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Brian's Buzz on Windows has changed its name to the Windows
Secrets Newsletter. Get the latest high-tech tricks with a free
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APRIL 10, 2003 - Issue 3
Brian's Buzz on Windows is switching from
monthly to bi-weekly! As I announced
last time, the next issue will be published on
April 24. Future installments
will appear on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of
each month. Thanks for
your support, which makes this all possible.
TOP STORY - info you need to make Windows
work
Microsoft to release Windows Server 2003
By Brian Livingston
San Francisco will be even geekier than usual on April 24
as Microsoft
descends on the city for the formal ceremony releasing its
long-awaited
server operating system, Windows Server 2003
(formerly entitled Windows 2003 .NET Server).
The product is positioned as an upgrade to Windows 2000
Server.
I'm not going to write about Server 2K3 here this week,
because
the OS isn't officially out yet. I also don't want to make
this issue of
Brian's Buzz on Windows too long by dwelling on Windows
Server, considering
that there are many other
subjects I'm covering in the sections below.
Instead, I want to invite you to send me your experiences,
findings,
and challenges with Server 2K3. Microsoft is describing it
as a more
secure server and has released a
white paper explaining why. Whether you were an early
beta tester or are
just now installing Server 2K3 for the first time, what
are your thoughts?
To send me more information about this, or to send me a
tip on any other
subject, visit
WindowsSecrets.com/contact. Use "Server 2K3" as the
subject line of your
message, if that's the topic you're writing in
about.
WINDOWS GIZMOS - the best new stuff
AVerTV brings video or TV to Windows via a USB
port
It's great to be able to play a video or a cable channel
on your laptop or
PC. But you've been out of luck without a built-in DVD
drive or video board.
Now AVermedia has solved this problem with the AVerTV for
Windows. It's a
handy pocket-sized device - powered by a USB port, so
there's
no need for you to carry around a power supply - that
displays a video window
up to 1024 x 768 on your screen. You can even see a grid
of any 16 cable
channels before you decide which one to watch.
More info
Orange has the fastest and best USB 2.0 upgrade
board...
If your PC doesn't yet have USB 2.0 ports - which are up
to 40 times speedier
than the older USB 1.1 specification - you can add them
quickly and easily
with the new OrangeUSB 2.0 PCI Card. It gives you four USB
2.0 ports in the
back of your PC plus another one that you can
access in front through
a drive bay. This card was ranked No. 1 for speed among
USB 2.0 add-ons
tested in the Feb. 25 PC Magazine.
More info
...and for laptops, USB 2.0 fits into a PC Card
slot
For laptops without USB, Orange also makes a small device
that fits into a
PC Card bay. Slip it in and you've got four USB 2.0 ports
on the side of your
notebook computer. Now you hardly have an excuse not to
use all those new
USB 2.0 peripherals.
More info
SUBSCRIBERS SPEAK UP - your take on the world of
Windows
Solutions to working with offline files
In my last issue, reader Glen Looby presented a problem
that plagues his
users when they move from one office to another. As he put
it:
- "We use 'offline' files for our laptop users,
typically comprising their
personal and shared folders on the network. The problem we
have is that when
the user works from another office but on the same domain
(we're in New
Zealand and the office is in Australia), Windows connects
the drives to the
original location rather than 'work offline.' "
I asked for input on the best solutions, and several
readers provided a
surprising array of answers. Because any one of these
could help you solve a
problem of yours, I'll print more than one answer
here.
Mike Smith explains two simple settings:
- "Choose 'Synchronize' from the Tools menu in
Windows Explorer.
Click on the Setup button. You will find several options
that will
probably fix the problem. Two options pertain to automatic
synchronization.
These are to automatically synchronize when logging on and
when logging off.
Glen will probably choose to have neither of these
selected. There is also
an option to "Ask me before synchronizing." He may want to
select this to
make sure that it does not synchronize. He will then be
able to work with
the offline files."
DalSuwa Love proposes a method that employs the
net use
command:
- "Ask your IT weasel to create an 'offline'
shortcut to a
command session with a batch file containing
net use
commands to change drive assignments, then
pause.
"When the user completes their MS Office work, they click
on the command
session and hit any key to continue. Execution continues,
reassigning drive
assigments back to 'corporate' connections. This task
could also be broken
into two or more icons (batch files) for multiple
configurations.
"The magic is in the
net use
command. Type
net use /?
for info on this useful tool."
Joel Gegerson developed his own short batch language
solution:
- "I've been working around the offline files issue
in 2000 and XP
by using the Robocopy.exe utility from the Resource Kit. I
made a batch
file with the following contents:
robocopy "\\server\share" "C:\Synch" /E /XO /V
/ETA
robocopy "C:\Synch" "\\server\share" /E /XO /V /ETA
"It's definitely not perfect (delete a file from one spot
and it'll get
re-created the next time you run the batch file), but it
works OK for me
and required no more $$$."
