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Today we watched opening ceremony in HD on our big screen. A day late, but I prefer to watch things on my own schedule, even sporting events! The ceremony was Inspiring, especially in all the High Definition glory on the wall.

You will need specific setup, to bring the best quality available Olympic coverage to your Big Screen TV. First thing you’ll need is Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate edition. Next, you will need an XBox 360 connected to home network, or you can skip this in case your Windows Vista PC is already hooked up directly to TV (it happens!).

Now, simply install TVTonic add-on on your Windows Vista MediaCenter PC, and start it. You can use it on your Windows Vista PC or naturally view it via XBox 360, using the Media Center extender functionality.

Actually, TVTonic brings a whole world of Internet TV to your local computer. It is actually similar to Miro and others, in that it simply pulls RSS feeds of Podcast style broadcast shows. It comes with pretty impressive guide with all kinds of Internet shows, including Dilbert, and GameTrailers in HD, both of which me and the kids enjoy tremendously!

Of course, you can always simply visit NBC Olympics site and watch highlights or even full events, steaming and online.

I am very pleased with this progress! The TVTonic client is completely free and brings home very high quality video, for convenient viewing on the Big-Screen TV. We have configured it to download specific sports, like soccer and fencing, automatically as they become available!

If you have Vista 64 Bit edition (very rare still), they are promising to make it available soon (via EngadgetHD).

An important announcement from Microsoft, something called Mesh, is happening tonight at Midnight eastern time.

I am into guessing game, again, mostly because it is fun, but also because in a funny coincidence, I left a rather long rant at Yahoo’s own Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. What started as a short comment, turned into longer and I think worthy read about future of operating environments for us all. Jeremy doesn’t post too much, which is exactly how I prefer it and thus he is on my ‘read-first’ list. Check out my comment right here.

Back to the issue, I really think this one will be about cloud computing and web services, or cloud services, or whatever we want to call them services. And of course, their integration into applications and the OS, finally. Some applications already integrate nicely, such as Windows Vista Photo Gallery. And I hope they will finally take it to the next level.

Speaking of Vista, and of Windows 7. I hear people continue to trash it, but seriously, why?! Yes, it is bloated. Yes, it is incompatible with a lot of old software and drivers. But, that was obvious (just to me?!) going into it! Only install Vista on newer core 2 duo and faster PCs with 2GB ram. That’s obvious! Next, do NOT install older software on it, wait for lazy/suicidal/incompetent 3rd party companies come out with updated software specifically targeted at Vista! Or, use Microsoft’s new built-in software. Yes, be like the rest of us and use the primitive Windows Movie Maker for your HD editing… What? Microsoft were nice and anti-trust friendly by not killing Adobe and Sony and others in this market, and coming out with their own Killer Video Editing program. And how do Adobe/Sony/etc repay them?! Where is Vista optimized version of our favorite video editing tools, a year and a half later? Almost here, I bet…

Probably by the time your read this, the announcement will be out. For some reason official Mesh site is acting up (stress-testing was skipped, I bet). So instead, check out Scobleizer commentary on this "breakthrough" technology.

Yesterday Scobleizer reminded me about the whole Mac versus Vista debate, with his post about Vista on Dell’s Tablet. It seems not only Robert is having that issue, here is an Attorney with similar complaint:

… another reason why I prefer Apple computers. Mac laptops sleep when you close the lid and wake up instantly when you open the lid. You can do this over and over again, for months, and never have to reboot. Very few, if any, people have this experience with Windows computers.

First, directly to the point being discussed. There are excellent controls provided by Windows Vista to make this happen on PC laptop! In fact, this was one of the first things I adjusted when our new Dell laptop arrived. Yes, I had to dig deep inside myriad of Power Management settings in Control Panel. The question, of course, is what was Dell and Microsoft thinking!? Why isn’t this CONFIGURED PROPERLY out of the gate?

Mac has really come of age, and with Firefox running well on Mac, it finally is a leading second choice for desktop. But, here’s my message to Steve – we are not imbeciles! We can figure out how to use 2 Button Mouse! And it isn’t just me, I hear from a friend who otherwise loves his Mac Laptop, that his biggest complaint is that there is no second button on the mouse!

I have been running Vista on my primary PC for over half a year now. It is a monster machine, with 4gb ram and 4 cores processor, so I really don’t feel any sluggishness or anything. Quite the opposite, in fact, but would it be even faster with Windows XP? I never did run XP on this PC, so we may never know. And even if a single process would be faster on XP, I am not sure it would be as fast/efficient in utilizing 4 cores with as many processes as I run…

PS: If you want to know what exact settings I put on Vista on our Laptop, just ask in comments, and I’ll promptly put up a detailed write-up there.

