• Create a directory on your system and add it to your path. In my case, I use C:\scripts.
• Create a script, cyghere.bat, as follows (assuming cygwin is installed to C:\cygwin):

  start C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico --exec /bin/bash
  

Now, you can launch a cygwin shell from basically any program that lets you launch subprocesses. Most common for myself is either the Windows command prompt or Windows Explorer.

Tip: if you have a folder open via Windows Explorer and you want to “cygwin here”, press Alt-D to jump to the location bar, then type “cyghere” and press Enter. This also works!

For a right-click option to open a folder via Cygwin, I defer to the rest of the Internet. With the above, I generally don’t need the right-click option.

What’s the problem? What to do?

The problem has to do with explorer.exe, the Windows “shell”. It seems to interfere with 256-color mode applications. I don’t know enough as to whether it is the compositing (i.e. Aero interface) or something else, but it does get in the way.

What’s the fix? Kill explorer.exe!

But wait… Don’t we need that to run our desktop, start menu, etc.? Yes. But there’s a semi-well-known workaround for this issue which has been circulating YouTube and elsewhere.

Basically: write a Windows batch file which kills explorer.exe, launches the app in question, and then re-launches explorer.exe when done.

Typically, this is done via a script like this:

TASKKILL /f /im explorer.exe
"C:\Program Files\Starcraft\StarCraft.exe"
PAUSE
START explorer.exe

This is really quite simple. It’s not very robust, but in reality it’s pretty unlikely to break. All it’s doing is killing explorer, running the app, waiting for user input, and then resstarting explorer. Note that the PAUSE is necessary for Diablo as Diablo will not block the script from proceeding. I suggest it for Brood War as well. (I think in the case of Diablo that it spawns another process and then closes, hence the required PAUSE to let the user decide when Diablo is “really” done.)

For fun and educational purposes, I wrote more robust versions. Here’s my current launcher for Starcraft: Brood War:

@ECHO OFF

SET "APP_NAME=StarCraft: Brood War"
SET "APP_EXEC=C:\Program Files\Starcraft\StarCraft.exe"

TASKKILL /f /im explorer.exe >NUL
IF %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 (
    ECHO Launching %APP_NAME%...
    "%APP_EXEC%"
    ECHO Press any key to re-launch explorer.exe . . .
    PAUSE >NUL
    START explorer.exe
) ELSE (
    ECHO An error occurred while killing explorer.exe.  Aborting.
    ECHO.
    ECHO If explorer.exe was killed, press Ctrl-Alt-Del, open the Task Manager ^(if not
    ECHO automatically opened^), go to File -^> New Task ^(Run...^), enter "explorer"
    ECHO without quotes into the pop-up and click OK.
    ECHO.
    ECHO Press any key to close . . .
    PAUSE >NUL
)

And here’s my launcher for Diablo:

@ECHO OFF

SET "APP_NAME=Diablo"
SET "APP_EXEC=C:\Diablo\Diablo.exe"

TASKKILL /f /im explorer.exe >NUL
IF %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 (
    ECHO Launching %APP_NAME%...
    "%APP_EXEC%"
    ECHO Press any key to re-launch explorer.exe . . .
    PAUSE >NUL
    START explorer.exe
) ELSE (
    ECHO An error occurred while killing explorer.exe.  Aborting.
    ECHO.
    ECHO If explorer.exe was killed, press Ctrl-Alt-Del, open the Task Manager ^(if not
    ECHO automatically opened^), go to File -^> New Task ^(Run...^), enter "explorer"
    ECHO without quotes into the pop-up and click OK.
    ECHO.
    ECHO Press any key to close . . .
    PAUSE >NUL
)

The benefit of the above is: it’s more robust, it’s user-friendly in the case of errors, it eliminates extraneous output (except in the error case), and it’s data-driven. The same core logic powers both scripts. Indeed, I could actually rip out this logic and put it into its own batch script, but that would provide little benefit since this whole workaround is fairly limited in scope.

Anyway, regardless of which solution you pick: with one of the above scripts, you now have a way to launch the programs.

Now, you have a script or scripts for launching the programs. However, these aren’t pretty: they show as plain old batch files and you can’t assign an icon. In other words, it’s obvious they’re a hack. Can we make this look nicer? Yes!

Again, the fix is simple: we can just make a shortcut to the batch file, and we can assign an icon to the shortcut, using the icons embedded in the original program’s executable!

In my specific case, I have the following files:


C:\batch_launchers\brood_war.bat
C:\batch_launchers\diablo.bat
C:\batch_launchers\Diablo.lnk
C:\batch_launchers\StarCraft - Brood War.lnk


I could put the links directly in the start menu, but in my case I just pinned them to the Start Menu.

With this, you have all you need to create Brood War and Diablo launchers which look just like the original Starcraft and Diablo launchers, but they will instead launch the batch file and handle all the explorer.exe acrobatics for you.

Have fun!

(To do: clean this up, revise for brevity, possibly make a youtube vid.)

This took a small bit of googling to find; I’ll add my own version of how to do this below.

Assuming that Warcraft 3 was installed normally (i.e. to the Program Files folder):

1. Run Warcraft 3 as an administrator and connect to Battle.net; this will download the latest updates.

   Result: game gets updated, and cinematics display, however they are ugly and basically washed out.

