Eaton sent over there 5PX1500RT UPS for review and for us to keep (consider this our disclosure.) It is a 1500VA-class Line Interactive Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS). This rack-mountable UPS weighs in at 65 pounds and is made by a 100 year old company! We will be giving away our review unit so please chime in below in the comments as to why you should be the proud recipient of the device (you will have to pay for shipping though!)

 

The device arrived from a struggling freight delivery gentleman. It comes with a rail kit for 2U rack mounting, two pedestals feet for tower orientation, quick start guide, RS-232 serial cable, USB cable, user manual CD, software CD and a Phillips head screw driver.

After un-boxing the big guy the first thing I noticed was the LCD screen on the front panel. I feel this is a must for appliances nowadays! You can monitor the device right from the LCD which is great. You can see from the image below that it shows the current load information, battery charge percentage and run time. The LCD is orientated to either a rack mount situation or if you stand it up besides your rack. 

Let’s take a look at where the action happens. The back panel of our UPS:

We have 8 total outlets. The black ones are standard battery protected outlets. The Grey ones allow for more configuration and management. There is the option to connect up 4 additional external batteries. The slot all the way to the left allows for an optional web management interface card.

We plugged in two servers, one firewall and one router into our unit. We simulated a power failure and we were able to keep our devices running for close to 15 minutes before the IPP software kicked in and started shutting down our server. Letting the servers run without the software caused the devices to completely die at the 22 minute mark.

Talking about the IPP software – we should explain what it is. The software is called “Eaton’s Intelligent Power Software Suite.” The IPSS includes two powerful tools to help you manage your power. These tools are the IPM and the IPP. Don’t you just love an acronym?

Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) is the “supervisory software” that facilitates management of power and environmental devices through a Web-based interface that can be accessed from any PC, anywhere on your network. Eaton’s IPM is compatible with network-enabled power devices such as UPSs, PDUs and environmental sensors. It even supports some non-Eaton UPS units. Through IPM you can monitor battery conditions, load levels and runtime. You can also perform mass firmware upgrades, customize views, centralize alarms and track equipment. So, what about virtualized environments? Intelligent Power Manager easily integrates with VMware’s vCenter, bringing power management right to your vCenter dashboard [in its own tab]. It even allows for remote shutdown of servers in clusters. There’s more, it integrates with vCenter’s vMotion and SCVMM’s Live Migration applications so you can transparently move virtual machines from a power affected server to a non-affected server on the network.

Intelligent Power Protector (IPP) is the “protection software” that monitors and protects connected devices during power events. It can be configured to automatically save any work or open files and conduct a graceful shutdown of computers and network devices. It communicates with the UPS via serial port, USB or via network (with optional Web/SNMP card) and acquires information that can be monitored, configured and updated via a web browser or through IPM.

All in all, the device is solid and reliable. We have had no issues with the device thus far in around 45 days of testing. It is backed by a full 3 year warranty and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

We have received the UPS device as compensation for this article. The article/review was not biased. The device will also be given away on our website. Let us know why you want and/or deserve it!

_ThePoweredAdmiN_

Image via Wikipedia

I’m sure that like me, most of you are the tech support for the family. Every time your creepy uncle goes to a sleazy porn site, you have to stop by his house and clean up his computer’s internet VD (Viruses and Malware). You’re mom calls you because she can’t figure out how to print pictures of her precious little dog, and your dad’s hard drive is crashing every time he plays Farmville on Facebook. We at AskTheAdmin feel your pain.

How many times have you just told your family, “screw it, re-install Windows”? Of course they can’t because all of their precious files are on there, and of course they never ever back that stuff up! Why not give them the gift of backing their stuff up for them? Not just to an external hard drive that will fail in 6 months either. I’m talking about true set and forget automated cloud backup!

Back in August I wrote about how I am using some software at work to backup my servers. It’s called Crashplan. Now Crashplan has some pay versions if you want to back up to their servers, but they also give you the option to set up your own cloud solution for free! Plus it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux! That means no matter what you’re relatives use, they can backup using Crashplan.

I said cloud backup though right? This is where you come in. I recommend buying a relatively low-cost NAS device with RAID, or you can build your own Bauer-Power SAN using Ubuntu, IET, ZFS and GlusterFS. Then you can install Crashplan on your computer at home, and backup all of your friend’s and family to your redundant storage; because Crashplan will let your friends and family backup to your machine over the Internet using a simple friend code. You only pay for your home storage.

With this solution their files are offsite, and you are once again the computer guru that swooped in and saved the day!

Now when they call you after pooching their computers, you can re-install with confidence, and restore all of their essential files. You can also drop off an extra drive at their house, and back your stuff up to them. Ulterior motive? Maybe. Awesome idea? Absolutely!

The cool thing about Crashplan, besides it being free, is it also saves data using deduplication and encryption. That means the files you save for your relatives will be secure and won’t take up a lot of space. It’s a friggin’ thing of beauty!

If you decide to do this for your family over the holidays, let us know about it in the comments!

-=El Di Pablo=-

Any way, the company is only a few years old, and up until now we are running on a Microsoft BizSpark licensing plan. Now that we’re getting a little older though, and we are using more servers to produce our goods, we need a more robust licensing plan from Microsoft. I decided to go to one of my local VARs to work on some quotes, and what they came back with almost gave my boss a heart attack.

