Ever wanted Firefox to blend in seamlessly with Vista or Windows 7’s aero theme? Now you can in the shape of the ‘All-Glass Firefox mod, based on Glasser’.

Firefox 3.5 users can download from here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/ga-IE/firefox/addon/12181

Firefox 3.1 users can use this previous version:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7336

If you couple this add on with ‘Personal Menu’ you can make firefox look really nice you can download personal menu from:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3895

I promised I would do a video of how fast your laptop can go with a good SSD drive. Here it is…

Friends will know that I got an amazing deal on a server machine from Ebuyer - £149 for a Xeon-based Acer Altos G330 Mk2 – currently available from Memory Express for £445!!  I’m still not certain that the deal I got wasn’t a pricing error!

Getting a server PC is better for Windows Home Server because you want something expressly compatible with Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 on which WHS is based.  I have to tell you, my server – even with 1gb of RAM – EATS WHS alive.  It’s a wonderful experience.

Well, I got my Ebuyer email today, and there’s another special on a server at the moment which would also make a superb, if not rather overpowered, WHS box:

HP Proliant ML115 G5: £199.99

Team that with WHS: £99.99 (has become MORE expensive over time?!)

Then you would do well to shove in a couple of Western Digital GreenPower HDD’s to supplement the 160gb system drive:

2 x 640gb Western Digital GP: £105.88

That’s just £405.86 for a machine with a QUAD core Opteron, and ready to run WHS and the new WHS2 (‘Vail’ - when it becomes available) for many many years while breaking no sweat!  Compare that to the undeniably lovely HP Mediasmart, which tends to come in at around £350 with 512mb or RAM, 500mb storage and a 1.8ghz SEMPRON CPU, although newer models have been announced.  This self-build is therefore amazing value.  I suppose the one thing that the HP has is it’s size – it’s tiny!

Let me know if you’d like a Proliant WHS though, and I’ll build it for you for a very reasonable premium

Dan

Ok, so here’s the heart of my new HTPC system.  I realised that IGP (integrated graphics) are finally at the point where I can ditch my graphics card (and get good money on Ebay!) and still get top Media Centre performance – this thing will do HD MKV and Blu Ray decoding smoothly with its built-in ATI HD3200, and uses less electricity and generates less heat.  All good for the living room HTPC!

Dan

Again, does it count when I don’t actually get the thing out of the box?!  It’s a processor and a heatsink – what’s the point?!  This is going into my new HTPC build.  It’s the perfect CPU – 2.6ghz so plenty of horsepower for Vista HP for now, and Windows 7 once it’s stable enough for the living room.  The other benefit of course is that it’s 45nm, so runs very cool, sips lightly at the electricity, and requires very little cooling (therefore very quiet).

Dan

New background spotted on the installation process in Windows 7.0 Build 7057.

Sorry no posts recently – too much fun playing the SSD!  Lots of unboxing to come though…

It occurred to me the other day when I was testing the SSD that the most significant element of the boot up period was actually the Dell initialising it’s BIOS, and obviously that time is a constant on the boot whatever the hardware attached.  So I thought I’d time it, and it turns out that the BIOS takes a full 16 seconds to initialise!

That means the final scores on the doors are:

Vista 64 + Seagate Barracuda: boot up time (excluding BIOS) = 3 minutes 0 seconds

Windows 7 64 + Samsung SSD: boot up time (excluding BIOS) = 0 minutes 25 seconds

Does make me wonder if other motherboards get through this quicker – anyone have any other experiences they’d like to share?  Pop them in the comments.

Dan

Initial reactions are - it’s amazing…

My brand new Dell Studio XPS i7 is a beast, but I suspect it has a rather cheap and cheerful hard drive.  It’s never been that quick to do things, which is rather surprising given it’s a Core i7 with Vista 64bit (SP2RC) and 6gb RAM!  The drive is a Seagate Barracuda, but with Vista it just isn’t that quick:

Vista 64 cold boot: 3m16s

Of course, that’s with all my apps, Antivirus and MS Mesh installed.

I installed the Samsung 64GB SSD, and Windows 7 (build 7048) 64bit, and the result was:

Win7 64 cold boot: 41s

Wow! Of course that’s a clean install of a new OS, but the difference is significant.

It’s worth adding that the install takes up 18.4GB on the disk, and that the installation took 18m48s in total.

More to come I’m sure tomorrow, when more hardware arrives

Dan

Does it reallycount as an ‘inboxing’ if all it comes in is a Jiffy Bag and antistatic wrap?!

I picked up this Pinnacle 7010ix dual 2x DVB-T / 2x DVB-S tuner from an Ebay seller, as they don’t seem to be on the market any more.  In fact, it seems to be quite the sleeper card.  The only decent information about this card seems to come from an AVForums post.  Pinnacle seem to have forgotten that they ever sold it on their website.

I’m excited, because in Windows 7 this card should give me four tuners, including the opportunity to take HD from Freesat, all for free without any subscriptions.  It is also one of the few multi-tuner cards that doesn’t suffer from incompatibility with the currently available builds of Win7. Given that it was also cheaper (£37) than my original dual Hauppauge Win Nova-T, then it’s win/win situation!

More information as the new HTPC gets built.

Dan

I recently attended the Microsoft After Hours seminar in London. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the emphasis was on fun ways to interact with technology.They covered Microsoft’s Live products, I have to admit that the Live branding kind of gets on my nerves “its Live” as apposed to? Anyway… I have to say Microsoft really have an impressive array of services that are free for you to use some of which inlcude MESH, Photosynth, Maps, Skydrive and Mail. I have to admit I use Google Apps but hey! You have a choice. We were also lucky enough to get a sneak peak at the new XBOX 360 Dashboard which looks good and it comes out today for the lucky people who manage to get hold of the download.

The guys also went into areas of home automation which have to admit is a subject that gets me very excited the talk even covered robots! One of the guys even has his own robot…. just make sure that Sarah Conner doesn’t find it.

They also demo’ed the PDC build of Windows 7.0 on an Acer Aspire One and it looked as though it was running really well with a decent rating of about 3 if I remember correctly.

The main thing that I came away with though from the evening was a good feeling about Microsoft it was nice to see people so enthusiastic about the jobs and embracing technology. Its inspired me to look into .NET and maybe even try and get into the XNA scence.

Now where can I get those “I’m a PC” stickers from?