Vineserver has a place

So being cursed with the Vista notebook has really put a crimp in my ability to control and fix mac clients. Remote Desktop was so good for me when I had a mac, but dropped vnc connections constantly when I would connect from a PC. Vineserver fixes all that.

It is much faster than Remote Desktop over general Internet. I use Ultra VNC on the PC, and Vineserver on the Mac. They connect beautifully and I can now be effective again. I also configure the Vine server to use a different port than VNC on Remote Desktop. That way there is no conflicts (also set vine server to start on system reboot.

Anyway, very cool. Links here:

Vine server: http://www.redstonesoftware.com/products/vine/server/index.html

UltraVNC: http://www.uvnc.com/

Forced to run Vista

Too many of us are here. Being forced to run Vista for work. Here are a few tips I've had to work out lately.

If you would like a simple way of picking up Podcasts use Juice at:

http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/

Then make these adjustments:

http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/02/10/how-to-make-juice-22-work-in-windows-vista/

If you have and old PALM like me (LifeDrive) try these instructions for syncing:

http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2007/08/how-to-sync-lif.html

If you wish to run Windows 2003 server admin tools do the following:

http://briandesmond.com/blog/archive/2006/11/21/How-to-get-the-Windows-2003-Admin-Tools-Working-on-Vista.aspx

All of these have worked for me! Still, I'm secretly getting Ubuntu to work with Wine for all of our coporate software. Once that is up, bye bye Vista!

Ahh LifeDrive, how I loved thee ...

Well PALM still has not derived a new OS. What a shame. That platform rocked and was miles ahead of everyone else. Then, well I'm not really sure what happened next but the bottom line is no innovation for years (Aside from treo models)

I just wanted to post one last time about my favorite model of PALM; the LifeDrive. Cool gadget. Everyone goes on about the beauty of the iPhone, well I've had everything but the phone part for a couple of years now. The LD has a speedy 416 Mhz proc and lots of storage. Mine is configured to automatically grab my recent photos, songs or pod casts from iTunes, and I use an SD card to grab Xvid or Divx movies for trips. They play on the beautiful 320x480 large screen without resizing or formatting with tcpmp (best player ever!). However it was hampered by the 4GB Hitachi HD and little real RAM.

Well that is easily fixed. For about $40.00 and a half an hour of time, the HD can be swapped out with a Compact Flash card. That makes the unit how it should have been, fast and reliable. (Instructions here, and benchmarks here)

Seriously with wifi and bluetooth, cheap 2 gb SD cards ($20.00), and 4 GBs built right, this hand held does it all. Still does it all!

My only remaining beef is the web browser. Blazer is ok, but not great. Too bad Optera or Firefox did not write one for PALM. Oh, and while I'm dreaming why didn't Skype come to PALM? Anyway this was an amazing machine. I regularly stun people with all it can do, and have yet to see a better device in someone's hand. Still this year my work will buy me a Windows Mobile since it ties in better with Exchange. Smaller screen, and I'll lose all my old programs, but I guess it has a phone ....

LifeDrive, you'll be missed.