In this post I am strictly going to talk about Microsoft SQL Licensing. Just so you know though, the quote we got for SQL was on top of an already ridiculously high $107K three year quote for server licenses. Before I give you the quote I got for SQL, keep in mind this is only for two physical servers running SQL Enterprise.

So we got our quote from Microsoft, and it was roughly $183K for three years. Yes, for two servers it was almost $200,000! That is because at the time of this writing, they were quoting us based on the number of processors. One of the physicals servers has four processors, and the other has two. Bam! Bend us over for $200K!

On top of that, my VAR is telling me that next year Microsoft is switching to a per-core model of licensing. On my server with four procs, each proc has six cores! On the two proc box, each proc has four cores! Now my boss is starting to hyperventilate.

I’m sorry Microsoft, I know you’re just a mom and pop shop, and you’re just trying to make your way in this crazy world, but $200K is too much to pay for a database. The good news for us is that Microsoft SQL isn’t the only game in town. Good news for my company, I’m not afraid to think outside of the Microsoft box.

After getting that quote, the manager of our dev team and I started talking about moving to an Open Source database solution. First he said MySQL, but since they’re owned by Oracle now they have more strict licensing. I’m suggesting PostgreSQL.

Never heard of it? Here’s a description from their About page:

An enterprise class database, PostgreSQL boasts sophisticated features such as Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), point in time recovery, tablespaces, asynchronous replication, nested transactions (savepoints), online/hot backups, a sophisticated query planner/optimizer, and write ahead logging for fault tolerance. It supports international character sets, multibyte character encodings, Unicode, and it is locale-aware for sorting, case-sensitivity, and formatting. It is highly scalable both in the sheer quantity of data it can manage and in the number of concurrent users it can accommodate. There are active PostgreSQL systems in production environments that manage in excess of 4 terabytes of data.

Best of all, PostgreSQL provides all of their Enterprise features absolutely free under a Liberal Open Source License! With something like this we can lower our overhead, and use those cost savings to improve our bottom line.

We will have to no doubt do some serious coding changes to make sure our data is compatible with PostgreSQL, but I think in the long run, the cost savings of switching to open source will outweigh the work to get there.

What do you think? Move to an open source database? Stick with Microsoft and suck up the cost? What’s your argument for or against? Let us know in the comments.

-=El Di Pablo=-

Well, not sure if my coworkers do this, but I like to use the status update area in Office Communicator to subtly say what I’m thinking about. Sometimes that also requires a little bit of ASCII art.

Do you do the same? Awesome! Here is a list of some simple one line ASCII art you can use to put in your messages:

Ascii Text Animals

Caterpillar ,/\,/\,/\,/\,/\,/\,o
Fish <`)))><
Fish Swimming ¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º>
Happy Cat <(^.^)>
Kitty cat =^..^=
Koala @( * O * )@
Loch Ness monster _mmmP
Monkey @(‘_’)@
Mouse <:3 )~~~~
Rat (to the left) <^__)~
Rat (to the right) ~(__^>
Sheep °l°(,,,,);
Spider ///\oo/\\\

Ascii Objects

Crayon ())__CRAYON___)) >
Cup of coffee [_]3
Glasses -@-@-
Needle |==|iiii|>—–
Pie fight —=======[}
Rose 1 @-}--
Rose 2 @}}>-----
Rose 3 @)}---^-----
Rose 4 @->-->---
Rose 5 --------{---(@

Ascii Faces/People

Angel ^i^
Concerned (@_@)
Heart <3
In Love <*_*>
Looking at you ô¿ô
Very Happy ^_^
Very Happy 2 [^_^]
Sleeping (-.-)Zzz…
Sleeping Baby w/Pillow [{-_-}] ZZZzz zz z…
Whoa O_o

Miscellenous Ascii Art

Ascii Waves 1 *~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*
Ascii Waves 2 `’~,.,~’`'~,.,~’`'~,.,~’`'~,.,~’
Hearts w/text »-(¯`·.·´¯)->TEXT<-(¯`·.·´¯)-«
Robot d[ o_0 ]b
Text Embellishment 1 (¯`·._.·(¯`·._.·(¯`·._.· Your Text ·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)
Text Embellishment 2 ,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-(_Your_Text_)-,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸

Not only are these good for IM, but you’ll find that they work pretty good for Twitter and Facebook as well. Hell, you can use these for email signatures if you want. The sky’s the limit really.

Do you like to add a dash of ASCII to your every day? Let us know how you like to insert ASCII into your stuff in the comments.

-=El Di Pablo=-

[Via Squidoo]

You see, if you did not know, there are currently two major censorship bills passing through the halls of government these days. SOPA, and Protect IP. From what I understand from the media, SOPA is pretty much dead thanks to you Internet users that have contacted your representatives, but Protect IP is still being pushed through the Senate.

What is Protect IP? From Wikipedia:

The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011; United States Senate Bill S.968) is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S.The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011 by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 initial bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a hold on it.

The PROTECT IP Act is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010. A similar House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced on October 26, 2011

According to groups like the Eff and AmericanCensorship.org, this bill is vague enough that it will make it really easy for the US Government to shut down any website they deem a threat. Mmmm, what’s that smell? Smells like communist China! I don’t know about you, but I like my freedom of speech protected by the first amendment. This act threatens that freedom.

Imagine if one day Uncle Sam had an issue with AskTheAdmin? Guess what Jack! You can’t read it any more! Don’t let that happen!

Well, I’m asking for your help. Please use the form above to call your representatives and let them know that you oppose the Protect IP Act. We need as many calls as possible before the Senate breaks for the holidays if we want to stop it.

