Microsoft Online Template Fail!

That is right, you fail.

Apparently, your ActiveX control fails to properly identify my Powerpoint 2007 installation.

WinZip vs 7zip: First round – Misc Textual Documents

So, I was a lot closer to having this “mostly” working than I thought. After some trial and error with 7zips command line arguments I got a few good test runs in. I need to work with some different data to further confirm, but so far, it seems that 7zip is pure win!

See the text results below:

Starting WinZip…
WinZip finished… reporting…

Start Ticks: 633616615839494087
End ticks: 633616615845744327
Time to completion (ticks): 6250240
Time to completion (ms): 625.024

Starting 7Zip…
7Zip finished… reporting…

Start Ticks: 633616615846681863
End ticks: 633616615859338599
Time to completion (ticks): 12656736
Time to completion (ms): 1265.6736

Press esc or enter key too continue…

Starting 7Zip…
7Zip finished… reporting…

Start Ticks: 633616617982545127
End ticks: 633616618061454407
Time to completion (ticks): 78909280
Time to completion (ms): 7890.928

a 7zip with max compression?

Starting 7Zip…
7Zip finished… reporting…

Start Ticks: 633616621970019726
End ticks: 633616622006270886
Time to completion (ticks): 36251160
Time to completion (ms): 3625.116

Testing Windows file Compression Utilities

So, after recalling a debate about which file compression utility was the best (WinRar vs 7zip, I think it was) I have decided to test this in the most accurate way I can think of. I am going to write an application that will run WinZip, WinRar, and 7zip on the same set of files, with the same settings (if possible, I haven’t looked at WinRar yet, but WinZip’s CLI is pretty sparse).

A few pages I found for reference:

• http://www.memecode.com/docs/winzip.html
• http://alonesworld.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-use-7-zip-on-command-line-prompt.html
• http://www.respower.com/page_tutorial_unrar

It seems that if I use the same files, run each from the command line through a .NET application and time it from start to finish, I think we can get some pretty accurate results. Check back in a little while and we’ll see what I come up with.

Saving your Putty Session information

I have found a few nifty ways to copy your settings for Putty. Putty is a windows SSH client allowing a secure cli (command line interface) to *nix based servers. I use it daily for various tasks related to managing the Ideas Unleashed servers. I do have a habit of formatting my systems semi-frequently, at least once a year, so keeping track of bookmarks, Filezilla settings (a topic for a future blog), Putty settings, and many other things difficult.

However, saving and restoring your Putty Settings is a snap! From the Start -> run dialog, run this command to place a .reg file on your desktop that you can merge on another windows system to copy your putty settings.

regedit /e “%userprofile%\desktop\putty.reg” HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Simontatham

Thanks to Joe Mansfield’s comment for the shortcut!