Category: Musings

Random thoughts and posts

Very interesting

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Just attached Windows Live Domain to my .com here.

So far pretty interesting in that now with the help of the Outlook.com app on my Android phone I’ve regained the ability to sync between my phone and desktop.

I honestly looked into this after Google and MS had a spat apparently and now they barely talk to each other (lost my calendar sync!).

Now not only do I have my calendar again, but now I get all sorts of cool sub domains to attach Live services to my main domain!

It also kicks Google Apps in the shins since it’s still free, supports more users, and apparently provides the same services.

And to top it off, my webmail interface kicks directly to Outlook.com, very nice.

I think I finally got it!

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Thanks to the power of Google (and a very patient wife!) I’ve managed to set up a portable development and learning environment on a flash drive.

It contains:

  • XAMPP (Apache, MySQL, FileZilla)
  • SVN via Apache
  • Eclipse (Aptana Studio)
  • Java runtime for Ecplise

So far I’ve only tested on 2 systems but it appears to work just fine!
Should make this a lot easier than relying on 1 PC to host everything, so long as I sync the drive for backup.

Office 365

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Just got my complementary copy of Office 365 (working in retail has its perks).

Going to see what the new features can do for the average person.

I’ll be learning the new stuff that Office can do, which will be interesting because I barely use it at all.
Granted I WANT to use it more often.
I’m sure I’m missing out on something!

A New Year!

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A happy new year to everyone!

It’s also around this time I’ll actually be planning database layouts and getting into some actual code (holy crap!).

Stay tuned.

Testing Windows 8

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So I’ve now had Windows 8 installed on my desktop for a few weeks.

I have to say the changes are significant, but I’ve quickly grown accustomed to it, so I don’t feel a loss of functionality.

I know a lot of people will hate it just because it’s different. But they also said that about GUI’s, mice, and the Start Menu in Windows NT/95; yet here we are!

Doing things the hard way

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Trying a different method of installing Windows 8 when I get it.

I’m going to attempt to create my own custom installation that will not only install Windows 8 on my PC, but it will also reference a script from my NAS and install most of my software!
Why reference a script instead of just installing Win8 and creating a recovery image?
One, it’s BORING!
Two, I have the advantage of updating and replacing software installs on my NAS so when I goto re-load Windows (either from clutter or me breaking it) I can have the latest versions of apps installed.
Doing it that way I won’t have to do so many updates to my favorite programs (Yay Windows is loaded! Boo I have to update all my programs!).

Going to make a nice recovery partition and everything just like the OEMs do!

This is gonna be fun!

New idea!

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With all the problems I see, and all the misconceptions I hear, I feel like starting a new project.

Every week I’ll try and post a few things to help keep PCs alive longer, and hopefully make user experiences a little more pleasant.

Technology shouldn’t be as painful as I see it through my customers eyes.

Common security practices I wish I never saw

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I see these day in and day out.

The practices that would would make any computer security expert scream and pull out their hair.

To be fair, many consumers just don’t know and aren’t really told about these.
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When good advice goes bad

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Day after day I meet people who know just enough to be dangerous with computers.

Watching a how-to on YouTube about building a PC doesn’t make you a technician.
It doesn’t mean you can give advice or start doing stuff for other people.

I recently had a customer come in looking for floppy disks.
I asked him why and he said “I need it to RAID my new hard drive”.
So that tipped me off he had no idea what he was doing.
Long story short he said he built the PC himself, and didn’t know if he was going to RAID 0 or 1 for better performance (for the record RAID 0 increases performance slightly, but at the cost of halving the life of the drives).
He had no idea you don’t need a floppy for RAID drivers on Windows 7.
He kept saying he already installed the “software from the CD” yet he hadn’t installed Windows?
This is the kind of dangerous I’m talking about.

I also meet people who are completely misinformed.

I keep hearing things like “registry defrag” or “clean out prefetch folder”.

If you don’t know what these things mean on a very deep level, please don’t help spread false information.

And for the record on that comment, registry fragmentation doesn’t affect performance, and clearing out your prefetch folder actually does more harm than good.

Please stop telling your friends/family/customers to fly blind

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I have a request for all of those who fix PCs, or are otherwise involved in the PC business.
Stop telling people antivirus isn’t required, or telling them to use a cheap/free ineffective product.

Can some people survive without it? Yes. But the only people doing that should be professionals.

I’ve heard countless people who are NOT tech savvy at all tell me friends and “computer guys” tell them not to use antivirus.
I would stop listening to them immediately and never get help from them again.

A lot of people are easily fooled into downloading bad files.
Many download off unprotected P2P networks, open every email they get, visit weird websites, and aren’t pros who can see something coming.

You can teach them as much as you can, but they aren’t the pros you are (or claim to be).

You’re doing them no service and are only putting them in harms way, for who knows what reason.