November 28, 2007 by phillip.

Being a computer guy I’m often asked by people to look at their computer and tell them what’s wrong or can I help them figure something out. For that reason, I’m doing this post on some real tech tricks to make you look like a star. All that from a USB drive.

The first thing you have to realize is that being prepared for anything is always your goal. I’m never unarmed. There are a couple things that are always on my person like most men: wallet, keys, watch, cell phone, and most times my PDA (an HP IPAQ) . Turning any of these items into multipurpose tools makes you ready for anything. Women can of course get more mileage out of this because they carry a purse. Now, for the really techy, I will continue with a blog post on the ultimate home support system because there are a lot of times I connect to my systems at home from a client’s site. I put a USB stick on my keyring that has a ton of goodies as well as my IPAQ. Today we’ll focus on the USB stick.

For the quick and easy route I’d suggest a simple USB stick (doesn’t have to be U3) but you want it to 1 gig or bigger. This will work on a drive as small as 128mb but I always like to keep extra space on the drive in case I need to copy a lot of files over to it for backup purposes. The last thing you want to do with a machine that is on it’s last leg is turn it off and hope it comes back on.

For a long time now I’d been downloading applications individually and copying them to the drive. You’re still going to install some extra ones to the drive but first download this handy set of tools: PCRepairsystem.zip . It’s a fabulous set of tools from the site Daily Cup of Tech. It’s a zip file that you just download and extract to your USB drive. Pull out your drive and stick it back in and you’re done! Well, almost done. When you put it in it puts a little coffee bean next to your computer’s clock on the task bar. Right clicking on that clock brings up a list of programs that do everything from drive repair to rootkit revealers to CD burning. These will serve you well. Get to know what each program does and you have most everything you need.

Next make a visit to www.portableapps.com. This site is full of applications that you may already be using all the time except these are made to run straight from a USB drive. Believe me, having access to a computer and not having administrative rights can totally shut you down because you can’t just download and install the applications you wanted until this.

Take a look around and get what you like. These are some of the ones that I put on my stick and the reasons why.

Firefox: Always want a fully capable web browser.
Clamwin: To be able to walk up and scan a computer for virus’ is absolutely essential.
WinSCP: If you have access to another machine with a secure connection you can FTP or SSH to and from it. Openoffice: A full Microsoft Office competitor on a USB stick? You can’t beat that.
VLC: Will view any video or play any audio.
Gimp: A Photoshop like program. You may need to resize or edit photos or something for someone.

Now with all of these you have to save the file to your desktop then install them and give your USB drive letter in the install path. For example, where it says “Install path: \openoffice” put H: (or whatever your drive’s letter is) in front to make it H:\openoffice.

In closing, I’d suggest you open every program you put on your USB drive before leaving home. The last thing you want to do is be surprised while you’re on location. A good example of this is that the first time you run Clamwin it wants to download the virus database. Assuming you’re at a site with dialup or no internet on the machine you’ve just wasted a ton of time or won’t even be able to fix the problem.

Also, the program SIW on the PCRepairkit should be your first stop when looking at a system. It will tell you everything about the machine. Save this to your USB stick. Should anything happen to the computer you know what it had before.

That’s it! Go out there and make the world a better place with safe computing.

Oh, and just for your convenience, keep some music, podcasts, or things to read on your USB stick. You might get stuck somewhere for a long time. No need to be bored while a virus scan or drive repair runs.  I also put my resume on the drive.  As a consultant you have this time as a window of opportunity if someone really likes you and may have a big project coming up.

Posted in Windows, Only for the techy people, Software | 1 Comment »

October 4, 2007 by phillip.

Let me just start by saying that I don’t read licenses on different things that much so I want you to be forewarned that you should check on the legality of doing this but it’s worked for me.

My issue is that I encounter a lot of computers that I need to reinstall Windows on. The thing is, I have this down to a science (almost) with Linux (read my blog post on PXE) but I end up having a lot of people that need it for Windows. I totally HATE installing Windows. It’s the most boring thing that I ever have to do. I have to wait a long time and have to keep going back to see if it’s asking me a question. I really hate that because I’m a serious multitasker. I want to go through as much configuration as possible before hand and come back and it’s done. Ready to use. Well, here’s my ideas for a Windows computer install.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Windows, Only for the techy people | 1 Comment »

September 24, 2007 by phillip.

I’ve never smoked cigarettes but for a couple years now I’ve totally understood that addiction. I’ll tell you what mine has been: Microsoft Office. I’d do anything to get a hold of it in my past. I worked a deal a while back to buy some licenses from a vendor that I bought a lot of products through so I still use it. However, that was quite a few years ago and right now I’m seeing no compelling reason to upgrade to Office 2007. FYI, my wife’s new Macbook came with Office 2007 so I may play with it more there.

I’ve blogged a long time ago about my dependence on Microsoft Outlook and Access. I’ve been trying to find a way around them to little avail. Well, that’s what it would seem like but I actually have found solutions but I still have that Office monkey on my back. At home and for my consulting I work in Linux, Windows, and Mac and one of the major themes of this blog is working well in all three or whatever you’re given. Well, with my laptop I primarily boot into Linux, my desktop I primarily use Windows and and my wife is on a Mac. The rest of my systems are a mixture of the three except I run all Linux servers. So, for consistency at home and for offices I really want to run the same software throughout.