-=El Di Pablo=-

Not only that, but all the walls, and windows around us will be computerized as well, and can sync up with our mobile devices. Seeing the way technology is right now, I don’t think this dream is too far fetched any more. Check it out:

Some comments on the Youtube page say things like:

Technology? will kill us! – pajkica

I know I am a f***n hippie or something for all of you.. But who cares about the future of technology? We have computers, and cell phones, and we can enter? internet every moment we want, we have bluray, we have 3d.. We can communicate now with everybody! so… It’s time to talk about the future of the people microsoft..;/ – RandomProductionzzTV

While others are saying:

All I can say is that it’s awesome. I would like to live that future? :) thank you for sharing it. – wesamly

It seems the future holds technology that is incredibly intuitive, knowing exactly where the user wants it? to go, as if there are no other options. There are some interesting and exciting parts to this video, but also some things that woulde cause fear for anyone concerned about privacy. The concierge seemed to know a lot. Identity theft seems easier in the future. – citzsold

What do you think about Microsoft’s vision of the future? Flippin’ awesome? Cold and bleak? I’m curious to know what your vision of the future is. Let us know in the comments!

-=El Di Pablo=-

Well, I found a place that puts the long-ass email address I had at Newland Communities to shame. Oh, and by the way, you can get an email address with them if you like for free! The site is, and I’m not kidding here, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com, and they are giving away free mailboxes so you too can have one of the worlds largest email addresses!

Take a look at their selling points from their home page:

With each account, you not only get an obnoxious email address that is sure to piss you friends off, but also you get 25MB of storage. True, you’re better off with Gmail, but then again, you won’t have an email address that won’t fit into some web forms. Your call I guess.

-=El Di Pablo=-

Download Music

Arguably the easiest step is one that is already being done by millions: get your music online. Whether it is through iTunes, Pandora, or others, listening and grabbing music from the internet means that there’s no need for packaging, handling, transportation, or warehouses. Instead, the music gets transferred right to your computer. What could be greener than that? It’s pretty convenient too.


 

Reusing Used Goods

For things that are not as easy to transfer as music, there are always buy/sell/trade sites such as Craigslist. While it might not seem green at first, nothing helps out the environment more than buying from the people around you and putting to good use what is essentially trash. Buying local used goods helps not only reduce landfill clutter but also cuts down on the transportation and packaging of new materials. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, especially when you’re getting involved in your local community.

For another similar site that is explicitly dedicated to helping those around you, try Freecycle.org. It is a fantastic site where people give away things they don’t need to whoever asks for them. Get rid of your old broken down TV instead of throwing it away, and it could live a new life in someone else’s home.

DIY

Speaking of broken down TVs, do not throw anything if you can repair it first. If you do not have the skills, don’t worry! DoItYourself.com has great guides on how to fix just about anything, helping you save your money and the earth as well. DIY projects also help you learn valuable skills and gain self-confidence. Few things make you feel better about yourself than fixing your own broken down appliances and furniture.

Know Your Greens

If you still cannot fix it, and you cannot do without it, your best bet is to head to EnergyStar.gov and gather information about the products you need. Staying informed about your future purchase is both good for the environment and your wallet. The cheapest option is not always the most cost-efficient once you factor in the cost of operations and the impact it could have on your utility bill every month. As they say, knowledge is power, and electronics are getting more efficient every day.

Green ISPs

Do not forget the internet itself! Some internet service providers (ISPs) are going green as well. Because the internet is so entrenched in our daily lives and it is so widespread, any steps ISPs take to go green will be similarly large and impactful. Even something as simple as going paperless and making monthly billing statements online reduces the impact of hundreds of thousands of envelopes and paper slips, not to mention ink that simply does not need to be used. Some ISPs make sure that their resources are powered by solar or wind energy instead of gas or coal power, increasing the green factor even further exponentially. Some internet service providers go as far as to hold a sweepstakes for a hybrid vehicle as well as other green giveaways to promote their paperless ordering!

So as you can see, sometimes you can make multiple steps at once. If you’re diligent, and use the right resources, you can take two steps forward and no steps back, and walk your way into the green future.

Blake Sanders is a writer of technical information at broadband comparison site Broadband Expert. Blake specializes in internet service providers, cell phones, and high speed internet news and information.

Note: Photo courtesy of br1dotcom via FlickR Creative Commons.

Check this out:

HostGator is attempting to break the world record of all deals by offering up a 40% savings today and today only. Hit the banner below to automatically have the 40% applied today for the 4th of July!

Today only (July 4th, 2011) we will be offering 40% OFF ALL hosting plans and ALL Term lengths.

I was able to get into the wp-admin interface and uninstall the old caching plugin and install W3 Total cache the traffic was not as heavy when Gator reinstated the site but the 7,500 hits did not bring the server down. Learn a lesson from us no caching eats up server resources – enable a caching plugin like W3 today so it is running when you need it.

Thanks everyone for sticking with us!

_TheCachedAdmiN_

Care to share the games your little ones play? Let’s all learn from the collective knowledge of all you admins.

I see it time and time again – someone losing all of their personal documents, pictures or music to a bad hard drive a virus infection or even worse having a machine or drive stolen. So make sure you backup everything to the cloud or a server away from where the data is. This way if a disaster strikes you can recover. I love dropbox and I love Windows Home Servers for automatic backups.

