Technology Burner Technology Burner

Well, I gave it a shot. I’ve been running Ubuntu Linux on my home rig for the last month and basically been productive. No dual-booting was allowed, I wanted total immersion. And ya know? In general it went very well. Ubuntu is certainly easy to install and configure and I can’t claim I ran into anything that I couldn’t do. Sure, sometimes I had to search the forums, but the answers are out there.

It’s the night before election day and I’m still not enthusiastic about tomorrow’s election. I can’t help but wondering if Barack Obama is simply a redo of Vista:

• Huge marketing budget.
• Hyped for change.
• Promises of greater stability.
• Improved security.
• Complete compatibility.
• A little more expensive.

The media and pundits are calling it a win for Obama already. In a few months, I wonder if America will be wishing for a downgrade, or even the opportunity to switch to a Mac. (McCain, that is).

I’m a huge fan of Dropbox, it has become a very important part of how I work on multiple machines. Honest, I love it.

With that out of the way, I have to admit that there’s one aspect that drives me absolutely nuts. It seems Dropbox just isn’t happy unless it is notifiying me of every updated file(s) – in real time. Since I have several machines syncing and I’m usually in front of at least two, I see stuff like this a lot:

Last week I received an invitation to participate in the (free) preview of the new Microsoft PC Advisor program. While we’re “not allowed” to share the initial survey and download link, if you search around the web (and on twitter) you should be able to find it easily enough… do note though: Vista only.

Here’s the pitch:

Y pensar que creí que lo había visto todo!  Según las malas lenguas Mac es el informal, el piola, Linux es el macho, el bad ass! y Vista siempre está de fiesta!

Un poco de humor no viene mal!

Gracias a Humor Geek!

I generally enjoy running Vista on my home PC. It does what I want, how I want, when I want. I dual-boot between it and Ubuntu and frankly, as far as user experience goes, they’re darned close to the same for me.

Well, except for Vista’s “Run as Administrator” option. There are some odd wrinkles with this that caused me a few minutes of extreme confusion this morning.

For instance, I’m back to playing EverQuest (an 8+ year on/off love affair). To launch EQ, I need to right-click on the short-cut and choose the “Run as Administrator” option.

Earlier today I decided it was time to re-subscribe to my old weakness, EverQuest, once again. I have upgraded my system since my last time around and was pretty excited to see how this new rig would fair against the stress that EQ can bring to bear.

Here’s the current Vista Experience thingy (click for full size):

Earlier today I decided it was time to re-subscribe to my old weakness, EverQuest, once again. I have upgraded my system since my last time around and was pretty excited to see how this new rig would fair against the stress that EQ can bring to bear.

Here’s the current Vista Experience thingy (click for full size):

Talk about not learning from one’s mistakes…

The Windows 7 Team
There’s a lot to building an org structure for a large team, but the most important part is planning the work of the team. This planning is integral to realizing our goal of improving the overall consistency and “togetherness” for Windows 7. So rather than think [...]

Itookia, web de diseño comercial de iconos para Windows Vista y XP, que entre su oferta incluye varios sets de iconos de descarga gratuíta.

Cada vez son más las webs comerciales de diseño de iconos, que entre su oferta incluyen también packs gratuítos de libre descarga. Y no es para menos tenían demasiada competencia con los diferentes lugares que ofrecen iconos totalmente gratuítos y de libre uso.

Here are two true statements:

1. My home computer, when running Vista, seems to lockup or crash when hibernating (I should probably try to fix that someday…)
2. I’ve been running Ubuntu via the Install in Windows option and sometimes, when attempting to start it, I get a funky error and no pretty UI

The funky error? A brief boot cycle and then I’m looking at something like:

My trusty old PC started another round of hardware issues this week - primarily cooling based this time. The heat-sink fan was getting sluggish and one of the case fans was having a rough time as well. I’ve limped this thing along through a series of cases, motherboards and upgrades for almost 6 years now…

Remember the old joke? “Sure, this is George Washington’s axe! We’ve replaced the handle 3 times and this is the 4th handle…” That’s my home PC.

If you’re an XP user used to using the /console switch to manage your servers, be aware that going to Service Pack 3 will alter your Remote Desktop options a bit.

Specifically, you’ll now need to use the /admin switch instead.

This makes it very similar to using Remote Desktop with Vista, as I discovered earlier this year when I couldn’t get console access from Vista (the solution was provided in the comments).

For reference, here are the new command line arguments to mstsc (the command line equiv of Remote Desktop Connection):

Our clients utilize PCAnywhere for their support issues. I’m running Vista - so when I tried to load our licensed client, I was swiftly met with an incompatibility message and the installer quit.

In visiting the Symantec site, they of course fixed the compatibility issue with an upgrade to version 12.1. The snag? You have to pay $100 for the upgrade. I have to have it, so I paid the $100. Paying $100 for an application to simply work after you paid the initial licensing before is really enough to make you angry.

Late last year I shared some of my thoughts about Vista. At that point I’d been using it on my work laptop for about a month. The conclusion at the time?

To wrap this meandering thing up, I’ll just brazenly come out and say it: I like Vista. (don’t confuse that with me saying I don’t like any other OS. That interpretation would be silly and illogical).

Not much has changed since then. In fact, I’ve even been pondering going Vista at home too.