RogueSpear

I have a couple dozen of them at work (a police department). We've been getting ToughBook's for about 10 years now. I've swapped out SO-DIMMs and hard disks that have gone bad. The other guy in my office is a little better than me with actual finger work and has swapped out touchpads, keyboards, and screens over and over again. They're great units and worth their weight in gold. If there seems to be any weakness with them, it seems to be the touhpads. Also, the Bluetooth modules that Panasonic uses are made by Toshiba In Linux this generally means you're going to need to use the omnibook module. In Arch this is no problem - just get it from AUR. In Ubuntu I found it to be a bit more involved.

I'm a little late to the thread, but thought I'd offer up a little advice. Back when Windows 2000 was Microsoft's current day server I read Mark Minasi's excellent, if not huge, Master Windows Server 2000. Basically I put myself in a self-imposed solitary confinement for a week and read the entire 1,000+ page tome. I walked out of my cell knowing Windows 2000 inside out and up and down (or so I thought). Anyway, he has a really nice style that makes for an easy read so far as technical books go. And it looks like he's still pumping out new versions of the book: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Microsoft-...8/dp/0470532866 Also, if you have any questions about something, in my experience he will actually respond back to an email you send him.

My personal rule of thumb for domain member workstations is to never use or allow local user accounts on those workstations.

For better or worse, a huge amount of enterprises use RHEL or CentOS. I am personally just beginning to find out just how incredible FreeBSD is (and am kicking myself in the ass for wasting so many years on Windows). Time is limited, but you really do need to diversify. At least have a basic knowledge Linux/BSD which probably equates to CentOS and FreeBSD. As the years go on I'm finding it more and more difficult to keep up on everything. It's getting to be like medicine where you need to specialize, yet everyone expects you to know everything.

I don't know what drives this applies to within Western Digital's line up, but I recently purchased their 1TB bus powered passport drive. It came partitioned in some kind of way that part of it appeared as a CD-ROM even within Linux. No amount of fdisk or parted would free the thing up either. Eventually by way of Google, I was able to find a step by step on WD's website (that I couldn't find without the assistance of Google) that detailed how to get rid of this abomination. Here's the best part of it. Windows or Mac is required. First I had to update the firmware on the drive, then I had to run some sort of utility to remove the software and partition. This isn't something you can do in a VM either since the drive disconnects and reconnects several times. I ended up having to use a Windows machine at work in order to do this. Whoever at Western Digital though that this was a great idea and thought it was an even better idea to require Windows needs to be summarily executed. Anyway, it's something to consider if you're looking at a WD drive.

More important than anything else - all of the browsers, all of the web, and everyone else need to dump the epic abortion that is known as Flash (and that doesn't mean go to Silverlight either). Only Adobe could make Microsoft look like a security conscious software developer.

I like Chrome, but until all of the functionality provided by Adblock Plus, BetterPrivacy, Cookie Monster, and NoScript is available in one form or another, I won't make the switch full time. I also really like Aurora quite a bit, but it has the same deal breaker as Chrome for me.

For Windows I believe SpeedFan can both send email and shutdown based on temperature readings, fan RPMs, voltage readings, etc. from both the CPU and GPU (depending on the hardware support of your video card). For Linux I don't know of a real turnkey system but you could probably rig Conky to do all that with a little elbow grease.

Sheesh.. no sooner than I finally find the proper article, they go out and post a brand new benchmark for 32 v 64: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=arti...2_pae&num=1 Looks like there's no reason to stick with 32-bit unless you simply can't live without a particular application that refuses to work under 64-bit.

Woops... They did just have a 32 vs. 64 article in the last month or so that presented some pretty surprising results (to me at least). I didn't look at my search results closely enough. I have the site in Google Reader and sort of figured the search wouldn't result in a 4 year old article. Man did I just now have a hard time finding it too: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=arti...final&num=1 Ok it's not strictly a 32 vs. 64 article, they had OSX in there too. And it is older than I thought - November 18th. Anyway, I was surprised at some of the differences between the two archs. In my own testing, I've noticed some difference with Handbrake encoding. Not a ton, but I'll take whatever I can get.

Sometimes the written word doesn't translate as well as a face to face discussion, so I'll say that I'm not trying to be a smart ass here when I ask what exactly makes it so much better? Granted, starting with version 2010 you no longer need to use IE to get the full OWA client, but I've found Exchange to be a very labor intense affair - especially when you're the one administering an entire network all by yourself. Their licensing model has always left little to be desired in my book and things are only worse now that Outlook licenses are not included with each seat. In addition a SAN is practically mandatory in all but the smallest of deployments. I found that you get a lot more functionality from Google by default, particularly when you factor in cost.

