Peter Vatistas

It’s official, I have made the decision to migrate all my desktops and laptops to Apple after 15 years with Windows. The really funny thing about my situation is there are tons of people doing the same and I found that by going to Craigslist. Try this, go to your local Craigslist page and search computers for sale, you’ll notice a lot of people willing to trade for Mac’s and Macbooks.I have an extremely powerful and fast desktop computer by Dell, and a couple laptops by Compaq. I am replacing all of them with the following:1. Mac Pro (Desktop) - Dual Quad Core Intel Processors, 4GB Ram, 2TB Sata’s, 4 nVidia Graphics Cards, and 2 30″ LCD’s.2. Macbook Pro (Laptop) - 15″ 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB Ram, 200GB.3. Macbook (Laptop) - 13″ - Black, 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram, 250GB.I’ve already made the switch at my office and have been using my Mac Pro for months on a Windows 2003 Domain. I recently upgraded to Leopard OS X and am in heaven, goodbye Windows!!In addition to the computers I have already replaced my phone and my wife’s phone with Apple’s iPhone. We’re adding the Apple TV to the family room as well. We’re hooked!!Have you made the switch? Are you thinking about making the leap into the world of Apple computers and electronics? I am really interested to here your story.

Much like the root “super user” of Unix, Microsoft’s Windows Vista has a secret “master” administrator account which is disabled by default. The “master” administrator account in Vista gives all rights/permissions or total control over your OS; this is great for a Systems Administrator but not for the normal user or power user.

Just like in Unix, it is highly recommended that you run applications, services, and general interactions with Unix as a regular user. When your interactions within Unix require a raised level of authority you can run the command: #sudo su followed by your password. Vista has followed this almost exactly and I am sure you’ve seen this several times like when you install an application, run certain programs, or change system settings windows will display a UAC popup requiring you to accept your actions before you can continue. This “master” administrator account is the equivilant root or super user of Unix.

To unlock the secret administrator account in Windows Vista, follow these steps:

Start> type cmd in the search box> right-click on cmd.exe> select Run as Administrator> type: Net user administrator /active:yes then press enter. Now the next time you log in you will see the ”master” administrator account, which BTW is unprotected so I strongly suggest you set a password (click here for a great password generator). Now if you want to disable the administrator account just follow the same steps above but change the active:yes to active:no (Net user administrator /active:no).

I was very excited to get my copy of the Cerulean Studios Trillian Astra (Alpha release) today and so far I am impressed! Trillian Astra is graphic intense and so far has played very well with Microsoft’s Windows Vista Ultimate operating system. The loading time for Astra is notecibally faster using the Vista Aero theme filled with all my network connections (AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Myspace, Windows Live, and Yahoo) and windows load on the fly, without a hitch (or glitch).

 A very nice feature of Astra is that you now have one username for all your network connections and accounts. No matter what computer you’re on, when you install Astra all you need to do is login with your Astra credentials and your all set! All your contacts and groups populate and you’re ready to go, just like you were on you other computers!! Another thing I really like is how I can have all of this, exactly how I have it on all my computers, on my iPhone - BIG PLUS!! The mobile edition is something I have yet to be able to test but if it is anything like this Alpha test release I will be a happy customer.

So far I am 100% impressed and I will continue to rip into this Alpha test and let you know what I find. Get excited for Astra’s widgets BTW, looks very slick - let’s hope they add RSS feed support!!

90% of my day is spent remoting into my server farm to make changes, monitor, and etc… Normally when I need the task manager I do the normal Start>Run>taskmgr command to get me there but I never realized I could have a CTRL+ALT+DELETE like command. Normally when you remote desktop and hit ctrl+alt+delete it invokes YOUR computers options, not the computer you are remoting into. The solution for this (and I am sure I am years behind on this) is CTRL+ALT+END!

It is funny how knowledgable I think I am when it comes to Microsoft products but when I learn something like this I feel dumb! What cool tricks have you found out by accident or totally made you feel like a newb? I would love to hear them.

I am sure by now most of you have had a chance to see Microsoft’s new OS called Windows Vista. You’ve also probably heard of the many issues people have with Vista on their computers and I have to tell you there are a good amount. I have several new computers and have upgraded all to Vista Ultimate over the last few days, actually one of the computers I upgraded the day Vista Ultimate came out (bad idea).Each computer after the Vista upgrade has had their own unique issues ranging from incompatible drivers to incompatible hardware. Being that all the computers I own are brand new, Vista Premium Ready, and well beyond the best recommendations for installation I was pretty bummed by the issues I was facing.

The breakdown:

Desktop computer: Dual-Quad Core Xeon 3.0GHz Processors, 6GB 667MHz ECC RAM, 4-146GB SAS 15k drives, and Dual 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra video cards with AGEIA PhysX physics accelerator. This computer is a bad mamma jamma and has given me a lot of problems when upgrading to Vista.

First (and also the most expensive problem) was the memory. At the time of the upgrade I had 1 GB of ram (which Microsoft recommends) and though it was barely decent when I ran Vista without all the cool aesthetics, there was a much bigger problem; it was incompatible (blue screen every few hours during different tasks using different applications)! I had to go to Dell and order a newer set of memory and because I noticed how crap the performance was while running Vista in Aero mode (the more graphically intensive desktop) I ordered 6GB’s of the new memory (overkill, I know). Problem fixed, no more blue screens, no more slowness at all.

On to the next problem: The FireWire card; just not compatible whatsoever, end of story, bought a brand new one and works fine.

And the next: Applications! Odd right? Okay I totally expected a few applications to have issues and there were: CuteFTP, MS Office 2003 Pro (WIERD!?!?), and a few other titles which I just had to wait it out until they released updates (Adobe, Macromedia, etc…).

Oh and one more: My $400 sound card, seriously come on already!! This was a card that I actually bought 6 months before I bought the computer & Vista but it was recommended to me and labeled as “compatible with Windows Vista”. It’s actually quite funny because while I was fighting to get everything to work properly I never actually remembered hearing anything, no OS sounds, no music, nothing… LOL! Oh well, I’m already down $1800, what’s another $450 right? Replaced and problem solved.

Okay now I am sure your thinking that taking the leap to Windows Vista is a bad idea but I do have to say my incompatible drivers and peripherals were a unique problem and everyone will have a different “compatibility” problem. With that being said, please stay tuned and check out my next post on how bad ass I think Microsoft’s Windows Vista really is, after the war on compatibility.