Writing by Brent Rockwood
My local Atlantic Superstore has a sale on 2GB USB drives for $9.99 this week. Unlike most cheapie drives, these ones actually pass the Windows ReadyBoost test with respectable numbers of 4809 KB/sec for random read and 1920 KB/sec sequential write. As an added bonus, the case looks like it might actually hold together for [...]
After nearly three years, I finally decided to upgrade my venerable first-generation Motorola Razr to something a little more modern.
The iPhone 3G seems to be the new hotness, so I patiently waited on the list for a few days until last Thursday when I got a call from my friendly neighborhood Rogers dealer to come [...]
After ten years with my old Kenwood VR-206 home theatre receiver, I’ve finally decided to upgrade. The winner is, the Yamaha HTR-6160. I’ve always found Yamaha receivers to have a natural sound, and this one supports the newer standards including Dolby True-HD and DTS-HD Master, both of which are commonly found on the Blu-Ray movies [...]
If you look at some of the back-end structures of Group Policy Manager, you may notice some odd names. First off, most of the dll’s in the Program Files directory start with "Quest.Avalanche". Avalanche is the internal code name for the product. Like many software companies, we don’t necessarily know what the final product name [...]
A while back, the hard drive in my new laptop started to make a scary-sounding clicking sound. Rather than wait for it to fail, I decided to contact my friendly IS rep and have the machine replaced.
Now, normally, this would entail a few days of reinstalling Windows, copying my data over, reinstalling all my apps, [...]
I am building a PowerShell SnapIn (more on that in another), and decided it should have a proper Windows installer. Of course, at the time I decided this, I was at the Shoe. No matter. I pulled out my trusty laptop and added a WiX project to my snapIn solution. Next I added my files [...]
Halifax has plenty of coffee shops. Most every one of them offers free wireless internet access. When you think about it, this seems like a reasonable service to offer when your customers are willing to shell out five bucks for what is, essentially, a big glass of milk.
Unfortunately, Starbucks has recently partnered with Bell Canada [...]
I finally broke down and bought a Playstation 3. After one day of ownership, I have to say, I couldn’t be happier.
I bought the 40GB version, which lacks the media card reader and Playstation 2 emulation. Neither of those features was particularly important to me, so I couldn’t really justify an extra hundred bucks for [...]
Vista Service Pack 1 has been released to manufacturing and will be available in mid-March for most customers. I’m looking forward to testing it. I have not been able to find a comprehensive list of the issues addressed, but they are generally believed to be largely around performance and reliability. Of course, various updates over [...]
QGPM uses programmatic interfaces exposed by GPMC for various functions, including backup/restore and reporting on GPO settings. Primarily, these features are implemented in the QGPM service, but GPMC is also used on the client if you try to export a GPO from the live environment.
With SP1, Microsoft is removing GPMC from Vista. For the majority [...]
