Data centres to off-centre opinion

The guys over at downloadsquad.com have a good list of free Windows utilities; here. They include, CD/DVD burners, network synchronisation, file transfer, image editing etc.

They’ve also posted a list of Systems Admin utilities here.

A friend recently complained about how long his computer took to boot each time he switched it on. When I showed him the Sleep and Hibernate modes he immediately changed the default settings so his computer hibernated when he pressed the power button instead of shutting down.

This is exactly what I do with my work laptop, and indeed is what I’ve been doing since 2001. I also use Sleep when I’m only going to be away from my computer a short time (e.g. lunch, or walking to a meeting with my lapotp).

Both sleep and hibernate save the state of the computer so that when you next turn it on (or “resume”), the computer carries on where it left off; no need to start everything from scratch.

Hibernate saves the state to disk then turns the computer off, so it uses no power. Sleep saves the state in RAM which needs some power to work, so a small amount of power is consumed.

These features work irrespective of what Operating System you’re running (Windows XP, Vista, 7, Linux [e.g. Ubuntu] and Apple OSX ). Some boot more quickly than others (OSX vs Vista for example) but none are as fast as resuming from sleep or hibernate.

The only word of warning: reboot the computer once in a while (for me, thats a couple of times/month) to clear out garbage left from crashed programs.

I’m lucky enough to have received an invite to the beta of Threadsy. In their own words: threadsy is the world’s first integrated communications client! it combines your existing email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts into a unique, enjoyable experience.

Earlier this year I wrote a post asking for just such a thing, however now I’ve got it I’m faced with the question of trust. Do I trust Threadsy with my usernames and passwords for Twitter, Facebook, Live Mail etc? How do I know Threadsy is legitimate & secure? The answer is I don’t. I have to make up my own mind based on their privacy policy and reputation. The one thing they have going for them is the fact they were featured on Cnet – a site I do trust. In other words, trust by association, which is just like life: you build trust through recommendation/association and experience.

Error 0×80040154 indicates SelfSSL can’t open the metabase – which is to be expected on IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 by default as the metabase changed significantly from IIS6 to IIS7 (and SelfSSL is an IIS6 resource kit tool).

On IIS7 and IIS7.5, you need to install the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility role service to be able to use SelfSSL. You don’t need any of the other IIS 6 role services installed.