RIMs Playbook tablet - best value tablet on the market for Xmas 2012

Playbook

Overview - impressively spec'ed and a rock solid implementation by RIM, the Playbook has everything the typical home user, worker, student needs in a tablet for work, communication & entertainment on the go in a very friendly form factor.

Hardware - see the full specification here.  Highlights are the 7-inch, 1024x600 WSVGA crystal clear LCD display, 1080p HDMI output (via microHDMI), 5 mega-pixel rear camera and 3 mega-pixel front facing camera.

The battery life is truly impressive, even with moderate use the device can go several days without needing a charge.

Included Software:

Email & Calendar - with the latest OS software update, a full email client is now included.  When adding an account, you get the typical options of the various flavours or email servers and services, (i.e. Exchange, GMail) to minimize the configuration details.  If you use more than one email and calendar service, such as Exchange & GMail, the Playbook nicely integrates the email and calendar data from different account into one view.  This mean you can see your work and personal email and calendar information all in one place

Camera & Video - both front and rear facing cameras take still pictures and video of decent quality.  Only issue is there is no flash so picture and videos appear dark if you don't have ample lighting.

Music & Video - players support most formats that I came across.

Connect to my Blackberry - If you are a Black Berry user then the BlackBerry Bridge lets you

The all important Facebook & Twitter are there with a highly functional implementations.

Print2Go - the name initially made me think it was some sort of printing application but is actually a tool which let you 'print' documents from your PC and have them go directly to your Playbook, thus the  name Print 2 Go.  Sounds like a very simple way

PressReader - a digital market to purchase and subscribe to digital copies of your favorite local or worldwide newspapers.  The interface shows you a true representation of the entire newspaper page by page, as it was printed. When you want to read a specific article, click on the title and it converts it to a much more readable full page width text format.  No more trying to follow story continues on Section A, page 16, page flipping with traditional news papers.

NewsRSSReader typical RSS reader.

Web Browser is fully functional thanks to the inclusion of Adobe Flash which many sites still use.

App World - well actually more like a small under-developed continent.  The only downside to the Playbook is the limited app world.  Some well know apps are there, others are noticeably missing. But you can't really blank RIM for that.  They left space for functionality extension like all other providers did, just that the opportunity void hasn't been filed in the marketplace.  A capitalist with not other information would certainly assume that the financial incentives were not lucrative or reliably enough to warrant enough investments for new or existing ventures.


Price - available at $149 for the 8GB WiFi model is it certainly a very inexpensive and highly functional tablet.

No Hyper Terminal for you Windows 7 - Putty has Serial too!

Windows 7 does not come with the legacy Hyper Terminal application.  If you spend any time configuring or trouble-shooting Cisco routers, (among many other things you might use a serial port for, assuming you still have one), then this is a modest inconvenience.  Solution: one of the best tools of all time, our friend putty.

Honestly I've used this tool for over a decade and never notice the Serial option.  Probably because I never needed it because I had Hyper Terminal.  Why was I wasting my time, putty is so much better.

Bvckup - Desktop Backup Tool

During our search for a Desktop backup tool we came across Bvckup by Yaletown Software Design.  Our primary requirement was simple, to find a low-cost and simple tool that would allow us to backup user files located on their laptop PCs running Windows 7.  When in the office these laptops are connected to our Corporate LAN, but they go home each night with the user.  Thus we needed a backup tool that would run continuously in the day and not harass users if the network resource wasn't available.

Works, but only issue we found was that a missing delete buffer.  If the user deletes a file on their PC, the backup copy gets deleted upon next sync, usually every minute.  Therefore this tool won't help to recover files from accidental deletion.  But as long as you backup your users network sync location then you should have at least a nightly copy.

We have not yet deployed this tool to a large group, but if we did, it would be handy to be able to have all installations also log occasional status to a network location so that we can tell if the backup is working or not.

Todd 4 Tech: Phone Lock Samsung Rugby 2 - Steps to Unlock

Thanks Todd, has the same issue:

Todd 4 Tech: Phone Lock Samsung Rugby 2 - Steps to Unlock: The Problem I recently had an issue where one of our mobile phones was returned to me with a phone lock on it. I tried a couple of simple ...

Portable Document Libraries - Characters to Avoid

Problem: The best way to save, organize & structure a set of documents that together comprise a document library, such as for a manual, catalogue or other sizeable, multi-document reference set.  (And while I am a big fan of wiki's these aren't appropriate in many cases)

Solution: A well organized directory hierarchy of PDF documents is a very safe way to go.  While it lacks many fancy feature of other solutions, it is very simple and portable.  This structure can easily be implemented any fashion, local file systems, shared network folders, FTP and web servers.  The entire contents can be zipped for easy transport or exchange.  In order to be compatible for multiple operating system as well as web server, you must be sure to name the directories and file using the lowest common denominator of characters accepts on most platforms.

