Wednesday, August 08, 2007
New Airport Extreme Lost in the news...
Yesterday Apple launched a series of new products. The new Airport Extreme was lost among all the Live Blogging and excitement.The new Airport Extreme base station now offers Gigabit Ethernet, which fixes one of the biggest complaints about it since it's introduction. AEB is an excellent SOHO server. With an extra powered USB hub it can serve as your File and Printer sharing server as well as your internet router. The first revision only offered 100 MBit ethernet, which for many people became a bottleneck for file sharing since all the latest Macs and most PCs now offer Gigabit ethernet.
Apple seems to be making great strides to capture the 'mass market' now, rather than targeting the elite.
Labels: Apple Airport Extreme., File and Printer Sharing, SOHO Router
Article Link
posted by Jambo Consulting at 1:50 PM
1 comments :
Post a Comment : email post 
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
New iMacs and more...
Engadget has some great coverage of today's Apple Event where Steve Jobs announced new iMacs, iLife '08, and iWork '08. Some notable additions include the long rumored Number's spreadsheet application and an increase of storage space for .Mac users up to 10 GB. MacWorld also has great coverage of the event ( with less pretty pictures ).It looks like Apple is rounding out it's competitor to Microsoft Office. I think for a large number of business users, iWork will provide more than enough features for them, as well as ease a lot of frustration with Microsoft Office. Being able to quickly create a document and make it look nice, or enter some numbers and easily create a good looking report will be very appealing to many users. Though many of the very advanced users will still stick to Excel for it's extensive list of features and functions. At $79 for a basic office suite vs. several hundred dollars for Microsoft Office, I think iWork '08 will be a big hit.
Labels: Apple, Apple Special Event, iMac, iWork, Microsoft Office
Article Link
posted by Edward at 1:39 PM
0 comments :
Post a Comment : email post
Understanding Mac OS X Open Directory
Nice overview of Open Directory in MAc OS X.
Article Link
posted by Edward at 1:20 PM
0 comments :
Post a Comment : email post
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Article: Can I Really Run My Small Office On Macs? One Company's Example
Eugene just had his article about running a Small Office with Macs published at MyFirstMac.com.Labels: Mac OS X, Small Office Macs
Article Link
posted by Edward at 1:36 PM
0 comments :
Post a Comment : email post
Brief history of OS X
Kernel Thread has a nice summary of how Apple's OS X came to be.Labels: Apple Mac OSX Leopard, History of OS X, Mac OS X
Article Link
posted by Edward at 1:33 PM
0 comments :
Post a Comment : email post
Tech: Anti Virus / Malware Software
I sometimes wonder how some people keep getting their PCs infected with virus. I rarely ever get any virus on my PC, even when I wasn't using any Anti-Virus software. And I haven't caught a virus yet ( cross my fingers ) since I got my first Mac in 2001. I don't even think there exists a virus for OS X in the wild. Let's hope that stays that way.Whatever the case, my customers that are running Windows often have virus or malware problems. Here are a few tools that I have found helpful in cleaning and preventing virus and malware:
AVG Free - Free, and runs with pretty low resources. AVG purchased an Anti Spyware company a while back and is offering an excellent Anti Spyware package as well ( though not free ).
Avast - There is also a Free Anti Virus version of Avast for home users. Like AVG, it provides excellent virus protection for relatively low resource usage ( though I feel Avast is a little more resource hungry than AVG )
Kaspersky - There is no Free version for Kaspersky. However, from various reports on the net Kaspersky seems to be one of if not THE best Anti Virus software on the market. Very accurate and extremely efficient in identifying and scanning for virus. It is reported that Kaspersky is the most effivient Anti Virus software out there.
Spybot Search & Destroy - This is my favorite Spyware and Malware scanning and removal software. It is completely Free and development depends on users' donations. Spybot paired with AVG will provide pretty comprehensive protection for your Windows PC without the bloat of Norton or McAfee suites.
CCleaner - A Free tool to clean up various thing on your Windows PC.
Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel - A Free tool by Mike Lin that let's you easily turn-off all those pesky little applications that start when you boot Windows.
Although Macs aren't as vulnerable as Windows to virus now, they can still spread virus by passing them on via various means:
ClamXav - ClamXav is a gui frontend for the open source ClamAV antivirus software. It's probably a good idea to have this installed and run every now and then in case you are passing on virus unknowingly.
Labels: Anti Virus, Antivirus, Clean Up PC, Free software, Free Windows tools, Mac Virus, Malware, Spyware
posted by Edward at 1:05 PM
0 comments :
Post a Comment : email post
Tech: Windows - Reset Corrupt Winsock
I often run into some customers that have suddenly lost the ability to surf the internet. Usually the problem is either their DSL / Cable connection has gone down, or some basic wiring or settings were changed on their PCs. However, there are cases where everything seems to be in order, but there is still no Internet Browsing. The typical symptoms are:
- Ethernet connection active
- Valid IP and DNS entries from DHCP server.
c:>ipconfig /all- Can resolve domain names.
c:>nslookup google.com- Can ping the internet.
c:>ping google.com- Server not found when using any browser
If this is happening on your computer, it is likely Winsock is corrupt. Winsock is in charge of TCP/IP communication in Windows, and when it's corrupted you start getting very illogical networking behavior.
In Windows XP there are two main ways to reset Winsock:
If you do NOT have Windows XP Service Pack 2 follow these steps from Microsoft Knowledgebase 811259:
We are basically deleting Winsock REgistry entries, and then reinstalling TCP/IP Networking Protocol.
Windows XP without Service Pack 2 instructions
To repair Winsock if you do not have Windows XP SP2 installed, delete the corrupted registry keys, and then reinstall the TCP/IP protocol.
Step 1: Delete the corrupted registry keys
Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.
For more information about how to back up the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
322756 How to back up, edit, and restore the registry in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. In Registry Editor, locate the following keys, right-click each key, and then click Delete:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock2
4. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
Note Restart the computer after you delete the Winsock keys. Doing so causes the Windows XP operating system to create new shell entries for those two keys. If you do not restart the computer after you delete the Winsock keys, the next step does not work correctly.
Step 2: Install TCP/IP
1. Right-click the network connection, and then click Properties.
2. Click Install.
3. Click Protocol, and then click Add.
4. Click Have Disk.
5. Type C:\Windows\inf, and then click OK.
6. On the list of available protocols, click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then click OK.
If Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) does not appear, follow these steps:
a. Click Start, and then click Search.
b. In the Search Companion pane, click More advanced options.
c. Click to select the following three check boxes:
- Search system folders
- Search hidden files and folders
- Search subfolders
d. In the All or part of the file name box, type nettcpip.inf, and then click Search.
e. In the results pane, right-click Nettcpip.inf, and then click Install.
7. Restart the computer.
If you have Windows XP Service Pack 2:
Open the command prompt Start > Run > command
Enter the following command: netsh winsock reset
Restart your computer.
You should be able to start surfing normally again after Winsock is reset. However, more importantly you should try to find out what caused Winsock to get corrupted. Consider when you were last able to surf the internet, and what you did around that time. Did you download a new internet game, click on a link a stranger sent you, etc.?
References:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299357
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/winsock.htm
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=what+is+winsock&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Labels: Can not Browse, Can Ping but Can't Borwse, No Surf, Reset winsock, Windows XP, Winsock
Article Link
posted by Edward at 12:34 PM
0 comments :
Post a Comment : email post
