Month: March 2007

Yep… you can actually by a Commodore PC again. Would you want to? Well, here’s the deal:

“The Commodore XX includes an Intel Core2 Extreme quad-core QX6700 microprocessor, an ASUS P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI motherboard, 4 Gbytes of Corsair memory, a pair of Nvidia 8800 GTX SLI graphics cards, and three hard drives: two 150GB 10,000 RPM SATA drives arranged in a frowned-upon RAID 0 configuration, and a 7,200-RPM 500-Gbyte RAID 1 drive.”

Pretty nice!

“The GX includes a Intel Q6600 quad-core processor, 2 Gbytes of memory, and a single Nvidia 8800GTX 320-Mbyte graphics card. The GS includes a Core Duo E6600 processor, 2 Gbytes of memory, and an Nvidia 8800 GTS card,along with a single 320-Gbyte hard drive. The Commodore G includes an Intel Core2 Duo E6320, 2 Gbytes of memory, and an Nvidia 7900 GS graphics card.”

OK… I can dig that. But maybe the best part… for ol’ timers that used to love their Commodore’s is that all of the systems come preloaded with a Commodore64 emulator and 50 “classic” games. Dewd! Gotta love that! (If you are a geezer, anyway!)

Commodore Unveils New PC Line

I have been thinking about the recent flap over Microsoft’s response (or lack thereof) to the Daylight Savings Time issue. This has been a “known problem” for two years, and I understand that they had to address it to customers in the window from November of last year (after the last time change) and now… but, there seemed to be no really clear plan… no helpful notices along the way, and no regard at all to businesses that were still running what Microsoft regards as “legacy” versions of software. Notably, Microsoft Exchange 5.5. If you have Exchange 5.5, there IS a fix for internal calendar issues with the time change, BUT they were not provided to customers unless the customers paid a special $4000.00 fee! In this situation, it could be viewed by customers of Microsoft as A) paying a penalty for their not upgrading as Microsoft wanted them to, or B) extortion! Where is the “customer care?” Where is the desire to “go the extra mile” for customer relations?

Is Microsoft SO arrogant, SO sure of its market share, that they don’t really care about customer needs? Having dealt with them as a system administrator for many years, sadly, the answer appears to be…. yes. They know that they have you by “the short hairs.” You will do as they say, you will take what they give you, you will pay what they require… or, what?

Well, some are going to look elsewhere, given enough grief. I have only HALF jokingly said to folks where I work, “Well, we could always go to Sendmail!” Or Postfix, or Zimbra, or, or, or… Microsoft may not believe it, but there ARE alternatives. And they may find out soon, just how many there really are out there. The hard way!

For those that always have to think about how to spell “The Computer Curmudgeon” we now have an additional URL (the old one will, of course, still work!) You can go to:

https://www.drbill.tv

or

https://drbill.cc

Get it? “CC” for “Computer Curmudgeon”… cute, huh? It will hopefully be easy to share with your friends… which, by the way, you should! Thanks!

“This guide shows how to install the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) on Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) and 6.06 (Dapper Drake) server systems. Zimbra is a full-featured, open source collaboration suite – email, group calendaring, contacts, and web document management and authoring. It has a feature-rich AJAX web interface and is compatible with clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, and Novell Evolution so that mail, contacts, and calendar items can be synchronized from these to the ZCS server. It can also be synchronized to many mobile devices. ZCS makes use of many existing open source projects such as Postfix, MySQL, and OpenLDAP.”

How To Install Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) On Ubuntu

I know we’ve had a lot of Ubuntu stuff this week, but what can I say… it has been a geeky week!

“#$!VB@#^%^@!#!!!” That’s roughly what a lot of IT managers are saying about Microsoft this week! Why? Because of the need to run an update program on every desktop, sometimes with user input required (if the user needs to agree to a date in their Outlook calendar being reassigned a time.)

Microsoft Customers Irate over Daylight-Saving Time Woes

“The extension of daylight-saving time by a month in the United States is causing enormous grief for some IT administrators running Microsoft software, as many of the software programs running on their users’ systems need to be individually patched to reflect the change. This year, DST (daylight-saving time) starts on Sunday, March 11—three weeks earlier than usual—and ends a week later than usual on Nov. 4. Microsoft has been warning customers that unless certain updates are applied to their computers, the time zone settings for their system clock may be incorrect during this four-week period. ‘In particular, you must make sure that both your Windows operating system and your calendar programs are updated,’ the company said on its support site.”

Yep… they are mad… crazy in fact! Despite five new zero day exploits… Microsoft has called off it’s regular “Patch Tuesday” updates this month. Can you say, “Doom?”

No March Security Updates from Microsoft

“After a whopping twelve security updates last month, March will bring Windows users a welcome sigh of relief: Microsoft has no patches planned for next week. The company will, however, release a number of non-security updates; 2 will appear on Windows Update and 4 on Microsoft update. Because there are no security bulletins for March, Microsoft will not be holding its monthly webcast on TechNet. An update to the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool will be made per usual. Microsoft released six critical security updates last month, correcting flaws in Windows, Office and its anti-malware products.”

Not that there are no updates needed… just that they have decided not to bother! So it goes. Really serious about security, aren’t they?

Here’s a “HowTo” for a great backup solution for Ubuntu Linux!

Backup and Restore Ubuntu System using Sbackup

“Data can be lost in different ways some of them are because of hardware failures, you accidentally delete or overwrite a file. Some data loss occurs as a result of natural disasters and other circumstances beyond your control. Now we will see a easy backup and restore tool called “sbackup.” SBackup is a simple backup solution intended for desktop use. It can backup any subset of files and directories. Exclusions can be defined by regular expressions. A maximum individual file size limit can be defined. Backups may be saved to any local and remote directories that are supported by gnome-vfs. There is a Gnome GUI interface for configuration and restore.”

I would. Just think, “Open Source hardware!” Kind of a neat idea! This is an open letter to Mark Shuttleworth, who founded Canonical, makers of Ubuntu Linux:

Open letter to Mark Shuttleworth

“Now Canonical and Ubuntu have made great strides toward realizing your vision yet there remains a bottleneck – people still have to install Linux. Installing Linux is easier than ever, but installing any operating system is unfortunately not trivial and is a chore that most computer users have no use for and will avoid. Remove this impediment, sell Linux pre-installed…

In short;

– there is a market for pre-installed Linux
– you already have the support system
– potential partners exist in the hardware branch
– you already have the software”