Do you guys have backup routines? We want to hear about all your bat scripts running xxcopy scripts and all that good stuff. Hit us up in the comments guys. Let’s all benifit from the groups knowledge.

_TheBackedUpAdmiN_

We had the pleasure of reviewing the HP Mini 100e which is a classroom laptop. It reminds me of the one laptop per child plan a few years back and actually comes close to their price point at around $300. there were a few features that this machine had that I really liked. I should start off by saying I could not get this mini laptop away from my 3 year old daughter. She absolutely loved it’s handle. She carried around the house for a week!

Comfortably access your 4GB Sony laptop in dark places using ultra laptop light.

The machine comes with a spill resistant keyboard,  durable design meant to withstand daily use by young students and beginner PC users, a network activity light on the reverse side of the lid when the machine is online, integrated camera, integrated modem. With a 3 cell battery the machine sees about 3-4 1/2 hours of use and with a 6-cell battery the machine can get any where up to 8 1/2 hours of use. Both models are under $300!

Organizations can have the machines branded and other options. Currently they are only available for bulk purchases from educational institutions but we will see what happens in the future. Personally I like these machines better for younger students than iPad type devices because they teach them how to use a keyboard and mouse.

The only thing I would do differently with the production of this machine would be to include a touch screen option for transitioning small children from touching the screen to using the mouse. This would make the machine a bit more expensive and missing the $300 mark so I doubt we will ever see it here!

All in all I am very impressed and realize the need to teach the children about computers and technology young!

I wanted to start off by saying thanks to HP for sending over the Elitebook 2540p for review. This is their smallest business class notebook. You can opt for a few different processor options including the i5 and the i7. My system came equipped with the i5, a 12.1 inch LED backlit display, 2gb of memory and a 250gb hard drive.

Right off the bat you can see its ultra modern and sleek design. The system is not made out of cheap plastic but a metallic alloy that is very attractive and strong. They throw in all sorts of hard drive anti shock protection, a spill resistant keyboard in addition to its light weight and cool design.

Did I mention that it meats military standards (MIL-STD 810G2)? That means it can withstand dust, vibration, humidity, altitude and extreme temperatures.

I enjoyed using it and my daughter enjoyed mashing away on the keyboard playing her online games. We put it through rigorous testing and we were pleasantly surprised.

When the computer is off you can get on the Internet in a few seconds using HP Quick Web and you can even get to your calendar, contacts and email without booting the system up using HP QuickLook3. Have access to your information in seconds!

In addition to all this techno goodness the device’s battery life seriously rocks and I saw about 6 hours of hard use out of the slightly extended battery. Without using Wi-Fi the machine lasted almost 10 hours for me.

My system weighed in at about 3.3 pounds and was a pleasure to carry. This was a huge improvement from my 5 pound tablet! I might just be in the market for a new machine and this might be the winner! Stay tuned for more information and you can purchase the device for less than $1100 on Amazon here.

As computers are becoming cheaper to manufacture some companies are choosing to reduce the quality of their machines. HP on the other hand continues to innovate and impress me. In three short years I have done a complete 360 and have moved away from Dell entirely. I now only purchase HP desktops and laptops.

Great job HP!  Dell can certainly learn a thing or two from you and your customer service department!

Do you have a favorite new computer that you want to share with us? We would love to hear from you. So please share with us in the comments!

I extracted the files and ran saved them to a shared folder on the network. I then ran PushVNC.exe

Simply type in your target IP address, a username, and a password. You can leave everything else as is or you can select to leave the service installed or to set the service to automatic. You can also choose your color options. After that hit the push button and you will be connected to the workstation or server. When you disconnect the files and service will be removed unless you opted to leave them.

I use SingleClickVNC for my remote off network support – what do you use? We would love to hear from you in the comments!

Well you are in luck as we have a link to the portable version of Firefox 4 beta via Portable Apps. Follow this link to grab it. Here is a quick shot of the new browser with AskTheAdmin.com’s home page loaded up:

If you are interested in making your plug-ins Firefox 4 compatible check out this post from Life Rocks 2.0 and if you want to move that big feedback button off of your toolbar check out this tip from DownloadSquad:

1. Click the Firefox button
2. Go to Customize > Add-ons.
3. Locate the Test Pilot add-on.
4. Click Disable.

Voila, no more Feedback button!

_TheFireFoxAdmiN_

Gmail's new chat window

Hey Boys and Girls,
Commodore 64 here to give a quick heads up about Gmail. Seems they’ve upgraded their chat window to look smoother and cleaner than ever. Hopefully it will be more compliant.

I’ve been using gmail for a while, and so has my wife. In her place of work, they haven’t gotten around to updating their browsers, so she is stuck using good old IE6, which doesnt offer many options along the lines of gmail chat. Most of the features are disabled, save for actually chatting.

My hope is that they’ve given her some more features to play with…

In the meantime, i just thought it interesting to point out this slight facelift on the good old Gmail chat box.

Oh and by the way, Gmail has added some animated emoticons as well, namely the rocker dude emoticon, which you can get by typing the following characters:

\m/ x-( \m/

-enjoy

Commodore 64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on),8,1

Pressing "Ctrl + Backspace" deletes entire words so you don’t have to hold down "Backspace." I went years without knowing this. Hopefully this is enlightening for some!

I came across this tip on Reddit and while typing this post used it in:

1. Windows Live Writer
2. Firefox
3. and Word 2003

So chances are it works everywhere. I will never get my lost productivity back but maybe there is still time for you! Did you know about this? Why didn’t you tell me?

