tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35096131505210735732011-11-27T15:42:31.472-08:00Not affiliated with Microsoft.Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.comBlogger161100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-90280847738607892532011-11-20T00:35:00.001-08:002011-11-20T00:41:14.022-08:00

Since this blog printed an article two years ago about using the Group Policy Editor to kill the desktop icons, it seemed worth adding that this feature, at some point, slipped into the right click context menu for the desktop. Just right click on the desktop. Under arrange icons, there is an entry to show/unshow icons. Not sure how long it's been there, whether it arrived at RTM or SP1. But it's

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-48742040824451769492011-11-19T13:24:00.001-08:002011-11-19T17:49:59.094-08:00

Blackbox is a re-implementation of a window manager for X11/Xorg, which itself came out as a response to the increasing weight and complexity of Gnome and KDE. The focus from day one was fast and simple, and that has been retained in the several windows versions.  It is well maintained, and fully supports 64-bit oddities such as having two program folders and two collections of control panel

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-24002025607558368262011-11-18T15:19:00.001-08:002011-11-18T16:23:35.536-08:00

Oracle's VirtualBox, originally developed by innotek, and aquired by Sun, has quickly developed a huge market share in relationship to industry standard VMware. By some reckonings, %60, though deployment count is notoriously hard to prove. Why? Again, we hit this point again. Oracle has chosen to keep at least the core functionality available via GPLv2. A few other things that they don't have

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-69494906806511033222011-11-18T09:47:00.001-08:002011-11-18T10:01:45.866-08:00

As I'm sure we all know, the biggest flaw (debatable) in Windows is that, for historical reasons, the text based console is busted and neglected. Why? I have yet to find a support article answering this. But MS, as well as the Open Source community, offers a few tools to make it feel like the real computer it actually is. Here's a handy one that needs little explanation. uptime.exe.  It does

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-52303849135438751232011-11-16T19:32:00.001-08:002011-11-16T20:47:12.526-08:00

Reader pl1ght added to the comments section on the article about Power Archiver a shout to take a look at 7zip for Windows. And after the final test, we have to say 7zip gets the win, all the way. It's not pretty or ugly. It's simple and fast. Best of all, it's Free and open, supports all the typical Windows and *NIX formats. For those concerned with it, it features better compression ratios than

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-64238045106870625282009-10-09T18:31:00.000-07:002009-10-09T18:32:15.373-07:00

A couple of the new features in Windows 7, Homegroup and Libraries, create icons on the Desktop and Sidebar, whether they are in use or not.  They cannot be customized with the usual methods for adding and removing icons from the Desktop.  Here at the lab, we’ve been looking for a way to get rid of these extra icons, and searched but couldn't find the answer.  Finally, building on some well

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-36512375675736148912009-09-21T12:36:00.000-07:002009-09-21T12:52:11.414-07:00

This just in: We're not sure when this feature came about. A quick search of google revealed nothing about it. The key binding ctrl+alt+tab is our favorite accidental discovery of late. It works much like alt+tab, except that it stays on the screen. It's possible to actually look at the windows, move back and forth, and remove your hand from the keyboard while the windows are heads up. It can

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-16992024140868638532009-09-19T03:00:00.000-07:002011-11-18T09:54:35.956-08:00

It may come as a laughable surprise to those who are already familiar with these commands, but in some corners, pretty experienced workstation users haven't discovered them. It was only after gaining some familiarity with using cygwin as a windows shell that we learned of some of these commands. Others are being restated because the make the list more useful as a quick console reference. A

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-17484732890906886282009-09-17T21:46:00.000-07:002009-09-20T20:02:57.120-07:00

Maybe this is just nitpicking, but WinRAR  has an archaic user interface.  While there is something to be said for consistency (most WinRAR users can operate it blindly), we started looking around for something that was a little more up to date, and fit more closely in with the windows 7 style. Searching around, Power Archiver 2010 rose to the top of the heap.  It supports all the file types

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-11117887630338524422009-09-17T16:49:00.000-07:002009-09-17T16:49:58.301-07:00

Some in the computing world actually have more experience using linux as a desktop than they do windows. Many others are at least very comfortable using the bash shell (or others) to navigate the file system, and frequently find it faster to move around using a shell than with a bunch of clicking. Linux is the operating system of choice for many tasks here, but we're mostly using windows on the

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-357244892058762232009-09-17T14:59:00.001-07:002009-09-17T15:14:09.297-07:00

This may be one of our more esoteric hacks. This author does not like Desktop icons, at all. There is so much clutter created on the screen, and a background with Window Maker and other Step-like window managers on linux has opened questions as to the generally utility of the concept. There are no Desktop icons on Window Maker or blackbox, and they were never missed here. These icons in

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-51540426995231263512009-09-17T14:41:00.001-07:002009-09-19T04:40:18.040-07:00

Here at the lab, we’ve always hated the cluttered context menu. . . it’s always been one of those areas where windows application installers are given free reign to pollute the day to day operation of the system, through a mechanism the user is not conveniently able to access. To clean it out one has to use the registry editor. Using the registry is a pain in the ass. Nonetheless, around here

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-68390274677452041172009-09-16T19:39:00.001-07:002009-09-19T04:32:53.406-07:00

A lot of superlatives have been heaped on Windows 7 since it’s first beta a year ago.  For the most part we agree with them, though we’re not without complaints.  We’ve been giving windows media player a shot, a bit of microsoftware that generally avoided, because it was very cumbersome.  The current version is a lot more comfortable than versions seen in the past.  One complaint, though.  The

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-77371544425980405012009-09-16T16:01:00.001-07:002009-09-16T19:23:31.074-07:00

We found a nice little utility to customize the login screen with pretty much any image we have lying around. Take a look around for the tweaks.com login changer. All nice and activated :)

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-56318149112197961592009-09-16T15:19:00.001-07:002009-09-16T19:25:15.933-07:00

Here at the labs we’ve installed the latest Windows 7 release (one that takes a bit of searching to find). It’s after a string of Win 7 RC and Beta offerings from MS that this machine has run. It’s vista performance was awful.  Now that RTM is here, we thought it was time for a proper badge to replace the Vista badge this machine came with.  Not much is out there so we made our own :)

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3509613150521073573.post-12442143607896433282009-09-12T22:33:00.001-07:002009-09-17T14:58:02.090-07:00

We’re pretty happy using Windows Live Writer to post this blog, as it’s well formatted and works smoothly.  Don’t laugh. It works. Perhaps we’ll test out making a movie clip in Movie Maker next. UPDATE: My love affair with windows live writer ended in about two days, when i realized it was basically trashing the posts with a bunch of busted html code. It’s what i should have expected. 

Mack Allisonnoreply@blogger.com0