Sage’s Computer – Vaio Laptop

So today, April 1, 2007 is a day of crazy emotions. Yesterday, my Acert Aspire 5670(I think) melted down. Literally melted down… there were times I couldn’t actually touch it, it was so hot. So I took it into Compusa for the 3rd time because I’m 90% sure the hard drive died. I did that at 8:30 on a Saturday night. So I went out today and got another computer. My Acer was less than a year old.

I happen to LOVE technology. So, while I was exhausted from the idea and process of losing my computer yet again. I’m totally jazzed with my new computer:

It’s a Sony Vaio VGN-AR300
Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 @ 1.66GHz
2046 MB of Memory
32-bit Operating System
142 GB Hard drive

In an effort to help my sanity in the future I wanted to record everything I do to this computer to get it to where I like it.

So, here are my customizations:

  • Installed Firefox 2.0.0.3
      Extensions:

    • ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox)
    • SEOpen
    • del.icio.us Bookmarks
    • StumbleUpon
    • Web Developer
    • PDF Download
    • Image-Show-Hide
  • Macromedia Studio MX 2004 – The disk for this is in the box along with the serial number
  • Pinnacle Studio 10 – I installed it from the box. Then I went online and got the update which is currently Studio 10.8 BETA. The edition I have from the box does not work on Vista at all.
    • I bought some “Pinnacle Premium Titles”. If you do a search in gmail you’ll find them.
      Product Name: Titles: Professional
      Amount: $9.99
      And they gave me a “Dream Glow effect”. Doing a search in gmail should find that too.
  • I installed VZAccess from one of the multiple cd’s I have for this to let my Motorola Q run as a modem.
  • I downloaded Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center 6 (32-bit) from Microsoft for Vista for my Motorola Q. This was instead of the Microsoft ActiveSync 4.2 on the Moto Q disk. 4.2 doesn’t work with Vista. Doing a search for “Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center” turned it up.
  • From the Moto Q disk, I installed, “Dial-up Networking Software” to get the Motorola q drivers to use it as a modem on my computer.

    • SlingPlayer for my Slingbox. Found here: http://us.slingmedia.com/object/KB-005296.html

  • Added Google Notebook to my personalized Google homepage for reminders.
  • Installed Picasa
  • Installed SmartFTP
  • Installed ISO Recorder v3 from here: http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/Vista.htm to burn iso images to disk.
  • Installed HyperCam2 from I:\Downloads
  • Installed Switch Sound Converter – PAID from I:\Downloads – this is used to make audio files for Asterisk.
  • Installed Xilsoft3GPVideoConverter-Paid from I:\Downloads – this is to convert video files from my Motorola q to editable video files.
  • Installed putty.exe
  • sftpdrive installed to map a drive to the sagerock file server through ssh
  • Installed WinSCP to access ssh like ftp. It’s free and pretty nice.
  • I bought and installed SftpDrive to map the SageRock files remotely through shell access.
  • I just bought Flash Video MX to convert movie files into Flash. It’s in the Downloads folder with its access codes.
  • I just bought YellowPagesCrawler to crawl Yellow Pages files for mailing and calling. It’s in the Downloads folder in it’s own folder.
  • I turned off “User Access Control” (UAC) in my user account. YellowPagesCrawler was trying to access an .xml file in the root C folder. I’ve also had some trouble in the past accessing some other files in the root folder. This seemed to take care of that.
  • I just bought TotalRecorder for recording audio presentations. It’s in the downloads folder in it’s own subfolder.
  • I bought WebcamMax… it allows me to capture multiple cameras and the screen. It’s license is in the downloads folder. I got the lifetime license.
  • I have been putting some movies on my flash drive using Handbrake and DVD Decrypter
  • I added MPEG_Streamclip and Super for batch video conversion. Super was recommended by YouTube and Streamclip has a lot of high user ratings. Streamclip also lets you mash two videos together while it converts them. I don’t think Super allows that. Both were free.
  • WinDirStat It’s a hard drive space visualizer so I can see where all my hard drive space is going.
  • Installed UltraVNC (http://www.uvnc.com/download/) because the free VNC no longer supports Vista
  • Installed eFax Messenger – it doesn’t support Vista 64
  • Installed S3 Firefox Organizer (S3Fox) for interfacing with Amazon S3
  • Installed Lightroom 2
  • I’m running SyncBack to back up data. I’ve got a Western Digital hard drive at work where I’m offloading pictures and videos using this tool.

    • Removed:

  • Napster
  • Quickbooks starter edition
  • Norton Internet Security