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Yes, maintaining data separately from OS and application is quite handy for backup and recovery as well as maintaining a generally high level of performance. It's a good idea all around. Yes, it's a good idea to have your OS drive in RAID1, but if you can tolerate an hour of down time for a...

Android Device Manager was released today. It's a web app that hooks in to your Google account. It can ring your device and/or remote wipe, though you have to do a factory reset before the wipe feature is enabled.

My lady friend just moved in to her first apartment. She found out her next door neighbors are Mormon missionaries. Her idea of a good SSID for her new place: "Bride of Godzildo"

... and just to be contrary, I've had users break USB and displayport connectors by pulling up or down on them as if they were handles, something that I never experienced with anything that used a D-shell style connector. I like the ribbon types better as well but they're definitely delicate .

Check your PMs

Yes actually I am. Very often Android device owners are looking for the base feature set of the device (web browsing, email, navigation etc) and tend to install far fewer apps, even when those apps are - by the nature of Google's revenue model - free. iOS definitely has less of a free software...

I don't feel like it's necessary at the moment. I have ad blocking in Firefox and getting rid of web ads was the biggest single reason I rooted my last Android phone.

Apropos of nothing in particular, while Windows Server 2012 does not support synchronizing user settings via Microsoft accounts, if you sign in to the Store all of your downloaded or purchased Metro-style apps are installed just like they would be on Windows 8. I found that out while trying to...

I think it's more a case that HDMI could have been and probably will be updated to accommodate those things at some point in the future. I *have* had people bitch at me because they forgot the $10 adapter on a day they needed to plug in a projector and I wish there were only one common port just...

Points in Apple's favor: 1. General UI consistency vs. dozens of Android launchers 2. Perfectly responsive OS for a given generation of hardware vs. cheap/imperfectly implemented devices 3. Single monolithic online service for doing everything vs. pick-and-choose media, storage and security...

On Android, it's a case of "It depends." Samsung phones have it built in to the Samsung account portal but many phones have some kind of opt-in or require users to pick an app on their own. It's one of those things people don't think about until they need it. Google Apps admins can remote wipe...

I have an end user freaking the fuck out over a missing (personal) smartphone right now. I'm told that there are some pictures of a (cough cough) "personal nature" on it. We all know full well that law enforcement has ways on to our devices but I bet most of us with smartphones have a few fun...

Is anyone using/bothering with phone encryption?

I have an Asus Zenbook Prime in my office for the time being and I have to say it's a ridiculously nice machine. I'm told it was only about $700, but it has a 1.7GHz i5, 4GB RAM, a 128GB SSD, 1920x1080 IPS screen and weighs about 1kg. It has a decent chiclet-style keyboard and a huge touchpad...

Sense is really the best of the Android overlay launchers. It's heavy but very well tuned. I've gotten a lot of mileage lately out of APK Share and Backup. It's amazingly helpful for people with devices lacking Play access or Android 2.x devices that just can't load software for no...

I have a couple different ones. It's not something where I have a bunch of strict requirements. I just think it's silly not to have a calculator at the ready. HTC had a really nice one that I'm too lazy to grab from my old phone.

That was my Exchange experience as well: Put a Linux box in front of it so it only had to deal with filtered mail. The Linux machine would invariably be running on 1/10th the hardware and still handle mail better all by itself.

Why the bloody hell would you have Exchange as an Email server in an environment with almost no ability to run or support Outlook? Why bother with Active Directory without Windows systems to manage with it? That doesn't make any sense to me.

You guys who are advocating a straight-up password hack may or may not know that a Windows Server that has been promoted to act as a Domain Controller does not have a local password database to crack. But it's relatively simple to get a back door in so you can do a password reset on a DC if you...

I've been using a couple Samsung external USB3 Blu-Ray drives for the last few weeks, mostly so I could move my main desktop well away from my body during the (theoretical - it's actually been pretty mild this year) heat of summer. I don't notice any performance decrease in overall disc ripping...

Chrome starts a little faster than Firefox. Chrome also uses more CPU time and RAM. I use mobile Firefox for most but not all of my browsing because of ad-blocking, but because I sometimes need multiple logins on the same site, it's not uncommon for me to be using several browsers at the same...

Yes. When you sign in with a Microsoft account, your wallpaper and tile arrangement and crap show up just like they are on other machines. And there's Skydrive and Skydrive Pro, which are pretty much the same thing as having Dropbox or Google Drive other than the confusing fact that they're...

