http://globalizenetworks.com/blog Low cost, high value solutions to common network administration problems. Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:19:26 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've been wondering why there aren't more free internet remote support solutions given that there is very good open source code out there to accomplish this (i.e. VNC).  Using VNC requires knowing the host IP and having TCP 5900 open through whatever firewalls the host is using.  I have come ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/06/24/remote-support-software/ What should we do about Vista?  The major hardware vendors are making it harder to get XP pre-installed, so licensing will begin to get dodgy.  Also Microsoft will end "Mainstream support" of XP on 4/14/09 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&C2=1173&x=13&y=13 Personally I would prefer to stick with XP until the bitter end, but we will ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/06/17/transitioning-from-xp-to-vista/ I went to my first SF Tech Meetup today and learned a little bit about widgets.  These are little chunks of content that you can embed in a webpage or blog and e-mail around.  Widget people like to use the word viral.  This seems like a good way to promote ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/06/13/widgets/ I am starting to get into things like Technorati and Digg and Reddit. Technorati Profile http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/06/12/technorati/ ASR Backups are a cool way to get system state backups of  Windows 2003 server.  They are cooler than regular NTBackup system state backups, because you can do a "bare metal" restore by booting a system with no OS to the installation CD and providing the ASR disk and path ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/06/04/automate-asr-backups-on-windows-2003-server/ Here are the main problem I see with rolling Google Apps out to Outlook users who are used to Exchange: Access to shared calendars won't work the same I guess you could use something like OggSync to sync public and selected private calendars, but that is kludgey compared to Exchange free/busy functionality. Using ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/06/04/how-close-can-you-get-to-exchange-with-google-apps/ At a large HMO I used to work for, they used to have a tough re-image policy.  I believe that if a problem took more than two hours to solve, they would just have the desktop support person re-image the machine.  This approach did lead to plenty of problems, lost ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/05/31/re-imaging-instead-of-troubleshooting/ I had a lively exchange with another consultant today that included a discussion of imaging client machines. This other fellow subscribed to what I think is an old school philosophy that there should be a separate volume for the system and the data on client machines. I still subscribe to ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/05/31/workstation-builds-two-partitions-or-one/ For corporate Video Conferencing, we usually have a dedicated "codec" from Tandberg or Polycom.  However, we recently ran across this offering from Sony which works well, has nice modular add-ons, supports the latest protocols, and is more economical:  Sony iPela PCS-G50 (CDW is a good corporate vendor if you want ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/05/30/net-meeting-in-the-corporate-video-conference-context/ I have been thinking about how to provide health monitoring to our clients, host servers for our consulting business, and have a flexible lab environment for testing and training.  We don't have a data center of our own, so I started looking at dedicated servers, virtual dedicated servers, etc. I ... http://globalizenetworks.com/blog/2008/05/23/crazy-computing-clouds/