Re: thebetaguy » Microsoft Windows 7 Exclusive

 Posted on May 23, 2008  |  Erik

thebetaguy » Microsoft Windows 7 Exclusive: “Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, it doesn’t think about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows. Making the break from backwards compatibility is a dangerous proposal but a dream for software developers. Performance of native applications can be increased, distribution sizes can be cut down, functionality can be added without the worry of breaking old applications, and the overall end-user experience can be significantly improved. [Read More]

re: Betalogue » Word 2008: How to assign command-G to ‘Find Next’

 Posted on May 21, 2008  |  Erik

Betalogue » Blog Archive » Word 2008: How to assign command-G to ‘Find Next’: “Word 2008 is so bad that it is driving me positively nuts. Yet I have no choice but to use it sometimes, and in such situations I need to try and reduce the mental pain as much as possible. Inevitably, this process involves customizing Word, not to make it do things your way, but simply to make it do things the normal way, i. [Read More]

Re: Common Myths for the Macintosh

 Posted on May 20, 2008  |  Erik

David Alison’s Blog: Common Myths for the Macintosh: “There are however an increasing number of people that are moving to Macs now - many of them people like me that hated Macs at one time. I believe there are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which is that people that are running Windows XP are faced with an upgrade to Vista as their next logical step and feel that maybe it’s okay to consider a Mac since they have to go through a full operating system refresh anyway. [Read More]

Update on the PERC situation

 Posted on May 20, 2008  |  Erik

Followup up on the PERC fiasco. After a few more back and forths with DELL, the following facts have become clear :- If you’re using a PERC with a direct attached JBOD (eg. MD1000) any discontinuity will result in the card reporting a foreign configuration error and you’ll have to reimport the configuration and let the drives do a full background ‘initialization’ (which really means verification in this context). If you’re using a PERC with a direct attached Powervault solution (eg. [Read More]

Review: "Here comes everybody" by Clay Shirky

 Posted on May 19, 2008  |  Erik

I’ve long been a fan of Clay Shirky’s writings published on the web, and just finally received my copy of his latest published work “Here comes everybody” which collates much of this work into a very nicely packaged tour of the impacts of our new media world on social networks and group behaviour. My first introduction to Clay’s works was his article Ontology is overrated, which is an essay on the transformative power of tags vs categorization. [Read More]

Cool LaunchBar feature

 Posted on May 15, 2008  |  Erik

I use LaunchBar as my primary application launcher on my daily machine and have been a happy customer for ages. There’s a ton of subtle intelligence built into the application that often goes undiscovered until you type something by mistake Up until today I’ve always launched NetNewsWire with my customary Control-Space, followed by ’netn’ which works just fine. I was in the middle of typing a note about NetNewsWire with a colleague and had started abbreviated it as NNW and by chance I fired up LaunchBar and muscle memory fired off ’nnw’ and it pulled NetNewsWire up to the top of the list! [Read More]

Getting extended attribute file information

 Posted on May 15, 2008  |  Erik

Now here’s something potentially useful. I’m often writing up documentation for clients and use PDF files that I’ve downloaded from various sites for supporting information. I can’t simply copy the whole PDF into a Word document and dragging a multipage PDF document into Pages just imports the first page. So the usual solution is to note the URL where you can go get the document and put that into the text. [Read More]

Rands In Repose: Saving Seconds

 Posted on May 15, 2008  |  Erik

Rands In Repose: Saving Seconds: “The point of this exercise is awareness. Once you’ve found one or two shortcuts that shave a micro-second here and there, you’ll become more aware of other places where you’re repeating yourself. You’ll start looking for time-saving shortcuts elsewhere because there is bliss in saving time.” (Via Rands In Repose .) Absolutely brilliant. This is a must read for anyone that spends any amount of time in front of a computer. [Read More]

The Business case for Virtual OS X Server

 Posted on May 15, 2008  |  Erik

I wrote the article “Apple in the enterprise” partially based on the rather off the cuff idea of OS X Server being sold for virtual only sales. I’ve been mulling that thought over for last little while and the more I think about it, the more interesting it becomes. First off, you have to remember that I’m coming from a high end virtualisation perspective where I work with medium and large businesses that are in the process of moving to virtualisation solution in order to take advantage of the ability to consolidate many servers onto fewer physical machines, abstract each machine into a few files in order to simplify backups, disaster recovery and business continuity. [Read More]

Mac Mini Dead?

 Posted on May 14, 2008  |  Erik

Can we get over this one? I keep running into more and more articles bemoaning the imminent demise of the Mac Mini. This is getting tired, especially since there’s absolutely no reason to kill the Mini. Why not? In it’s current incarnation, it’s just about perfect. Now it’s not necessarily the machine for everyone, but you have to remember what market niche it plays in, hint: it’s not the bargain basement-entry level competitor. [Read More]