_TheShortCuttingAdmiN_

In this video I will show you how hacking WEP is now so easy that your Grandma could probably do it. Sure, there are lots of videos showing you how to hack WEP, but not too many show you how to do it using an easy to use GUI in Linux! Not to mention that this GUI will also let you crack WPA! Take a look:

I want to apologize about the audio at the beginning. My mic was turned off, so I had to use the camera’s mic. I fixed it in the second half though. I would have gone back and re-filmed, but I didn’t have the time. Either way, I hope you learned something from it, and if you haven’t yet, perhaps you will try out Bauer-Puntu!

Have you been known to hack wireless? What programs/tools do you use? Do you do it in Windows, Linux or Mac? Does someone you know (Company, neighbor, or relative) still use WEP? Let us know in the comments!

By El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

The objective is to creep up behind your enemies instead of killing or destroying them. They say a master never uses violence unless he has to. You get to creep up behind your enemies and then kill them.  This may not be the way of the ninja but hey, it sure is fun! And you get a gun later on after the first few training boards.

You can also go to GamesForWork and search for Creeping. Once you start the game up, you will see the following splash screen

Do as you are told and click anywhere on the screen with your mouse. Then you will move on to choose your saved game or start a new one as you can see below:

If you have never played before just click OK. If you have played before you will be able to select your saved game. That will bring us to the next screen where you can start a game, choose a level, set your options or play a survival game. We will be walking through the game. So go ahead and click begin to start.

That will bring you to the actual game. You will see that you move by pressing the W, A, S or D keys. You can jump with the space bar. You can move around the small area your character is stuck in to get the hang of moving around. When you are ready, use the keys to move your character to the bottom fence. Then hit Space to jump over it.

We always want to move in the direction the arrows are telling us to. That will advance you to the next part of the screen. You will see new directions telling you how to teleport. You teleport by holding Shift and the letter key for which way you want to move.

I moved my character over to the wall covered by the fence, towards the right hand side of the screen. I then hit Shift and W to magically teleport through the fence. When you get to the other side you will move on. The next board gets a little more interesting.

We need to navigate around the building and sneak up on the guard. Go ahead and give it a shot…

When you are in place directly behind the guard, you are ready to stab him in the back – literally! Go ahead and hit the F key. This will kill the guard like so:

Do it properly and you will see a banner at the top right of your screen that says expert! Don’t worry, it gets harder. So moving on to the next board, it looks like we will be using a gun. To use your gun aim with your mouse and click the mouse button to fire. You can see the screen in the next image:

You need to continue navigating using the keyboard and shooting at the same time with the mouse. You will be given opportunities to duck and cover behind walls or other objects. Good luck and may the force be with you!

The first thing you need to know is that by just adding a wireless router to your network and allowing anyone to connect to it will put your own computers and network at risk. You need to separate your public and private network so that wireless users cannot access your local area network. You will need two routers. One that has a DMZ and one that you will use for your public wireless access point.

There are many ways to do this. One way is to add a expensive router to your network that is meant for this purpose. One example of a router like this is a D-Link Router. This private/public hotspot gateway lets you set up 5 separate networks that cannot access each other but this comes at a price of almost $3000.

So a better and cheaper solution would be to split your Internet connection into two separate networks that use the same Internet line.

Your first step would be to get your hands on a router or firewall with a DMZ (demilitarized zone). I have done this in the past with Sonic Wall Pro but that can be pricey. The good news is that MakeUseOf.com has covered a special router firmware in the past that can turn your old router into a expensive router with this open source firmware. We covered using it to create a wireless bridge but you can follow the steps to set up your DD-Wrt router.

The second step will be to set up one network for your computers using one set of IP addresses and let the wireless router be physically connected to your DMZ port and use another range of IP addresses.

If you already have a router or firewall with a DMZ and you have your home network set up, you are ready to configure your public DMZ network. If not we will want to get our home network going first.

For example you can have your Internet connection coming from your cable modem or router going into your firewall/router. You will need a static IP address for this setup.

Your static IP address gets assigned to your firewall/router. Then you create your internal LAN using a internal subnet like 192.168.1.0/24. In layman’s terms that is a 192.168.1.1 – 192.168.1.254 network.

The firewall will assign the IP’s to your internal network using DHCP. You can use 192.168.1.2 – 192.168.2.254. You will have all your personal or work computers on this network. They will use NAT (or Network Address Translation) to access the Internet.

Then your wireless router that you will be using to share your Internet connection will connect to your DMZ using a IP address of something like 192.168.124.0/24.  It’s default gateway will be set using your main routers IP address.

This will let you have 254 connections to your wireless router. Name your wireless network something that will let your potential users know that it is free and they are able to access it. You can do this in your wireless router by looking for a setting called SSID.

The wireless network will be unable to access your computers and machines because they are on a different subnet. There are also other methods of achieving this but this setup has worked for me in the past.

I have seen people use VLANS (or virtual local area networks) to further isolate and secure the two networks as well. By using a VLAN you can set rules limiting the access from one subnet to the other. Check if your router or switch allows this in your settings. Depending on your  equipment some of them allow you to set VLANs by port and others by IP address IP range.

This is my VLAN setup page on my HP Pro Curve:

You might want to extend your wireless router’s range by adding a range extending antennae to it like this one I found on eBay.  You can increase your range by as much as 200% by simply removing (unscrewing) your current antennae or antenna’s and replacing it with one like I did to mine.

