VNC Viewer: You'll probably have used VNC viewer at some point, but if not, let me explain. You can use this to take control of a remote PC. Couple this with PuTTY (in my previous list) and you can access pretty much any system you choose

Symbian DivX Player: Does exactly what it says - a full implimentation of the DivX codec for Symbian S60 v3 phones...

Navimote: Free SatNav! It's never going to be a TomTom beater, but it'll get you out of a spot, and it's free...

Locr: Automatically Geotag your photos - if that's your sort of thing, knock yourself out!

Nokia Step Counter: I'm sure a lot of people are still desperately trying to lose weight as part of their New Years resolution to get fit. Well, with the step counter, you can see exactly how fit (or how lazy) you really are...

SymTorrent: Tie an unrestricted data plan (thank you Vodafone!) with a desire to download stuff on the move, and what do you get? SymTorrent - the only Symbian S60 v3 bit torrent client.

As part of our ongoing Sharepoint project, I've decided to go all modern - the base OS is 64 bit Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and the database engine is 64 bit SQL Server 2008. However, as soon as you try installing Sharepoint Server 2007 with a vanilla disk, you'll run in to problems - 2008 R2 expects Sharepoint to be service packed up, and at the moment there's no media available with SP1 or SP2 embedded (in fact there's no media avaliable at all on the Volume Licensing site at all, just a note telling you that for the moment they'll ship you the physical media for free - WTF is going on at Redmond at the moment?)

Luckily, there is a pretty easy way to get around the problem.

• Copy your install disk to a hard drive
• Download Sharepoint Server 2007 SP2 here
• Run the following command from the command prompt (cd to the directory where your download is stored first): officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract: [Location of files copied from installation disk]\Updates
• Run setup.exe from the copied installation media root

Job done

As part of a Sharepoint deployment project, this week I've been building up one of the blades in our blade centre (an HP C-Class with an MSA1500 sitting on the back). A couple of things have struck me as I've been going through the build process - firstly, the insanely huge recommended partition size for Windows Server 2008 R2. The minimum recommended is 64GB. Take a while and let that sink in. 64 GB. The blade I'm using comes equipped with a pair of 137GB SAS drives, so once we mirror them, nearly half of the available space is taken! Not funny Microsoft! I'm sure that the chaps at Redmond will justify this by saying that it means that the OS has the optimum amount of space to spread in to, but compare this with a CentOS installation on the same hardware. 1.5GB. There is no way anyone can justify more than 40 times space for an equivalent installation - our CentOS box runs mySQL, Apache with 4 virtual sites and 2 instances of our VLE (Moodle - more of that in later posts). It's just not on, and it's no wonder that a lot of the admins I speak to are looking more and more seriously at an Open Source back end...
Secondly, the lack of 64 bit driver support is a major pain. Building the blade with a SmartStart v7.9 disk was an absolute no-no, even though it's only around a year old. Had to download v8.3 to get driver support for R2 x64. It's no wonder that lacklustre support from vendors leads to the same from developers - on my 64 bit desktop, probably half of the apps are still installed in the x86 Program Files root. 64 bit computing is not a new idea, and until either Microsoft or Intel make a stand and push 64 bit then we'll be stuck in a situation where 64 bit chips are running 32 bit code, hosting virtual machines to run 16 bit code designed by 2 bit companies...

As part of the MCDST course material, we look at accessibility options for end users. The material available is fine for the exam, but doesn't go in to nearly enough detail for the real world. Microsoft have therefore produced a number of factsheets for the various main desktop products which will give you, in great detail, all of the information you need to configure the OS of your choice for end users with any type of impairment.

Visit the site Here

When you work in support, people often ask why your default reaction is to assume that users are idiots. If you have a look at the pictures below, you'll have an idea why...

This is how Amazon takes my payment, right? Note there are 2 cards...

If at first you don't succeed, try installing it loads of times...

So close, yet so far...

I'm getting the most of my £200 by installing Office 9 times...