Exchange 2003: All-In-One Tools Download

Download details: Exchange 2003: All-In-One Tools Download

These tools are sooo cool. I won't use them all, but if you manage Exchange Servers, you should spend some quality time testing each of them.

Offline NT pw & reg-editor, bootdisk

Offline NT pw & reg-editor, bootdisk

To recover or change a local admin password

CERT - Steps for Recovering from a UNIX or NT System Compromise

CERT?D/CC Steps for Recovering from a UNIX or NT System Compromise

Just for reference. Its important to have a checklist.

AMD Athlon XP 2500 Overclocking

P u r e O C - AMD Athlon XP 2500 Overclocking

Just bought this chip for $80. Will test overclocking with the premium cooling system and see what happens.

Quiet and Cool PC Build notes

I updated my primary workstation. With the previous cooling system, I had a 1.4 GHz system overclocked to 1.6 GHz. After running for at least two years with a PC Power and Cooling 275W power supply, and I had trouble keeping the CPU temp under 70C.

I installed a spare 300W Antec power supply, but I still had problems with the CPU temp.

I cleaned off a 1.8 GHz Athlon XP chip, running at standard speed and voltage (no overclocking) and installed a Thermatake Vocano 8 CPU fan. The baseline CPU temp is 50C and stays under 54C during CPU intensive (scanning, etc) operations. Huge difference.

I should have the AMD cooling kit (CPU fan and power supply) later today and if I have time will build a box with the new Asus motherboard and Athlon 2500 (Barton). I have a Thermatake variable speed case fan that I will use and see what CPU temps I get.

A4 Paper Format / International Standard Paper Sizes

A4 Paper Format / International Standard Paper Sizes

I may have already posted this article. Markus Kuhn has done a great job summarizing ISO standards for paper. Anyone who has traveled to Europe has probably wondered aloud about how nicely all the paper products 'fit'. Its very simple. In the US, we are still folding paper in wierd shapes to get it to fit into envelopes.

"Globalization starts with getting the details right.
Inconsistent use of SI units and international
standard paper sizes remain today a primary
cause for U.S. businesses failing to meet
the expectations of the global economy. "

IBM Redbooks Online

IBM Redbooks | Redbooks Online

IBM is the sleeping giant. They don't do everything right, they are still too big to be 'agile' in the marketplace, but they have great technology and some very, very smart engineers.

The Redbook site has more technical documentation that you can read in a lifetime available as free downloads. In particular, the Linux and Networking series have some very good material.

I'm reading "Understanding LDAP" this week.

This article parallels my recent experience migrating from a Compaq E700 (500 MHz, 256 Meg RAM) to a new nc8000 (1.6 GHz, 512 Meg RAM. 30 Gig drive).

I'm also looking at the best method for Sarah to backup her (future) laptop when she goes to college.  I bought an external USB 2.0 drive and she also plans to backup over the web to one of our home servers.  I plan to get Web Folders (IIS) or an scp (SSH copy) to a UNIX host.

I will publish our results.  

Last Friday, I received my new laptop, a Toshiba M2, with a Centrino chip, 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, DVD/CD-R, an 80GB laptop and the best feature by far, the 64MB nVidia video card.  My last laptop, a Toshiba Tecra 9100 had serious hardware issues. I had to replace two screens, had a broken fan and had lots of “unknown” driver issues.  The driver issues were so bad that I would blue screen (or randomly restart) on average every five days.  I have to give serious credit to the people who designed Windows Error Reporting. Why? Well, frankly I would have blamed Microsoft for my blue screens, but they turned out to be all hardware related.  Anyways, here's some helpful tools and tips for configuring your new machine.

• Imaging: Acronis TrueImage - This software is great, *very* easy to use, you don't need to restart to use it, and you can even create an image on your image. I love this software...it makes the tedious process of backing up your machine completely painless.
• Email/File Searching: X1 - simple and sweet
• Organizing Links: OnFolio
• RSS Reader: Newsgator - SharpReader is great, but you can't beat Outlook integration
• Network Utilities: NetStumbler
• Virtualization software: Virtual PC 2004
• Image Editing: Digital Image Pro - Lots of great built in features to do cool things like smart-erase, blemish removal, and lots more. Take the product tour and enjoy

Laptop Best Practices

• Buy a second hard drive (40GB) and a drive bay that you can swap out in your DVD drive bay. Copy all of your VPCs on the second hard drive and you'll notice dramatic perf improvements since the OS can spin on its own drive. You should also use differencing images so that you have one base image and multiple unique builds on top of those images. If you need more VPC tips, send a comment to Brian Keller, who happens to know more about VPCs then anyone I know.
• If you travel a lot, or your laptop battery is subpar, you should definitely get an extra battery add on.  I bought the nCharge VNC-130 system and have been really happy with it. I get about 6 *additional* hours using the nCharge with my old, highly draining Tecra 9100.  I like the nCharge system because it can be used with any type of laptop (assuming you have an adapter) and it can, with the proper adapter, power anything with a car adapter like a cell phone, Pocket PC, etc
• If you're running Windows XP, turn on ClearType. right click on your desktop and select properties, select appearance, click Effects, and change the “Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts” and select ClearType. You can configure ClearType here.
• If you have a large hard drive (>30 GB), change the default recycle bin size from 10% (the default) to 1%.

That's all I can think of now, did I miss something? Are these valuable tips? Let me know

 Related...
[Microsoft WebBlogs]

Wap11Ver22Hack - SeattleWireless

Wap11Ver22Hack - SeattleWireless

LinkSys WAP11 WAP hacks.

Spending a Year with Mac

Spending a Year with Mac - OSNews.com

Great read. I would like to summarize my experience with Win2K, XP and my laptop.

298882 - The new command-line tools for Active Directory in Windows Server 2003

298882 - The new command-line tools for Active Directory in Windows Server 2003

There are lots of new command line utilities with Windows 2003, but this article lists the ones related to AD.

Office Resource Kit Administrative Updates Home Page

Office Resource Kit Administrative Updates Home Page

This page has links for all the Office Admin updates. Admin updates don't require the CD and are optimized for automated client updates.

Office 2003 Editions Resource Kit Administrative Updates

Office 2003 Editions Resource Kit Administrative Updates

Found this on one of the Microsofties Blogs. Why doesn't Microsoft advertise this better?? This is critical to companies, so you can centrally manage updates (and not require install CD's for updates).

eBags

eBags - luggage, handbags, backpacks, bags and travel accessories

The idea of a laptop 'wrap' was appealing, but none of these are large enough for my company HP nc8000 laptop (which I like a lot).

I'm leaning toward an Ogio Metro as a price/performance winner, but I would prefer a more traditional briefcase if I could find one that can handle all the odd bits I carry.

Water bottle, laptop mouse, assorted cables, small tools, pens, stationary, file folders, glasses (sun and reading), cell phone, spare batteries, PDA, diary, etc.