Blast from the past: originally published February 4th 2002.

So much has been made of Windows XP product activation, with every major PC magazine carrying a feature article and countless online rants, that I felt it was covered to death. The information had been presented to me at the product launch held by Microsoft that covered all there was to be said, but I had encountered a number of variables.

Here and there I had read that product activation was required, but you could upgrade pieces of hardware without reactivating. I was told seven hardware …

Blast from the past: originally published December 31st 2001.

I’m a big fan of Windows Update; one easy place to find all the updates needed for your system. I’ve found it works with Windows 95 up and long as your version of Internet Explorer is 4.0 or greater. With versions 5 and 6, you go to Tools, Windows Update. With version 4, go to Tools, Product Updates. Either way you’re brought to the Windows Update page, with lots of information available.

Products updates is my frequent destination for the latest operating system patches. It’s neatly organized into …

Blast from the past: originally published December 30th 2002.
Christmas is almost upon us, so that means our loved ones have to buy us something. They’re looking for dropped hints, circled catalogue pages and the like. For gaming enthusiasts, this is a frightful situation. These best intentioned people will wonder into a computer shop and say “what game should I buy my son/boyfriend/nephew?” And how the salesman will love to dump some piece of crap, assuring the purchaser how every gamer wants this title. Lucky for us Microsoft has launched a major ad campaign this season …

Blast from the past: originally published June 18th 2003.
Traditionally I’ve played sports and fighting games on my console systems. The PC handled everything else with aplomb. Since the console market dominates I’m trying to dally in all the genres available. This led me to Microsoft’s Mech Assault. The latest in a long line of Mech Warrior titles, this is a third person shooter where you control a variety of Mechs in a variety of missions. In case you’re not familiar with the whole FASA universe, I’ll boil it down for you. It’s the future, and war …

Blast from the past: originally published June 17th 2003.

I’ve finally started playing some games on my X-Box. A guy at work was selling his X-Box with two controllers and some games for a song, so I couldn’t pass up the deal. Got it home and read the manual. Grabbed an HDTV adapter the next day and set it to take advantage of the various resolutions available, plus hooked an optical cable for Dolby Digital sound. My X-Box was ready for whatever I threw at it, which was nothing …

Blast from the past: originally published December 14th 2001.

I don’t have to tell you that Microsoft launched their latest operating system on October 25th. There was enough media coverage, advertising and hoopla to let everyone who has a PC get word of the new Windows eXPerience. I was at the product launch in Toronto, Ontario and received my press copy of Windows XP Professional. The question is why did I take so long getting to it? It’s the latest and greatest, so shouldn’t it have been installed ages ago?
Way …

For those who have looked at doing their own web hosting the acronym LAMP or WAMP is familiar: Linux/Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP.  Wrapped in an easy to install package with some management thrown in this is a simple one step install to get yourself an up and running web based application.
I’m familiar with Windows so I tried out a few WAMP packages to get WordPress, Drupal and Joomla running on my network so I could see what they’re all about.  All fairly straightforward to get running but like a …

I’m a big fan of free and luckily there is no shortage of free real time anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities available to Windows users.  The big news of the week was Microsoft’s beta release of Microsoft Security Essentials.  As part of the Connect beta program 75000 slots were made available for beta testers which filled very quickly: I was lucky enough to get in.
Microsoft Security Essentials is a free Windows security package that’s a derivative of it’s enterprise Forefront Security package, pared down as a free simplified offering.  That’s not …

I’ve written a review for every version of Small Business Server but have never published any of them: the scope seems to broad to adequately cover.  I’ve sat on this one for a few months but decided to get it out there.

