This is the part of the experiement of the henrico School Board, and the paid agent of Apple who ripped off the county for no gain but his own pocket. They switched to Dell, so they are dumping their old iBooks!  Out of Warranty, the only thing they guarantee is that they are working when you buy them! 750mhz (local radio guy said 750 mb!  What a putz!).  OSX (If I had to guess, I would say 10.2.x. Read the Article and be the first on your block to get one cheap! Catc...

Yep!  I went out and bought a Dell Notebook for my Wife!  Complete with wireless so she can sit and watch TV while she does her work.  And I was impressed with the prices!  Just when you think they cant get any lower, they do! This one comes with most of the bells and whistles.  I did not get a DVD burner, but that is about the only thing it does not come with.  And all for about a grand!  It helped that I do business with them regularly, so I could buy off ...

OK, Dharma posted an article about an ID ten T at SBC.  Now I have a confession to make.  I was once in end user support!  {{{SHOCK}}} Most of us engineers are not born as engineers but come up through the ranks.  So we have to do our time at the help desk, or desktop support (at the source of the problem).  So I am not going to slam Sukdav Sirra (her support person) that much as I have been there with the really totally clueless! And I will make another confession...

Zobot was one of the fastest exploits of a microsoft hole yet created.  IN less than a week's time, these infantile idiots, Farid Essebar of Morocco, and Atilla Ekici of Turkey released what essential was an aggravation (the worm did not destroy data, just crashed servers).  I am glad these juvenile deliquents were grabbed so fast as these clowns must be stopped before someone tries to outdo them in the future and release a deadly worm just as fast. But I have to wonder ab...

With appologies to all teachers who read this, there is a reason not everyone is a teacher!  But unfortunately, have worked in education, I can tell you that there is a great bigotry against anyone who is not a teacher in that profession.  I was subjected to it when I worked there. But there comes a time in most people's lives when they realize they are in over their head.  Perhaps it is when you want to rebuild that Hemi, pull a bad tooth, bypass an artery, or even Build your ...

My wife decided to surprise me and clean my computer room yesterday.  SHe did a good job, but in the process broke the Wireless Switch/Router I had in my room.  A very fine Netgear, that had a few quirks, but had been very reliable.  So last night off to the store I went for another.  Since I had to pick up a couple of things at the big box office supply store, I decided to get it there.  Unfortunately, they only had D-link and Linksys. I had bought a D-Link about thr...

Yea, my Aunt recently moved to FLA!  (Hey Mason!  She is your neighbor).  And she graduated from Dialup to DSL!  Oh Boy! Yea, no hardare firewall!  She is naked as a jay bird, and I am powerless to help her! (But I think a cousin is there so I am calling soon). When I talk about the users of the Internet, I talk about "Aunt Ida".  Well, this one is not quite like that, but close!  So I am trying to figure out how to get her an ethernet card (she is hooked up...

I like Dell.  I really do.  Good cheap, and when you order they notify you every step of the way.  So you know exactly where the order is.  Their estimated ship date is a joke, as they always ship at least a week early!  But having ordered umpteen systems from them, I have learned that.  But they always notify you when the system ships so you know when it is going to arrive (they use UPS, so it is easy to track). Until now.  No notification that it has shipp...

So my PS died.  So I went down to my "trusted" computer store and told them I needed a new one.  They trotted out a nice one, just fourty bucks.  And I was happy.  BUT It did not fit!  It was too big!  BUT it did fit, just with a hangover.  Ok, I know my setup is old (coming up on 3 years now), but what is the extra prongs for?   It works (or you would not be seeing this) and is great. Damn!  I have to get up on the NEW ATX. &nb...

No, not the machines.  I still think they are over priced.  But their service.  We made another 2 trips out there yesterday (to the Apple Store).  But now I know how to make a reservation before going. The first trip (and the second) was for my Son's iPod.  For some reason it wiped all his songs and then would not let him re-add them.  So we took it in and I let him do all the talking.  And the tech wiped it (the songs are still on the computer) and we went ...

I have been working with company X to try to recover a NAS for the last week.  A little background might help to understand the circus I work in. First, there is no backup for this NAS.  Both the owner (I am just support) and my Boss decided that was too expensive (for those who have read me, my boss is a pissant that likes to piss off people and if he is mad at you, will give you bad advice).  Second, ignoring my pleas to get this NAS on a UPS, the Owner hemmed and hawed and h...

With all do defference to Satan's Advocate, Apple is not about hardware!  They suck at hardware!  They have had some great ideas, but they have all died on the vine! So what is Apple great about?  Geez!  This is a no brainer!  They are great about SOFTWARE. Ok, why do I say this?  First, they had their own platform.  No one could run on it (well, BEOS and LINUX), but that was not GOOD enough!  So they went to Intel!  Who is running on Intel?...

I use to laugh about the life of a computer nerd.  No one (in the early days) wanted to invite us to parties as we were too nerdy.  And we talked about esoteric things that no one understood. But that has changed.  The change started in the 20th century and has only accelerated in the 21st century.  Now, we are revered like the doctors of the 19th century!  Miracle men!  And with the reveration, has come the penalty. We have all heard of the joke about the blo...

I recently was blessed with a user who was fooled by an email about a package and tracking.  The email of course had nothing to do with a shipping company, but contained Cryptowall, a variant of the Cryptodefender trojan.  And it was methodical.  After basically locking them out of all their databases for a day while it did its business, it popped up the obligatory message about all the files being encrypted with an RSA 2048 key, and if you did not give them $500 in bitcoins (that...

I am sorry, there is no nice way to put it.  I have had the thing for 2 months now, and find about the only thing it is good for is playing movies.  It is not even good to surf the web as you cannot load Java!  I know MS hates that (preferring ActiveX), but unfortunately many sites use it. I also cannot use Logmein, VPN, VMWare View, or even OWA!  There is no hard client for VPN, and since RT does not do Java, you cannot use the Anyconnect.  VMWare View has a client i...