VMware Fusion

Teaching Science with Wi-Fi (Thanks, Ruckus and MetaGeek!)

February 10, 2012 by Stephen 3 Comments

As a parent, especially a techie one, you never know when a teachable moment is going to appear. Last night, I mentioned that I was testing a new Ruckus access point and enthused about how fast it was. My 12-year-old asked, â€œwhy is it so fast?â€ This led to a wonderful discussion about radio waves, congestion and propagation, and spectrum licensing. Yeah, I’m that kind of dad.

Upgrade to VMware Fusion 3 For Just $9.99!

September 30, 2010 by Stephen 1 Comment

Are you a Parallels Desktop 5 user eager to jump to VMware Fusion? Or were you too cheap to move from Fusion version 1 or 2? Well now’s your big chance to upgrade from either product to a full VMware Fusion 3 license for under ten bucks!

How To Disable Windows 7 Automatic Reboot After Update

August 20, 2010 by Stephen 5 Comments

Despite using Mac OS X for most of my daily work, I normally have one or two Windows 7 virtual machines running in VMware Fusion. But Windows Automatic Update is causing me trouble. It automatically restarts these virtual machines whenever there is an OS update, which seems to be every night lately. This automatic reboot kills whatever programs happen to be running at the time, causing me to lose half-written articles (even though I saved them and Auto Save is on) and almost killing an old BlackBerry I was updating. I had to figure out a way to disable this automatic reboot!

Got Excess Money? Upgrade Your 2009 Mac Mini RAM To 8 GB!

October 22, 2009 by Stephen 6 Comments

Are you the kind of person who always wants the best? Does an upgrade that costs as much as the original item sound like a good investment? Are you the owner of a 2009 Mac Mini? Then you’re in luck! Apple’s latest firmware update allows nVidia-based Mac Minis to be upgraded to 8 GB of […]

A Concrete Reason Macs Beat PCs: Intel VT

August 7, 2009 by Stephen 13 Comments

There is a lot of FUD flowing between Apple Macintosh true believers and the rest of the PC world. This is especially true now that Macs use Intel CPUs, NVIDIA chipsets and graphics, and so much more commodity PC parts. Lots have argued that a Mac is just an expensive PC with a flashy case […]

Ranting and Raving About the 2018 iPad Pro

I remain enthusiastic about the iPad Pro, despite getting a scratched screen and my concerns about durability. It’s a worthy successor to the original and offers enough improvements that I’d recommend the upgrade for just about anyone who uses their iPad for serious work. It’s still not yet a laptop replacement, but this is due more to a lack of desktop-class software for iOS than anything in Apple’s control.

The 2018 iPad Pro is a Beast!

The third-generation iPad Pro is a great machine but also a bellwether of change at Apple. It will be very hard for the rest of the mobile and client computing industry to keep up with this kind of progress!

Virtual Machine Mobility: Of What, and to Where and in What State?

January 16, 2012

Moving cold virtual machine images from system to system, or even across great distances, is one of the main selling points of server virtualization. But it becomes much more difficult to manage movement of virtual machines that are still running, especially outside cluster or across WAN links. When talking about virtual machine mobility, it is important to consider what is being moved, the state it is in, and where it is going.

The Myths of Standardization

December 15, 2011

I certainly benefit from standardization of the world around me, and I welcome interoperability and interchangeability as well as the price and product selection advantages. But I am not blithely focused on standardization above all else. I will happily use a proprietary solution if the alternative is inelegant, ineffective, or insufficient.

From Kipling’s Dirigibles to the Jet Age

May 13, 2012

I don’t get much chance to read for pleasure, but two things I’ve been reading recently spurred my imagination. After reliving the advent of modern transportation in the solid non-fiction Jet Age by Sam Howe Verhovek, I stumbled upon two pieces of speculative fiction from an unlikely source that predated everything presented there.

Review: American Standard’s Champion 4 Toilet Flushes Almost Anything

July 31, 2012

Although most crappers are crap, plumbing companies like American Standard are hard at work innovating to eliminate the excrement. The current champion is fittingly called the Champion 4, and I have purchased, installed, and tested two examples of the type. The Champion is engineered to reduce the most common causes of clogs, and it has proved effective and “hands-off” in my real-world testing.

Cisco’s Trojan Horse

September 15, 2014

Industry watchers like me have long wondered when Cisco will transform itself into a full-line IT infrastructure vendor. This strategy was tipped in 2009 as Cisco barged into the server market with UCS. But one leg of the stool is still missing: Storage remains the province of Cisco partners like EMC and NetApp.

Marketers: Fudging the Meaning of Buzzwords Matters (To You!)

December 2, 2015

Too many marketers and salespeople play fast and loose with words, but they’re only hurting themselves. Improper usage is embarrassing and causes a loss of credibility with the people they most want to reach. It would be wise to spend a lot more time being correct and a little less time jumping on bandwagons and buzzwords!

It’s Time To Move Beyond Passwords (Especially On Web Sites)

January 8, 2016

Sure, single sign-on puts all your eggs in one basket. But this is vastly preferable to trusting that hundreds of third-party baskets are secure, especially when they prove on a weekly basis that they aren’t! It’s time to put distributed passwords behind us and switch to systems like SAML, both for businesses and consumers.

Defining Failure: What Is MTTR, MTTF, and MTBF?

July 6, 2011

Most computer industry vendors use the term â€œMTBFâ€ rather indiscriminately. But IT pros know that systems do not magically repair themselves, at least not yet, so MTTR and MTTF are just as important!