This article by MTL list the characters to avoid when naming such document libraries.

http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/web/resources/cms/characters-to-avoid.html

Android Change Exchange Email Password

Most Corporate Windows Networks have in place policies that you must change your Windows login password every so often, typically 90-days.  If you have an Andriod smartphone this can be a further hassle because your phone likely uses the same password to login to your Exchange server to access Corporate email.  After you change your Windows password you may notice that the Inbox on your Andriod phone is reporting "Couldn't open connection to server."  Here are the steps to update your email password on your Android smartphone.

Click on the following items:

• Settings
• Accounts & sync
• select email account from list
• Account settings
• your email address
• Incoming settings
• Edit the password field
• Click the Done button at the bottom of the screen.

Create an LPT Printer in Windows

LPT printers and computers that have LPT ports are becoming rare.  If you use any legacy or DOS programs, you may still have a need to print to LPT printers.  Windows has a simple way that you can map a "network printer" to an LPT port to allow for LPT printing.  Here's how.  Open a command prompt and enter the following command and press enter:

net use lpt1 \\printserver\laser1 /persistent:yes

LPT1 is the LPT port number.  You could also use LPT2, etc.
PrintServer is the name of the server/PC that is sharing the printer.
Laser1 is the share name of the printer device.
Persistent yes keeps the mapping after you reboot, making it permanent, until you manually delete it.

Even if your printer is a local USB one, you can share it and map to your own share name.

Microsoft Support article on the topic can be found here.

Windows 7 God Mode

Ever get tired hunting for the correct management screen in Windows 7?  Windows 7 has a number of "smart" contextual menus.  Sometimes hunting for the right place to find the right link is more than half the battle.  I know what setting I want to change, where's that damn screen again!!!

Windows 7 God Mode puts 278 Control links at your finger tips, all nicely organized into logical groups.

Win7 God Mode

1. Right-click on Desktop and select New > Folder
2. Erase the default name of "New folder" and replace it with the following text and press enter
   GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
3. The icon will automatically change to the same icon as Control Panel.

Unlock Your BlackBerry

I have used this site numerous times to unlock BlackBerries with a 100% success rate. (http://iunlockblackberry.com/)  The process only takes a couple minutes and has complete step-by-step instructions for every Blackberry model.  Price is great too, only $9.95 USD per unlock code.  All you need is your IMEI number (dial *#06#), your Blackberry model number, your country and name of current operator/network your phone is currently locked to, (i.e. Rogers/Telus/Bell).  With this information and your payment, you are provided with a MEP/MEP2 code.  Just enter the MEP as instructed for you model and your phone is now unlocked.  Highly recommend this service.

If your current Blackberry is broken or just old, instead of buying new or locking into a dreaded contract, you can buy used and unlock so it will work with your provider.

Or if you are travelling abroad, instead of paying huge roaming changes, just unlock your phone and pick-up a pay-as-you-go SIM card at your destination.  This is usually a much cheaper option.

Enable Telnet in Windows 7

The Telnet Client is disabled by default in Windows 7.  Follow these steps to enable it:
(Or use putty, it's a much better application)

• Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features
• Click "Turn Windows feature on or off" from the sidebar.
• Check "Telnet Client", click OK to apply setting.

Batch Thumbnail Creator

Easy Thumbnails by Fookes Software is a very handy tool for creating thumbnail images for one image or a entire directory of full size images.  A must have for avid photographers looking to batch process their collection into a manageable size for casual web viewing or sharing via email.  Also, web developers will surely fine a good use for this application, especially if you have worked on any on-line catalogues or shopping carts.  There are a number of code libraries that can create thumbnails upon upload to a Content Management System (CMS) or even browser image request.  But doing the heavy lifting upfront can alleviate your web server from having to perform this task.

Download Contents of Web Directory - wget

Good ol' wget, such a useful tool.

Common Question: How do you download the contents of a web directory?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/914624/downloading-the-contents-of-a-web-directory

$ wget --wait 2 -rkc --no-parent http://example.com/dir

See the complete wget manual here.  wget for Windows too.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 DB Maintenance

WSS 3.0 with MSSQL 2005 EE

If you find that your WSS_Content.mdb or WSS_Content_Log.ldf file is getting to large, here is a great set of instruction on how to Shrink their size.

Great article on how to maintain Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 which uses the Microsoft SQL 2005 Embedded Edition Database.

http://www.mytechfetish.com/2011/04/how-to-compact-or-shrink-windows.html

Thanks Chris