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Posted in Mac, Windows, Linux, Software | 1 Comment »

August 17, 2007 by phillip.

I don’t know what to think of myself. I don’t like pack rats but I must admit to my one weakness. Trying to breath life into old machines. Believe me, I’m good at it. I’m the guy that has all these extra PC’s in my garage that I put together to see what I can do. I have a drawer full of old memory chips and I’m not afraid to use them.

The funny part is when people see my house or office sometimes. I have guests over and they naturally assume that I have spent tens of thousands on all my equipment but I haven’t. I’ve spent a tenth of that cost because most of these are computers that people either didn’t want or companies told me I could take home. Throwing Linux on these machines is like a fresh coat of paint that looks good. Windows and Mac people come and feel right at home based on what screen I give them. Of course I do have some pretty fast machines around too for the database and multimedia stuff but that’s not the norm.

Before you think about throwing out that machine you’re using figure out what you really need a computer for. What you’re running might just need a little cleaning up and it’s as good as new again. Windows and Mac computers just get a little slow because of all the bloated software that is or was installed. Backup all your info and then wipe your drive. Re-installing it with a restore CD you got with the computer and building it back up can most times make you fall in love with it again.

Posted in Mac, Windows, Linux, Tips | 1 Comment »

August 9, 2007 by phillip.

I can’t say it enough but I’m just a junkie. I’ve been using Vmware server for a while and it’s great for someone like me. I continually try new stuff. I don’t have to risk blowing up my machine to do it either. I’ll install every operating system I can download. I’ve been through every trial edition. Tested out everything there is (well except games because Vmware’s virtual video driver can’t handle that). I can even show a company how the new software’s going to act by virtualizing their current hardware and trying out whatever I want on it. If it fails? So what do it again. No harm done.

If you aren’t riding this hot wave the you should. Go to every Linux distro you want and try all of them out. Use it on another machine as a backup solution. Your main machine goes down you can run on a virtual one from another computer in seconds. One day Apple will realize that they should make their software compatible with this but until then you too should become a virtualization junkie.

Posted in Mac, Windows, Linux, Operating system | 1 Comment »

June 29, 2007 by phillip.

I must say, I do a LOT of web browsing and a decent amount of blog reading and I came across a great idea for my house as it may be for yours as well. The original blog post was on a site call the Infected project (link to article). The article was on an easy way to set up the Video LAN Client (VLC) media player to be controlled remotely by a web interface.

Let’s start by saying, VLC is my media player of choice on every OS. I use it on Windows, Linux, and Mac and I LOVE IT. I turned my kids onto it about two years ago and they stopped using all other MP3 and video programs. It does it all and it’s a great open source program. As fickle as teens are if my oldest son says it even looks better you should believe him.

After I read the blog post I got a million ideas. First, most people have more than one computer in their house. Second, these computers are usually connected to the internet thus they are connected to each other. This made me think of a lot of great ideas for whole house audio. My older boys play music in their room all night. Thing is, when they go to sleep I end up roaming the house at 2 AM turning off their music. Now I don’t have to. I can control their VLC player from my handheld PC in my room. My 5 and 9 year old go to sleep listening to soft music from their computer. Knowing their IP address allows me to turn on/off their music or change it. Even better, I can lower the volume while I’m sitting in my room on my laptop doing some late night surfing. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Mac, Windows, Linux, Software, Tips | 1 Comment »

June 22, 2007 by phillip.

I know I must bore my wife enough with computer talk just like I do about sports talk.  This time she intrigued me with a great correlation.  I was explaining to her what “Patch Tuesday” is.  Once a month on a Tuesday Microsoft issues new fixes to Windows and Vista.  She said that should be called “Bad haircut Tuesday.”  Its funny because Microsoft has become such a big corporation fixed on quick releases that it just puts out a product and figures it’ll fix a lot after that.  This happens though.  Microsoft gets a lot of flack but patches are a part of every operating system because they can’t think of everything.
What I find funny is Microsoft’s arrogance when I heard an interview on one of twit.tv’s podcast security now. Marc Maiffret of  eEye Digital Security finds many holes and submits them to  Microsoft to be fixed before they even know.  Thing is, they don’t listen to him and their legion of programmers don’t try to fix these problems till weeks or even months later.

How do we fix this? Marc Maiffret fixes his own problems.  He makes a Anti-virus Firewall that is great.  I’ll review it on Friday.

Posted in Windows, Operating system | 1 Comment »

June 12, 2007 by phillip.

I know. All you Mac lovers stuck on a PC are telling me SHUT UP! Yes it is true. Apple’s web browser Safari is now available on the PC. Apple wants to join the ranks of Firefox and Internet Explorer in running on every platform. Check it out at: www.apple.com/safari .

True cross platform would involve Linux though, people at Apple. Let’s get on the ball since Apple is running a Unix OS under the hood so it seems like it would be so much easier but I digress.

Check it out and tell me if it’s faster than the other web browsers like it says. Honestly, I still think that the Opera browser is the fastest but I haven’t given this one a good try yet. Come on though. Firefox and it’s plugins are digital manna from heaven so I’m not switching.

Posted in Windows, Cool Net Tricks, Software | 1 Comment »