Some months ago Microsoft made available a release candidate of Windows Small Business Server 2008 for public preview: I downloaded and installed it to give it a whirl.  I ran it for a month to see what was new and to form an opinion, outlined below.
I’ve been a big fan and …

Can’t favor one system over another, so Dungeon Siege: Legends Of Aranna has occupied my free time for the last three weeks. Some may remember the original title from a few years ago: this is a follow up slash expansion, somewhere right in the middle. Legends Of Aranna follows the same game style: a third person point and click fighting game based on a fantasy genre, like Dungeons and Dragons or Diablo. You work your way through the world, fighting monsters, acquiring new weapons, armor and equipment, adding teammates, trying to finish various …

Being a true die hard fan of RTS ( real time strategy ) games, I had to give MechCommander 2 a try. The original had come out a few years ago, but I had missed out on that one and didn’t want to repeat that error. I’m a little behind the rest of the press pack on this review, but I was slow installing it. On the surface MechCommander 2 appears to be a limited RTS title, but just like your mother says it’s what’s inside that counts.
After an uneventful install I fired …

I’ve just finished six months of dual booting my PC with Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista Ultimate x64 (the 64 bit version of Windows).  Please peruse my initial installation here if you haven’t already before continuing.
Let me start by confirming I am still dual booting, but mainly because Vista x64 isn’t supported by the Connector software from Windows Home Server.  If I want my PC backed up I have to go into a 32 bit operating system to get it done.  A 64 bit version of this was to …

I signed up for the Microsoft Windows Home Server beta program early in the year and have been impressed and completely satisfied with the product. The final release came out a while ago, but my Microsoft PR contact never came through with a copy so I picked it up at NCIX.com for $153 CDN and upgraded my RTM (release to manufacturing) copy this past weekend.
For those not in the know, Microsoft Windows Home Server (WHS from now on) is just that: a small server operating system designed for the home. …

With even a passing interest in computing you would be hard pressed to have not only heard and shown interest in Microsoft Vista but also the deluge of bad press it’s received. Slower than Windows XP! User Account Control a failure! Version confusion! And so it continues. Whatever your feeling, Microsoft has the leading market share for an operating system and has moved to the Vista platform, with XP to go the way of the dinosaur over the next few months.
Of course XP will live on through your old PCs …

It’s been a few weeks since my last eWeakly, simply for the fact that I haven’t done anything computer related of interest.
Last week Microsoft released the Windows Home Server Community Technology Preview (CTP).  This put a lot more fit and finish to the product.  I used the upgrade option to upgrade my existing WHS beta 2 installation.  Things went well, but I was still getting a failing service and couldn’t install the client software.  I had hoped the upgrade would resolve these two issues.
Around the same time I realized my …

A few weeks since my last Weakly; went to the New York Comic Convention ( read about it here ).  I’ve also been running the Microsoft Home Server Beta 2 ( WHS ) and have found it quite useful.
For some reason I have a bunch of hard drives lying around at home for two purposes: to upgrade my Small Business Server ( SBS ) machine and to build a disk based backup machine.  I had a Xeon workstation sitting around so that was going to be repurposed to WHS, but …

At home I run a Small Business Server ( SBS ) 2003 domain and connect my PCs to it.  I’m in a corporate setting and am used to a Microsoft domain setup, so when SBS 4.5 was released many years ago I jumped onboard and have kept upgrading to the latest and greatest.  In a nutshell SBS combines Windows Server, Exchange and remote access in one nice package and adds a ton of wizards to guide you through getting set up and maintaining your environment.  With SBS 2003 the wizards …

With the high cost of Vista looming on the horizon I thought it best to sign up for a Microsoft subscription package and get all their software for one year for one price.  I wanted to screw around with a lot of their products and this was the best way to get mostly everything on one place.
Microsoft basically offers three ways to do this: TechNet, MSDN, Action Pack.  TechNet is aimed at the IT crowd, with full access to all Microsoft retail corporate/enterprise software ( no home or game products …

After a bunch of users have logged onto a system those profiles start to bog things down.  Microsoft released the abovementioned utility to clean up after those errant profiles and speed up the restart/shutdown process.
User Profile Hive Cleanup Service

Wow! Microsoft has now made available Vista Beta 2. This is beta software so use it at your own risk, but at least you’ll see what all the hype is about. You have to login and answer a few questions but it’s not a big deal. You’ll finally get to a download page with a link and your product key.

Microsoft Vista Beta 2