Seismatters

Some time ago, I stated quite emphatically that I was never going to change from Windows 2000. Well, I have to eat my words.

I am finding that some applications struggle under a 32 bit OS and I finally bit the bullet and purchased a new laptop. This time an HP Pavilion 15-e007TX.

It’s a 4^th generation i7 based machine and available at a good price. It only comes with a DOS OS though, so the challenge was to install Windows 7, when HP are pushing Windows 8. It was quite a struggle to find all the drivers for W7 – something I am not alone in, it seems many people want W7 rather than W8. Not surprising really.

 

For anyone interested, here is what I ended up finding and using:

For network go here (the driver on the HP site didn’t work for me):

http://www.realtek.com/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=13&PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

And  download this:

Win7 and WinServer 2008 R2 Auto Installation Program (SID:1606895)

 

Download HP’s ‘HP Support Assistant for Microsoft Windows® 7 (32/64 Bit)’

from here:  http://h18021.www1.hp.com/helpandsupport/hp-self-support.html

 

Then run the diagnostics section and let it update. It will probably only update the Bluetooth driver but it’s a start

 

Download the media card driver from here:

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/swdDetails/?javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.prp_bd9b6997fbc7fc515f4cf4626f5c8d01=wsrp-navigationalState%3Didx%253D%257CswItem%253Dob_123664_1%257CswEnvOID%253D4059%257CitemLocale%253D%257CswLang%253D%257Cmode%253D%257Caction%253DdriverDocument&javax.portlet.tpst=bd9b6997fbc7fc515f4cf4626f5c8d01&sp4ts.oid=5405424&ac.admitted=1383744398575.876444892.492883150

 

Then go to HP’s FTP site   ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/

And download and install the following Softpaqs

 

sp62227     Intel Rapid storage

 

sp62582     Intel Graphics driver – important, do this before the Radeon drivers!!!

 

sp62228    Audio drivers

 

Install the USB drivers form here:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/confirm.aspx?httpDown=http://downloadmirror.intel.com/22824/eng/Intel%28R%29_USB_3.0_eXtensible_Host_Controller_Driver.zip&lang=eng&Dwnldid=22824

 

Finally the Radeon Graphics drivers from here:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

 

It is important that the Intel Video drivers be loaded before the Radeon ones. You will not be able to load the Radeon drivers until the Intel ones are installed.

 

Some good links here that might be useful to some:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Other-Notebook-PC-Questions/How-can-I-download-drivers-for-Windows-7/m-p/2952677

 

Once the drivers were installed and the updates to the updates of the Windows updates were complete, it was a matter of making Windows 7 useable.

The first thing of course is to turn off all the Aero crap. Whoever came up with that deserves a slow and painful death.

 

Then to get the network activity monitor back, download and install this:

http://www.itsamples.com/downloads/network-activity-indicator-setup.zip

 

One thing that had me going for a little while was that external USB hard drives were not recognized. Luckily it was a simple solution – go to Device manager select each of the USB Root hubs shown, and for each one turn off the power saving option.

 

There are a bunch of other tweaks possible, but it is very difficult to locate settings in Windows 7. My solution was to use a package called “Ultimate Windows Tweaker” from here:

 

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista

 

It takes away a lot of the pain and frustration.

 

Despite my misgivings, Windows 7 is turning out to be useable but it will never be as good as 2000.

Is it faster though? In some areas, yes, but not much. Even with a 4 core processor, and 8GB of RAM it is only a little faster than my 5 year old Fujitsu with Core 2 Duo with 3GB.

I had hoped the new processor, 64 Bit architecture and extra memory would have made a significant difference, but it doesn’t. I can only assume the added processor power is consumed by the OS. A bit sad really. I still look forward to the day when I can move to Linux.

 

It seems that my last post (since removed) upset some people.

It was intended to provoke a reaction, and by some accounts, I guess it was successful.

The equipment vendor involved claims to have a solution to one of the issues with their equipment. To date I have seen little information though. Maybe there will be more when I get back next month. I guess I will just leave it at that.

 

Despite the not to be mentioned again issues, the last trip was certainly better than the one before. The crew is working through some very challenging terrain, and making quite good progress. Things could always be better of course, and perhaps if advice given was taken, then things could be. By the time I get back, they should be in more interesting areas, with challenges of their own – sand dunes being one. It has been some time since the crew, and in fact I have worked in dunes. It’s probably going to be a bit of a struggle to start with for all of us, but it is the nature of seismic crews to manage anything thrown at them. They aren’t necessarily happy about it, and nor they should be, but seismic crews do venture where no man has gone before. A bit like Captain Kirk I suppose, but without the Enterprise.

 

During my last break, I got interested in Android tablets and wrote a small app for, of all things HSE. And no, I have not suddenly turned queer and embraced cosmetic safety in all its gory glory. My approach remains quite pragmatic – I believe the essence of safety is common sense, not hiding in an office writing 200 page reports about the dangers of wanking in the shower.

 

That being said, camp inspections are important and a lot of a rep’s time is taken up in write-ups of inspections. This is where my new app comes in. It runs on an Android Tablet and allows the rep to easily and quickly generate useful incident reports.  I call my system SeisStop, as it is loosely based on Stop Cards as invented by Dupont. It is two parts – the Tablet App and a small application on a PC that allows for editing and printing the incidents recorded by the tablet.

 

The Tablet App allows you to take pictures, make notes and tag the usual issues.

Drop down lists make for easy selection of areas, departments and responsible party.

(This one is not the crew BTW, but me at home, I probably should tidy up)

 

The PC part (not shown here) allows each report to be edited and printed. One big thing is that the pictures are tied directly to each report. Much better than having to sort it all out later on.

 

It worked well for me and I plan to develop it further, possibly to a commercial stage.

I am working developing more apps that should be of interest to reps and contractors. The only downside was that the Tablet I have (Acer A1-810) is not easy to read in bright sunlight.  This is an issue common to most tablets I have seen. It just meant I did most of my camp walk arounds in the early morning.

I highly recommend the Acer Tablet though. It performs very well and is priced very reasonably.

 

For those interested in these things, an update to SMTAN2 is available which adds some extras in the Statistics page. See here:

http://seismatters.com/SMT%20Analyser2.html