What I've discovered in the past 24 hours

[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."

 

[POKO]

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."

Excellent John - please continue with this ngblog,
POKO
--
P. Keenan - Webmaster
Web Page Design
Manitoulin Island, Canada
http://manitoulinislandindex.com
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Peter Seiler]

POKO - 16.12.2004 05:16 :

Excellent John - please continue with this ngblog,
POKO

POKO (and many others): please think about quoting. There is no need
quoting all these ~ 60 quoting lines again (snipped) and somtetimes
again and again in the possibly following thread postings only to post
something like a "thank you..." line. If one want/need she/he can simply
read back.

THX for your kind understanding.

 

[john.hood]

Hi - John H again, posting from work.

Uh, yeah, what he said. I get chatty. Don't need to quote me.

Other things I found out about Copernic - It will search all Outlook
emails and contacts for your search string. Calendar, tasks, and notes
- no dice. This is a problem because if you attach lenthy notes or
documents etc. to a Outlook appointment, then send it over Exchange
server to other attendees, the only place the information exists is in
the calendar (it's not even in Sent Items).

I also took Google desktop search for a spin (I am still concernes
about security, but I wanted to see how it worked). GDS found
everything I was looking for, even calendar items, but the results
screen does not show you in what folder the item was found. You can
open the item, but not open the folder.

Final result Copernic has more features, and the results tell you more,
but some things are not included in the search. Google search search
is easier to do searches, and you get more results, but you can't do as
much with the results. For someone who wants an authoritative tool
that will "just find the damn thing" I'd say Google. If you want a
search with more options, more control, and better (though fewer)
results - Copernic.

Also - I was doing a writeup for a computer class "Best Practices for
Avoiding Data Duplication" and came up with an interesting read:
"World drowning in oceans of data"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3227467.stm

You can also search Google for "Information Overload" (with the
quotes) to get ideas and other tips.
.. This begs the question: Computer hardware and software vendors are
very good at building things that create information, but this
technology is years behind the features that would let you catalogue,
sort through, or even remove information. Witness that Windows file
metadata contains all sorts of information - except "expiration date"

John H.
Web Site www.jhoodsoft.org
"The best home and business free software, no ads, no time limits, no
fluff."
"No kidding."

 

[mike ring]

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.

I don't like things that have to run all the time; I was well impressed
with Copernic, but I'd just indexed it, an everlasting process.

Ransack only comes out when I need it, and as I have SOME idea where the
wanted item is, ie, not in C:/windows, or D:/downloads I find it pretty
fast.

But the clincher is it stops Allchars macros from working, and I use
that ALL the time

mike