Alligator Belly           Gadgets and Technology

Trying to install Google Chrome on Vista today and after downloading it through Firefox and running Alligator kept getting the dreaded Installation Failed 1625 error. Tried making the account an administrator on the machine but that didn’t help either. Turns out the Google Chrome installer needs to be Run As Administrator manually. While installing other applications Windows Vista automatically elevates to Administrator mode but it does not do so with the Google Chrome installer. So download the installer and browse to the folder where the installer was saved and right click on the file and click Run As Administrator. That should let the installer do its job!!!

Gamespot has updated the screenshots of Flight Simlulator X. There are a couple of comparison pictures between Flight Simulator 2004 and Flight Simulator X which just show how much detail has been added. All this eye candy will only be available throught DirectX 10 although you could still use DirectX 9 with fewer graphical details. Flight Simulator X is expected to release this holiday season.

Here is one site where you could download windows drivers. Although they wouldn’t have all the drivers but the list is huge. The drivers have been split into categories like graphics drivers, lan drivers, sound drivers, wireless drivers, etc. Check it out at DriverPacks.net

Sony has come up with their VGP-XL1B2 DVD Changer which can store up to 200 DVD’s. This changer can be used with Media Center 2005 Update Rollup 2 and connects via Firewire port. One great feature about this $800.00 unit is that it allows to daisy chain up 4 other changers adding upto a capacity of 1000 DVDs. But wouldn’t it just be easier to store everything on a hard drive or an array of hard drives instead of stacking up 5 changers?

Google Earth had been titled as the most innovative technology of 2005. Now here is Microsoft’s answer to Google Earth : Virtual Earth. Virtual Earth lets you drive/walk around the city unlike Google Earth which only shows a bird’s eye view of the city. But grabbing pictures from every street in every city in the US alone is not a easy task. Therefore Virtual Earth has just two cities for now, Seattle and San Francisco. Only time will tell if Virtual Earth can make it to be the most innovative technology of 2006.

Time for all you Flight Simulator fans to start saving up cash. The successor to the lovable Flight Simulator 2004 has been announced and it’s going to called Flight Simulator X (screenshots here). Graphics look pretty good but would definitely need a good gaming rig too. Minimum hardware specs have not been specified as yet. This is also the first of the Flight Simulator series to be shipped on DVD.

The Kama Sutra worm will destroy thousands of infected computers on the 3rd of February 2006 and the 3rd of every month thereafter. Worms like Kama Sutra install themselves onto computers over time and wait till a predefined date or time to do the damage. The date for Kama Sutra virus is the 3rd of February 2006 when it will overwrite and destroy critical files on the computer. According to one computer security company over 600,000 machines have been infected and will possibly be destroyed by the virus. So this might be the time to update your Anti-Virus software and backup all your financial information and personal files onto a virus free ZIP,CD,DVD or another harddrive.

Every wished that you could jump so high into space from New York that you land in Africa. Well now you can with Google Earth. Google Earth is a application for Windows that has the satellite imagery of seleted cities arounf the globe. Bundled with eye popping animation Google Earth lets you fly over any city with a click of a button.

Google Earth comes in three flavours : Google Earth (freeware), Google Earth Plus (for high resolution images, 20$) and Google Earth Pro (for business users, 400$).

Google Earth