Mike's Quarter - the internet blog » Rummaging the WWW

How to find Sony Vaio Drivers ?

Mike — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 09:22:07 +0000

I love Sony Vaio laptops. They all look great and are marvelous pieces of technology. They cost a lot too, but that’s another story

However, there’s a bigger problem than this one: Sony delivers a CD with Sony Vaio drivers for their laptops only for an extra $64.99. That’s quite a lot for something that most of the producers offer for free. But, if you might have to reinstall your operating system on your laptop, you’ll definitely need those drivers. So, let’s see where you could find them online and preferably for free.

First of all, you should check if you have a recovery partition. To do that, you just go to your desktop: my computer > right click> manage > disk management . There should be a partition up to 4 or 5 GB with no drive letter. And this would help you get the drivers needed. From here on it’s self explanatory. This only works when the OS you’re installing is the same as the previous one.

But what if you had Vista and now you want XP? That’s the most common problem with Sony Vaio Drivers.

Let’s see. First stop should be this site. You just select you device and see if they have the drivers you need. In some cases though, they might not have your model. Or, if the laptop is new, they will only have drivers for Windows Vista. And, if it’s too old, they’ll give you drivers for Windows 2000 or something… So, although this option is worth trying, you might not get what you need from the official Sony support site.

You can go then to this other site . Chances are that if you did not find your laptop on the previous site, you’ll find it here. Just search for the exact model and hope they’ll have it. If they do, you might want to take your time, as download speed is insanely low (below 1kb/s for me). But you could be luckier than me and have a better connexion.

If you still did not manage to find the drivers you need for your Sony Vaio laptop, here comes the hard part. You have to go search them by hand. Let’s see you need a driver for a Lan device named Realtek F453HS . How do you know that’s the name of it? Cause you read the manual, noted the version number when you had the previous SO installed or used a program that would help you get drivers automatically (we’ll talk about this kind of programs later on). So, if you know the name of the device and the OS you’re having, just go on to Google and type: "Realtek F453HS driver for Windows XP" . You’ll probably end up with lots of results, you’ll just have to try them out and see which one of them works for you. If you’re scared of this hard work, you can always call your dealer and buy that $64.99 CD with drivers…

There are also solutions on the market that claim they can scan your device and find the best drivers available for it, like this one. They would cost you like 30-50 bucks though. You can install them for free and get them to scan you PC. You’ll see what kind of drivers they find and only if you wish to download them via this program, you’ll have to pay. I can’t give you any advice here. Sometimes they do find proper drivers, sometimes they don’t. If you have many laptops and you regularly change OS on them, buying such a software could be an option. Otherwise, you can just use the free part for finding out what kind of drivers you might need and search for them manually on Google. At least that’s what I do.

In the end, if none of these solutions worked for you, you’re doomed. You just have to buy that bloody CD from Sony with the required drivers for your Sony Vaio laptop. And next time, think ahead before buying a Vaio (kidding)

That’s about it. Hope this was helpful in finding your drivers. If you have any questions, just post them via the form below.

How to hack Yahoo Messenger passwords

Mike — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:00:02 +0000

I’m sure you’ve always wanted to know your friend’s Yahoo Messenger password, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this post

And that’s why i have something for you that will help you crack this password. I had it for a while and i’ve used it sucessfully several times. What do you have to do? It’s simple. Just right click on the link bellow and select Save target as.. (or Save Link as) and save it on your desktop.

Right click on this link here

You now have the file yahoo.bvs on you computer. If it’s called yahoo.vbx.txt , just press F2 and delete ".txt" so it will be called "yahoo.bvs". And then just double click the file to run it. Just follow the instructions and in a couple of seconds you’ll have the pasword. Pretty simple, ay?

