Save big on Dell’s Refurbed Inspiron or XPS Laptops August 1st 2008 Only!

Here is a quick tip for you, If you are a student going back to school or just in the market for a lappie, and want to save some dough. Take advantage of this one day Dell Outlet sale giving our readers an extra 15% off of the already 35% discounted prices.

These machines are all certified by Dell and covered under their warranty. I love me some refurbs!

The coupon is only good for 500 uses and it starts @ 12:00am it won’t be published elsewhere until tomorrow. So go get ready for your midnight sales splurge!

Like this setup for ~ $360

There is no coupon code just Use the link below after 12:00am on August 1st, 2008. 

ONE DAY ONLY! 15% off already low prices on any refurbished Inspiron™ or XPS™ PC at Dell Outlet!

_TheQuickSavingsAdmiN_

My Sonicwall won’t let me FTP! Error: FTP: PASV response bounce attack dropped

A user in one of my remote home offices has a Sonicwall TZ-170 and they can not download files from a FTP for work. There connections keep closing before they ever authenticate. After some investigation I decided it was his hardware firewall blocking the connection as I could log in from my office. I looked into it a little further and found that the Sonicwall was indeed stopping these connections thinking they were malicious.

According to Microsoft a FTP Bounce Attack is:

The CERT (http://www.Cert.org) (http://www.Cert.org)) Advisory CA-97.27 warns of an FTP security attack called the “Bounce” attack. This involves misuse of the Port command to maliciously open a connection to a port on the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server.

But they also go on to say any of there versions of IIS 4.0 or better will stop these attacks. So why is my firewall not letting me log into a clients FTP site? It is logging:

FTP: PASV response bounce attack dropped

Well there is a simple solution to this if you are not scared of visiting your Sonicwall’s back door to reconfigure this option. You can access you hidden options deep in your sonicwall by logging into your device and then changing your /main.cgi to /diag.html
After clicking on the button that says Internal Settings, You will get a screen that looks like this: Read more »

Microsoft wants you to like Vista so bad they are going to lie to you.

Wow so Microsoft is going to crazy lengths to prove how great Vista is… By tricking its loyal XP uisers into thinking they are getting a glance at the next release of a Windows Operating System. They called it code name Mojave.

We get to hear all about what really happened, later today… Check it out here

REDMOND, Wash.–After months of searching for ways to defend its oft-maligned Windows operating system, Microsoft may just have found its best weapon: Vista’s skeptics.

Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista.

“Oh wow,” said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.

To be sure, the focus groups didn’t have to install Vista or hook it up to their existing home network. Still, the emotional appeal of the “everyman” trying Vista and liking it clearly packs an emotional punch, something the company has desperately needed. Microsoft is still trying to figure out just how it will use the Mojave footage in its marketing, though it will clearly have a place.

The Mojave project is likely to be just one of many efforts designed to resuscitate Vista’s image as well as lend strength to the Windows platform among stepped-up competition from Apple and Google. In an interview Wednesday, Windows unit business chief Bill Veghte told CNET News that he wants to see his unit try new things to get the message across.

“We have a huge perception opportunity,” he said, offering a glass half-full assessment of things. “We are going to try a bunch of stuff.” [Continue Reading on Cnet]

Boy would I be pissed if I was in this group! How about you????

_TheVistaLovingAdmiN_

I love my Vista Tablet!

I wrote some time back about my HP 2710P and how much I really like working on it. Well here we are a few months later and I can safely say I LOVE THIS MACHINE! I was a long standing hater of Vista and now I can see it’s key selling points come to life.

I wanted to walk you through a day in the life of my tablet to show you how awesome it actually is.

I wake up in the morning do my getting ready thing and take my 2710p off the docking station and put it into my bag. I have the normal battery and a slice that attaches to the bottom of it. Today I roll with just the normal battery. I see about 5 hours of real use from it.

My email and rss feeds are already downloaded to my tablet for easy processing on the train. I walk the three blocks to the B train grab a cup of coffee and jump on the train. I whip out my tablet in tablet mode and fire up FeedDemon and Outlook to sync up again while I am still above ground. For my mobile access I am tethered to my Dopod C730 using HSDPA which gives me awesome speeds (3.5G).

Then I throw her back into laptop mode and answer a few emails with my stylus, research and write a blog post for AskTheAdmin and start collecting data for my next MakeUseOf.com post. I open several web pages and prepare to go under ground.

I have enough work to do but instead decide to fire up an episode of the Simpson’s and start my day a little easier. I put on my bluetooth headphones and laugh at Bart and Homer’s antics. My Outlook reminder pops up to alert me of my 8:30 meeting in 1 hour.

I review the notes in reminder and prepare for my meeting. By the time I get off the train I am up to speed, entertained and in a relatively good mood fueled by coffee and Simpson’s humor.

I get into the office take my tablet to my server room. Check all my backups and servers from the tablet in landscape mode taking everything in. Everything seems to be running smoothly. I grab another cup of coffee and off to my first meeting.

My meeting was in my boardroom with several department heads discussing their new technology issues. I have my 2710p open in tablet mode, OneNote fired up and taking notes. I jot down diagrams and notes to myself. Our head of design hands me a few business cards of new vendors. I put them in front of the laptops built in camera and it scans them into my contacts flawlessly.

After the meeting I transfer the notes and data to my desktop and put her down to charge.

Don’t get me wrong all of this could be done on a laptop but I love (is that geeky?) this tablet immensely! It makes everything so much fricking easier. Thanks HP and you to Marco!

Do you guys have some questions about Tablet Edition 2005 or XP? Hit me up in the comments and I will be more than happy to help you out!

_TheTabletLovingAdmiN_

Display the up time of a workstation or server.

Do you ever need command line access to see how long a machine has been up for? This morning I did. I needed to prove that a machine was up last night at 3 am when a critical process was going down. Someone flucked up and it sure wasn’t me! So…

Using one of my favorite command line commands NET I will show you quickly how to display your Windows up-time:

Support office 2007 without a copy? Use this live demo to help you through the options.

I know a lot of you Admins out there in Admin land support products that you don’t have installed on your own desktop. Sure you can remote desktop into a machine or fire up a VM but this is so elegant it is a HUGE surprise that it’s from Microsoft.

This issue was mine. I support Office 2007 and run Office 2003 for a bunch of reasons. Now walking someone through disabling an add-on or changing some preferences / options can be a real challenge. Especially when I have to keep saying…

“So why don’t you tell me what you see on your screen…”

Instead you can fire up this link and launch a free live version of any Office 2007 component. It’s actually pretty fricking cool…

Now I can go back to my monotoned voice saying… “Left click tools…. Left click options… Find the preference that say…

Anyone else find this nifty? Have you never ever used Office 2007? Want to give it a test drive? Don’t worry about crashing launch it in your browser… But before you get any, snarky “Will this replace my office install for me” questions the answer is NO. This Still is M$ after all!

_The2007AdmiN_