2. Right click on the shortcut you use for launching Warcraft 3, and then select Properties. In the next window, select the Compatibility tab at the top, then check “Disable desktop composition”.

   Result: cinematics now display normally.

Please note: manually registering codecs should not be necessary, nor should you need to adjust gamma settings specifically for Warcraft 3.

Tested on: Windows 7 64-bit with Intel HD Graphics 4000.

NOTE: I don’t know whether downloading maps, etc., works as expected or if this also gives errors if not run as administrator. Either always run Warcraft 3 as the administrator, or relocate the installation folder to an unprotected location. (Other web pages out there tell how to do this; I haven’t done this myself.)

Hope this helps someone out there…

I’m writing this entry from my mother’s new laptop, a Toshiba Satellite C655. It was purchased to replace her Asus Eee Pc, which sadly has not lived up to the hype for us. The first Eee we got had critical hardware issues (graphical glitches and the like), and the replacement seemed to work but has had stability problems. I’ve already reinstalled WinXP on it once, but it has periodic blue screens during bootup and when sitting idle. Plus, the battery now holds zero charge whatsoever (as in, the computer sees the battery but says 0% charge, and if I disconnect the AC cord it will immediately lose all power). It’s only been maybe two years since she got it, so I hate to say, it’s been a lemon for us… and I was one of the people who recommended it.

Anyway, onto the topic of the replacement. The Toshiba was purchased from bestbuy.com for around $270 or $280. Immediately I thought “not again” because of the last cheap system we got for my mom. However, this system has fared much better.

On to the review…

The good:

• Much larger screen than the Eee. The Eee is meant to be small and works great for a geek like myself, but for my mother it makes everything too small. Lowering the resolution helps, but then everything stretches off screen. With the new laptop, we don’t need to tweak anything.
• Not too heavy. It’s heavier than the Eee, but surprisingly not too much so. It’s certainly no Ultrabook, but it isn’t a burden either.
• Faster than the Eee. The low end for laptops has gotten nicer nowadays; this laptop has 2GB of ram which is pretty decent for Windows 7. The CPU is an AMD E-300, which only operates at 1.3 GHz (translation for family: pretty slow), but has a benefit of running near silent. Plus, it seems to run my mom’s flash games better than the Eee did, although still a bit choppy.
• Did I say nearly silent? I can hear the laptop if there is no other background noise in the room. Under normal circumstances it’s pretty nice.
• Battery life appears to be excellent. I’ve been typing on here for a good 30 minutes or so with the AC disconnected, and I still supposedly have 6 hours left. That’s actually pretty attractive for someone like myself…

Just based upon the above, was the laptop a good move for my mom? I’m going to say yes.

But, since other family members are curious, and since I myself am now in the market for a new laptop (as the screen on my Japanese one just died), I must get critical and list up the bad:

• Initial impression: Super slow. Doing the initial boot-up took forever. The computer seemed to be really slow when running Chrome for the first time as well. I’m not sure if the slowness was all due to running the first time, or if it was also due to the trial Norton which was installed (I have a history with Norton causing machines to run like molasses), so I dropped Norton, installed the free edition of Avast, and rebooted. The second boot-up took maybe 1:45 to 2 minutes before the computer was -really- usable, but at that point it was working halfway decent.
• Very low horsepower. Good enough for email, word processing/spreadsheets and basic flash games, but again, it can be sluggish at times. A step up from the Eee PC though.
• YouTube test: Loaded up Gangnam Style since I know it goes up to 1080p, and tried different quality settings at full screen. At 1080p: The computer was super choppy and nearly uncontrollable. 720p: Also pretty bad, although somewhat less choppy. 480p: Playable and fairly smooth.

Okay, so I’ve rambled on enough. What’s the verdict?

For my mom: Sure, it’s good enough for most stuff.

For my wife: No. My wife does lots of streaming video and this’d be too borderline, even though the stuff she watches isn’t generally HD.

For myself: Pretty tough sell; probably not.

Really, the single biggest thing that I was disappointed with was not even being able to play 720p YouTube videos smoothly. That just seems like a red flag right there. I know 1080p is pointless since the screen isn’t even big enough for it, but 720p seems like a minimum standard for any new system nowadays in my opinion.

But for those who aren’t so much into multimedia on their computer, or for whom music is plenty, or for just light computer users: this may be a great option for the money. And seriously, the battery life seems killer – that’s one benefit of having an “underpowered” CPU is that it keeps going and going.

That’s about it. And for those who are curious what I would buy: I’d say something, probably an Ultrabook, with at least an Intel Core i3. Intel really does have a strong leg up on the competition nowadays. If you can afford an i5, go for it; I think the i5 still has more active CPU cores than the i3 and the extra cores do help. The value of the i7 is debatable, although I personally may go for it.

Also, keep in mind that many new Ultrabooks come with Intel’s integrated “HD” graphics, which is actually a halfway decent onboard graphics solution. I believe it’s supposed to handle 1080p video by design if I recall what I’ve read right. This is probably my suggestion for people who want a good solid system but without spending the premium for a “gaming” laptop.

Update: Been using this laptop a bit more, and it’s basically reinforced what I previously wrote. This does seem like a decent laptop for my mother; I don’t want her to return it or anything. However, I could do another test: Netflix. Netflix in HD is totally a slideshow. Normal netflix is mildly choppy but tolerable. (Both cases tested at fullscreen.)