bioneural.net » Windows

Access Bluetooth devices in Windows on Mac

Bruce — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:57:53 +0000

Users of Parallels Desktop for Mac find a number of advantages apply to booting Windows in a virtualized environment that is integrated with OS X. The shared access to hard drives, keyboards, networking, displays etc. does not unfortunately extend to your Mac's built-in Bluetooth. When I reviewed a Bluetooth-based GPS data logger recently I wanted to compare the Mac tools to their Windows equivalents. A small investment in a Bluetooth USB adapter was all that was required to make this possible. You could, of course, use Apple's Boot Camp and start your Mac up in Windows which—with Apple-supplied Bluetooth drivers for XP—makes your built-in hardware available. I would have done this, but my Boot Camp partition is unavailable as a boot drive in FireWire Target Disk Mode (it's a long story). After a bit of searching I discovered a solution hidden away in the Parallels Forum: Turn off built-in Bluetooth on the Mac; Start Parallels and insert the CD to install drivers for a Bluetooth USB adapter you purchased earlier (mine cost £12); Plug in the adapter when prompted, and wait for it to be recognized; When the installation is complete, turn on your external Bluetooth device and pair it; After pairing you should be able to access any Bluetooth services supported by the device. If you forget to turn off built-in Bluetooth on the Mac you'll encounter this message as OS X tries to appropriate the adapter:

Remote assistance that works

Bruce — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:18:24 +0000

From bioneural.net:

It can be a struggle to provide remote assistance via Windows Messenger when both parties are behind NAT routers, even when UPnP is supported by both devices and computers, and port forwarding is in use. UltraVNC SC is a custom-configured "single click" VNC server used to initiate a support request; the "expert" runs UltraVNC in listening mode and forwards port 5500 on their router (the novice doesn't need to configure their own router). More here. This worked for me where RealVNC and Screen Sharing (vnc://x.x.x.x) failed.

I don't want any Safari!

Bruce — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:50:05 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Installation of software you didn't actively choose to install is malware. I'm referring to Apple's recent decision to force Safari 3.1 on hapless Windows users via Software Update. How can you "update" a product that isn't installed? Wife: Have you got anything without Safari? This is bad form Apple. At least Ars consider this browser a much-improved and stable "true competitor".

FeedDemon gets the Geotag Icon too

Bruce — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:04:09 +0000

From bioneural.net:

FeedDemon, purportedly the most popular Windows-based feed reader, automatically detects geotagged feed items. Form version 2.6.1b1 it uses the Geotag Icon as a visual identifier for plotting the location, "hidden" in metadata, via Google Maps. FeedDemon has lots of other great features, including synchronisation with NewsGator Online which I use when travelling (in conjunction with NetNewsWire on the Mac).

Internet Explorer for Windows for Mac

Bruce — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:21:08 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Developing on an Intel Mac but need to test websites under Internet Explorer? Virtualization is one option, and you could run multiple IE versions side-by-side in Windows. Another option is ies4osx for multiple IE versions in an X11 window in OS X—sans Windows (£) or Parallels (£)! The ies4osx app is free and depends on an OSX wine port, Darwine. See Derek's write-up for more details and discussion.

Remote Assistance and NAT routers

Bruce — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:54:34 +0000

From bioneural.net:

My parents have a PC running Windows XP. From time-to-time they encountered glitches, and it's been useful to establish a Windows Messenger connection and thus provide remote assistance using the tools built into the OS. The remote "expert" (that would be me) is able to see what they see on-screen, and to take control of the screen to help diagnose problems. It worked fine so long has my parents had dial-up Internet, even when I was asisting from my Mac via Parallels. But when they got broadband this functionality broke—all because of their NAT router. When Dad asked for help after conversing in Messenger the connection would fail, and I would be notified that "Remote Assistance connection could not be established because the remote host name could not be resolved. Please try again." Microsoft have a Knowledge Base article on the subject. The issue arises, apparently, because our computers are not in the same private subnet or because Microsoft Windows Firewall does not allow the computers to connect to Microsoft .NET Messenger Service servers. To resolve this the article details the process of making a custom RAInvitation.msrcincident file containing the public IP address of the computer needing help, and e-mailing this to the expert who can then use it (within a certain time frame) to make the connection and provide assistance. It's a hack, but it works. The thing is, there should be no need for a hack. Microsoft says: If the computer that sends the Remote Assistance invitation and the computer that receives ...

Testing multiple IE versions simultaneously

Bruce — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:16:07 +0000

From bioneural.net:

I finally allowed the automatic upgrade to IE7 in my Parallels installation of Windows XP. Up to this point I had been testing my site in IE6 using Parallels and then booting (via Boot Camp) into Windows XP to test it in IE7. Thankfully there is an easier way. Much easier. As discussed on Position Is Everything, using multiple standalone installations of IE to debug your CSS can be problematic. Furthermore feeding different CSS to various IE versions using conditional comments is a royal pain when testing their effectiveness requires rebooting. The ideal solution would be to install and run clearly identified multiple versions of IE without having to do any hacking to make things work. Enter TredoSoft's "click and go" installer which does just that. I'm now running IE7 and IE6 at the same time (other IE versions are <1% each according to my Mint stats). Internet Explorer 6 and 7 running side-by-side

Hold off on that upgrade to Vista

Bruce — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:35:12 +0000

From bioneural.net:

PCWorld says Windows Vista is incomplete; expensive; wants a new PC; is time-consuming; doesn't obsolete Windows XP; and may be the best reason to buy a Mac.

Hasta la Vista, beta

Bruce — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 09:25:21 +0000

From bioneural.net:

First impressions count. They can leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling created out of the hope and ripples of excitement a product generates... or, they can leave you feeling like you feel having installed the public beta of Microsoft Windows Vista. I like to know what all the fuss is about plus I wanted to debug my site for IE7 (err, I mean bypass the bugs in IE7 to work with my site): two good reasons to download and install the beta of Microsoft's finest OS. Aside from the undeniable "God is it slow or what?", the other in-your-face personal observation has to be "I've seen this before—in Mac OS X Tiger!". Choose your flavour One of the niceties about choosing Mac OS is the simple choice: there's just one desktop version. OS X is full-featured, period. With Windows it's different: you have to think about what features you might possibly need in the future, and balance these with the increased cost of having them. With Vista the choice is schizophrenic: That said, Windows Anytime Upgrade means if you choose the wrong flavour, you can buy more features. No mention about getting money back, however, if you dug deep and found no use for bloatware ;-) The beta installs the Ultimate flavour, still missing several anticipated features which have been cut from the OS as Microsoft discovered it couldn't deliver them. For Ultimate, "the most significant customer audience is the 'dual user'—the person who wants to have one PC to use both at ...

Windows Vista beta 2 public preview

Bruce — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 08:57:09 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Windows Vista Beta 2 is available as a DVD-sized public download. Unfortunately it doesn't (yet) work with Parallels virtualization software on Intel Macs.