The Learning Blog

Been away too long, so what’s up?

Been up and going, skinning off that so-called “Writer’s block” with a purchase of a netbook, a much lighter notebook. The MSI-Wind U100X, is that notebook.

It doesn’t come with any OS, so just like any computer enthusiast, I installed initially with Windows XP Pro, and since the notebook comes with a CD full of XP apps and drivers, then there were no problems tweaking and installing the apps for my new Wind.

MSI Wind

However, we’re humans, and we’re supposed to develop our abilities and skills, and like the average human that I am, I looked over my neighbour’s yard, and yes, the grass is greener on the other side, and thus my obsession to change my operating system became so needlessly emotional that without any hesitation, I went first to Windows 7 beta version which I downloaded weeks earlier. No problem with that, installation went smoothly. However, beta it is, problems with hardware though rare was still there, so I had to resort to Vista drivers if needed. But then, the experience was good and exciting.

But then, something happened, I came upon a forum called MSIWind.net, an unofficial site for all things Wind, including installing Mac OSX, or the so-called Leopard. Immediately, I looked around for anything about using the Mac in my Intel-Atom-run notebook and lo and behold, I downloaded an ISO file called MSIWindosx a Mac installer which is catered for the MSI Wind. So I downloaded that and, at first, I just couldn’t work it properly. I tried dual-booting using Windows 7 and Mac OSX but somehow the use wasn’t that good. Even more, my USB CD/DVD Drive was not working good. So I decided to hold off my experiments and went back to XP. But this story didn’t end this way, in fact, it became better.

Once in a while, I went over the forum and do some little research, getting some tips and tricks that I can use while tinkering my software in my Wind, looking for ways to increase the performance without sacrificing battery life (the so-called Holy Grail of mobile computers). You have to know that in laptops, and notebooks, battery life is very much a problem: increase the power consumption, you’re going to lose your battery life to a few hours. The MSI Wind isn’t an exception. My Wind has a 2200 mAH battery and that only will get me to about less than 2 hours, purchasing a 6600 mAH battery will get me more time. But now I digress, what happened is that I saw a forum thread that talked about tweaking the BIOS to solve some software problems. And this I did, I went to my Wind’s BIOS and activated the AHCI which, I think, was in the category of USB devices if I’m not mistaken. All of a sudden, everything became as what I expected, I can immediately use my USB DVD drive without hitch.br /br /I then installed again Windows 7 beta and Mac, using EasyBCD in win 7 for dual-booting, now I’m happily typing in Mac OSX, and doing my transcription projects in win 7 since there were still some issues regarding my keyboard and foot pedal in the mac.

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