Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

Matt2000 said:
I think my Creative Gigaworks T40 speakers might be dying. When they're switched on they're crackling slightly, particularly the left speaker and even with the volume turned right down and no input.
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Apparently that last bit isn't accurate, they only did it when the cable was plugged in. It turns out that the cable is faulty, the original one that came with the speakers. The speakers are fine though, thankfully, here's to 7 more years of great service from them! :beer:
 
Even downloading the .txt linked to by the Wikipedia article throws this for me:



Note though, not every single scanner out there does identify this... however, I see no reason why a sane scanner should not, so I'd poke whoever chose this with a big stick.
 
narf said:
Even downloading the .txt linked to by the Wikipedia article throws this for me:



Note though, not every single scanner out there does identify this... however, I see no reason why a sane scanner should not, so I'd poke whoever chose this with a big stick.
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I installed Security Essentials. As soon as I ran the file (after changing the extension to .com) Microsoft Security Essentials pops of a small banner saying "your computer is being cleaned" and the file disappeared.

*EDIT*

I downloaded the file again and I didn't even have a chance to look at it and it was removed.
 
Wow, there are some IT-companies out there botching together systems and networks... :?

Today I received a call from one of our customers that an acquaintance of him working in another company which we don't service has a problem with one of their mail accounts. They changed the password at the mail provider but since then that mail account doesn't receive mails anymore. Our customer tried his best yesterday to solve the problem, but failed to do so.

I contacted the acquaintance of him to solve the problem, they let me on the machine for a remote support session.
The machine is a Windows Small Business Server 2011 (based on Server 2008 R2, bundled with Exchange 2010 and some other crap) which I know since we have some installations at our customers, too. The thing is that the physical server (not virtualized) has just 4 GB of RAM. :shock: I thought 8 GB in a server of a customer of us who we adopted was low, but an SBS 2011 with 4 GB is painfully slow.
Anyway, I fixed the problem (they fetch the mail via POP3 so the password for the mail account had to be changed there, too), but they had another problem: Our customer really made a mess, he disconnected the old mailbox with all the mails from the user and set up a new mailbox in the hope of getting the new mails to work. Additionally, he tried setting up a new Active Directory user which didn't work either. So I had to disconnect one mailbox from the user and connect the old one with the old mails (thankfully the mailboxes aren't deleted right away...). Carve something into stone is quicker than those tasks...

Next thing: the client-PCs (thankfully Windows 7, but with Office 2003) aren't domain-joined so the password for the mail account in Outlook had to be set manually, and every time the user changes his password in Active Directory.

But the problems didn't stop there: their smartphones didn't synchronize with their Exchange Server anymore. They told me the settings of the smartphones, and they have a DynDNS address as server address. One problem was that they just replaced their defective router with a new one which of course didn't have the login data for that DynDNS account. The next problem was that the DynDNS account used before is from a IT company which doesn't work for them anymore (I'm not surprised why...) so they had to set up a new DynDNS account with a new DynDNS address. The third problem was that the router is a measly Fritzbox which can only forward ports, but doesn't scan anything when ports are forwarded. I hesitantly set up the port forwarding, not without warning that their Exchange Server Outlook Web Access is now reachable from the internet without protection.

Oh, and of course when they set up the new Fritzbox they didn't disable the DHCP-service so the DHCP-service of the SBS stopped itself when it detected the other DHCP-server in the network. They were lucky that the server had an IP ending with .110 and the Fritzbox allocated IP adresses from 20 on...

While I was at it I discovered that their internet connection has 850 kbit/s down- and 160 kbit/s upload.

Those tasks which would have been about 45 minutes on a normal system (including explanations to the customers what DynDNS is for, what a DHCP-server does and whatnot) lasted 3 hours... :|
 
Around here it seems like the formal training isn't up to snuff.

What makes it really difficult is having in the IT support off site. They claim all our computers will be set up to work on a domain but, that hasn't happened and it's been 3 months. People at the office still ask me to fix their stuff. I tell them we have a company to do that. But, they insist and I can't resist.
 
Honestly, some of the people at the place I work at just don't realise how good they have it with us in house IT staff. We're in the process of getting a pair of HP 3par systems installed. :)

Oh, the memory I mentioned on the last page is in and so far there have been no stability issues. Annoyingly though the price of the i5 I wanted has come down to make it even more tempting...
 
tquattro said:
I have a Latitude E6540 from work and I'm thinking of buying a docking station for it and sell my personal laptop. Any disadvantages in using somthing like this that I should be aware of?
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tquattro said:
My personal laptop has most of its ports used(power supply, 2xDisplays(monitor & TV), Ethernet cable, speakers, external HDD, 1xLogitech wireless receiver for keyboard/mouse, another wireless receiver for my gaming mouse , also planing to buy a mechanical keyboard), which makes my laptop quite unportable. A pain in the ass to remove/reattach all the cables, but doing this 2-3times a month is not a real problem and didn't bothered me before(if I keep my personal laptop it will probably never leave the desk again in the near future). Now I have two laptops with similar performance and doesn't make sense to keep them both. The only thing holding me back in selling my laptop is the fact that I would have to do all this removing/reattaching of cables daily on my work laptop. A docking station would solve this problem, I'm just worried a bit that the docking station will create bottlenecks in some areas(like slower LAN speed, bigger display latency...)
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prizrak said:
If your laptop has USB 3.0 there are a few docks out there that you can get for it.
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Matt2000 said:
We had some USB 3.0 docks at work for Latitude 6430u ultrabooks, they were shit. Well, the drivers were shit, not controlling the power options or video outputs properly and meaning that the machine would go to sleep if you closed the lid with the dock plugged in and would try to duplicate the main screen to the monitor at the laptops native resolution. Being USB they also couldn't power the laptop or run from its power so you had to have power to the dock and power to the laptop. Dell didn't supply a second power brick for the laptop with the dock, so you had to buy one yourself or crawl under the desk to unplug it every time you left the office (in our case at work). Hurr

