Hardware
I just picked up a Archo's 9 Tablet from one of my favorite scratch and dent tech suppliers, http://www.techforless.com/ , These are products for the not timid tech people. People who are their own tech support. :-)
Maybe some of my techniques will be helpful to you.
You get something that is a little distressed, in the assumption you can make use of it. And little to no tech support.
Blank Hard drive
My tablet came with no OS, Blank hard drive. It had a license sticker on the back. An no OS restore cd.
Which is fine for me, as it is now running fine with Window 7 Ultimate and Office 2010. I had some consern that the drive was a failed disk, but it worked fine. Perhaps some security wonk wiped it clean.
I read a variety of mixed reviews on this device, and in my opinion, it’s great as a tablet pc, and does an amazing job of running some heavy weight software. It’s (not so obvious to some people) not a high end supped up Workstation PC. It runs what I need, and it browses web just fine.
So I thought I would write up the steps I took to rebuild the os, and share with the group.
Who Need a CD?
First I generated a Boot thumb drive.
I went to the computer and bought a 8 gig high speed Thumb drive, the size had enough space for a copy of windows 7, and all the other stuff I wanted to load on this new pc.
There are lots of directions, involving some fancy formatting needed to make a thumb drive bootable. I tried a bunch of things, and nothing worked.
I finally used the Microsoft utility for this, (Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe) and Shazam, it worked like a charm. (I wonder what other OS’s I can load on that TD…)
A nice article on it:
Customizing under the hood
Once I got that going, I had to locate the appropriate drivers for the computer I was working with.
This is largely going to the website for the manufacturer doing head scratching and navigating, and downloading all the appropriate files. I packed them all in a directory for later use.
I booted the computer with the newly loaded thumb drive, and installed the OS with very little fuss. I did need the mini-replicator port, to get enough open USB ports to do this. And needed a keyboard and mouse to accomplish anything, as the touch screen drivers were not working properly yet.
My next step was to load the various drivers I had previously downloaded. It took me a little while to sort everything out, for the lack of experience with the software, but I was able to figure out how to calibrate the touch screen (digitizer) and get the onscreen keyboard driver to work. That took a few hours. Much learning, much easier next time.
License key woes
Meanwhile the OS was squawking at me that it was not activated and that I had a pirated copy. That was because I hadn’t put the activation key into the OS yet.
I started the activation process and I kept getting weird errors when I tried to activate the OS with my License Activation key. (yes, it is a legit key. ) Very frustrating, and it took a few tries, and searching the internet for a clue, what the obscure error code was saying. Turned out to be dead easy. I needed to set the date and time on the computer.. then the key worked like a charm.
Install Office
I loaded up Office 2010 on the computer and activated that.
Quilting the OS
It was time to patch the thing.
(After completing the patching there is about 75 patches on it.)
I used my favorite tool for this.. Autopatcher.
It will create a package of all the patches needed for a Windows OS, and MS Office.
I set this up on the thumb drive, and had a working PC download all the patches to the thumb drive.
This minimized the security risk of putting an unpatched OS on the wire to download the updates.
It’s one thing to put a handful of patches, on a pc versus a 70 some odd patches. This tool make it fairly painless.
Enter the Acrobat
Then it was time for Adobe product, acrobat reader, flash, and so on.
They also need a round or 2 of patching.
Video entertainment
VLC media player, in case I want to watch some video.
Cleaning crew
Then it was time to turn to performance issues. I loaded 2 free utilities to help with that,
First, was CCleaner, to remove the accumulated garbage on the computer.
I used this to get rid of all the leftover and unneeded files on the computer. Windows sure is messy, and leaves quite a clutter.
Organize
Once the garbage was cleaned out, I added Defraggler to the mix to defragment the hard drive.
This is a free defragmenting utility that optimizes the hard drive. And boy did it need defragmenting.
This really helped the performance, again this a tablet pc, and while I believe it CPU on it is mighty powerful, the system only has 1Gb RAM to play with so every bit helps. And this minimizes the amount of work the computer has to do to get anything done. It also can do an offline defrag of the registry files and the page file.
Vandal Resistance
I added Anti-virus software, provided to me as a free perk by work.
PREY
I installed Prey open source anti-theft software. http://preyproject.com/
Great for any device with a built in video camera. Turns a thief into potential prey. : - )
Trash Filtering
I set up the OpenDNS account and installed OpenDNS Updater, and set the DNS setting on the computer to do the internet filtering, ahead of the Antivirus software.
Tick Tok
I also set the computer to auto synchronize it clock to the internet on a periodic basis, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the cock problem again. (this is a bunch of advanced setting, that require enabling a system service, and make a few command line changes. (this process is a separate article.)
Wallet survival.
Not counting the Microsoft Software, all the components were free. (I have a Microsoft Technet license, so it’s not really free.) All the above didn’t cost more than the hardware.
If AV ain't free
If I had to pay for anti-virus, and I have 3 systems that needs something I have been using trend internet security. I have found that the price on this product varies quite a bit. I bought my copy from amazon.com for $13 plus shipping. You can pay up to $70 for the same product.
My Stuff
And now for my applications.. oh Trancender, where are you? One of the points of this was to load trancender software to help me study.
Conclusion
With some free tools and digging I saved a bucket of money, and ended up with a tablet PC my way.
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