converser.nz

Month: August 2007

  • What is the best computer suite layout?

    We only have one computer suite, and it has been in two different layouts from the time I was involved in it. The first one had all the computers around the walls of the room and people faced the walls when they worked. The teacher could see everyone’s screens from the front of the room…

  • Non bootable Vista DVDs / MAKs, KMSs etc etc

    After a lot of poring through the MS website I discovered indeed, the upgrade DVD you are supplied with by default will be non bootable. But you can get a bootable one on application to MS. The more tricky thing is to work out what licensing key to use with the volume license. Vista requires…

  • Another plug for Windows Live Writer

    Well, I had a go with WLW, and I had a go with ScribeFire, and I had lots of goes with Blogger’s own composer. And after all that, even though WLW can’t do as much as Blogger, it can’t justify and it can’t post pictures, it is still the greatest because in other ways it…

  • REVIEW: Epson Perfection V100 Photo Scanner

    It’s not often I get to review something, but here’s a look at a value for money option for scanning those photos, negatives and slides. Previously, if you wanted to scan slides, you were looking at something around $500 or more to get a reasonable result. At $299, the V100 is a lower cost way…

  • Are Vista upgrade DVDs not bootable?

    Like all NZ schools that have joined the MS license agreement, we received a Vista Business Upgrade DVD recently. There’s just one little problem: it’s not bootable. Here’s a practical illustration of the situation. In the picture above, you see the extraction from IsoBuster showing what is on a bootable DVD ISO image obtained from…

  • Modern MicroATX low profile PC

    To bring the series about PC designs right up to the present day, here is a modern low profile desktop PC. This is a generic chassis, the Foxconn DH153, which like many chassis has been adapted to “Prescott” specification when Intel decided that a vent directly above the huge CPU cooler was needed. (From comparison…

  • Ident Server on Vista Clients

    Some proxy servers (generally non-Windows) require an Ident server running in each PC on the network so that the server can get the name of the user who is requesting Internet access. While there are limitations and security issues with the Ident protocol it is a simple easy to configure option for some applications. With…