Mastering Windows Vista
As mentioned in a previous post, I’m studying for the 70-620 Configuring Vista certification exam. As part of this process, I’ve read 85% of Mark Minasi’s book, Mastering Windows Vista Business. The book starts rather low tech, moves toward more work related topics and higher level information as the it progresses. It covers a lot of [...]
Google as IT
I must say that over the years, troubleshooting has become much easier with the rise of the search engine. Many an issue has been solved just by visiting a search portal with the exact (or vague) error message.
One of my favorite resources is Google’s Special Searches which are narrowly defined for Microsoft, Linux, Apple and BSD [...]
IM Chattin’ Part Deux
Well it’s not been quite two weeks since I’ve started using Miranda IM and I’ve made the decision to go back to Trillan. The plan was to unify all my chat clients and that was Miranda IM’s promise, but all it did was add more work for me.
The install and configuration was lackluster, it didn’t [...]
Microsoft Press E-books
Microsoft Press Books, while not always the best in their catagory are certainly useful. One feature I’ve come to really appreciate is that most of their books include a CD-ROM containing a full copy of the manual in eBook format, typically PDF.
This isn’t to say other publishers like Sybex and O’Reilly don’t do this, but it seems [...]
VMware Server 2.0 Released
VMware Server 2.0 (the free version) was released yesterday and is a great testing and learning tool for hosting multiple operating systems on one system.
I’ve used this quite a lot at client sites, hosting a Windows workstation to add to a domain without having a GPO applied to my company laptop. This has also been invaluable in [...]
Network Card Unseen
Today I was examining a customer’s Lenovo X60 which failed to see its internal network card in the Windows Device Manager. It recently returned from having the motherboard replaced (cola was spilled into the keyboard).
After trying to get Windows XP to discover the device for a few minutes, I rebooted, went into the BIOS (use F1, not the [...]
Geek Envy
Okay, I thought I was one of the cool kids for getting a 24″ LCD. But whiIe checking out the SBS Dvia Blog today I see this: Four 24″ monitors on a Vista system. If only I wasn’t spending money on food and gas…
Welcome to…
This is the second of a group of IT templates I’ll be posting from what I’ve created or gathered/modified. This one is your basic “Welcome to Company” sheet that I tyically hand out to new employees. It’s only a page long and surprising it’s actually been read more than once (unlike the typical stack of papers [...]
Free Exchange Presentations
One of my favorite tech authors, Jim McBee, just posted his slide decks from the past Connections conferences. I’ve just reviewed a couple of of them and there’s definitely gold in there; like what to setup for monitoring and logging in Exchange 2003 and lessons from Exchange 2007 migrations.
This is an excellent free resource for [...]
Vista Ready Boost
Yesterday I purchased a new 8GB Secure Digital card (only $21!) in order to free up my current 2GB SD card used in my Vista laptop for use in my new(ish) Canon SD1100 IS.
Curious as to what allocation unit size to choose when formatting for optimal Ready Boost, I read a number of blogs, The [...]