PS: People, this post is a trick. The thing you are going to download is just a prank that should make you panic a little bit and stop trying to hack Yahoo Messenger. Cause it doesn’t work anymore So please stop sending me hard words via comments. It’s just a joke and you were supposed to amuze yourself

Yahoo looks forward for a brand new facelift

Mike — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:08:20 +0000

It seems the guys at Yahoo are really struggling to revive their flagship: the portal. Thus, a couple of pics of a brand new front page redesign were released online today, looking for the public reactions to this new look.

I for one don’t use any of the services on Yahoo except its mail, but this one also has lost a lot of ground in front of Gmail in my preferences list. But, if i would be a regular Yahoo user, i believe i would appreciate the new design that seems to be more light-weighted and with less intrusive elements present on the page.

Also, i would like the left sidebar, that allows me to group together the applications i need: mail, weather, news, etc so i can easily access them from the front page. From the pics, it also seems that the new Yahoo portal will allow users to read their Gmail mails here too, but i don’t quite get it why someone will use this feature…

Anyway, from what i see now, i kind of like the new Yahoo facelift and am looking for a final versions to be implemented on the site as soon as possible. But that doesn’t mean portals are so 90′s and their glorious days are far lost in the past. And a new face won’t change this… But nobody can’t blame them for trying, i guess…

Oh, not to forget, the pictures with the new Yahoo face came from here.

Diablo 3 – the end of my social life is here

Mike — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:50:50 +0000

From the moment I’ve heard Blizzard is preparing the new Diablo 3, one quote rested in my mind: "the end of my social life is here" . Cause after all, that’s what the sequel of one of the most appreciated and played game in the history of PC games will represent: hundreds and hundreds of hours in front of the PC, building up for the final encounter with Diablo.

And here’s the first trailer of Diablo 3:

The story starts 20 years after the death of Diablo, Mephisto and Baal in Diablo 2, when the forces of evil once again begin to threaten Tristram. You will be able to play with one of the five characters in a completely new interactive universe. A brand new and improved graphic engine will be used for Diablo 3, that will allow a higher level of detail, vivid effects and an interactive and destructible enviroment.

Diablo 3 will probably not be launched this year, as another great Blizzard sequel is scheduled for the end of 2008: Starcfraft 2, so for now you’re safe, you can still have a social life. For now…

Good templates are not just a dream anymore

Mike — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:39:39 +0000

A friend of mine asked me a couple of days ago where could he get some decent templates, as he was trying to put together a couple of sites and he does not have the required skills to design them by himself. And also not the money to hire a paid designer either.

I haven’t used templates for a couple of years so i said i’ll take a look. And indeed i did, but i didn’t go directly to the big sites selling website templates. No, i looked for a couple of smaller ones that would provide good quality for a low fee. And that’s how i find DreamTemplate.com .

Well, the name sounds a little pompous. The templates found on this site aren’t really ripped out from my dreams, but they are of high quality, that’s a fact. But besides having well designed templates, this site has some other advantages:

offers over 300 decent free (Yuguuu!) templates.
full access to the entire 3000+ database of web templates cost only $59.95.
for every template, besides the HTML pages you also get the already sliced PSD so you can easily adjust things you don’t really like.
if you’re a webmaster, you can make an affiliate account and start selling templates on your site. For every new person you manage to bring in DreamTemplate’s boat, you get 30% of the $59.95 fee. and i must add that’s quite a fair percent, ay?
also, you don’t get just web-templates, but also Word or PowerPoint ones, plus a couple of logos and company identity IDs.

But enough about this. Let’s just have a look at a couple of the templates:

Well, and lots of others. All you have to do is go to their site and have a look. I can almost guarantee that the next step will be to press the Register button. Cause after-all, getting a big bunch of quality web templates for a decent price is quite a good deal, don’t you think? I know my friend did, and hopefully he will be satisfied with the deal…

A couple of whys

Mike — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:32:58 +0000

There are so many unanswered questions in my head. And i can’t seem to find the answers; perhaps you can help me somehow.

