Oi! I'm getting serious beta sickness from Vista, and if I don't get me some answers from Dell and the Rotting Heap Formerly Known as a World-Class Software Company, I am going to start bringing out the Hasta La's in a serious way.

Thanks to all who have helped with previous ones, which I posted on:

• March, 2005: Sat 05 Mar 2005, Sun 27 Mar 2005


• April, 2005: Sat 16 Apr 2005, Sat 29 Apr 2005


• May, 2005: Sun 15 May 2005, Sat 28 May 2005


• June, 2005: Sat 11 Jun 2005, Sat 25 Jun 2005


• July, 2005: Sat 09 Jul 2005


• August, 2005: Sat 13 Aug 2005, Sat 20 Aug 2005


• September, 2005: Sat 03 Sep 2005, Sat 17 Sep 2005


• October, 2005: Mon 03 Oct 2005, Sat 15 Oct 2005, Sat 29 Oct 2005


• November, 2005: Sat 12 Nov 2005, Sat 26 Nov 2005


• December, 2005: Sat 10 Dec 2005, Sat 24 Dec 2005


• January, 2006: Sat 07 Jan 2006, Sat 21 Jan 2006


• February, 2006: Sat 04 Feb 2006, Sat 18 Feb 2006


• March, 2006: Sat 04 Mar 2006

Special thanks to dankamongmen and nikolasco for replying to my last query.

Here's my fortnightly update:

• 1. More Windows Woes: I still can't find a substitute for Ctrl-W, or an OS-wide option for suppressing interactive "allow move" dialogs. I did stumble across the Restore Point creation tool, but I'm not sanguine about it being useful in light of possible hardware glitches.


• 2. Windows applications problems: Rather than muck about more with IE7 or Opera 8.5, I have installed Mozilla 1.7.12 (the classic browser, not Firefox). This shall serve as my secondary LJ/GJ browser, and grant my simultaneous access to other (more) important things.


• 3. Non-Vista question - latest Athlon processors: dankamongmen gave me some good tips, and I'll follow up this week during Spring Break.

Now for the new questions:

More Windows Woes

Here are a few more of the persistent problems I am having with Windows Vista. I'm not 100% sure it's all Vista-specific, but I haven't had these particular problems with XP Pro or Home.

• Limitation to 1Gb of RAM. After spending several days wrestling with the 533MHz 1Gb RAM DIMMs that I bought from Kahlon.com, I found the Dell 9100 Inspiron series (an older but similar line to that of my Inspiron 6000) had some 10/100 Ethernet NIC or 802.11b WiFi NIC glitches that caused Dell to temporarily set MAXMEM at 1024Mb. Edit, 05:00 CST Thu 23 Mar 2006 - I sure hope this doesn't last until the July, 2006January, 2007 release.
  Any ideas?


• Silencing of headphones. A similar problem seems to cause Windows Vista to play no sounds when phone jacks are plugged in. Unplugging the headphones results in normal playback from notebook speakers.

Windows applications problems

• Studio MX, MX 2004, v8. Does anyone else have trouble keeping Studio MX, MX 2004, or v8 stable under Windows? I have MX under Windows 2000, MX 2004 under XP, and Studio 8 under Vista. In every case, it inevitably locks up or starts bluescreening.


• Other applications instabilities. Does anyone else use WinXP (or WinVista) who's had significant rise in the frequency of lockups (where the whole OS freezes) recently?

Structured Query Language (SQL) servers

Which SQL server would you rcommend for a CS department with KDD rsearch group and an introductory DBMS course for undergrads? I would like to have my students do their own installations on at least one system each.


Thanks in advance,
Banazir