We now buy E7440s with the proper dock connector and proper docks. Much better but there's still some stupidity as Dell never released a dock for small laptops, so it's the massive one and there's a huge gap between the laptop and the back of the dock. Durr

This is the Dell dock we had btw, should be universal enough to work with most laptops.
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I have the Dell PR02X dock with USB3.0 at home that I used with my oooold E6500 for a while, and still do, but I don't use that laptop much anymore... Works fantastically well, with all the extra I/O implemented seemingly properly (no broken serial contrllers or similar BS). Everything works at full speed, besides USB 3.0, because my laptop doesn't support USB 3.0. That is exactly what should be expected, because that dock is basically just a giant breakout cable. As a side-effect, no extra latency crap to deal with or broken USB drivers or OS compatibility etc. If you don't need legacy connections, the PR03X may be a better option for you. A friend has one at work where he docks in his Precision M4500. I have my Lenovo dock in said office, with it's humunguous 170W PSU, a 24" screen, keyboard, mouse and ethernet.

As for USB docks, they suck. Ignore them completely and/or burn them in a fire.
 
Only Google could force every Youtube user onto their shitty G+ service and then 1/2 year later, say that in order to subscribe to a pay-per-view channel you gotta have an account which is not connected to G+.

Fucking genius.
 
Quoted from New Toys thread.

Perc said:
Ah, you're that kind of user. I get it.

Yeah, Office 2011 is not really on par with the windows version, but I use it on a daily basis and IMO it's fine for what I need from an office suite. And for what it's worth, It's really easy to make custom keyboard shortcuts for any menu item in OS X.

Microsoft is supposedly releasing a new version this year. It's going to be interesting because it feels like MS is starting to pay attention to other platforms again. Having a quality office product on Windows isn't necessarily enough when the customer also likes to do work on their Macbook and iPad (for instance). The new Mac and iOS stuff they've put out recently is nice.
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While that's great and all. I have a question, what are macros and why do I need them?
 
My mum uses a 7 year old laptop, she only uses it for the usual old lady stuff. But, it sounds like a fucking jet engine, the hinges are cracked, the screen has issues. As it still functions she won't replace it, I'm gonna treat her to a new Toshiba one. The only downside is of course Windows 8, I have a feeling this is not going to be smooth sailing from the start...

Even 8.1 doesn't appear to do what we all want it to do, which is to be Windows 7.
 
chaos386 said:
Sequences of commands that you can record and play back. Very useful for semi-complex yet repetitive tasks.
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Like math equations?
 
WTF, HDMI?

My TV setup is (was) as follows:

Mac Mini and Apple TV hooked up via HDMI to my AV receiver, and from there on to the TV. Works fine.

IPTV set top box (Motorola VIP 1003, not that it matters) hooked up straight to the TV, because the receiver's HDMI switch is full and I don't watch much TV anyways so I haven't missed the proper sound system.

The signal from the TV box has been zap cutting brzp out CRACKLE recently, both video and audio. I plugged the set top box into the HDMI cable usually reserved for the Mini, and all was well. I figured the cheap-ass cable between the set top box and TV was to blame, and I finally got off my ass today and went out and bought a new one. Didn't help. If anything, things got worse.

Fast forwards 25 minutes: everything's rewired, with the IPTV STB and Mini now being routed via the receiver and the Apple TV wired directly, with an optical cable connected to the CD input for audio. Everything seems to work, no problems at all. Using the exact same hardware as before, only hooked up differently.

Again. WTF?

The maze of wizards, settings and interface bugs I had to go through to put all the new input settings into my Harmony 555 deserves its own post, really.
 
Aston Martin said:
My mum uses a 7 year old laptop, she only uses it for the usual old lady stuff. But, it sounds like a fucking jet engine, the hinges are cracked, the screen has issues. As it still functions she won't replace it, I'm gonna treat her to a new Toshiba one. The only downside is of course Windows 8, I have a feeling this is not going to be smooth sailing from the start...

Even 8.1 doesn't appear to do what we all want it to do, which is to be Windows 7.
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Why do you hate your mom? I used two Toshibas in my life both were absolutely horrible and had a ton of problems.

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chaos386 said:
No, you record actions you make in the interface. Changing the visibility/width of a column, changing cell formats, or any other command you'd invoke through a right click menu, keyboard shortcut, or the ribbon.
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Or importing data and populating pivot tables.
 
Aston Martin said:
My mum uses a 7 year old laptop, she only uses it for the usual old lady stuff. But, it sounds like a fucking jet engine, the hinges are cracked, the screen has issues. As it still functions she won't replace it, I'm gonna treat her to a new Toshiba one. The only downside is of course Windows 8, I have a feeling this is not going to be smooth sailing from the start...

Even 8.1 doesn't appear to do what we all want it to do, which is to be Windows 7.
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You could set 8.1 to boot into the desktop. Switch the start screen to "all apps" view, and you're all set.

Depending on the machine, today's windows 8 systems may have these options turned on out of the box if they don't have touch hardware.

Perc said:
Windows 8 is a fucking farce.
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I use it just fine :dunno:.

prizrak said:
Why do you hate your mom? I used two Toshibas in my life both were absolutely horrible and had a ton of problems.
.
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This. So much this.
 
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