* Posts by Tezfair

454 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Dec 2006

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Mars rover seeks perfect suntan spot to survive winter

Tezfair
Go

...

If my wife was in charge of driving the rover she would swing it around a few corners and get rid of the dust. I often say to her that her tyres never get worn in the middle.

Beeb rescues old Who episodes

Tezfair
Coat

In the future...

Someone decided that early episodes were really crap and went back in time and wiped them

Windows Defender Offline: For PCs too hosed to go online

Tezfair

sweeper

doesn't Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper Beta do the same thing?

Redmond rolls with Exchange 2010 SP2 update

Tezfair
Meh

been there, done that

you may have to stop the data collecter services in order for it to run and I also noticed that some of the settings had defaulted back (such as size limits and mobile password policies etc)

otherwise a long update - 48 minutes for my little box

other than than its no different!!

The BBC Micro turns 30

Tezfair
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came close

I nearly had a BBC-B 2nd hand. Drove about 40 miles in response to an advert having spoke to the owner on the phone, got there and he had 'just' sold it. I was a little annoyed!!

Ended up with the speccy.

But the article has invoked a few memory cells, do I recall having the ability to download software on a Saturday morning on the computer show,? was it via teletext or from a flashing square in the corner of the screen or both?

Ahh, Saturday mornings, Robinson Crusoe, dubbed foreign children shows that just stopped at the end and cutting edge computers.

Nokia promises not one but two Lumia 800 power fix patches

Tezfair
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1 day old and 2 updates

Got to be Windows.

I had the 800 yesterday and I hate the OS. 500 features? more like 500 other things removed from 6.5.

Guess my lads getting a new mobile, im going back to my HD2.

No tethering

No remote desktop

No simple way to get to the outlook subfolders

Constantly flickering tiles (not wonder the batteries flat its always jiggling the screen)

The list goes on

still, when its turned off it look nice

Neutrinos still FASTER THAN LIGHT in second test

Tezfair
Mushroom

fast?

Who says that the speed of light is the ultimate speed? its just the fastest thing know to man currently. The test at cern shows that its possible to go faster so im not sure why everyone is saying it can't be done.

I have watched many sciencey programs that says the big bang happened everywhere at the same time, well since space is a bit of a big area it would take something pretty damn fast to get across the universe in an instant.

my theory on the neutrinos is simply they are so small they can pass though other atoms and photons whereas light gets bounced around other atoms on the same journey, eg, straight line as apposed to a wibbly wobbly one

Compact Disc death foretold for 2012

Tezfair
FAIL

I have lots of digital downloads...

...trouble is, its on an old pc with a long gone email address so despite backing up the license key im not able to listen to them.

Im not planning on downloading for a long time

UK.gov threatens to 'pull plug' on smart meter rollout

Tezfair
Facepalm

I've got one of those plug in monitors...

..and all it tells me is that...

my flat screen TV uses 3 times more electricity than my old analogue TV

strip light fittings use as much electricity as the actual tube (eg, 60w = 120w consumption)

my house uses around 300w during the night

It does save me money though - the batteries went flat in it and I have not replaced them!!

HTC's Mango handsets hit shelves in Blighty

Tezfair

shock horror

There's people such as I who really don't care about apps and wasting money on something that they don't actually need.

Im not buying into brands that your forced to install itunes just to make a phone work, or ones that (possibly) track everything you do in the same way as its search engine.

I have WM phone, always have and it does what I need. It makes calls, goes on the web and has a satnav. Anything else is a time waster.

I have set up 'store iphones' at various mobile high street stores in the past and the response was they were rubbish, and my lads -2nd replacement- android constantly hangs and is slow. People will argue how great *their* mobile is over the others. Great, I happy it works for you. Windows Mobile works for me.

Go Daddy flogs 50 MILLION domains

Tezfair
FAIL

...and not a single one was .co.uk

Microsoft delivers 'copy Apple' Windows 8 message

Tezfair
Facepalm

Touch screens? unlikely to appear in businesses

Can you imagine how tired staffs arms would be having to reach out to touch a screen that for H&S reasons is already at arms length?

I suspect the mouse and keyboard will be around for a long time yet.

What works for spotty oiks at home doesn't work in an office.

Having had trouble with smartphones with my big fingers im not rushing out to get a touchyscreeny just yet

TomTom fights falling satnav sales with iPad app

Tezfair

Copilot does BT but.....

Copilot allows directions over BT, however I turn it off because the BT goes into standby all the time so you miss the start of the direction. Its ok if your playing music over BT to keep the audio alive.

The cloud and the incredible shrinking office

Tezfair
Facepalm

all fine and dandy but.....

