A program that provides Software, Support and Visibility for Software Startups.
If your business developes software, is privately held, is less than three years old, and makes less than $1M US annually… you might qualify for greatly discounted (or nearly free) Microsoft software.
For more information, check out the requirements on the Microsoft® BizSpark™ web page.
Originally posted 2009-11-17 01:00:01.
Let me start off by saying that there is a lot of free software available for just about every popular operating system that works well, is well written, and straight forward to use.
Let me also point out that a lot of free software is free because is simply couldn’t be sold — yes it’s that bad (of course there is a lot of commercial software that is on the market that shouldn’t be sold; but that’s another rant).
I have a favorite saying:
You rarely get what you pay for.
And with free software that could be taken to mean, it almost always ends up costing you…
I always recommend that you read up on software before you use it; and try to read comments written by someone with similar computer skills and goals as you have. Then ask yourself the simple questions “do you need the software” and ”do you have something that already does the same thing that works”.
If you just want to play with a piece of software, consider using a virtual machine to try it out and then discard the changes; and I always try out a piece of software in a virtual machine even if I’m fairly sure it’s something I want.
I maintain a list of products (free and for pay) on my web site that I consider worth using…
It’s rare that I have any problems with any of my computers — and that’s mainly because I don’t “junk” them up with lots of software I never will use and don’t need… and keep in mind — COMPUTER PROBLEMS are one of the costs of installing software.
Originally posted 2008-12-17 12:00:43.
If you have a need to transfer files via FTP, SFTP, SCP, etc and you prefer to user a graphical user interface on a Windows, Mac, or Linux machine — then the Open Source FileZilla is a very good solution to consider.
Just download the client, install it, and within a few moments you’ll have a connection to a server (that you can save the information for quick reuse if you like). The interface is clean and easy to understand, and supports drag-and-drop as well as transfers from the multi-pane manager.
And, you can’t beat the price – FREE.
Originally posted 2011-09-13 02:00:47.
I haven’t sent one of these tid bit emails out in a long long time — this is just a collection of little points that you might find comes in handy.
Server 2008 is indeed out and available. I think I’m going to wait a few months (and I’m just about out of funds for MSFT store purchase, so doubtful I can get a copy for anyone else — I’ll probably do the MSDN OS subscription again). Hyper-V has not shipped as of yet.
Service Pack 1 for Vista can be downloaded or you’ll get it from Windows Update. If you’re updating more than a single machine, download the whole thing (Windows Update will swamp your connection). There are separate packs for 32-bit and 64-bit (you may need both if you have both machines). Also, copy the update file to the local disk (it will need elevated privileges to install).
Virtual Server 2005 R2 can be installed on XP, XP-64, Vista-32, or Vista-64. The management interface requires IIS, so that’s a little different with PWS version on non-server platforms. If you have VS installed on a server, you should be able to manage _all_ of your installations from one management interface (though Vista doesn’t make that easy).
Google GMail allows you to host your domains for email there for free… you basically get GMail accounts in your own domain. I’ve moved my mail services over there for the time being (I still archive all my email on my own server at home, but the active send/receive is done via GMail).
Parallels is coming out with a new server (64 & 32 bit) to compete with Hyper-V; I looked at the beta (definitely a beta, but useable), they may be able to get some of the market share — but my guess is they’ll get the share from VMware (I didn’t care for the Mac-ish look of the product on Windows).
2.5″ SATA disk drives continue to fall in price; Seagate 250GB drives were $104 @ Fry’s, and they still had some on the shelf on Monday!!!
Intel hasn’t release the most of the 45nm processor family yet; the older Core2 dual and quad processor continue to be a great buy. Remember that really none of the current Intel chip sets take advantage of the higher transfers the newer processors are capable of (well the X38, but that’s supposed to have major issues) — so you might want to wait for the next generation of Intel chips and motherboards to hit the market. FYI: Intel delayed the release because AMD missed their ship dates… their new cores had some rather serious flaws
Notebook and desktop memory are nearly on par with each other. You can purchase 2 x 2GB for under $100 (easily — even the really fast memory). $60 is actually the low price and $80 get’s you high quality with heat spreaders (notebook memory doesn’t have heat spreaders — no room). 2 x 1GB can be purchased for $40!!!
Originally posted 2008-04-01 12:58:23.
Let me start by saying that Windows Desktop Search is a great addition to Windows; and while it might have taken four major releases to get it right, for the most part it works and it works well.
With Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 Desktop Search is installed and enabled by default; and it works in a federated mode (meaning that you can search from a client against a server via the network).
Desktop Search, however, seems to have some issues with junction points (specifically in the case I’ve seen — directory reparse, or directory links).
The search index service seems to do the right thing and not create duplicates enteries when both the parent of the link and the target are to be indexed (though I don’t know how you would control whether or not the indexer follows links in the case where the target wouldn’t normally be indexed).
The search client, though, does not seem to properly provide results when junction points are involved.
Let me illustrate by example.
Say we have directory tree D1 and directory tree D2 and both of those are set to be indexed. If we do a search on D1 it produces the expected results. If we do a search on D2 it produces the expected results.
