Igor Delovski Board

[XNote]

Why windows takes so long to start up

"The first tip I want to talk about is the windows prefetch. Windows XP
has this feature that loads commonly used programs - at boot time."

[Martin]

Slate: The Best Computer Upgrade Ever,
By Paul Boutin

"While a faster processor lets you do what you've been doing more
quickly, extra display space lets you do things that were previously
unthinkable."

[Ike]

Walkthrough: Running Windows Vista on your Intel Mac with Parallels Desktop

"I managed to get Vista running on my MacBook Pro in both a copy of
Parallels Desktop and Boot Camp, but this post is only going to cover the
Parallels side of things; my Boot Camp post is still in the kettle."

[Ike]

Ed Bott’s Windows Expertise: One more time: do not clean out your Prefetch folder!

"Yet another Web site posted yet another 'tip' today recommending
that you clean out your Prefetch folder to improve performance of
Windows. Arrrggghhh!"

[XNote]

coconutIdentityCard 2.1

Tells you where and when your Mac, iPod or any other Apple-Product was born

[Ike]

Winadmin tools

"Started as a small Sourceforge project for a larger folder clean-up
VBScript script I made (waRmZip), this site now features a dozen of scripts/
hacks I created during my work as a Windows sysadmin: for managing
Network Load Balanced sites (waCluster), for timing and calculating
throughput (waTimer), for automated scripting (waCron, waSendKeys) …"

[Jean Jacques]

The Ultimate Mac Software List

“Everything shown here are the best apps that could put Mac users on
the right track towards productivity. I ’ve judged their functionality for the
average Mac user, and all apps listed are Universal binaries — so they’re
future-proof."

... and Linux Quick Hacks

"Man pages formatted as text, Man pages formatted as html, Finding
Who Has a File Open, etc."

... and The Most Powerful Linux/Unix Command Nobody Ever Uses

"lsof is the Linux/Unix über-tool. I use it most for getting network
connection related information from a system, but that's just the
beginning for this amazing and little-known application. The tool is aptly
called lsof because it "lists open files". And remember, in Unix just about
everything (including a network socket) is a file."

[Guest]

How to run µTorrent in Mac OS X

"As a x-Windows guy and an ardent BitTorrenter I can confidently say
that µTorrent is one of the best BitTorrent clients available for Windows
95 through Vista. It’s lean, takes up very little memory and doesn’t need
to be installed, you can even run it off a USB pen drive. It also offers all
the important features like Selective Downloading, Universal Plug ‘n’ Play
Support, Super Seeding Mode and RSS Feeds Subscription. Soon we will
also be able to use µTorrent via a web-interface."

[delovski]

Raymond Chen: Why doesn't the Shutdown dialog use Alt to get alternate behavior?

"... since the only things on the Shut Down dialog are pushbuttons, there
is no character input and you can just press "S", "U" or "R" without the Alt
key. What's more, you don't need to hold the Shift key if you want to shut
down; you can just type "H" and the Hibernate option will be invoked, ..."

[Ike]

PortableApps.com

"A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with
you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your
USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is
plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as
you would on your own PC. And when you unplug, none of your personal
data is left behind."

[XNote]

What REALLY slows down Windows - Boot and run time

"I took a clean Virtual PC install of Windows XP Pro (SP2a) and installed
Microsoft BootVis on it. For those not in the know, BootVis is a tool that
lets you time how long windows takes to start up."

[delovski]

Hard Drive Data Recovery Guide

"If you've been using computers for a decent amount of time there is a
good chance someone has told you that data stored on a hard drive is not
exactly safe. I'm here to assure you that this is indeed true."

[XNote]

JoS: Best tips that no one seems to know about?

"Another is vertical text selection. Usually when you want to highlight
text, you want to do it horizontally, but if you hold down the ALT Key and
then try to highlight text, you can do so vertically. This has saved me a
rediculous amount of time fixing Comma Delimited Files."

[Gnome]

THE UNIX ACRONYM LIST

yacc - yet another compiler compiler !?

[XNote]

Backing up, restoring and installation cloning on OS X

"There are two types of filesystem disk formats we need to worry
about, HFS+, which is the default OS X filesystem format, and UFS, which
is the "normal" unix file system format. All of the standard unix utilities
are designed to cope with UFS."

[Guest]

Terence Parr: How To Look Like A UNIX Guru

"If you want to be a serious server developer, you will need to have a
certain facility with a number of UNIX tools; about 15. You will start to see
similarities among them, particularly regular expressions, and soon you
will feel very comfortable. Combining the simple commands, you can
build very powerful tools very quickly--much faster than you could build
the equivalent functionality in C or Java, for example."

