HOWETechnical

Microsoft to Donate Eight Meals for Every IE8 Download

// June 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // OS, Tech

OK, enough unfortunate or otherwise negative Microsoft news for today. Let’s instead focus on something good, like how the company is donating the equivalent of eight meals to the Feeding America Network for every completed download of Internet Explorer 8.

The program, called “Browser for the Better,” is connected to those wacky Dean Cain IE8 commercials that launched earlier this month.

And while the Dean Cain marketing effort will likely last forever thanks to the glorious wonder of the Internet, the charity portion of Browser for the Better only runs from June 10 to August 8. Don’t ask about the image. Apparently, for the meals to become viable, Microsoft had to truck in a bunch of artists so they could stack them into shapes resembling the Empire State Building and Golden Gate Bridge.

Windows 7 - Got the RDC Blues? Not Anymore!

// May 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // OS, Software

As many of you know, the newest version of RDC (Remote Desktop Connection) included in the 7100 build of Windows 7 RC has some major issues with being incredibly sluggish. This seems to only persist when connecting to Windows 2000 / 2003 machines, which unfortunately just so happens to be the operating system(s) in use by a great majority of servers. In addition, it seems that this issue was not present in the 7000 build of Windows 7 Beta, nor was it in the 7050 build either.

There is relief, however! I’ve stumbled upon this little workaround that will allow you to run a previous version of Windows RDC in Windows 7 RC (7100). So, until Microsoft has fixed the issue officially, let this serve as a band-aid for your RDC blues.

Step 1: Download 7zip (available at 7-Zip )
Step 2: Download an old version of Remote Desktop Here: RDC Download
Step 3: Using 7zip, extract msrdpcli.exe to any folder.
Step 4: Using 7zip, extract msrdpcli.msi to any folder.
Step 5: Using 7zip, extract data.cab to any folder.
Step 6: Rename F1059_mstscax.dll to mstscax.dll .
Step 7: Rename F1060_mstsc.exe to mstsc.exe .
Step 8: Rename F1061_mstsc.chm to mstsc.chm .

You can now place those last 3 files wherever you want, and run mstsc.exe to launch the old RDC client.

Microsoft: Windows 7 Free for 1 Year!

// May 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // OS, Videos

As the title implies, it seems our corporate friends (and sometimes enemies) in Redmond, WA, have exercised a practice rarely demonstrated by the software giant; Windows 7 (RC) will be provided free of charge until May 1, 2010. Windows 7 is the successor to Windows Vista, and as simple as the title may sound, it is an omen of how simple the operating system is to use and install, as reported by Microsoft and beta testers of the operating system. Some even go as far as to say it is what Windows Vista should have been, lacking in complications and problematic driver support, and additionally providing for a viable competition to Apple’s OS X. There is one thing to be understood, though; this free version of Windows 7 is not the final product, but rather the release candidate that Microsoft expects will be final version when officially released in retail stores. So even with as much praise as Microsoft’s new operating system is receiving from the world of developers and software engineers, it is safe to “expect for the best” but “prepare for the worst”, as the saying goes. In light of this, Microsoft does not recommend that the release candidate be used as your primary operating system, but rather a test bed on a partitioned hard drive or alternate, non-primary machine.

Microsoft Windows 7 (RC) Download:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

Switch to Ubuntu Linux not Apple Mac OS

// October 18th, 2008 // No Comments » // OS

For the past few years Apple has seen an increase in its laptop business due majorly to the dismal failure of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. Umpteen number of reports have been published telling people why they should consider switching to the Mac OS now that Vista has failed, but not a single one has surfaced that spells out the merits of switching over to a variety of Linux.

Linux on the server side is pretty well established with Red Hat Enterprise Linux being the dominant flavour there. It is on the desktop that there is an ongoing war mainly between three parties - Microsoft, Apple and the host of Linux vendors. The availability of a large number of Linux distributions may initially confuse a user but a harder look quickly separates the wheat from the chaff and Ubuntu/Kubuntu emerges as the best.

