Abby...abby something. Abby-normal?

So now that I have Windows 7 up and running on my Macbook – things are really clicking. I’ve got some decent Antivirus action going on (which it was so kind to remind me I needed), courtesy of AVG.

Now I had the evil idea of trying to upgrade my iPhone 3G from Beta 4 of the iPhone OS 3.0 to Beta 5. Will the world implode upon itself, asking these two technologies to play nice together? I am a developer current knee deep in “Hello World” and other fabulous development. I’m actually working my way slowly through Stanford’s iPhone development course and figuring out Objective-C along the way. For someone whose programming experience is web scripting (PHP) and MySQL – so it’s all new to me.

The first hurdle to get over is how to open a DMG file on Windows. Through some sleuthing I found a utility called HFSExplorer which will let you mount a DMG and extract files out of it. (Warning: requires Java)

Once I got past that, it’s just a matter of installing the 8.2 prerelease of iTunes and (hopefully) upgrading from Beta 4 to Beta 5.Fingers crossed, here I go!

Whoops, ran into a weird error when launching HFSExplorer complaining about some dll missing. Looks like the program still runs okay, regardless.

One thing that struck me right away was the beautiful new design of the installer environment. It gives you the feeling like you’re already up and running. However, what made me laugh is “Password Hint” is now a required field. *sigh* really, Microsoft?

Got the drivers installed from the trusty Leopard install disc…hoping all would go well, but no wi-fi action. Amazingly the Wi-Fi drives out of the box work better than the Apple-provided ones. Had to roll back to old drivers (newer, wrap your head around that!) but then all was well.

My biggest snag is that when my laptop sleeps or I close the lid, the screen refuses to turn back on. It turns back on but the screen stays black. I’m open to suggestions. Anyone? Beuller?

Edit: Turns out that the brightness was turned all the way down when it comes back up, and the key to turn brightness up won’t work. Still haven’t found a good workaround. Still open to suggestions…?

Edit #2: I’ve found that if i turn “down” the brightness when the screen is completely black, then it turns the brightness back up to a visible level. I’m guessing Apple’s Windows 7 drivers aren’t quite up to stuff, just yet.