Here are just a couple of the questions. I was wondering:

why Firefox and IE aren’t as good at resampling pictures as Opera is. Just take a look at this cool wallpapers site for an example (the pics on the sidebar).
why did this guy take down my banner without even saying something, although we agreed on a 125 x 125 banner exchange some time ago
why don’t i have enough trust in Perry Marshal to buy his book, even though so many people recommend it? Perhaps because I’ve been burned too many times.
why haven’t I came with a good April’s Fool Day post, although everybody else did. Oh, and they all seem to dream of selling their blogs for fortunes like Daniel Scocco here.
why is Smashing Magazine one of the few sites i check daily. Perhaps because they give up free things like these, that’s why
why am i too lazy to finish the ebook I’ve started writing a couple of weeks ago? Others seem to be doing great with ebooks, like her and her. And it’s not because they are girls, for sure…
why didn’t the guys from WordPress think to add a Quick Answer button next to each of the comments in the new WP 2.5 comments administration panel. That would have come in handy.
why Chinese people think like this and I don’t
why do i still keep using Adsense although they pay so poorly?
why should i use Twitter to tell people what am i doing… Like there weren’t enough things i have to do daily… But others seem to like the thingy, like Al and Patrick. What’s the catch, i don’t get it…

That’s it, just 10 quick ones. I hope i haven’t bored you too much. And i also hope I’ll get at least some answers. If not… there’s always Yahoo answers…

Source for the pic: here

Wetpaint – have your own wiki in just 2 minutes

Mike — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:29:05 +0000

Wetpaint is not a painting service but a wiki-system. And one of the best out there. Unlike most of its competitors, Wetpaint’s system is faster, better looking and a lot easier to use.

Their motto states it all: Creating your own Wetpaint wiki in as easy as 1,2,3. Cause yes, you can set up your own wiki in just 3 simple steps, that should not take you more than 2 minutes to complete. Here’s mine for example.

Wetpaint is not a fully customizable Wiki and can not be hosted on your own server, but it’s free and pretty good looking, thanks to the number of templates you can use for your page. Being free comes with a price though: a 160 x 600px Google Ads cell on the left sidebar. But come on, that’s not such a big deal.

This free wiki uses a great user interface. It’s a WYSIWYG editor, with just the basic functions, perfectly suited for the ordinary wiki contributor that lacks advanced knowledge of HTML. If you are a savvy webmaster and this thing bothers you, think about your readers/users. Using complicated styles and features will only be translated in countless hours spent fixing what your contributors made wrong. And not from malevolence, simply because they weren’t able to use the advanced functions properly. Thus, keeping the system simple saves you from a lot of headache.

Wetpaint wiki management system is suited for mass wikis, where every user can bring its contribution, but can also be used as a private/invite only wiki. This way, if you need a specific wiki for your employees for example, or for your school, Wetpaint is exactly what you were looking for.

In the end, all you have to do is give Wetpaint a try . I could be rumbling here for hours about it, but the only way you’ll be truly convinced of its quality and usability is by making your own Wiki. In the worst case, you would have lost 2 minutes of your life. But i assure you, once you gave Wetpaint a try, it will become your favourite hosted wiki system out there.

Different browsers, different faces of your site

Mike — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:58:12 +0000

Have you ever heard about Flock, SeaMonkey, Galeon or Epiphany? I believe not. But you surely know what Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari are. Internet browsers, of course. Although most users use one of these four, there are lots of other tiny browsers out there used by a bunch of people. Thus, you might want to make sure your site is properly displayed on most if not all of them.

How can you do this? You could install all of these browsers. But, if you consider most of them have several versions, you would end up with like… 100 browsers on your system? Not really that many, ay?

Actually, i was kidding. You can’t do this, but you can use this tool/site : Browsershots It does exactly what its name says: provides shots of your site in different browsers. You have lots of options, and you can even choose to see if there are differences between the way the page is displayed on the same browsers on different operating systems: Linux (Ubuntu), Windows, Mac OS and BSD. There’s only one problem, you have to wait a little to get all the shots. A little more actually, like 1-2 hours if you select all the options. But hey, it’s free and it’s useful, so we can get over this minor disadvantage.