Once upon a time a hacker required a PC to be on the get access to your files. Now they can bash away in the cloud since its available 24/7/365

Not everywhere has ADSL. No good for to country folk with poor connectivity

Who pays for exceeded bandwidth

So many things to think about, maybe its best to not go down that route

Virtualised desktops: provisioning done the MS way

Tezfair
WTF?

another week..

..another VDI write up.

I looked into all this today and discovered that you have to pay for addition RDS CALS. So you pay for the OS, you pay for the server, you pay to access the server and you pay to access the remote desktop on the server.

And as far as im aware, if its all in the cloud you have to pay for the data you shift around the cloud.

I can see this all crashing down as way too expensive.

local networks are here to stay

Google Apps v Microsoft Office 365: Rumble in the enterprise

Tezfair
Thumb Down

no SSL?

In that case I can't see many companies taking this on otherwise they are hit with the risk of the DPA coming down on them - they can't protect their data.

It will be a long time before companies stop having local software

Music on plastic discs still popular, apparently

Tezfair

While there's DRM...

CD's for me too. I have fair amount of paid for music, albums and singles which im no longer able to play because the license backup doesn't export to another PC and the account which I purchased under has long since expired.

Equally I would never have itunes

Microsoft BPOS biz-cloud hit by another outage

Tezfair
Mushroom

Crash, Burn, Die

Title says its all.

Help! My Exchange server just rebooted

Tezfair
Happy

hmmmmmm

"tools to convert OST files into PST files". If you keep the computer from seeing an exchange server and your Outlook is showing the cached emails you can still 'export' to a PST file from within Outlook. No tools required.

I tend to script exmerge as a 2nd line daily dump of exchange mailboxes with NTbackup doing the main backup and housekeeping. I have tried other expensive backup solutions, but have found them to be bothersome. On the basis that a store can't be bigger than 75Gb Im happy to dump everything on to rotating ext HD's and also a copy to another networked device (NAS / PC etc)

Works for me

Trusteer vows to fight 'baseless' code-theft lawsuit

Tezfair

No point in chasing crap software...

Each time a customer brings a PC into our shop complaining about how slow it is we then remove rapport and suddenly its fast again.

Sizing a server to support desktop virtualisation

Tezfair

Doing this now

I have a 2 year old server that I setup as 4Gb on a 64 bit server 2003 dual core (no cpu virt) to have a RD / VPC play around whilst accessing it remotely. As soon as 4 desktops were running the server the lag was horrendous.

Although the system wasn't committing all the ram and the HD activity was negligible the cpu was 100%

I have to quote a company a RD server that can handle 20 desktops for branch office access. The server requirements simple means its cheaper to buy separate PCs.

The licensing for something like xenserver is 4 digits

I simply don't see much call for Virtualising the desktops, after all, you then have to pay twice for the OS, one on the physical machine and one on the virtual.

Microsoft skills up IT pros for jobs in the cloud

Tezfair
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bad for professionals

I see the cloud as the start of the end for IT professionals. Once businesses start putting their systems onto the cloud there's going to be next to no support needed. It will all be done at the host.

The physical PCs will become dumb terminals and will have a hugely cut down OS whereby replacing the PC will be far easier than having it fixed. Most likely there will be a class of PCs called 'cloud optimised' which are preconfigured to a cloud supplier and all the end user does is hook it up to the mains, the router and then add their online details and the PC is then ready to go.

And then there's a software sales side. Again, everything will be provided in an 'all inclusive price' online so your not going to have a chance to sell anything.

I can see a lot of people out of a job within 10 years once this becomes main stream. And no, im not going to spend £k's on a certificate that will ultimately make me redundant.

Channel VAT loophole shrunk, not shut

Tezfair

@ Anteaus

ok, businesses will pay the VAT on what they use as soon as you pay 25% more tax on your salary and don't forget Employers NI contributions when they deduct your employees NI so you can double your NI contributions.

Intel re-invents its mainstream SSD

Tezfair

SSD user

I treated my self to the 160Gb jobby at Xmas giving up a 500Gb spindle from my 4720s. After you get used to the fact that your boot up time is halved you start to miss the capacity.

I would recommend that the average user waits until the SSD capacity and price comes closer to HDDs.

Early adopters like me are effectively keeping intel's R&D in a job

Amazon buys bloody big shed for Dublin data centre

Tezfair
Coat

waste of space

Virtualize it and you can fit it on one server running under the stairs in my grans house.

Why is virtualisation important?

Tezfair
Thumb Up

Why is virtualisation important?

Its not.