Now say we create a junction point (link) to D2 from inside D1 called L1. If we do a search on L1 we do not get the same results as if we’d searched in D2.
My expectation would be that the search was “smart” enough to do the search against D2 (taking the link into consideration) and then present the results with the path altered to reflect the link L1.
I consider this a deficiency; in fact it appears to me to be a major failing since the user of information shouldn’t be responsible for understanding all the underlying technology involved in organizing the information — he should just be able to obtain the results he expects.
It’s likely the client and the search server need some changes in order to accommodate this; and I would say that the indexer also needs a setting that would force it to follow links (though it shouldn’t store the same document information twice).
If this were a third party search solution running on Windows my expectation would be that file system constructs might not be handled properly; but last time I checked the same company wrote the search solution, the operating system, and the file system — again, perhaps more effort should be put into making things work right, rather than making things [needlessly] different.
Originally posted 2010-01-22 01:00:57.
Once again I’ve been disappointed with the “service” and “products” provided by an Amazon merchant.
I’ve ask Amazon how to inhibit the display of any and all items except those sold by them; I don’t care to deal with the questionable merchants that use Amazon’s sites. And obviously Amazon doesn’t stand behind them either (look over their A-Z Guarantee, and notice that a person who buys an item every day has the same lifetime limits as one who rarely buys — sounds to me like Amazon is afraid to offer a real guarantee — why should I have more confidence).
Anyway, rather than play the game with Amazon I’ve just opened a charge dispute with my credit card company (which in this case happens to be an Amazon credit card).
If Amazon doesn’t have a way to block the display non-Amazon merchandise I’ll close my account (and credit card).
Originally posted 2009-04-08 12:00:24.
If you have a cellular plan that allows you to make air-time free calls to a set of designated numbers, then Google Voice might be able to save you some money by effectively giving you unlimited calling.
I’ve written up BLOG entries on how to use Google Voice to get “free” calling before; and I’ve included the caution that you might not want to use it for calls that might contain sensitive information…
Personally I find that when I need to call “customer service” (those people you speak to at a big company that don’t provide much service at all) it generally takes forever and would quickly exhaust my monthly allowance of minutes — and I personally don’t care of Google indexes the information in the call or not.
With a Smart Phone you can use the web interface to Google Voice any time you want to make calls, if you have an Android phone Google has already provided an app that allows you to use Google Voice directly from your contacts if not, there’s a number of apps you can buy or just download that achieve that.
For those who have Windows Mobile and an unlimited data plan (like me), I use iDialer (a free app) with the pre-fab configuration for Google Voice (you can configure it for other services as well — the Google Voice one just requires you download, install, and then provide your Google Voice account information).
Bottom line — it works… though I have to tell you it’s a little odd to “dial” a call and then immediately have your phone ring to complete it… but that’s how Google Voice works (in callback mode).
It’s free, it’s easy to install, and like I said it works.
http://www.supware.net/iDialer/
Originally posted 2010-04-18 02:00:45.
Computer viruses, worms, trojans, etc are on the rise… if your computer is connected directly to the internet (or on a public wireless network) you’ll definitely want to have a firewall enabled. The firewall in Windows XP SP2 (or better) and Vista is reasonably good (so there’s no reason to spend money on one).
Also, you should definitely consider running Windows Defender (free from Microsoft) and a Virus scanner.
Two good free Virus scanners are Avast and AVG.
Avast is extremely thorough, but can put a bit of a load on lower end systems. AVG isn’t as thorough, but a great deal lighter on CPU. Also, Avast will require you to register for a key — you can use a throw-away email address (from my experience they don’t seem to SPAM).
Originally posted 2008-05-09 18:20:12.
Several weeks ago I took a look at the free edition of SyncMate, and I had some fairly good things to say about it. In fact, I was so impressed with it that I started using the free edition to synchronize my Windows Mobile device.
Eltima Software contacted me and offered me a license for the expert edition to enable to me more fully explore the capabilities of it (and to write a more in depth post about it).
I agreed, and here’s what I found…
I decided that this would be a fairly comprehensive test; it would involve a number of different operating systems, and synchronization environments.
The operating systems I tested were:
OS-X 10.6.1 (32 & 64 bit)
Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit)
Windows Vista (32 & 64 bit)
Windows 2003
Windows XP
Windows Mobile 6.5 (HTC Touch Pro 2 – XV6875)
Windows Mobile 5.1 (MotoQ)
Outlook Look 2003, 2007, 2010 on the PC
Entourage 2008 on the Mac
Windows Contact / Windows Calendar (on Vista and Windows 7)
Live Contacts / Live Calendar (on Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows 7)
FireFox (Windows)
Safari (Windows and OS-X)
Additionally I took a quick look at iTunes and iPhoto (even though I don’t use either of those normally); and I took a quick look at Google synchronization (including synchronizing to an Android handset).
It’s a long list, and I assure you that the coverage of the tests were not exhaustive — but rather concentrated on suites of versions that would be most commonly found together (though I have a reasonably good feeling that unless there were some real flukes, the sample of tests I performed are probably indicative of all combinations).