Finally, Carl Houseman points out that there are
little-known Registry
settings that allow you to define the connection speed at
which Windows
2000 switches from offline files to online files. These
settings are
described in
Microsoft Knowledge Base article 263097:
- "Any network speed that is less than or equal to
64,000 bps
is considered a slow connection for offline files. This
setting can be
overridden through the following registry DWORD
value:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\NetCache\SlowLinkSpeed
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\NetCache\SlowLinkSpeed
"The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE value overrides the
HKEY_CURRENT_USER value
if both are present. The value represents bps divided by
100, so the default
value of 64,000 is stored as 640 in the registry."
Because Glen Looby's roaming users were connected to their
home offices
by a 512 Kbps frame relay, changing their SlowLinkSpeed
values to a number
greater than 5120 could keep Windows from
attempting to use files across the Internet.
I'm sending a certificate for a free book, CD, or DVD of
their choice to
all the readers whose comments I printed. Thanks for your
input.
FORWARDING INSTRUCTIONS - news gains value when it's
shared
Please share this information with your
colleagues
You're encouraged to refer your friends and colleagues to
this free
newsletter. Because most e-mail programs don't correctly
display a formatted
message that's been forwarded, simply call people's
attention to
the permanent Web address of this issue:
BriansBuzz.com/w/030410
RECOMMENDED READING - a few page views to boost your
knowledge
Google Hacks: dozens of tricks to get you the results
you need, faster
Now that Google is the world's most popular search engine,
it's time for you
to learn some of the tricks and tools that power users
have developed to get
exactly what they want. Google Hacks contains 100
examples of
little-known parameters, free downloads, and other goodies
that can make even
your most repetitive searches fun and easy. Plus,
co-authors Tara Calishain
and Rael Dornfest provide several code examples so you can
take advantage of
Google's new, advanced Web services.
More info
Windows XP Power Pack: a fistful of tools for the busy
admin
This is not an introductory XP book. It's a time-saving
weapon in the hands
of people who need to make Windows XP work. The book
includes a CD full
of various utilities by
independent software vendors, brought to you by some of
the same people
responsible for the earlier Windows NT Power
Toolkit and Windows 2000
Power Toolkit (this new title has six contributors).
More info
THE WEIRD WIDE WEB - playing for you the Internet's
greatest bits
The mysteries of the USB coffee warmer are
revealed
In my last issue, I wrote that I'd found an ad on a
Japanese
site for a
coffee-cup warmer (pictured at left) that plugs into your
USB port. Because
I can't read Japanese, I couldn't say how much the device
cost or whether it
was available in any countries outside Japan. But it
seemed like a very funny
idea.
Several readers came to my aid with helpful information.
John Weber, who
describes himself as "a coffeeholic in Portland," sent me
a
link that questioned whether a USB port had sufficient
voltage to heat
coffee. The forum page, run by HalfBakery.com, received
numerous pro and con
comments, including supportive ones from a poster named
JKew:
- "My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that
2.5W is sufficient
to raise 300ml of water by ~11 degrees Kelvin an hour -
ignoring any cooling
losses and ignoring the mass and heat capacity of the mug.
Flipping it around,
this suggests that a USB port is capable of maintaining
the temperature of
300ml of water which would otherwise cool by 11 degrees an
hour."
Fortunately, reader Arent Smit of Lake Cowichan, BC,
Canada, provided a
translation of the Japanese text, showing that the USB
device doesn't have
to heat the coffee, just keep it from losing
heat as fast as it
normally would:
- "The bottom surface is warmed up by the USB power
source and
with heat retention by the thermal insulating material
from which the
sides are made. This prevents hot drinks from cooling
down."
Finally, reader Howard Yamaguchi reports that coffee is
sold in heated cans
that stay warm with help from the insulated sides of the
USB cup holder:
- "In Japan, every street corner, train station, and
other public
area has a gazillion vending machines selling drinks of
every kind.
Coffee, both hot and cold, is sold in cans of various
sizes. The hot coffee
sold in cans is heated in the vending machines.
"What the device being advertised at the Japanese Web site
does is keep
the already hot cans of coffee (45 degrees C) hot for a
longer period
of time (around 40 degrees C), for 30 to 60 minutes. It
states that it
cannot heat a cold can of coffee up to the
temperatures stated."
So there you have it. If you've seen something equally
wacky on the Web,
tell me about it at
WindowsSecrets.com/contact. I'm sending readers Weber,
Smit, and
Yamaguchi certificates for a free book, CD, or DVD of
their choice for sending
comments that I printed.
CLOSING REMARKS - the best is yet to come
Windows makes us truly a worldwide community of
computing
You may have noticed that this issue contains the comments
of Windows users
from several different countries. I checked my logs
and found that the IP addresses of 14.2% of the mail
servers that received
the last installment of Brian's Buzz on Windows are
in numerical ranges that are registered to countries other
than the
U.S. (This is a more accurate measurement than counting
the top-level
domains of subscribers' e-mail addresses,
such as .co.uk, since many people outside the U.S. use
dot-com names.)
I expect the percentage to rise as more people learn about
this
newsletter. In descending order, the readers who are
located in countries
outside the U.S. are in Canada, Great Britain, Australia,
New Zealand, Germany,
the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, France,
Belgium, Sweden,
South Africa, Ireland, Brazil, Austria, Poland, Italy,
India, and so on.
I hope to make my content as relevant to the entire,
global Windows user
community as I can. Thanks for your support. --Brian
Livingston
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