Digg: UnixTutorials - Unix tutorials for all your needs

"A great site with lots of Linux/Unix tutorials!"

... and the original site: UnixTutorials

"I made a website where I could add tutorials that might come in handy
later on. When I started with Linux I was frustrated as there were no place
where you could find most of the tutorials and howtos. So now a lot of time
has passed and I decided to make life easier for guys like I used to be who’re
just starting with UNIX based operating systems. Also we’re not focused on
Linux, we accept tutorials as long as OS it meant for is based on UNIX."

[Joe Average]

JoS: How to get a diagnostic report from a remote PC ?

remote PC configuration - CPU, Memory, free Disk space etc
- OS version number patch level
- EXEs/DLLs loaded

[delovski]

10 things you should know about connecting Macintosh OS X systems to
Windows networks

"Macintosh systems are again appearing on business networks. Unlike
older Macintosh operating systems, when complex AppleTalk configuration
and additional Windows network services may have had to be installed,
adding Apple Macintosh OS X systems to Windows networks is fairly
straightforward."

[Ike]

Minimising windows in OS X

"Expose has a built-in keyboard window switcher. Try this; open a few
windows, activate Expose and then repeatedly hit the tab key. Watch your
windows switching like the cards in a deck. Once you have the window
you want to use, just hit enter and the window is all yours."

[delovski]

20 Must Read HOWTOs and Guides for Linux

"If your a Linux user who enjoys learning new things, I recommend
taking a look at the following 20 must read HOW TOs and Guides I ’ve
gathered over the years. These documents are vital to both new and old
Linux users."

[delovski]

MS Word preserves type & style of pasted text and in 99% of the cases that
is exact opposite of what you want!

Grr!

Omar Shahine: Do you "Notepad Paste"?

"Here is a neat trick. When you are in Word (or WordMail in Outlook), select
a bunch of text and enter control-space. This will clear the formatting and
set it to the default style."

Works on both Mac & Win versions of Word.

[XNote]

Digg: Mac OSX startup key sequences

"Handy list for troubleshooting and various startup options. Did you know
that you can boot your mac from an iPod?"

[Ike]

Digg: How to login to an expired Windows

"Thanks to Microsoft, if you do not activate your Windows after 30 days
of use, you will be locked out of your own computer! Find out how to bypass
this and login without downloading anything!"

[delovski]

What happens in the Mac OS X boot process?

"Long gone are the days of OS 9, watching our Macs boot up with a series
of extensions and control panels that we could always identify. Today with
the Unix underpinnings of OS X, many users are entirely unaware of what is
going on behind the scenes. So what exactly happens during the Mac OS X
boot process? A segment at KernelThread carefully lists the sequence of events,
from start to finish. It is fairly thorough and worth a read. It is repeated
below for the inquisitive Mac OS X users out there."

[delovski]

Digg: What software slows Windows down the most?

"This guy did a cool test and if you have Norton on your PC, you might
want to take a look at this. Norton slows down the computer so much it
was mind boggling. I always knew Norton was a hog, but this is ridiculous."

[XNote]

MacosX Hints: Increase Safari's page loading speed

[delovski]

Digg: HUGE Windows Vista Tweaking Guide!

"The guide is designed for novice and advanced users alike, containing 250
pages of objective descriptions, recommendations and tweaks for every aspect
of Windows Vista. It is all laid out in plain English, and while it may take you
a few days to work through, I promise you that at the end of it you will not
only have a better system..."

[Ike]

Digg: 22 Excellent MacOSX Hidden Tips and Hints from MacWorld

"This is a quick summary of a presentation by Rob Griffiths at the MacWorld
Encore Conf & Expo. It has a bunch of cool tips like making the expanded
Save dialog the default for all programs, quickly combine PDFs, selective
import from your camera into iPhoto, and a lot more. This is much quicker
than the hour-plus presentation!"

[delovski]

chris.pirillo: File Sharing from Windows Vista to OS X

"When you’re prompted for a username and password from the Windows Vista
authentication dialog, use: MacIPAddress\YourMacUsername (with the password
for your user account on OS X). For example, 192.168.1.27\chris might be used,
if your Mac’s internal network IP address was 192.168.1.27 and the user 'chris'
was configured for Windows sharing."

[delovski]

eWeek: Top 3 Vista Support Issues

"The biggest single Vista issue Support.com has been dealing with,
at 26 percent of all Vista-related support calls, is printers that have
outdated drivers or other compatibility issues with Vista, said Marc
Itzkowitz, director of product marketing at Support.com."

[delovski]

FOSSwire: Unix/Linux Command Cheat Sheet

"In an attempt to find a good Unix reference for you FOSSwire readers, I was
unsuccessful at finding a decent one on the Internet. So, why not make one?"

