J
John Hood
1: Wiki's work.
We are upgrading 15 Windows servers from NT4 to 2003 over Christmas
break, and are currently rehearsing the upgrade on a test domain. We
have a team of 6, plus a dozen or so others helping out. Somebody
suggested using a wiki to handle all the procedures and sub-procedures,
and little tidbits of data that we are accumulating and needing to
discuss. The wiki is a platform-independent tool that allows us to
argue, kibitz, collaborate, and come to a decision that everyone
involved can see. It also let's the boss see what we're doing and how
well (cuts down on status meetings and briefings), as well as showing
the folks on "mahogany row" the complexity of the project ("Holy sh#t!"
was one comment).
2: If I had kids, whomever designed Copernic Desktop Search, would get
my first born. I installed it yesterday to see how it compared to
Agent Ransack. No comparison at all. After running the indexing (took
about 45 min), I was able to search all of my email, and all of my
documents for specific keywords. Get this, it even opened the
attachments in the preview pane. WAY COOL! It kept me from bothering a
developer (he had already answered my question a month ago) and I found
a writeup I'd done a years ago, for one of the trainers, which saved her
a couple of hours of work.
3: [OT] Symantec Ghost 9.0 should be renamed Symantec (Won't) Ghost 2.0.
Symantec bought PowerQuest DriveImage Pro, and repackaged it. I have
to clone the boot partition of an XP pro machine to 30 others. I've
been working with Ghost since 5.5. You boot to DOS, run Ghost, and
image one partition to a file. Lather, rinse repeat, and load that image
onto the clones, done, end of story.
Ghost 9.0 does a lot of things, but won't do that. Ok, then what's the
point? It also installs as a service (WHY?). Lot's of newsgroup
digging came up with the fact that Ghost 9.0 comes with Ghost 2003 CD.
Don't even need to install it. Explore the CD, go to the \Support
folder, grab Ghost.exe and copy to a floppy. Viola! I was back in
business, several hours and a lot of grief later. What a waste of time.
Save yourself the anguish, If you're looking to image XP partitions,
buy Ghost 2003.
'das it folks. Tune in next time when we hear nurse piggy say: "Who is
Meg and what's she doing on my computer?"
John Hood
Web Site www.jhoodsoft.org
"The best home and business free software, no ads, no time limits, no
fluff."
"No kidding."
We are upgrading 15 Windows servers from NT4 to 2003 over Christmas
break, and are currently rehearsing the upgrade on a test domain. We
have a team of 6, plus a dozen or so others helping out. Somebody
suggested using a wiki to handle all the procedures and sub-procedures,
and little tidbits of data that we are accumulating and needing to
discuss. The wiki is a platform-independent tool that allows us to
argue, kibitz, collaborate, and come to a decision that everyone
involved can see. It also let's the boss see what we're doing and how
well (cuts down on status meetings and briefings), as well as showing
the folks on "mahogany row" the complexity of the project ("Holy sh#t!"
was one comment).
2: If I had kids, whomever designed Copernic Desktop Search, would get
my first born. I installed it yesterday to see how it compared to
Agent Ransack. No comparison at all. After running the indexing (took
about 45 min), I was able to search all of my email, and all of my
documents for specific keywords. Get this, it even opened the
attachments in the preview pane. WAY COOL! It kept me from bothering a
developer (he had already answered my question a month ago) and I found
a writeup I'd done a years ago, for one of the trainers, which saved her
a couple of hours of work.
3: [OT] Symantec Ghost 9.0 should be renamed Symantec (Won't) Ghost 2.0.
Symantec bought PowerQuest DriveImage Pro, and repackaged it. I have
to clone the boot partition of an XP pro machine to 30 others. I've
been working with Ghost since 5.5. You boot to DOS, run Ghost, and
image one partition to a file. Lather, rinse repeat, and load that image
onto the clones, done, end of story.
Ghost 9.0 does a lot of things, but won't do that. Ok, then what's the
point? It also installs as a service (WHY?). Lot's of newsgroup
digging came up with the fact that Ghost 9.0 comes with Ghost 2003 CD.
Don't even need to install it. Explore the CD, go to the \Support
folder, grab Ghost.exe and copy to a floppy. Viola! I was back in
business, several hours and a lot of grief later. What a waste of time.
Save yourself the anguish, If you're looking to image XP partitions,
buy Ghost 2003.
'das it folks. Tune in next time when we hear nurse piggy say: "Who is
Meg and what's she doing on my computer?"
John Hood
Web Site www.jhoodsoft.org
"The best home and business free software, no ads, no time limits, no
fluff."
"No kidding."