After spending few hours trying to connect, changing all the settings in the router, restarting the router like hell, I was about to reinstall the OS on that laptop. But as I never worked on Vista, I thought google-ing a bit might reveal similar experiences. And yes, I was so right… one of the first results was stating:

This issue occurs because of a difference in design between Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Specifically, in Windows XP SP2, the BROADCAST flag in DHCP discovery packets is set to 0 (disabled). In Windows Vista, the BROADCAST flag in DHCP discovery packets is not disabled. Therefore, some routers and some non-Microsoft DHCP servers cannot process the DHCP discovery packets.

The simplest thing you have to do is disabling Broadcast on your wi-fi card, by setting the REG_DWORD key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID}\ DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag to 0, where GUID is your wi-fi card ID.

Other options plus the description of the whole story is available here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233/en-us

… and yes, the problem is solved in Windows 7.

Good luck!

There was a post on Google blog saying they are now offering twice the space for quarter the price. I went immediately to my account and saw that I now have 80 GB of quota !!

… and the first option is to buy 20 GB for $5 ! Long live Google !

One funny thing here: check the “round” prices for bigger plans: $512, $1024, $2048….

Related posts:

Example:

Europe countries I visited so far

People say that one picture worth more than a thousand words. This is true: just change, or offer charts as alternative to your long and boring tables and you’ll see the result.

What have I done here:
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?

• chs=440×220 *dimensions – this is the maximum size for maps
• chd=t:100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100, 100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100 *color levels, one per child (chld)
• cht=t *some default parameter for maps
• chtm=europe *if you want to show just a region
• chco=FFFFFF,FF0000,FFFF00,00FF00 *default color and color limits
• chf=bg,s,EAF7FE *if you want to add a background color for water
• chld=ROBGTRGRITHUESPTFRNLBECHDEATGBPLSLSKNOCZLVLTRUBAMKSIHRGRCYCS *list of children (countries here)

!Note: It seems that google does not map Serbia correctly. The last country listed there is Serbia (RS) and it is not shown on the map. Strangely, changing this to CS is working. Currently waiting for a response from google (from a human, not the search engine )

Related posts:

Pidgin - Instant Messaging – Single client for all protocols, including Oracle internal one.

Launchy - Application Launcher – just press ALT+Space and write a few letters from app name to start it

MPlayer – Movie Player – no GUI, just console, very quick, no need to install codecs. Some issues with external monitor.

Firefox - of course, user since version 0.9 Beta

Dropbox - File Sync – simple sync of some folders between laptops or laptop and desktop. As a bonus files are stored online and you get revisions history

Google Mail – Personal Email – lot of space, even bought extra. Can also use it to read other POP3 accounts, all in a single interface.

Google Reader – RSS reader – the best RSS reader

Google Calendar – Calendar – simple to use, simple to share, to sync. Can also use it to read other calendars.

TripIt – Booking Manager – just forward all the travel plans to Tripit and you’ll have your itinerary ready, published as a web calendar, links to online check-in and other usefull stuff.

Related posts:

Starting with 9th of June, a new version of SQL Developer was launched. This is more a patchset to previous version, solving a significant number of bugs.
I am very happy that the “Bug 6994152: ORACLE_HOME environment variable sometimes has an adverse affect on migrations” was solved, this being a very frequent topic on the migration forum. Now there is no need to create the .CMD file to overwrite ORACLE_HOME.
Another useful and very demanded feature is auto-expand of the connections list when open the tool.

How to install?
- do a “check for updates” in your existing SQL Developer
- download and unzip.

You can import connections as shown here.

Andrei

Sometimes, upgrading Oracle SQL Developer will not import your existing connections. You can have in the end an empty connection list. In order to import it, you just need to copy the connections.xml file from your old location like this:

to your new location like this:

Another version would be, when upgraded version of SQL Developer is asking for the path to the connections file, just provide him the path to the old version.

Good luck!