New desktop, new DV strategy

Tezfair
Thumb Down

no real point

I have a couple of clients that are running Virtual Server 2005 with a handful of XP desktops hanging off it. They are great for the remote users to log into and they have their own dedicated XP, however in terms of the article I see not point at all in VMing the whole work place.

You still need to have an OS on a PC which is still consuming power. The more you load up a server the more likely your going to run out of resources.

And what happens if the VM crashes? no point in rebooting your local PC to log back into a hanging PC.

Bit like the cloud. Lets virtualise our servers and host all our data else where and then when our broadband stops working we're fooked.

Visualizing gone mad

Sky loses pub footy case

Tezfair

I blame the public

If people had stopped paying ever increasing subs and stopped supporting sky then a lot of this would not have happened.

Sky see's football as their cash cow across the board so if people had said 'no' earlier then its likely that sky sports would be affordable both publicly and commercially as they *knew* that people were not going to pay it.

Same with footy players, they demand higher wages so the ticket prices go up and up. Eventually people will stop forking out because no one will be able to afford it.

I ditched sky about 8 years ago and have never regretted it and im not a football fan, so its win win for me.

Good for the publican getting cheaper TV. If shes paid for it and the greeks have licensed it then there's not an issue.

Its no different to the truckers going over to France for cheaper diesel so not having to paying high UK fuel duty. I don't hear the gov taking the truckers to court.

Sir Norman Wisdom dies at 95

Tezfair
FAIL

not all are dead

Half of your list are still alive.

People have no bloody idea about saving energy

Tezfair
Alert

Speed read most of the comments...

I have a meter and its made little difference in the way I save power. What I found was...

1. My SOHO runs around 200w, but turning it all off at night on the cheap rate saves very little - and the inkjets when starting up run a cleaning cycle thats using ink making it dearer to turn everything off!!.

2. Florescent tubes which people think are cheap to run don't realise that the ballasty thing consumes as much as the tube - our '35w' tubes draw 60w each (provable by turning on and off while watching the meter)

3. Washing at 40 or less may save power, but you need to run a 90 degree once a month to kill the bugs in the washing machine - http://www.washerhelp.co.uk/usage_2.html#cl_q1

T

Mobile Office 2010: Free, and worth every penny

Tezfair
Thumb Down

Phone killer?

I have 2010 pro plus on MAP installed and its pretty much killed my laptop. Soooooooo damned slow now. Hate to think what its likely to do to a mobile.

Intel: Just 3,000 employees run Windows 7

Tezfair
Thumb Up

ME still out there

I replaced an old ME PC today, and the only reason it was being replaced was that some PDFs can't be opened unless she has a newer version. She's just been upgraded to a new HP running XP downgraded from W7P.

The PC was otherwise perfectly ok and loaded very quickly.

I think XP will be around for a longer time than MS thinks

Windows Phone 7 blocks out popular HTC model, blames buttons

Tezfair
FAIL

Typical!..

Had my phone for 25.5 hours and already its out of date. Im sure the peeps at Xda will come up with something.

Spanish city shuns Brit 'Saga louts'

Tezfair

Great...

Just got up Saturday morning with a cup of tea and read of the reg and now im depressed..

Im 45

5 years away from SAGA

remember agadoo

and the birdy song - all versions

went on 18-30 once - benidorm

still married to the girl i met from the above holiday

need to but a valentines card + flowers

I think im going back to bed

OpenOffice 3.2 - now with less Microsoft envy

Tezfair

mail merge

In older versions mail merge was the one part that meant my clients couldn't move from MS. once they make it as easy to do a mail merge (and im not just talking about addresses) then IMHO we can start moving away to OO

Oz banker caught porn-surfing on live TV

Tezfair

Am I the only one that saw...

It was an attachment?

He had Outlook open, and he's obviously opened the attachment - hardly porn surfing.

I suspect the guy that hovers was the one that sent it to him as 'find the butterfly on these pics to win $$$'s' knowing that its in view of the camera.

<-----------witty comment about paris command--------------->

<% Oncomment about sex INSERT paris picture%>

Windows 7 upgrades Vista laptops to lower battery life

Tezfair

My battery dead too...

However as for better battery life I would dispute this. Under XP the CPU hardly ran unless I was doing a lot of stuff. Under vista and W7 it runs constantly. With near double of background processes its going to draw more power - my powerpack squeaks when its been asked to supply more power so under XP - quiet, under WV or W7 squeaking!!

Its more likely the battery technology has improved the running time rather then W7 making the improvements.

IT training firm goes titsup

Tezfair

Never held papers..

Been in IT for years, self taught, know my way around Servers and Networks, never felt intimidated by people sending CVs with MCxxx and wearing badges, and never once been asked for qualifications by my clients.