I would also turn on all the logging you possibly can in the beginning to review if and what people are accessing. There can be a lot of trial and error in setting this up. If you are unsure of what you are doing make sure you install software firewalls on your computers to prevent unauthorized access. I recommend Zone Alarm.

From the netbooks we are able to do everything natively running all my apps right from my memory stick. So I went looking for a netbook. And I did not want to spend $1000 on a netbook when I could buy a small laptop for a little more. I decided this would be a sub $400 purchase (the same price as my phone). I would be using Windows 7 Starter edition which all the models have and I will only be looking at 10.1 inch screens.

HP was kind enough to let me review their new Mini 5102. I have previously seen their 5101 last year. You can find that review here. I really liked the look and feel of it. It is a metal case, a water resistant keyboard (and little ones have a hard time prying off the keys!) PCWorld saw one with an awesome blue metal casing here.

  It has a built in web camera and mic for Skype as well as Bluetooth and wifi. The screen is 10.1 inches which takes some getting used to. It is using a Intel Atom N450 processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 160GB 7200RPM hard drive. The pre-loaded HP tools are awesome. And I think I will be getting my netbook with a handle which by the way is ingenious!

The device weights a little more than 2.5 pounds. I was able to get about 4 1/2 hours out of the 6 cell battery which is more than enough for me but I would keep a spare battery with me just in case. The options that I have on 5102 run about $399 putting it right around where I wanted it to be. To check out this model on Amazon click here.

But I decided to check out two other options first; Dell and Asus.

The Dell model is their mini 1011 it also comes with a 10.1 inch screen and most of the other specs are the same. Yet the keyboard felt flimsy compared to the HP and the 1 gig of memory seemed to get sucked up instantly by the operating system. The battery was rated at 8 hours but I saw the same 4 1/2 that I got from the 5102. The Dell does have the built in web cam and microphone.

The screen also seemed darker to me. To top it off I learned that the memory is not upgradeable and the machine gets unbelievably hot! If you don’t believe me check out the reviews on Amazon. The Dell Mini 1011 goes for $344.96 available from Amazon here. It is $60 less but will give you headaches in the long run. The device weights 2.85 pounds.

And last I checked out the EEE PC with the same processor, memory and screen size the Asus seemed to fair the best in battery life but It had a lot to do with it’s automatic smart profile changing which was not so smart. It will dim my screen when it feels it should which as a writer I hate.

I don’t like machines making choices for me! It weighed in at 2.65 pounds. Check it out on Amazon here.

So I will be getting myself a HP 5102 in the near future! I absolutely love it. I think the touch screen, carrying handle and SSD would make it awesome but a little too rich for my blood at around $900. I might be a little biased seeming 90% of my equipment is HP but they sure do make awesome devices!

It is no secret that I love to use my keyboard – no matter if it is typing out console commands, browsing in dos or command line ftp. It might be the inner geek in me but I still love it.

That is where Keyboardr comes in. You simply browse to their site and start typing.

Let’s take a look at it:

I searched for Conficker the April Fool’s Worm that was supposed to ramp up its carnage yesterday. As soon as I started typing, results are displayed below. You select what you want by hitting the arrow keys. If you continue typing, your results will filter all without hitting your mouse or enter yet.

I added "AskTheAdmin" to my query and was returned with the following items. I want the first selection so I hit the enter key on my keyboard.

It opens a new tab in Firefox and I can hit Control + Tab to cycle through my tabs. Keyboardr also separates your search results into normal Google results in the center. Google Images and YouTube on the right and Google Blog results below.

The above images and YouTube videos came up with the AskTheAdmin query. I simply hit my right arrow key and it moved over to that part of the screen and upon hitting enter that item will open up in a new tab.

The author talks about Keyboardr on his blog, this little quote struck me so I thought I would share it with you:

In the first place keyboardr is a meta-search. You get Google, Wikipedia, Youtube altogether. The instant search and the keyboard navigation are replacing the feeling of "searching" with the feeling of "launching".

he goes on to give us a few tips and tricks

• Pressing ESC resets the search, takes you back to the clock instantly !
• One thing only a few know is, google is a all-in-one search. Try searching for "imdb Matrix". Or "lastfm james brown". Or "php str_replace".
• A feature often missed by the users eye, is the "All results" links to get the full version of each search engine. E.g. you need to calculate "5+5", "define:word" or check "weather cologne" then you just open "All results" from Google, right above the results, to get your answers from Google.

Do you use any sort of non-traditional search engines? How is that working out for ya? Please share them with us in the comments!

When you run net time from a command line you see your incorrect Current Time and the correct Current Time from the server.

After some searching and Googling as to why this one workstation is being troublesome and the rest of the network is fine. I found a update that was needed on the computer. My WSUS server thought it had pushed it out to all my clients but this one slipped through.

To solve your issues go to this Microsoft Daylight Saving Time Help and Support URL here. I needed to download KB955839 to fix my issue. And without restarting the machine it was magically all better! I thought I would save you some time on how to fix the one hour behind bug…

Windows 7 Features Walkthrough

Want to learn what is new in Windows 7? The How-To-Geek has put up a comprehensive screenshot tour, which walks you through the new features in Windows 7. Take a look at what you should expect from Windows 7 beta to learn more.