I've never had a reason to save a .mht in my life but apparently this Thunderbird add-on will give you that functionality and took a whole eight seconds for me to find.

On tablets I keep a Gmail widget on my home screen. I have a Plex remote widget on my phone and living room tablet. Every Android device I own has a full-page calculator widget on the first screen to the right of the home screen. My home screen consists of a few app shortcuts (Firefox, Google...

The gamefaqs walkthrough for Angry Birds is shockingly comprehensive.

I guess that depends on your perspective on copyright violation.

For what it's worth, I pay $50/month for a 1U server on an unmetered 50Mbit connection in a Colo that's 45 minutes from my apartment. If you have serious bandwidth constraints, it might be productive to move some of your crap off-site.

I really, truly wince at the idea, but Sharepoint is kind of made for this sort of thing. You can also share folders in Google Docs, but that might not be the most natural workflow in the world for a lot of people, especially if a lot of random folks might be uploading to any one folder. The...

I've done SmartBuyGlasses.com most recently. Their ordering and fulfillment people are in Texas though the glasses shipped from IIRC Hong Kong. Between Oakley frames and the ridiculously light plastic of my lenses, I think I saved about $400 over going to a Lenscrafters or something.

Today I poured a bunch of Skittles and Reese's Pieces in to the candy dish full of M&Ms out by our reception area. Possibly the most evil thing I will do all year.

Couldn't you just set up WebDAV and let them manage the folders through Windows Explorer?

That's one of the reasons I have an LTO changer. The aforementioned collection of loose drives are generally stored in my office at work.

"RAID5" is essentially the default setting in the Drobo's management software. I just didn't bother changing it when I set the silly thing up in the first place. I'm aware of the deficiencies of RAID5 for large individual member disks and you can rest assured that there was zero chance of a data...

... And just to play with the Drobo a little more, I yanked out one of the drives after I finished copying data to its destination on another system. It says it's going to need ~75 hours to rebuild my array. Yikes.

Job security at its finest!

I found this article completely fascinating. Does anyone think that computer security is anything other than a complete joke at this point?

Today I learned that iSCSI targets can be added to Windows Storage Spaces just like any other fixed disk.

It worked. I have a single disk Thunderbolt enclosure as well and as I recall it was a royal PITA to get working, but the Drobo was fine.

Thunderbolt worked for me.

It's too functionally limited to be of interest in my opinion. It does Netflix and Youtube. So does every other piece of electronics with enough brains to run an IP stack and a video output.

There most certainly is, but what that interface might be depends on your hosting provider. Many hosts allow FTP and (UNIX) shell access for making changes, but some providers only have some kind of lame control panel or something. Either way you'll need a username and a password from the...

My tablet is foremost a device I use for reading. My phone is capable of doing that, but it's not nearly as comfortable.

I just found this thingie on Ebay, but given my recent experience with Android STBs I think I'm going to wait until I can find one from a reputable reseller.

The 2013 Nexus 7" looks fairly awesome but now that there are 7" 1080P screens my next question is why does it still cost a young fortune to get a desktop display with any more pixels than that?

Neither Classic Shell nor Start 8 are complete matches for the Windows 7 shell and that also does not address the Start Menu replacements that big OEMs are providing. Very often, the people who need help with using something as basic as a Windows start menu are the very people who would have...

I don't feel like starting a new thread for this but I could see how someone or other might be interested in reading it so... I had occasion to test a Drobo 5D last night. The 5D is a DAS (Direct Attached Storage) that operates over Thunderbolt and USB3. Mine is set up with four Hitachi...

Tracking is occasionally not an option if Amazon is using a small, local carrier. Every once in a while I get an Amazon Delivery from some stoner in a 20 year old Camry, but he'll have a badge on that says he works for some Courier company I've never heard of in any other context than handing me...

Crossloop, TeamViewer and ShowmyPC are all fantastic, but they're not ideal for every circumstance because of bandwidth, security requirements or just circumstances of convenience.

I buy about 90% of everything except groceries and clothes from Amazon. It's not unusual for me to get deliveries every day of my work week.

Does your old host offer FTP access? Usually the easiest way to grab everything is to just replicate the FTP directory structure. Otherwise you can use some kind of spidering program, but if you do that you'll lose server-side scripts.