I am continuing to encounter strange Adobe Flash problems in Internet Explorer 7. We have a bunch of PCs here at home, and after upgrade to IE7 several had broken Flash. I had to search all other the web and try many different things before fixing it.

Few days ago I noticed that Adobe Flash stopped working on my main Windows Vista PC also, probably after Zune software installation, since that’s the only thing I installed recently. Though, there were also several Vista patches on Tuesday, that may have played a part in this.

I was able to fix it and here are the tips for you to try, organized from simple to hard:

• Go directly to Adobe installation site for Flash, Pay Attention and Uncheck Google Toolbar (seriously, it’s like Spyware installer!). Follow installation steps and make sure to reboot your PC after installation.
• Still doesn’t work? Try downloading Flash Installer package from Adobe. Follow directions and download the Installer package at the end of step 3. HOWEVER, on Vista, do an extra step and Shut Down Internet Explorer + Find IEUSER.EXE in Task Manager and End Process on it. Then proceed to install Flash as downloaded above
• Still broken? You are in serious fix… You will need to install Microsoft software and fix some registry keys. Then try again the step above. Reboot and Voila.

Of course, if you still can’t fix it, just use Firefox browser, it seems to work just fine even while IE keeps insisting that "Flash not installed".

Now that you have your Flash fixed, you have some options. First, educate yourself on our planetary crisis by watching the trailer below. Next, proceed to enjoy more Flash capabilities and features, courtesy of Adobe. Of course if they would get their act together, and talk in over with Microsoft or whoever, you wouldn’t have to mess with all that Adobe Flash installation mess to begin with. Enjoy!

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that Cyber Terrorism has won. It has all of us running scared, increasingly not trusting our own PCs, we are afraid to visit even secure bank web sites, and overall don’t trust the Internet.

Today I was trying to get ToonTown going on an old laptop. Actually, it was the second PC where I had to struggle with the same fiasco. Internet Explorer 7 upgrade made ActiveX controls, even approved and signed ones, unusable! I knew enough to move toontown.com domain to trusted status, but that did not suffice! Apparently, even in Trusted domain, signed ActiveX controls aren’t simply ‘allowed’ any longer. I had to manually reconfigure IE security settings for trusted site to make ToonTown work.

How would your average joe user, trying to setup ToonTown for his impatient child, supposed to figure this out?!? The usual end result would be very annoyed parent, and traumatized child, left without a game and with agitated screaming/cursing parent.

Is this a technology issue? I don’t believe so, same technology worked just fine when I first installed ToonTown for my kids a year or so ago. And this isn’t just Microsoft and IE crazy security. The most popular Linux distribution today, Ubuntu, also uses similar UAC features.

And you think it’s just the Internet that has us running for hills? Endless productive corporate hours are lost waiting for PC to respond while it’s too busy trying to scan for "viruses", and "trojans" and other such pests. The Antivirus that is probably installed on your computer as you read this, isn’t keeping you safe as much as it’s there to kill the speed of your computer, in half, and sometimes more!!

Are there any good news?

I say we stop running and take charge. It is clear that security software is a necessity in these turbulent times, but lets be smart about it! As companies, don’t release Antivirus software to all your desktops that endlessly scans all file accesses. Scan once a week, or only overnight, and NEVER in real-time!

As home users, lets be smart about web sites we visit, software we and our kids download and what antivirus programs we use on our PCs. Turn off your real-time protection, most often it’s just there to kill your whole PC experience. If you are going to click on that urgent email from "PayPal" and give out your username/password to a phishing site, No Amount Of Real-Time Protection can help you!!! Configure your antivirus software Not to run all the time, and only scan on schedule, overnight or once a week is usually plenty! Really, the only thing you need in real-time is that built-in Windows Firewall, just make sure to REVIEW any prompts asking you to open it .

To summarize, I want to pimp Windows Vista a little. Even with it’s quirks, it is a more secure alternative to XP today. Furthermore, if you insist on running that Antivirus, Windows Vista introduces background priority scheduling for disk access. This feature should make your computer much more responsive, even as Antivirus is chopping away at it’s resources trying to "protect" you in real-time.

Let us prepare for round 2 of the cyber-wars, and let’s make sure we, the good guys Win this time!