I found it a pretty interesting thingy that every web developer should use when coding a new layout for its blog/site. Of course, making a theme that would be properly displayed on all these browsers is a Sisif’s work. All you can do is make your code as standard compliant as possible, and hope the rendering engines used by future browsers would respect this standards (although this does not seem to be the case of the new IE8).

Spock – find people in a different way

Mike — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:38:03 +0000

Let’s say you want to find information about a certain person on the Internet. What do you do? You go and type that person’s name in Google or Yahoo and get a bunch of relevant (but not always) links? Well no, cause there’s something better suited for the job: a certain service called Spock.

Although in beta for more than an year now, Spock is a special search engine, designed to provide useful information about people. You just have to, and i quote, "Type in a name, email, location, or tag to find people" in the search box and press enter. And… the results speak for themselves. Not only that they are almost every time relevant, but they are displayed in a proper Web 2.0 style. For comparison, see the picture below, with the results pages from Google and Spock put next to each other. "Which one looks better?" is an obsolete question in this case, ay?

People search has never been easier, that is for sure. The creators of Spock claim the site has over 1 million people in its database, and growing fast.

There are several types of searches you can perform on Spock, but the most important ones are after a tag or a specific name. Let’s say you search for "Larry Page" . The results page shows you that there are over 200 people called Larry Page, but the first one in the list is probably the one you were looking for. Great relevancy, right?

But just search now for "ugly" . I swear that before i even pressed the search button, i was thinking exactly at Michael Jackson. And who’s in the first position, as the ugliest human being around? Well, him. Once again, the way this search engine delivers results is amazing. You can always try different search combinations, like "James Bond", "Top gear" or "blonde" and you’ll always be satisfied with the provided results.

From the results pages you go directly to a person’s page. Cause like on Hi5 or something, each persons has its own page, where you can find pictures, news, web appearances, tags and other persons, all related to the one you’re searching for. Brilliant ay? And again, all the info is presented in a very clean and light template.

Actually, there are so many things i like about this search engine that i could be rumbling on and on for hours. That’s why I’ll let you find all these cool features of Spock by your own. But one thing is certain. Spock is by far the best people finding search engine on the web. Actually, it has no real opponent, as similar services like LinkedIn or ZoomInfo are focused on more narrow niches. That’s why Spock will almost certainly be a success. I for one I’m going to use it whenever i will need to find information about certain persons. How about you?

Internet Explorer 8. Good day paps!

Mike — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:30:37 +0000

After the imminent appearance of Firefox 3, Steve (the other Steve, not this one) and his boys decided it was time to do something with their old and slow browser. Thus, the new version, Internet Explorer 8, is here. But is it any good? Hmmm…

My colleague from work, who is kind of out software expert in the office, tested it today. You can find the review of Internet Explorer 8 here, but it’s in Romanian so i doubt you’d understand anything from there So, here are the main conclusions:

Internet Explorer is a lot faster than its predecessor and is almost as fast as Firefox 3 Beta 3.
Most sites are really screwed over by the new IE8 (here’s a pic from GMaps)
IE8 claims to be standard compliant, but Acid3 says otherwise, as the browser got only a 17/100. Way worse than Firefox 3.
IE8 comes with two major addons: Activities (a couple of useful functions accessible via a contextual menu in each page) and Webslices (that allows you to subscribe to a certain portion of a site).

So, what does these mean? Internet Explorer is still the old paps, with a couple of bionic enhancements. But would they be enough to compete the overgrowing fox? Personally, i didn’t like Firefox 3, so i guess i would give IE8 a chance. But we shall see. In the mean time, if you want to give it s spin yourself, you can download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 from here.

Mike's Quarter - the internet blog » Rummaging the WWW

How to find Sony Vaio Drivers ?

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