10 Things You Should Know Before Installing Windows 7

Windows 7 is in beta, and there are bound to be several things which will not work. The Windows 7 center has a list of 10 things you should know before you install Windows 7.

Dual Boot Windows 7 With Windows XP and Vista

Adam Pash from Lifehacker has put up a nice tutorial using which you can dual boot Windows 7 with Windows XP and Vista.

What are Windows 7 System Requirements?

Windows 7 is not as resource hungry as Windows Vista, and you can run Windows 7 on a really low configuration. Learn more about the Windows 7 System Requirements.

How To Get Genuine Windows 7 Beta Product Key?

If you have downloaded Windows 7 Beta 32-bit or 64-bit, you will not be able to run it unless you use a valid product key, read our earlier guide to know, how you can get a Genuine Windows 7 Beta Product Key.

List of Compatible Anti-Virus for Windows 7

Windows is one of the most exploited operating system and you definitely cannot survive online threats without a good anti-virus and anti-spyware software. The How-To-Geek lists has compiled a list of Anti-virus software compatible with Windows 7.

5 Great Features in Windows 7

Martin from Ghacks talks about 5 Great Features you should know about in Windows 7, he promises that those features are not just run of the mill.

Extend Windows 7 Trail From 30 To 120 Days

The Windows 7 product keys are programmed to run for 30 days, however the How-To-Geek has a tutorial that will help you extend Windows 7 trial period from 30 to 120 days.

Shortcut Keys in Windows 7

Shortcut Keys definitely save users a lot of time, and Minty White has come up with a handy list of shortcut keys available in Windows 7, definite time saver.

Hidden Themes In Windows 7

The latest versions of Windows are more about looks, and Windows themes are definitely a craze, however Windows 7 does not allow users to use all the themes out of the box. Nirmal points out a neat trick that will allow you to use all the hidden themes in Windows 7.

How To Remove “Send Feedback” link from Windows 7 Title Bar?

Windows 7 is in beta mode and Microsoft is looking for feedback, fair enough, however many users are irked to see the “Send Feedback” link in the title bar of all the windows, Minty White talks about a registry hack that will allow users to remove the “Send Feedback” link from Windows 7 title bar.

Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder

Windows 7 comes with a useful tool “Problem Steps Recorder” that will allow users to record screen activities just like a regular screen capture program albeit for debugging purpose. The I Started Something blog tells us more about the Problem Steps Recorder and how you can use it.

How To Enable Aero In Windows 7?

We all love eye candy, but with that comes the need of a higher configuration PC. BlogsDNA tells us how to Enable Aero in Windows 7 on a decent configured PC.

How To Set Taskbar Buttons to Show Text Instead of Icons Only?

Windows 7 has a icon only taskbar, however Tech Recipes shows users How to set the Taskbar Buttons to Show Text Instead of Icons-Only.

How To Enable Run Command In Windows 7?

The run command is hidden by default in Windows 7 and blame it on the improvised start menu, however this trick can help you enable and display the run command in Windows 7.

How to Enable – Disable Taskbar Thumbnails Preview in Windows 7?

BlogsDNA has another interesting tutorial where they talk about the trick to enable or disable the taskbar thumbnails in Windows 7.

How to Enable – Disable Quick Launch Toolbar in Windows 7?

The Quick Launch bar has been disabled by default in Windows 7, BlogsDNA tells us How to Enable – Disable Quick Launch Toolbar in Windows 7

How to Show AM / PM Symbols in System Tray Clock in Windows 7?

Windows 7 uses a 24 hour clock to display the time, Tweaking with Vishal shows us change it back to show AM / PM Symbols in System Tray Clock in Windows 7.

Updates

We will use this section to link to new updates on handy Windows 7 tips and Tricks that will help you with using Windows 7

• 10 Handy Windows 7 Tips for Beginners
• How to Optimize Windows 7
• How to Customize Windows 7 your Way

Thanks Techie-Buzz!

I always have a copy of it on my USB stick, so I figured why not add some tools. One of them being a Windows password reset tool! Using this tool we can easily hack the Windows 7 Administrator password.

In this video episode of Bauer-Power (Which Karl so graciously let me re-post here) I show you how easy it is to hack Windows passwords using Bauer-Puntu Linux!

Besides Windows password hacking, Bauer-Puntu also gives you tools for:

• File recovery
• File shredding
• Hard drive wiping
• Disk imaging
• Disk partitioning
• Offline Virus Scan

Version 10.04 will be coming out soon. What other kinds of tools do you want to see on it? Like a different Live CD/USB distro? What is your favorite? Hit us up in the comments!

By ElDiPablo of Bauer-Power

I want a good, fast computer.  One that doesn’t take 5 or 6 hours to process a video which leaves me quite frustrated especially when we’re all now in a culture of having the here and now immediate feedback.  I looked at a decent dell for $1099 that included a 23″ monitor but realized that that would be the easy way out, and also not likely the truly fastest.  For maybe a little more, I was hoping to put together a smoking (possibly overclocked) computer that will let me deal with anything coming my way — especially those videos.

My research: Having never built my own computer before, this was something new to me.  Albeit that I do have an engineering degree with some (though somewhat limited) or maybe just enough knowledge to get me into trouble.  I did loads of research to identify the best price to performance ratio while still getting myself a sweet system.  This is what i came up with:

The Parts:

• Case: Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower
• Memory: G.SKILL PI Series 12GB (6 sets of 2gb)
• Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V (crossfire ready)
• Motherboard:  GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s
• Harddrive:  SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb
• Video card: HIS H577FM1GD Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express
• DVD:  LiteOn DVD R + – Ram Light Scribe… $35!
• CPU:  Intel I7-930
• CPU Cooler: cooler master Hyper 212 plus (extra cooling for overclocking)

My next post I’ll chronicle how I set it up and its performance.