My first test was to synchronize my Mac Book Pro with my Mac Pro… I’ve never really put any effort into making sure that the contacts and such agreed between the two, so I install unlocked the free version of SyncMate I’d installed on both and proceeded to enable all the plug-ins. After fighting with both iPhoto and iTune (you wouldn’t need to worry about that if you actually used them they would have already been setup and ready to sync). the little spinners started and in just a few minutes I had everything on both machines (which also included all the calendar and contact information I’d gotten from my smart phone to start with) in sync.
I went ahead and disabled iPhoto and iTune for the rest of my tests — I’d seen it work, and certainly synchronizing those would easily be covered with the folder synchronization (which was a more generic test — but of course it was nice that the iTunes/iPhoto sync could be enabled with a simple click).
I decided next to see what the various versions of Windows and Office Suites would do… so I brought up virtual machines using various OS images and installed versions of Office in them. I setup the Windows component of SyncMate and then decide to just do everything at once — so I added all the machines to SyncMate on the Mac Pro and hit the sync button.
It took a few minutes, but then on every machine in either (or both) the Windows Contacts and the Outlook Contacts there was a full copy of my contacts; as well as files I’d put in a test folder.
Things were going very well, so now I turned to a couple Windows Mobile devices.
Both were easy to setup via USB, and both synchronized perfectly (frankly I was a little surprised when the MotoQ running Mobile 5.1 worked as well as it did). So then I tried WiFi sync on the XV6875 — worked just fine (there’s a nice feature of the SyncMate driver on the WinMo device that will tell you the IP and name of the device if you need). Next was Bluetooth synchronization… and unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that on either device — during setting up the connection I kept getting “Uncompatible Device” (a newer version of SyncMate has corrected the awkward english construction; but unfortunately I still cannot use Bluetooth synchronization with either my XV6875 or Q), so I’m not exactly sure what the problem is, but I would consider Bluetooth synchronization more convenient than WIFi — though I generally use USB since I can charge the device as well.
Then I decided to try a few more scenarios from the SyncMate feature list.
Folder synchronization with a USB flash drive worked perfectly. And from that I’d be fairly confident that iTunes/iPhoto/folders could be synchronized to any USB (disk) device.
Google synchronization worked just as documented; and synchronizing an Android handset with Google just happens (all you have to do is enter you account information into the handset and enable synchronization).
Here a few comments on individual features…
Call history and the SMS manager are both very nice features of the expert edition… I’m not sure it’s sufficient motivation to pay for an upgrade, but it certainly is a sweet feature.
Mounting a Window mobile phone as a USB disk is a feature that didn’t make much sense to me; my XV6875 has the ability to select whether or not it makes an ActiveSync style or USB drive connection when you connect it; though on an older device like my MotoQ it does let you see the file system on the Mac much as you would on a Windows desktop.
Time synchronization is another feature that just doesn’t make sense; all devices get synchronized to the network (and thus to atomic clocks) so I see little value (and a number of reasons not to) synchronize them to each other and defeat the mechanisms already in place (if this were a camera, not a cellular phone I’d consider this a plus — but I’m going to say this feature should be removed; and certainly not used).
As noted before, synchronization to Windows Live isn’t support (and since this is a Mac centric product I don’t think that should come as a surprise — but, of course, some people who have Windows Mobile phones may use some of the Live services).
One thing I haven’t really covered to this point is how you setup a sync partner in SyncMate; and I guess I haven’t focused on it because it’s fairly easy, and definitely straight forward. It isn’t “automatic” (and I actually consider that a plus — I absolutely hate ActiveSync trying take ownership of a device I just want to attach once). A nice touch to the way you add a partner is that you can both name it, and include an image for it (though it might be a little nicer if Eltima included more stock images with SyncMate, or created a web interface to find images of handsets — but I just downloaded one of each of my phones and then used that).
The number one quality of SyncMate is that it works — and by far and large it works as advertised. In this round of tests I didn’t have any instability in the version of the Windows sync driver I installed (unlike in the previous tests where I did have some issues with the Windows sync driver crashing).
One feature I felt might be interesting for Eltima to add would be a “mesh” type synchronization — really all they’d need to do is have an ability to synchronize the partnerships between Mac hosts (ie — all the synchronization partnerships I entered on my Mac Pro could instantly appear on my Mac Book Pro the next time the two machines sync’d — and then conflicts would just be handled throughout the mesh on a peer-by-peer basis just as they are now).
As I’ve stated previously I find the price a little steep — but you and your wallet will have to decide for yourself… If you like the free version, and have needs for some of the additional plug-ins; I suspect you’ll be favorably impressed by what you get once you purchase a license.
Originally posted 2010-07-26 18:04:01.
But not from Steve Jobs, but rather Steve Balmer.
Last week Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft Corporation, participated in a meet and greet after speaking at Nashville Technology Council (held at Trevecca Nazarene University) and was ask to sign an individual’s aluminum Mac Book — and he did, right across the Apple logo!
Originally posted 2010-01-28 01:00:23.
