I have been waiting for Windows 7 for some time now, planning on installing it on one of the test machines that I currently have laying around. I have always been one to opt for installing the higher versions of Winows XP or Vista, since they have a few features which aren’t available in the home variety. This time around Microsoft has taken it a step further, not only is Remote Desktop not available in Windows Home and Windows Home Premium, but you can’t Remote Desktop into a Windows 7 machine running Home or Home Premium, that I find to be a major disappointment.

• Windows Home (No Remote Desktop)
• Windows Home Premium (No Remote Desktop)
• Windows Professional
• Windows Ultimate

I’m always interested in new hardware, what I have always found interesting is SSD drives and what they are doing with them. Fusion io came with the idea of a PCI Express SSD with 256 GBs and priced at $4000+ but this time around they teamed up with Fatal1y to come up with “budget” priced PCI Express SSD. You still can’t boot from this PCI Express card but the read and write speeds are ridiculous, there are some firmware updates which my add some new features but thats at a later stage.

Link: Gizmodo

I never thought that there would be a curved screen such as this. A 43 inch display in a curved widescreen format, its resolution is around 2880×900 double WXGA, a 10′000:1 Contrast ratio, single link DVI-D and HDMI inputs, on screen display, and probably the coolest screen to hit the market. You can have it by July with a very nice price tag of $8,000. The one part which seems to be missing in the description is that there is 9 inch back end resembling the good old CRT monitors from back in the day. Still for the techi who can afford this its one interesting piece of equipment, makes working on panoramic photos and editing IMAX movies easy as pie.

I have installed previous Linux OSes before but I have been pretty lazy to do anything about Ubuntu. Now I’m a bit fed up with one of my machines and I don’t want to upgrade to Vista for it and its too weak to handle windows 7, all I need it for is mostly FTP downloads. So I decided to switch it over to Ubuntu, I’m just going to have it delete the whole damn drive I don’t even really care whats on it, I’m that pissed with that machine. What annoys me about Windows is how the DLL files get messed up even when you don’t install anything at all or pretty much don’t download anything except media. So for the sake of my sanity I’m switching it to Ubuntu and its only a 4 year old PC so its still got some punch left it, to be exact its an old Alienware cube. Not that Windows is not a good OS, I think its an excellent OS, especially the development of Windows Home Server that made my life a lot easier with back ups and everything in a central location. I’m going to install it and I have a few softwares ready for all my needs, well a few at least to cover my basis.

I think everyone has something personal on their computer and have passwords at this point in time and the worst thing that could happen is to lose that password. Well my nephew messed around with a family members laptop and somehow managed to changed the password, keep in mind that he is only 4 years old. I’m more and more amazed what kids these days are able to do. Well I was called in to tackle the problem which I knew wasn’t going to be very easy, but simple enough. I did it my own way but the link below has the simplest and clearest way of explaining how to tackle this if you are in this situation. Windows Vista has an ability to create a password recovery CD which you can insert and reset your password but if you haven’t done that then there is another way.

• Download Active Password Changer on to another computer
• Install ImageBrn onto your system so that you can burn a Bootable CD
• Using ImageBrn, burn the Active Password Changer DOS bootable iso onto a disc usually located here: C:\Program Files\Active Data Recovery Software\Active Password Changer\Pwd-changer-boot-cd.iso
• Boot up your locked PC with this disc, make sure it boots from CD first
• Then you can go through the steps of finding your MS SAM database where the user and passwords are installed
• Once thats done you clear your password for a specific user, if their are multiple users
• Restart your PC and take out your disc, and it will go through with the user have no password
• Then you create a new password for that user

This is a basic breakdown of the steps that I went through, took me a little over 45 minutes to get through all that and its pretty simple. The link to ItsVista has a complete breakdown of the whole thing with screenshots.

Link: ItsVista

I’m always on the lookout for a new laptop, something mobile but packs a punch and its still thin and easy to carry. Dell have been taking shots at these types of laptops, and I think they weren’t extremely successful with the Dell Adamo so they came with the Dell Studio 14z which seems like a very well rounded laptop, not a powerhouse but not on a light weight diet.

Features:

• Core 2 Duo Processors
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Graphics Card
• 5 GB Shared Ram
• 5+ hours with 8 cell battery and this is more on the realistic side
• Hi-Def Widescreen LED 14″ display with 720p HD resolution and HD+ 900p optional
• Backlit Keyboard
• 4.3 lbs
• Wireless N and Bluetooth
• 64 bit OS available

A fully loaded version with all the bells and whistles you could possibly choose costs $1964 after the discount which isn’t too bad.