You need to dedicate an entire server for Symantec's enterprise offerings these days. And even then they don't work right. I swear they took what wasn't a bad product and sent it right into the crapper. I've been very happy with the free version of Avira's AntiVir product, but have no experience with their enterprise stuff. If anybody here does, I'd be very interested in opinions, thoughts, etc.

Here's a recent article benchmarking Ubuntu 32-bit vs. 64-bit http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=arti...m=616&num=1

It's been a while since I've had an Ubuntu install but I think when you install VLC from synaptic that libdvdcss gets pull in with it - which should allow you to play your DVDs. Probably some of the newer titles with more screwy copy protections won't be playable though.

Couldn't agree more. I went from a Penryn w/ 4GB to a Core i7 w/ 8GB for my desktop at work. Now I'm running two virtual servers and two virtual clients each with 1GB RAM all at the same time. I can't even explain how awesome it is to be able to have an entire simulated network available for testing. My old system was obviously two core. But the new system is quad core with hyperthreading, show it shows as 8 core. And of course you can never have enough RAM.

Actually I recently reached out to the creator in the feature request subforum to inquire about becoming a contributor to his project. I put together some files and configs to update his project with the latest UBCD 5.0 RC1. Still haven't heard back, but we'll see I guess...

If you're interested in using RIS, I also wrote a program a AutoImage that takes a stock Microsoft RIS image and tweaks it quite a bit. While I've stopped developing it, it is GPL with source. I still use it to this day for RIS deployments and for making custom install discs.

I went cert crazy in 2000 - 2001 even though I was (and still am) in a very secure position. Seeing all of these people with the alphabet soup after their names made me a little envious. Looking back on it now though I spent a ton of money on exams, books, etc. and a ton of time studying up so I could answer a question the way the test wanted me to answer it. Nevermind that the correct answer on a test could be a course of action that would take down an entire server/network/enterprise. Once I got the alphabet soup after my name I realized what a waste it was. Now I never obtained a certification that could be considered a premium or prestigious cert. I think that some of those do still have value - CISSP, RHCE, the various SANS certs. But the multitude of CompTIA and Microsoft certs are of little value. What has people offering me jobs is my experience. 25 years of it (yes I am old). So how can someone with no experience get it? Well if you're young enough, like a freshman in college, see if there is an ROTC program you can get into or just plain enlist. A good deal of the best and brightest that I crossed paths with have the military to thank for their start. Not into that sort of a commitment? Volunteer someplace. If you do a great job and everyone thinks you're a hero, put it on your resume. If you accidentally burn the place down - don't. But chances are you'll be helping out an organization that needs it. Volunteer fire departments, animal rescue organizations, and just about any other charitable or non-profit organization would be good places to look. Also, while you're there volunteering you never know who you might run into or who might take notice of the work you've done and make you an offer.

I recently priced out hosted Exchange (state/local government pricing) vs. Google Apps for 200 users. Holy crap. Exchange - $60 per user per month Google - $50 per user per year It used to be, back in the day, that I somewhat enjoyed running a mail server. Now? Not really. We're migrating away from Exchange 2000 and have looked at a dozen or so options. The only one that got my interest as far as self hosting was Zimbra. But now that Google is going to be FISMA certified, it became an option and my first choice.

I hope you made it to TO ok. Merry Christmas, get better, and if you find yourself stumbling through Buffalo I'll get you some hot Duff's wings.

For my multipass I've been using a 16GB Corsair Survivor. It's the one in an aluminum tube case. Completely indestructible. One of the benefits that I've never seen anybody mention before is that the stick itself is pretty small and lends itself to tight fits. I have to service Panasonic ToughBooks on a regular basis and with some models there is one USB port on the side which is deeply recessed. With almost any other USB stick I have to use an extension cable just because it won't fit. This one just pops right in there. The model I have is about 2 years old and it's not too fast. Hopefully current day releases are a bit quicker. For my main everyday stick I've been using a 32GB OCZ ATC. I really like OCZ products a lot, going back to my first 2GB dual channel Rally USB. This one is just ok. It's been working reliably for a year now, but it's kind of slow and the build quality itself just isn't there. It's one of those rubbery ones and the memory chips must really be jammed in there because it has a bulge in the middle. When I finally upgrade to a 64GB this will probably become the primary drive for a Shiva plug.

I found that this little trick is necessary for a crap ton of Linux distros. I used his post to wiggle Pentoo onto my USB.

I finally just installed it to the hard drive on both my laptop and netbook. I figure that I use it enough, may as well just install it.

I only discovered Arch about a year ago (in fact I only started using Linux beyond servers about two years ago) and it almost immediately became my distro of choice. I look forward to exploring your work! On a similar topic, have you checked out the recent releases from the Chakra Project?