Traditionally Linux adoption on the desktop has been plagued by the notion that it was difficult to handle. Its really a misconception. Ubuntu has changed the face of Linux ever since its launch. The current versions are sturdy, have very good UIs and are intuitive. Program management no longer needs knowledge of the various packaging systems but is driven by an elegant UI. Productivity applications on Linux have come a long way and the crown jewel in this category has got to be Open Office. Not only do you get a great word processor, a brilliant spreadsheet program, a fantastic presentation tool and a good desktop database but you also get compatibility for Microsoft Office documents. In the majority of cases, MS Office documents can be opened in Open Office without any changes. For e-mailing, there is Evolution that offers connectivity to Microsoft Exchange and also Mozilla Thunderbird. Calendar applications are galore. There are a host of commercial and open source tools for multimedia authoring,image manipulation and desktop publishing. Applications like Scribus, Blender 3D and GIMP are the best-of-breed and have the capacity to rival their commercial counterparts. For web browsing, Mozilla Firefox comes pre-installed.

If you are a developer programming in open technologies like Java/JEE or C/C++, adopting to Linux is really easy. All major JEE vendors support Linux as a platform for their offerings. Eclipse, NetBeans and IntelliJ are some of the best IDEs around that have Linux versions. For C/C++ there is KDevelop, Anjuta and many more IDEs offering best-of-breed features. Microsoft .net developers might have it a bit more difficult. Although Mono allows you to run .net applications on Linux, tooling support till now is not the greatest. In any case, if some one is going to use Microsoft technology for development, its much more likely that she/he would stick to Windows. So thats not really a great problem.

Ubuntu has a large number of hardware drivers in it making it very close to being the best distro for plug-n-play. In fact in a few areas it surpasses the great Apple Mac OS. Here’s an example. The Linksys WUSB54GC USB Wireless Adapter worked out of the box on Ubuntu 8.04 whereas in Mac OS it did not.

Security wise both Mac OS and Ubuntu are equally good though some would argue that Ubuntu is probably better. There are GUI tools available to tweak the security settings in a system.

In the look and feel department, Linux has improved in leaps and bounds. In Gnome and KDE you have two of the best windowing systems. With the KDE 4.1.1 environment, users get a light, responsive, and aesthetically appealing desktop that can rival even the Mac OS. Also with Compiz it is possible to extract effects from a Linux desktop that were hitherto unavailable on any other system. I doubt it exists in the Mac.

So why are people not going over to Ubuntu? Beats me. If you are looking for commercial technical support, Ubuntu does offer that. If you are looking at extreme personalization options Ubuntu offers that, probably even more than the Mac OS. If you are looking for easy upgrades to future versions, Ubuntu offers that. If you are looking for ease of use, Ubuntu offers that. If you are looking for robustness and security, Ubuntu is the best. Ubuntu can be installed on all types of hardware and even on older hardware. Mac OS does not offer this flexibility.

The more I use Ubuntu, the more I fail to understand the lure of the Mac OS. Is it the snob value or stupidity that make people consider a Mac over Windows and not Ubuntu?

Microsoft Announces 20 Editions of Windows 7!

// October 16th, 2008 // No Comments » // OS

Ok, well…not really. But if the past has proven to be of any forecast legitimacy for the future, then we can count on at least ten versions of Windows 7 to grace our checkbooks! With that in mind, enjoy this comical release of Microsoft-induced consumer tension.

15 Tips For a Better Linux Experience

// October 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // OS

Linux

The beauty of Linux is in users ability to do large amount of customization to have a unique user expereince. So today we will look in to some tips for a “better” Linux experience. The term “better” here is relative, because what works for me might seem a distraction for some or plain annoying to others; some of this “tips” might appeal to beginners, while advanced users might find it too easy. Hopefully some of these tips will be helpful to some of you.

1) Turn on your computer remotely by sending “magic network packets” to WakeOnLan supported network cards. This can be very helpful if you run a server at home but only access it occasionally. There is no need for you to have the server running all the time.

2) If you dual boot with windows, accessing Linux file system from your windows installation might be important for you. There are three windows applications that can help you do this: Explore2fs, Ext2 Installable File System, DiskInternals Linux Reader.

3) Similarly to have read/write access for Windows NTFS file system, you can use NTFS-3G. Most recent popular Linux distribution has NTFS-3G installed out of the box.

4) Share a single mouse and keyboard with multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, with support for copy and paste. Thanks to Synergy, the most popular free KVM software switch out there.

Synergy in action.

