Well after installing ubuntu 7.10 on virtualbox I must say I was a neat expierience but I’m glad I had the opportunity to try it without actually having installed it on my computer. I mean it’s a good system and and has a nice interface, but underneath it all it’s still Linux. What I mean by that is you still need to learn so much to become comfortable on it. I felt very restricted on it because there were many common tasks which I’m used to on windows that I couldn’t do on ubuntu. While the concept is nice and if your a technically inclined person it shouldn’t be a major deal for you to accept and learn these things, however I can’t see someone who only wants to be able to play games and use the internet wanting to take the time to learn all they need to know to install the various applications on it required. In the end I think I’m definitely a windows person. I grew up on it and it’s what I know. I may use linux based webhosting but I believe that’s as far as I’ll ever go into learning the O/S.

edit: 9-32-09 boy have things, changed. I sure love my ubuntu these days…lol.

So I’v been hearing a lot about the Ubuntu O/S lately and wanting to check it out. However since I don’t have an extra computer laying around and I have never dualbooted Operating systems before, so I looked for a way that could check it out but not loose my current system. In my search I came across a nifty free piece of software called Virtualbox. Virtualbox allows you to virtually run Operating systems on your current computer configuration. So Following this article I found on Free Software Magazines website I walked through the process of setting up Ubuntu virtually on my windows vista install. So far so good. As I haven’t really had a chance to fully “play” with it yet I’m not going to leave you with my thoughts on it yet, however I thought virtualbox was very neat and really wanted to share it with others so I figured I would go ahead post about it. If your into computers you may want to check it out.

I suffered this error today after installing the latest Version AIM messenger that would be version 6. I discovered I was given no access to my network and sharing folder yet still sporadically had internet access. So Here’s how I managed to fix it.

1. I uninstalled AIM
2. I uninstalled the viewpoint media player which came with AIM
3. I ran a registry cleaner
4. I did the following
   1. Opened my start menu -> all programs -> Maintenance
   2. Right clicked on the command prompt and clicked Run as administrator
   3. once the command prompt opened I entered the following Hitting enter after each entry
      1. Net localgroup Administrators localservice /add
      2. Net localgroup Administrators INTERACTIVE /add
      3. Net localgroup Administrators IUSR /add
      4. Net localgroup Administrators NETWORK /add
      5. Net localgroup Administrators NETWORK SERVICE /add
      6. Net localgroup Administrators SERVICE /add
      7. Net localgroup Administrators SYSTEM /add
   4. I then rebooted my computer

Everything appears to have returned to normal now I suppose for now I’ll just use trillian for AIM and avoid the whole mess all together.

If you reinstalled vista only to find half your files were backed up into a folder on your C drive called “windows.old” you can easily delete it using the following steps.

1. Click Start
2. In the search box type disk clean and hit enter to open the Disk Cleanup tool
3. Choose “Files from all users on this computer” and choose the drive you want to clean
4. After it lists what is available to “clean”, scroll down and select Windows.old from the list of choices. Then delete as desired!

Most users who installed 64 bit copies of vista than decided it wasn’t for them for one reason or another found that they had product key problems once they wanted to re-install vista 32 bit using thier upgrade disk. Most would have to install windows Xp then run the upgrade again, but here’s a nice work-around to that problem.

Run your vista 32 bit install and skip the part where it asks for a product key, DON’T EVEN TRY TO ENTER A KEY you’ll just get errors. Once you boot up into Vista for the first time, just insert the CD/DVD again and then choose to

There is a nice feature on windows vista that allows you to see a thumbnail of the minimized windows in your taskbar. It’s one of the things I love about vista. The live window taskbar hover preview can even support playing or streaming video or movie in animated preview. However, the thumbnail preview is kind of small, hardly allow users to see anything meaning, not to mention able to view movie in

There are two new
power buttons on the Windows Vista start menu that behave differently
than in previous versions of Windows. The main button, that looks like
a power button actually puts your computer to sleep, not really turning
it completely off. The other button locks your computer. I personally
do not like putting my computer to sleep. I would rather turn it off
completely to save some power and save some money on my electric bill
when I am sleeping.

Follow the steps below to customize these button to work how you want them to work:

1. Click on the Start Menu and type in Power Options and hit Enter.
2. Click on Choose what power buttons do on the side menu.
3. Configure the buttons.
4. Hit Save Changes.

Well for the first time in my life I decided to take control of working our budget here at home instead of letting Mark do it all I approached it somewhat vigorously, because I knew by doing this I would help get alot of the stress of his shoulders, and to that extent it has worked out. So Here’s what I did.

First I created a google calendar and decided to plan out how much we needed to take out of each check every week to put towards bills. I planned it all out pretty well actually and looking over the finished product I was quite proud of myself.

Secondly I went and bought a binder and some folders. A Folder for each bill the bills being Rent, Cable (which actually is three bills rolled into one ie.. cable, phone, and internet) a folder for gas and electric, and another for our credit card bill.

Inside each one I put post-it notes on how much was needed for what dates. Needless to say this actually worked out quite well as it only took as a month to get financially back on track. So from now On I think I’ll be using this tatic with the bills I recommend it to anyone who feels like they are always living from paycheck to paycheck as now we actully have a few extra dollars come pay day it’s quite a nice change…

One of the most commonly asked questions about vista is “How the hell do I disable the User account control On vista?!?!” You would be surprised at how easy it is do do this. I’ll outline the process below.

1. Logon to your windows vista desktop (a given)

2. Open your start menu and select Control Panel

3. Select User Accounts and Family Safety

4. Select User Accounts

5. Click Turn User Account Control On Or Off

6. Uncheck “Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer”

7. Click OK

8. You’ll now be prompted to reboot your computer so that the changes can take affect.

Thats pretty much it. Very easy to remedy in about 15 seconds. Now you’ll no longer have that annoying permissions dialogue popping up all the time. This doesn’t disable windows defender either which will still be running.

I hope this helps!

(Full credit for this article goes to My Digital Life Blog )

Windows DreamScene (also Motion Desktop) is a nice extra feature
that plays high definition video content or movie as desktop background
with animated wallpaper instead of static graphic. Unfortunately, Microsoft only offers the feature to Windows Vista Ultimate users for free download.
But it