Link: Dell

I had the Belkin ADSL which worked all nice and dandy for only a few days before funky things started happening. I wanted a one box solution which I could use for all my needs instead I got another bunch of headaches. If I left my desktop for more then a day it wouldn’t be able to access the internet, I would have to manually restart the router. If a laptop was put into standby I wouldn’t be able to connect to the wireless connection, again I would have to reboot the router. Another thing which really bothered me was that for some reason the connection was a bit slow whenever I did a traceroute there was always a long delay with a multiple websites, so after going through this hell for a couple of weeks I went back to my old solution.

I brought back the Cisco Modem and D-Link Router, as soon as I plugged it everything was back to normal. Browsing felt very fast and stable, I was downloading and browsing faster then before. Even when I was sharing the connection with the main PC I was having issues with it hanging. Now with this solution its working perfectly, my only gripe is that I can’t really do any configurations with the Cisco Modem, if I try anything from the console I will probably crash it, I can’t even access its web based interface, until I find somebody that can I will leave things as is.

Useful Command Line Tricks:
Window Key + R
Type-”cmd” to get the command line window

Commands:

• “ipconfig” – Look up all information about your network
• “shutdown” – Shutsdown your computer
• “tasklist” – All running processes on your computer
• “ping” – Displays lantency to a remote address
• “net stop wuauserv” – Disables the Restart warning that pops up after every Windows update

System Shutdown Shortcuts
Create a New Short Cut and type:

• “shutdown – s -t -60 -c” – Computer Will Shutdown in One Minute
• “shutdown -a” – A shortcut to Abort the shutdown procedure

I picked up this list from the Maximum PC April 2009 issue, there are some publications which are still worth buying in print and this is one of them. PC Geeks over the years have developed certain skill sets, some are through education, some through knowledge, and the majority of it is through breaking stuff. Well this is a list of things that I can relate with and I know a few people that can as well, there are people with a lot more skills and I’m one always willing to learn.

• Knowing the difference between the board connectors; PCI Express, DDR Memory, Dual Channel Rimm
• Benchmarking a PC
• Know basic HTML tags
• Bypass the Government content filter
• Run all your essential Apps on a USB stick
• Getting through to the real technicians of customer service
• Use photoshop to doctor a photo
• Wire your home with your know Ethernet and know how to crimp it
• Say NO to extended warranty
• Mooch Wi-Fi pretty much anywhere
• Use a DSLR in full manual mode
• Install a Hard Drive in a Laptop (Laptop broke down in the first month, damn annoying)
• Protect your Wi-Fi
• Take apart a damage external hard drive and extract the data
• Pull off an elaborate prank
• Set up a RAID configuration
• Securely Erase your data (They don’t know how to do that at Lockheed Martin)
• Solder like your life depended on it (I used to do that when I worked on my R/C Cars, would probably do some damage to a mother board)
• Rip CDs to FLAC
• Stream your movies, Music, Photos, and anything else to any location in your house
• Dual-Boot your PC
• How to hack a Windows Computer or Router
• Watch TV Shows on the Internet (Legally)
• Installing and configuring a Virtual Machine
• Protecting your tracks on the PC
• Run multiple monitors
• Know the important Linux Commands
• Avoid DRM at all costs
• Use Remote Desktop
• Rip a DVD to H.264
• Find everything you need to know Online
• Install Third-party firmware on your router
• Be an addict to Star Wars or Star Trek
• Be able to use the command prompt like a pro
• Be able to change your own tire
• Connecting to the ECU of your vehicle to tweak, or flash, clear codes
• Play Halo1/2/3 and still don’t want to sleep
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I did something a while back with my Hazmat WHS a while back when I was building it that I forgot about it. I knew the backplane wasn’t full, I just assumed it had all but one slot empty, I plugged in one hard drive and it didn’t show up so I assumed I left the SATA connection empty inside the server which was the case. When I went to plug it in, I found out that I had another slot in the backplane open so out of 5 only 3 were being used and only 3 were connected. I plugged the two but I still had one slot empty. And at the same time I have received the replacement drive for the 2TB which worked perfectly, I was surprised Amazon dispatched it so quickly. The only extra cost I had was spending a couple of KD sending the damaged hard drive back to the states.

After adding the hard drive in the WHS console to the collective of the server I managed to bump it from 11.14 TB to 13.87 TB and still a lot of room for expansion. Now all I need is to get the port multiplier and a few other parts to continue my expansion.