Metapad. This would be very similar. Do not forget the Celio Redfly, Palm Foleo and Windows tablets using the slate format. So far, the only one I know of that has been successful at all are the slate tablets, and only within certain vertical markets at that. Of course, the whole consumer market has changed, but the way in which this Hybrid has been put together just does not look practical to me. The idea of using two different operating systems could be a bit frustrating for some users. While I can see a benefit, since each OS is better suited to a particular physical format and size, I cannot see any real benefit of this over a two device configuration, that being a phone and a netbook. At least its an attempt at something new and different.

"We've shown you how to upgrade to the Windows 7 release candidate and walked you through what's new when you get there; now let's take a look at how to enable Windows 7 XP Mode. Windows 7's new XP Mode lets you seamlessly run virtualized applications alongside your regular Windows 7 applications—so your outdated software will continue to work."

One of the recently touted features of Windows 7 is that'll it will include a Virtual Windows XP so you can run your old programs. While it is fairly straightforward to set up, Lifehacker provides a handy wizard in case you have any problems. Unfortunately, not all PCs will be able to take advantage of Virtual Windows XP. I'm fortunate enough that my computers support it and I am quite certain I'll be using this for quite some time to come. While I have never had any significant problems with Vista, some programs have behaved oddly and could use the XP treatment. For an OS that has was released in 2001, the legacy of XP remains strong.