Additional Notes

 

Jeffrey Hein joined Paul as today's co-host. Glenn called in from Chester, CA.

Jeffrey Hein runs an IT consulting business that integrates technology into your business.
Phone 530-274-2037
http://www.jphein.com/

For those keeping an eye on the weather, accuweather.com has Doppler radar including an animated mode.

drop.io was mentioned during the Nov 17 2008 show.
Zentech has set up a demo at drop.io/kvmr895.
917-512-7398 ext 54837
Sending files larger than about 5meg or .exe files can be a problem, so use this service instead.
PowerPoint files can be viewed directly a slide at a time; you don't have to have PowerPoint. The etrange file at drop.io/kvmr895 is a PowerPoint file, if you want to see how it works.

For people anticipating power outages, keep in mind computers can be set to come on when power is restored. Check your BIOS setting — you get to it during boot-up.
Cheap generators often don't provide well-regulated power. Better, more expensive, ones do. Laptops may fare better than desktops.
Check in advance what might happen when the power goes out. You may find your laptop battery may not be holding a charge.
Small UPS (uninterruptible power supply) units are not intended to keep your computer working for long, just long enough to save your work & shut down.

A UPS may not charge when the power comes from the generator because it's poorly conditioned and you'll hear the UPS beep. Better UPS's do condition the power.

If you're on a generator and you turn on a high wattage device like a heater, the generator will take time to bring the voltage back up to normal. This can send a pulse to your computer and damage it if you don't have a UPS. Belken 1100BA is used by KVMR.

A caller, who has a Mac with the Parallels Windows emulator, ran a virus check and found many of them in a folder but there were only a few files displayed in the folder's window. Changing the folder settings to show all files didn't reveal any more files.
Parallels can run some Windows applications without Windows being installed, so the recommendation is to uninstall just the Windows system. Check the Parallels web site for software that can run without Windows present. Parallels came from WINE. WINE also runs on Linux.

A caller reminds us that Parallels runs only on Intel Macs. And he asks how a Windows emulator can use serial ports on a Mac that doesn't have any.
You can use the USB port with a USB to DB9 (or DB25) serial ports adapter and use the drivers that come with it. But anything that needs to talk to the UART registers won't work,

Jeffrey mentions mint.com that keeps track of your finances & budget. You are advised to consider just how much information you can trust them with. All the usual disclaimers apply; use at your own risk.

Jeffrey also likes clipperz.com; it's a password manager.
OpenID is another password management system but hasn't been fully implemented.

Google has a business directory at 1-800-goog411.

A caller bought a machine with Vista and wants to know if reverting to XP would require a reinstall of the applications or would they be migrated.
There are ways to migrate the apps but it's not simple so it's best to reinstall them.
First get the free auditing software from Belarc & it will create a profile of your machine including the product keys of the installed applications.

Same caller said he just upgraded FireFox and now it boots slowly.
The suggestion is to reinstall the previous version.

There are more utilities listed in the notes of the Dec 31 2007 show.