5) Recovering data from damaged media can be handled by several Linux tools including some LiveCD, specifically built to help recover data. Parted Magic, Ubuntu Rescue Remix, SystemRescueCd, Foremost (data recovery), Ddrescue.

6) If you are a blogger like me and enjoy using desktop client over web editors, you will find these clients useful: Gnome Blog, Drivel Journal Editor, BloGTK, Thingamablog, Bleezer, QTM.

7) If you are a webdeveloper/designer, you will often find yourself testing a website across many platforms and browsers. IEs4Linux is a great painless way to check how IE browser will render your website. You could use services like browsershots, but I had mixed results with them.

Does your iPod miss iTunes? Here are three itunes alternative which will do most of what your iTunes would do, not an exact replacement; but does the job: Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox.

9) Follow multiple files by creating multiple windows in your console with the help of MultiTail, also known as tail on steroids.

10) Use Terminator to split your screen space with many terminal windows, both horizontally and vertically.

11) For even better control over your terminal display and customization and complex functions, GNU Screen is a much better choice over terminator; however terminator serves only one purpose.

12) Use RSIBreak to help prevent Repetitive Strain Injury. RSIBreak will force you to take short break, depending on your configuration, so that you don’t over-work yourself.

RSIBreak

13) If you find yourself working on a dumb terminal (hello sysadmins) or prefer working on terminals, you will find newsbeuter to be an excellent RSS reader for the console.

14) I know some will disagree with me on this, but conky is an excellent compliment to your desktop experience. If properly configured, it can add a lot of value to your desktop environment. Check out this very creative conky setup and read about it here.

15) Do you do podcasts? rootprompt has a great article with huge resources for both Linux podcasters and listeners.

Microsoft sticks with ‘Windows 7′ for next OS

// October 14th, 2008 // No Comments » // OS

October 13, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. announced today that the code name for its next operating system, Windows 7, will be the product’s official name.

Mike Nash, vice president of Windows product management, said the company was sticking with the label for simplicity’s sake. “Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore ‘Windows 7′ just makes sense,” Nash wrote in Microsoft’s Vista blog on Monday.

After noting that Microsoft has at times stuck a date on the OS — Windows 2000 was the last — Nash said that didn’t make sense this time. “We do not ship new versions of Windows every year,” Nash said. “Likewise, coming up with an all-new ‘aspirational’ name [like Windows XP] does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Vista into the next generation of Windows.”

Some Windows watchers, however, questioned Nash’s claim that Windows 7 would be the seventh iteration of the OS. The AeroXperience blog counted seven as of Windows Vista, and eight if the consumer-oriented Windows Millennium was included. However, only if kernel revisions are tallied, XP wasn’t counted — and Windows kernel was incremented to 7.0 for Windows 7 — would that work, the blog argued.

According to the Windows timeline on Wikipedia, XP’s kernel is tagged as 5.1, and Vista’s as 6.0.

Microsoft’s own version of its client operating system timeline ends with Windows XP, but assumes nine editions as of Vista: Windows 3.0, NT, Windows 95, NT Workstation, Windows 98, Millennium, Windows 2000, XP and Vista. By that timeline, Microsoft doesn’t regard Windows 1.0, which it released in 1985, or Windows 2.0, launched in 1987, as “true” Windows.

More than two weeks ago, Microsoft had said it would issue an alpha version of Windows 7 to attendees of its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), which open Oct. 27 and Nov. 5, respectively. Today, Nash called that preview a “pre-beta developer-only release.”

It’s unusual for Microsoft to use an operating system code name as the official product moniker, and Nash ackowledged that fact. “I am pretty sure that this is a first for Windows,” he said.

Operating system code names at Microsoft have ranged from “Chicago,” which was the under-development name for what became Windows 95 and “Memphis” (Windows 98), to “Whistler” (Windows XP) and “Longhorn” (Windows Vista).

Microsoft has not pinned a ship date to Windows 7, but it has said it was shooting for three years after the release of Vista, which would mean it would be released late in 2009 or early in 2010.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Windows blogger Ed Bott wondered just last week whether Microsoft would keep the “7″ tag for its next OS. Nearly half his readers who responded to an online poll gave the nod to “None of the above,” but 20% voted for Windows 2010, 14% for Windows 2009 and 7% for Windows Vista R2.

Windows 7 received 15% of the votes in the poll.