Monday, March 30, 2009

Amusing Computer Quotes

Enjoy...

"Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software."
-- Anonymous

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
-- Isaac Asimov

 "Science is supposedly the method by which we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. In computer science, we all are standing on each others' feet."
-- G. Popek

"I sit looking at this damn computer screen all day long, day in and day out, week after week, and think: Man, if I could just find the 'on' switch..."  
-- Zachary Good

Thanks to Guillaume for some of them.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Free PowerShell eBook

Thanks to the Canadian IT Pro blog for this one.

Keith Hill is giving away a free eBook for PowerShell in PDF format. I've only begun to read it and I like what I see. Get it now at the best price around.

As an added bonus, check out Keith's Blog, it has a lot of scripting tidbits as well.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Internet Explorer 8 Released

Internet Explorer 8 was released today. I'm sure it's already been downloaded a billion times already, but you can get it here.

My first impressions have been favorable. I've been using Slim Browser for quite some time, but it still uses the IE7 engine and the performance has been lackluster as of late. I've stuck with Slim Browser over the last couple of years due to features like double-clicking tabs to close sites and not having multiple browser windows open when going from an internal to external site. These items seem to have been addressed in IE8 and so far I'm impressed with speed and functionality. Try it out (Windows users) it's free.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Only one DC?

Okay, maybe this is a soapbox item, but I've been to too many companies with only one domain controller.

Most of these companies have a full system backup running, but upon complete failure a restore will take a few hours minimum. One such outage and the cost of labor to pay an IT professional to restore a domain controller is about break-even, with an example price of $700+  for a Windows Server license and the cost of a cheap server or desktop. That of course doesn't really cover the true cost; if you have a company of twenty-five employees sitting around waiting for the server to come back online, now you're really talking money. With another domain controller present (with sufficient resources), the clients may never even notice the difference should a primary system fail.

Unfortunately, many small companies look at the short term cost of items rather than focusing on the immense cost of a prolonged outage or lost productivity with subpar equipment or dated technology. But in tough economic times many of these choices are made for them.