What do you guys think of my setup so far?

Kerry is a mother of 2 great kids and a wonderful husband.   Her favorite website is callcatalog.com a reverse phone directory.

The parts are inbound

This should have been easy. Macs are supposed to be easier to use than Windows machines right? Well no dice. You could not do it with out modifying they system. I tried over and over using VNC, Logmein, PcAnywhere and more…  Everyone of them would open my screen right on up, so anyone walking by could not only watch me work but also move the mouse or type on the keyboard! It was the end of the road when someone type hello into a spread sheet of a Production manager… Sonofabitch!

I found a hack courtesy of ArtOfGeek and added my Vine VNC server and a new port for the win!  My favorite quote from the article has to be:

I know, enough with the chatter, get on with the tutorial! Just follow these steps and you’ll be locking your Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard like it’s running Windows XP! Wait, did I just write that? Shudder. Sorry, I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

Here is the nitty gritty for ya:

1. Open Automator (in your Applications folder) and choose Service from the list of templates provided and click the Choose button.
2. In the left hand column under Library, select Utilities.
3. In the second column, drag “Run Shell Script” to the right hand pane.
4. At the top of the right hand pane where you dragged the Run Shell Script action, click on the menu next to “Service receives” and choose “no input”.
5. Copy and paste the following Terminal command into the empty text area of the Run Shell Script action:
   

   /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend

   The entire command should be entered on a single line and note there is a space after “/Menu\”.

   

   Completed Automator action, ready to save (click to enlarge)

6. Choose File–>Save, and give the new service a meaningful name like “Lock Computer” that will appear in the Services menu. Once you’ve done that, you can go to the Services menu (located in the current application menu, next to the Apple menu) and your newly created service should appear there.
7. Next open System Preferences –> Keyboard –> Keyboard Shortcuts and select Services in the left column.

   

   Setting the keyboard shortcut (click to enlarge)

8. Scroll down to the bottom and under the General category, you should see your newly created service listed there. Select it, then Double-click close to the right side of the selected line to reveal a field where you can enter a custom keyboard shortcut. Enter an easy to remember but unique keyboard shortcut (I decided to go with ctrl+option+command+L), and then quit System Preferences.

That’s it! Go ahead and test your keyboard shortcut!  That locked your screen right? Now you can install Vine VNC Server on your machine change the port that it is listening on to 1111 or something other than 5900. Connect to your Vine server using UltraVNC using the IP address and the port like this 192.168.1.1:1111. That will keep your Mac locked and allow you to log into your machine keeping the screen locked. If you try to lock the screen and log in on port 5900 (built in screen sharing) you will arrive at the login screen and defeat the purpose of this hack!

You can read the full post at ArtOfGeek here

_TheMacinAdmiN_

Are you logging in as a normal user? Are you logging out of your servers when you are finished with your work?

You should be…

Sure it makes stuff easier as you don’t have to authenticate over and over but it is also really really dangerous. If your session gets hijacked or your machine becomes infected guess what…

You just handed over the keys to the kingdom without a fight. Your whole network could be destroyed and compromised. What happens if your active directory objects are deleted?

If that happens lets look at a tool our friends at bauer-power.net used to recover deleted accounts. And while we are on that note does anyone know why schema changes would remove user objects in a 2008 native ad setup?

Today I walked into the office with a little bit of a shocker. One of the Help Desk users said that his, and another user’s active directory accounts on our parent company’s domain had miraculously vanished. WTF? The only changes to active directory the previous day was my co-worker was setting up OCS, and that require some schema changes. I am not sure why those schema changes would delete accounts, but whatever, this is the problem I was facing when I walked in (Still no coffee yet either).

Well it turned out to not be that huge of a deal because I found a really awesome free tool that easily finds deleted active directory objects, and with a click of the button restores them. The way active directory deletes objects is pretty cool, and it also makes it relatively easy to recover. According to Petri, “When an object is deleted from Active Directory, it is not immediately erased, but is marked for future deletion…The marker used to designate that an AD object scheduled to be destroyed is called "tombstone". A tombstone is an object whose IsDeleted property has be set to True, and it indicates that the object has been deleted but not removed from the directory, much like a deleted file is removed from the file allocation table but the data is not actually removed from the drive.”

The tool I used to recover the objects is called ADRestore.net. To use it you simply install it on one of your domain controllers, then click Enumerate Tombstones. Find the missing object (User, OU, Computer, Etc) click on it and hit restore. Easy as pie!

 

Yes! This works on 2008 Active Directory’s as well as 2003. How do I know? Because we are a 2008 native shop! Here is a list of the main features available:

    * Browsing the tombstones
    * Domain Controller targeting
    * Can be used with alternative credentials (convenient if you do not logon to your desktop as Domain Admin, which you should never do anyway)
    * User/Computer/OU/Container reanimation
    * Preview of tombstone attributes

Know of some other good, free tools for recovering deleted AD objects? Hit us up in the comments!

What do you guys think? What if the objects were modified instead of removed? How do you deal with that? Do you have to do  a restore from backup? Can you roll your AD back? Let’s here from you admins out there!

_TheAdAdmiN_