Solo Technology

K-Meleon Tab Management

04.Jan.09  Leave a Comment

I’ve mentioned the K-Meleon browser a few times and really like using it on older computers — and on my little Eee netbook. It doesn’t use much memory or processor and is very compatible with modern sites.

I’ve had one minor annoyance with it though: Getting links to open in new tabs instead of new windows. For whatever reason, I just couldn’t seem to find the right settings to control this until recently. (I got by with right-clicking and choosing open in New Tab but that gets tedious after a while).

Turns out the setting is very simple, I just hadn’t looked in the right place yet.

With K-Meleon running, go to Edit –> Settings (or hit F2). In the left, select “Browsing” – not the “Tabbed Browsing” right below it:

Then click that “Window Diversion” tab. That’s where the magic happens.

Now clicking links destined for a new window will result in a new tab. Just that simple!

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ClamWin Clobbered Me; Trying Out Antivir

30.Dec.08  3 Comments

My home machine has been running Vista 64-bit for a couple months now. Initially I didn’t bother to install an antivirus program, but since I have profiles for kids and visitors I decided I’d better add something to cover me when those folks are using my rig.

I went with ClamWin as it has served me well in the past. Lightweight, but no “on-access” scanning. I figured daily/weekly scans should do the job well enough. Until recently, that is…

I’m not sure what changed (if anything), but when this machine tries to run the weekly scan it is just completely crushed. To the point where the mouse pointer won’t even move! It is truly horrible — and completely useless — while the scan runs. And after letting it run for 6 hours today I’ve given up. ClamWin has been uninstalled.

The mystery is that I don’t know if it was always this slow or not (normally I’d be at work all day for the weekly scans). Or maybe it is related to my recent install of the Vista SP2 beta? I should really be a bit more diligent on this issue, but I really just wanted to get back to a usable state.

Moving Along…

On a more positive note, Antivir now works on my machine. When I last tried it (a few years ago) things did not go so well, but it seems to run nicely now. And hey, a recent Maximum PC article said reasonably positive things about it so we’ll see how it goes.

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Looking for A Windows Mobile Utility…

29.Dec.08  Leave a Comment

I’m a big fan of using my Windows Mobile phone and IMAP to keep current with my work email. Regardless of where I am, I always see my mail within 10 minutes — and that has been a real lifesaver a time or two.

However, there’s one huge drawback to the WinMo IMAP implementation: No real scheduling options.

Sure I want to know about that email between 7am and 7pm but after that? Not so much… but right now I still get the little *bee-ding* chime to let me know email showed up at all hours of the day.

Help me lazyweb! Surely there’s a little app or utility out there that’ll let me have a bit more control of when email is checked(again, using Windows Mobile)?

Or…

Perhaps a more interesting utility would be one that changes notification sounds/styles depending up on the time of the day. Sure, keep on getting that email every 10 minutes, but after 7pm just flash the alert light and don’t vibrate or make noise. Hey, that’d work nicely. Perhaps even better actually.

Anyone seen anything like either idea? I need fewer distractions and being able to control when I have to see those after-hours emails would be a wonderful start.

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VMware Server Bridging Problem (fixed)

22.Dec.08  Leave a Comment

Sometimes you just have to give credit…

Earlier today I installed VMware Server on a machine at work and then built a client Windows 2003 server on it. The install went smoothly, but once it was up and running I found I couldn’t get it on the network. In fact, I couldn’t even ping the gateway by IP address.

I installed the VMware tools thinking maybe I was missing drivers, but that didn’t fix it. I spent way too much time messing around with the client’s IP configuration as I was assuming that the issue must be something I’d typed or set wrong. However, after an hour of no progress I had to suck it up and search the web.

Fortunately, I found my answer almost immediately at the #ifdef blog. Turned out to be a VMware Server configuration issue – it was grabbing the Hamachi LAN adapter instead of the Ethernet adapter.

The fix was to force the VMnet0 controller choice rather than allow it to bridge to an automatically chosen adapter. By doing that, the virtual machine was able to get an IP on the LAN.

A few clicks and I was up and networking properly.

I love finding answers on other blogs. Ironically, I searched for something last week and found the answer in a post I’d written here 2 years ago. Kind of embarrassing… I didn’t remember writing about it until I saw the search results!

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