HP Slate Tablet PC gets Video ReviewedApple must be already happy to see this coming. During the Keynote from Ballmer at CES 2010, HP’s Slate PC was demoed. Not much of a surprise, the Tablet is just average.

The HP device shown up at CES did not appear to be the dual-screen tablet that’s the subject of much rumor and speculation, under the code-name Courier. Neither the HP video above nor Ballmer, however, showed the device from the back. However, as Ballmer had trouble bringing up the second Seth Meyers video from the device’s Media Center connection (due more likely to power problems affecting the router than with the PC itself), he did not try turning the unit over, which he might have done if there were a second screen on the back.

“We’re talking about something that is almost as portable as a phone and as powerful as a PC running Windows 7,” stated Ballmer, in introducing the HP “slate” along with two other models. “The emerging category of PCs really should take advantage of the touch and mobility and capabilities of Windows 7, and are perfect, perfect for reading, for surfing the Web, and for taking entertainment on the go.”

The unveiling video is way too impressive, but, only in theory.

HP’s entry in the Windows 7 “slate” product category.

But what matters most is, the device failed to wow those expecting a true competitor to the mythical Apple tablet iSlate.

As PCWorld quotes it, “The HP tablet is a basically a color e-reader running Amazon Kindle software, with few other details besides a sub-$500 price point and an estimated arrival on the market by mid-2010.”

The idea is so disappointing that Microsoft and HP’s shares fell a day after, according to BusinessWeek.

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Despite an attractive design, there is nothing particularly special about them. The over-hyped, yet disappointing slate computers presentation from Microsoft leaves a chance for Apple to once again win the game. That’s unless hype gets the better of them as well.

Windows 7 has proven to be much more stable than it’s predecessors. Of course those BSODs (blue screen of deats) have reduced and in some cases totally vanished.

Related: Understanding and Decoding BSOD (blue screen of death) Messages

So what is exactly is the New Black Screen of death ? There are instances when you log in and the screen goes black with nothing but a minimized Explorer window. Since it apparently looks Blank and Black, this “crash” is termed a Black Screen of Death. This is usually caused by a malware infection and sometimes affects XP and Vista as well as older servers and sometimes it totally out of no reason.

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Luckily, Prevx has a solution in the form of a quick-fix. All you need to do is download their Black Screen Fix applet and it will clean up your system shell for you. It’s a  small download (48KB) and you can easily download it even while affected by the Black Screen by opening task manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del), clicking on “new task” and typing this command:

RUN ->

“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe”
“https:://info.prevx.com/download.asp?GRAB=BLACKSCREENFIX”

(With the quotes)

Not many of us have used the early versions of Windows, that existed nearly 2 decades ago.

Many of us believe that “Windows upgrade” is buggy and doesn’t work well when you upgrade from older to newer version. We have often recommended a clean install but this video is here to prove every one wrong — A Man uses VMware to emulate old hardware and install DOS to Windows 1.0 and then upgrade it to all the subsequent versions, all the way upto Windows 7. And surprisingly, it worked.

The adventurous guy didn’t include the Windows ME, a big failure. The journey  is documented as a 10 minute video examining the upgrade process a Great recall for all Windows versions.

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Twenty Years of Backward compatibility

Before starting systematic upgrades, The Secret of Monkey Island and Doom II were installed to test DOS functionality in each version of Windows.

The results of the experiment are pretty amazing–the games worked in every version of Windows but Vista, which had clumsy DOS support, and problematic everywhere. Twenty years of backwards compatibility? Whoa!

As far as installation times are concerned, they peaked  with Windows 98 and Vista–So we conclude, its possible to upgrade from Windows 1 to Windows 7 without much trouble.