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Some exciting new developments are taking place in the world of information technology with the unveiling of the new Microsoft "Surfaces" interface for the full story go here.

Also this month i have had the opportunity to test some portable applications that i use on a day to day basis on my host machine. These are a portable version of the email client Thunderbird from Mozilla and also a portable version of my favorite FTP client Filezilla, that i use to upload my page changes to this web site. Both have proven worthy additions to my usb flash drive and can be found here, Another app i am testing at the moment is the anti virus CLAM-AV, most usually found on Linux operating systems , but this is a version for Windows -- i also am looking into a portable desktop so that i can use my settings and some favorite applications on any PC anywhere.

A friend who creates business and advertising videos, came to see me this month with a serious dilemma. While transfering his valuable work video files thru his Mac onto another smaller external drive from his 500 gigabyte Seagate drive something happened that converted his drive from FAT32 to RAW.First I tried a recovery program under the Windows environment on my computer which saw the files but "froze" during the recovery process. After discussing it for a while i remembered i had a Linux version that i used for recovery and after mounting the drive could not only "see" his files but we copied them at a much faster rate than Windows could handle to his 250 gigabyte Lacey drive, basically ninety gigabytes in approximately an hour and a half. Saw him later and he was so relieved , most of the files where usable with only a miniscule amount not up to scratch which were not required anyway.

OK. so Vista isnt the operating system for the 21st century, ( see http://www.mepis.org/ ) but give a person a medal who tries to install Microsofts media centre 2002. put in disc one, put on disc2, put in Windows XP professional sp2 disks, and then turn a double someraualt with a half pike to get a score of 0 in my books --- why does Microsoft have to be such a half assed vendor when it come to software. i have just installed this operating system to a Packard Bell iMEDIA A887 and it must have been the worst system install in my experience--- i used to critisize LINUX as being a pain but compared to this i rocks, i am currently testing MEPIS 6.5RC3 which is a beta version and all of my hardware works, it recognises my USB harddrives and ZEN neeon mp3 player and everything just works ---cannot say the same about a Vista totally new tower that i recently configured for a client.

Moved house this month and am settling in, but i cannot say that i am happy with my internet service provider, It seems that in this age of hi-tech wizardry that it still takes 5-8 working days to move your existing internet connection to your new residence. To make matters worse the fees are incredible . what do i get for my nearly 7 years with the one ISP--not much. Customer loyalty seems to not count one iota, when re-signing and upgrading your plan attracts a fee of $99.00. Similar tales of woe have been told me regarding Telstra who is in the same boat of average customer service -- with "new " customers getting the service while those convenient old customers are shafted with up to a one month waiting period while upgrading to 1500Kbps plans. What this tells me is that when changing addresses one would be wise to shop around - sign with a new ISP and you will probably get a higher priority and maybe free connection and a modem, stay with your previous ISP and you will get treatment of a second class citizen --- that said i still find TPG one of the more competitive players in the market. ---- 5 working days later am now back online ( 1500Kbps ) and realising the truth of just how dependent we are becoming of the internet in our daily lives.

A client came to me this month with the request to remove Vista from his computer (reinstall of XP), It seems that the new UAC (User Account Control) feature was confusing and annoying asking too many questions while trying to install programs, this is because Microsoft have adopted the policy long available and familiar with Linux users of not being able to install apps on a limited desktop, but having to log in as an administrator or root user with full privileges or user rights. More top stories this month: So you want to switch to telstras Next G network? Yet more info on on Vista

OK so i am going to start earlier this month because everyone wants to know about the new flagship for Microsoft - VISTA. Microsoft reckon as per their website that it will run on a machine with the following specifications; 20.0 GIGABYTE hard drive 512 MB RAM and a 1.0Ghz processor, before running out and spending your money though it may be advisable to read what others have to say about Vista.

My experience with the XP operating system is that yes you can load it onto a minimum specification machine but it will be so disappointing in performance that it will be almost unusable --- what you would call a real dog.and so i guess that it will be the same case for Vista. Here is a review from the bit-tech website and this was back in 2005, more up to date information can be found in the current online issue of PC World ----- what can i add but that there are going to be a whole lot issues to be resolved with computer upgrades required, or new machines bought if you want to run Vista. Notwithstanding that there is also the possibility of some of your favorite older applications not being compatible with Vista.....More on Vista can be found here at PC World

I had an interesting job this month instead of the usual virus removal--etc, that entailed the setup of a file server with remote administration via a workstation. this saved the client a considerable amount of money in that no monitor or other peripherals were required to administer it. Full lockdown procedures were employed, with ALL users password protected. The scenario also involved the sharing of an accounting program from the server back to the three workstations, plus the moving of all data files and spreadsheets to the one location on the server so that they could be accessed by all without creating a network bottleneck on the prime workstation where they were previously located.

The file server was a custom built machine supplied by me with an Intel core duo 2.66GHZ CPU, 2048MB of DDR2 RAM and a 160 Gigabyte harddrive with a FSB of 1066Mhz. The acccounting program (MYOB), all five versions of it, was dutiffully installed on the server on the C: partition of the main drive and shared, the .exe files were then mapped to the workstations to enable all three users to use the same data set. finally all data was transferred from the originating computer to the file server. the Excel spreadsheets were then transferred to the D: partition and again shared over the network with all users able to read and modify the files. All in all a straightforward job that has now created a more equal workload for the users

The next day after i had finished this job, i was asked to do a similar job to share MYOB over a smaller network involving two workstations. This had its problems as an older version of MYOB would not allow the opening of the data file over the network. this was overcome by installing the program version to the guest machine and the mapping the datafile to the guest desktop. When opening the file, the operating system said it could not open the file . so i chose to open it with the MYOB version installed on the guest machine and voila!!! the file was opened, the data was modifed, and when viewed on the host machine everything was done, what a success!

Also of note is the story on Adobe Reader on my web news page. attackers now using application vunerablilities and not just operating system ones to compromise machines. As software vendors tighten security on their products malicious users have become more creative. See full story on web news page and please update your version