[delovski]

RC: Why isn't QuickEdit on by default in console windows?

"In the properties of console windows, you can turn on QuickEdit mode, which
allows the mouse to be used to select text without having to go explicitly into
Mark mode. (In a sense, the console window is permanently in Mark mode.)
Why isn't this on by default?"

[delovski]

howgoodisthat - Cmd+Shift +L and other useful OS X hidden features

"Cmd+Shift+L = Searches Google with the currently highlighted text. Works
for any object containing text currently selected—even icons and non-editable
text in dialogue boxes."

[XNote]

ilounge.com - Transferring your iTunes Library

"Another common scenario many users find themselves in is what to do w-
hen they upgrade to a new computer. Your iTunes library has been working
just fine on your old computer, but you’re left with the question of how to
get it over to the new machine so that everything works the way it’s suppo-
sed to."

[XNote]

LifeLan - How to: Enable right clicks if disabled on web pages

"You can easily overcome that kind of “Security” by entering the following
javascript code in the address bar in your browser:

javascript:void(document.oncontextmenu=null)"

[delovski]

reddit - iTunes 10 Pro tip - Remove iTunes store link arrows

"defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE"

[delovski]

reddit - Mac ownership on my college campus is skyrocketing. It is
causing some issues though, and I could use some feedback

"I would like to hear your feedback on which method you think is best. We
want to be consistent, this is why I ask. We don't want to tell one student to
go buy Parallels, another to use VMware Fusion, and another to use Boot
Camp. We would like to keep it to one or two simple options to keep confu-
sion down (and hopefully costs)."

[Ike]

danrodney.com - Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

"I like to figure out the fastest way to do things. I hope these shortcuts will
help you become the power user that lies within. These keystrokes should
work on Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.5 Leopard (many also work on
10.4 Tiger). I add new shortcuts as I find them, so check back!"

[XNote]

30 Fantastic Geeky Tricks to Get The Most From Your Mac

"If you’re one of those Mac users that loves to dig in and play with hidden
features and settings, this post is for you."

[delovski]

take-a-screenshot.org - How do I take a screenshot?

"Mac OS X captures the entire screen and saves it as a file named like
“Picture 1.png” on your desktop."

On reddit:

"Another tip: hit Cmd-Shift-4 to get the crosshairs, then hold down Option
while you drag and the selection will expand at both corners. Hold down
Space while you drag and the entire selection changes position without
changing size."

[Ike]

osxdaily.com - Stop Spotlight from Indexing Time Machine Backup
Volumes & External Drives

"If you’d rather prevent a drive from being indexed from the command
line, you can do that with mdutil and the following syntax:

mdutil -i off /Volumes/VolumeName"

[Ike]

osxdaily.com - Track an applications usage in Mac OS X with opensnoop

"Using the command line tool ‘opensnoop’ you can track any Mac ap-
plications (or system process) usage of the file system. This is a very
handy tool for administrators and troubleshooting! The simplest way to
use it is as follows:

sudo opensnoop -n Safari

You can also track a specific file, and what is accessing it, like so:

sudo opensnoop -f /etc/hosts

Tracking a specific process is as simple as just specifying the process id:

sudo opensnoop -p PID"

[Ike]

tuaw - How to permanently remove Notification Center from OS X

"If you can't stand Notification Center, you can permanently remove it using
the following terminal commands:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist
killall NotificationCenter

Use these with caution as they will completely disable Notification Center"

[delovski]

How to permanently remove Notification Center from OS X

"If you can't stand Notification Center, you can permanently remove it using
the following terminal commands:"

[delovski]

dropboxwiki.com - Sync Folders Outside of the Dropbox Folder With Dropbox

"What if you want to synchronize/backup files or folders that reside not in the
'Dropbox' folder, but somewhere else on your harddrive?"

[Ike]

apple - How to transfer Time Machine backups

"How it worked in the end was:

- in the Mac settings, disable automatic backup and add the new hard drive as
Time Machine drive so that the drive is correctly formatted etc.
- remove the drive from Time Machine again
- copy over the Backups.backupdb folder (cp -R should not be used here
because
- of the symlinks, instead I used cmd+C, option+cmd+shift+V for exact copy)
- add the drive in Time Machine again"

[Ike]

apple - About policy banners in OS X

"A policy banner is a banner that you can display at the login window that
requires a user to acknowledge it before proceeding. Use these steps to create
a policy banner:

1. Create a plain text (.txt) or rich text (.rtf) document named PolicyBanner that
contains your banner.
2. Copy the PolicyBanner file to the /Library/Security/ folder.

The next time you restart the computer, the banner you created appears when
you would normally see the login screen."

Startup Message - After Login Mesage or Message after reboot