Experience sells, not the qualifications (which I believe expire after some time?)

I suppose that Cisco training would be on the radar as I have had a lot to do with Cisco, but for the majority of the time its basic tweaks so have usually figured it out.

Its like the ads on the TV for computer training where the guy is driving around in a beamer as he's rolling in it. The reality is not the same.

Sadly, people think that spending money will get them somewhere high in IT - generally it doesn't has there's another 100 people with the same intent.

Windows 8 possible July 2011 release?

Tezfair
Thumb Up

waiting until 2012...

No doubt they will come out with 128bit Windows somewhere in August 2012.

Personally I think they need to slow down the amount of releases and concentrate on getting them right. They need to realise that people don't upgrade to every version that comes out. The differences are so marginal as to not worry about. All the versions do its lock down the OS because the side programs, eg, IE are weak.

The reason XP did so well is that its joined the ease of Win98 with the robustness with NT / 2k.

They will never be able to repeat that, so lets go for something different, for example roaming profiles that's stored on memory sticks / in the cloud so you have dumb terminals and you plug in and all your licensed apps are there. No need to keep installing different versions of everything as its all on the stick.

T-Mobile to revamp tariffs

Tezfair

Actually, your wrong

I have just checked though my flext invoice for the last few months and ALL 08xx numbers are 'Outside Allowance'

Full-body scanner blind to bomb parts

Tezfair
FAIL

Nacktscanner or napsack scanner?

What surprised me more, was its a young lad trying to sell / demonstrate a multimillion quid system. I would have thought it would have been more of a boffin / director / old bloke selling the system. It lacks credibility from the start.

You could see he was out of his depth and doesn't have a knowledge of the system other than pressing the go button.

Perhaps he should tip it over and look for ied bombs - hang on, someones allegedly made a working machine that does that already...not!!.

Discounts damage for Microsoft Windows 7 PC boost?

Tezfair
Thumb Up

Strong Sales

My little IT company has been busy selling dozens of HP PCs in the last few months, so the article is correct - except for one thing...all of the PCs we shipped were downgraded to XP.

We have not sold a single PC with Vista or Windows 7 installed. ALL XP!!!

It's the end of TV as we know it

Tezfair
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Hmmmmm...

Whats the betting the BBC forces the Gov to come up with a IPTV license that makes all streamed TV require a license including time shifted content that currently doesn't require it?

Also, will the ISPs increase their downloading cap to allow this? A 10-30Gb / month cap simply won't allow much TV watching per month.

Vodafone drops top-of-the-range HTC

Tezfair
Thumb Down

bloody HTC

Im at my wits end with my touch diamond, so much so that I I went and got a Nokia 6300 just so that I could actually make calls. My touch is a royal PITA at the moment. despite numerous hard resets it kills all incoming calls within 2 rings, crashes constantly and is sluggish, whereas the nokia is up and running in seconds, goes for days on a charge and is simple.

I miss push emails, but since using a mobile for phone calls is pretty much required im having to drift away from HTC. Shame as I have been with them since the KJam

UK taxpayers hit by wave of tax refund scam mail

Tezfair
FAIL

123reg

if you track the domain down they are all registered via 123reg, yet when you try and alert then at abuse@123reg.co.uk they bounce it back as flagged spam.

maybe they need to change the way they register domains to reduce spam

Fast USB 2.0 Flash Drives

Tezfair
Thumb Down

Failure Rate?

Having had quite a few flash drives fail on me, regardless of brand / capacity I tend to go towards the low cost end. I always recommend that people only use these drives for temporary portability and not for backups.

Imagine the day when your 128Gb+ flash with your only backup of family pics corrupts and fails.

Eggs and baskets come to mind here

PC tune-up software: does it really work?

Tezfair
Thumb Up

I love tune up programs...

...As they invariably trash the registry and then im called out to restore the computer.

No third service pack for Windows Server 2003

Tezfair

2003 still available to buy

We just just rolled out a SBS 2003 Prem install on the 5/6th Sept. Wouldn't dream of installing the dreadful 2008 SBS version which demands oodles of RAM, SMTP mail and a superchanged CPU just to run normally.

Server 2008 - Its the Vista for Servers.

2003 may be old, but it still does the job well.

UK.gov won't drop 50p high speed broadband tax plans - yet

Tezfair
Thumb Up

maybe its time to ditch landlines

Just about everyone has a mobile and the rental costs for a phone thats underused is quite high already. maybe its time to save even more and go completely mobile.

Save 50p? cool we could save close to £15 / month, more if I ditch home ADSL and use mobile broadband.

yes, it would be slower, but speed at my age isn't important.

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