Precise I.T. Solutions

Aldrin's iPhone 3G Jailbreak Top 10 Apps

2009-07-19T14:53:00.011+08:00

Here is a list of recommended apps, once you have jailbroken your -

For information on how to jailbreak your iPhone 3G or 3Gs, please refer to iphone-dev team.
(NB: For iPhone 3G and 3Gs users - ultrasn0w - may be required to get your iPhone to work with your service provider).
To get ultrasnow add - repo666.ultrasn0w.com to your sources in Cydia

You will probably find more than 10 apps here but top 10 sounds better then top 17... :)

Essential Jailbreak Apps

All Sources - This will install all 'good' sources that you can access through Cydia. To get this package, you must add PwnCenter to Cydia sources (go to Cydia, select More Sources, then select PwnCenter).
Cydelete - Allows you to delete Cydia apps the same way as you would Apple/iTunes Apps without having to go through Cydia's management console.
Winterboard - this is essential for iPhone customization (for themes and more)
SBSettings - provides you with the ability to quickly manage iPhone settings (brightness, turn Wifi on/off, Bluetooth etc. also allows you to 'kill' background processes that are hogging memory).
Cycorder - If you are after a video recording alternative, then this is the best free video recording app you can get.
Five Icon Dock - Allows you to have 5 icons in your main dock instead of the traditional 4.
Five-Column SpringBoard - Allows you to have 5 columns instead of 4 on screen.
iFile - file explorer for iPhone.
MxTube - same as YouTube for iPhone but allows you to download and save the videos to your iPhone.
Safari Download Plugin - Allows you to download files and images to your iPhone from Safari.

MISC Apps to make your iPhone rock more... :)

A Better Tap to Unlock - Allows you to tap instead of slide to unlock your phone.
Flashlight - a better flashlight than the one offered in the App Store.
Hackintosh Theme - Nice mixed theme featuring Mac and Windows icons.
Blacklight and Black Light theme - same name different themes.
Vista OS X theme.
iBlank - Creates blank icons for use as separators for Springboard
Springjumps - jump from page to page using shortcuts on your springboard

App Store Apps that rock

Shapewriter - you have to download this to find out but I guarantee it to be a great note taker and email writer.
Evernote - take notes then upload to the internet for storage. Includes photo and attachment uploads
Shazam - finds out the names of songs by using your iPhone to record and compare with an online database. Very, very accurate.
Facebook - self explanatory

I will update this post as I find more favourite apps to add....

How to Speed up Firefox Web Browser

2009-02-23T21:52:00.004+09:00

If you are looking to speed up the Firefox browser i.e. loading pages etc, then here is a tip for you...

**Note that these modifications allow Firefox to access system resources and may take away performance from other programs and services. If your PC is not very powerful, please refrain from modifying these settings.

In the address bar type in

about:config

A warning page will come up ... HERE BE DRAGONS... just promise you'll be careful and carry on.

Once in, look for the following items and set accordingly

1. Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
2. Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
3. Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to 30. This means Firefox will make up to 30 requests at once (to populate a web page). The default is 4.

Finally, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

All things going well, you should see a marked improvement in the speed of Firefox loading and browsing ... if you are on a broadband connection :)

Nvidia or ATI - Graphics Card Comparisons

2009-02-03T12:08:00.001+09:00

If you ever wondered which is a better graphics card to get for your purpose, I would suggest a visit to www.gpureview.com. This site is self explanatory and provides, what I believe, to be the best tools for specification comparison of video cards.

Missing Power Volume Network icons from Taskbar in Vista

2008-07-19T17:13:00.003+08:00

Sometimes, Windows Vista loses the icons that are normally displayed in the taskbar area. In order to get them back you would normally do the following...
1. Right hand mouse click on the Windows Start Button
2. Select PROPERTIES
3. Select the NOTIFICATION AREA tab
4. Check the appropriate icon check boxes

If the check boxes are greyed out, there is a possibility that another software driver has over-ridden the default Windows icons. In this case, you would click on the CUSTOMIZE button and check through the list of icons available in there and select SHOW next to the icon.

If the icon is not there, then a registry edit is required (as per instructions from Microsoft).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945011/en-us

Here is the workaround as proposed by Microsoft
(NB: editing the registry can cause damage to your PC operating system if done incorrectly. If you are not certain or confident of the procedure, please contact us or your preferred I.T. consultant)...

You can make the icons reappear by deleting two subkeys from the registry. To do this, follow these steps:

Click Start , type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Allow.

Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify

In the Details pane, click the IconStreams registry entry.

On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click Yes.

In the Details pane, click the PastIconsStream registry entry.

On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click Yes.

Exit Registry Editor.

Restart the Explorer.exe process. To do these, follow these steps:

a.	Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.
b.	On the Processes tab in Windows Task Manager, click the explorer.exe process, and then click End Process two times.
c.	On the File menu, click New Tasks (Run), type explorer, and then click OK.
d.	Exit Windows Task Manager.

I have personally tested this and it appears to work for my Vista system with no adverse side effects.... AL.

Getting the most from your PC

2008-06-20T12:57:00.013+08:00

Ever wanted to do more with your PC. Here's a list of software that I think will help you get more use out of your PC - be it for fun or productivity, but mostly fun :)

NB: Most of this software is free for personal use only (not for commercial or business use unless you pay for the commercial licence accordingly).
Web Browser

Firefox Version 2 - although version 3 is already out, Firefox V2 has a lot of useful add-ons that make its functionality a bit more versatile. I am sure V3 updates are not far off though
Update: 17/7/2008 - Just tested the add-ons below on Firefox version 3 and it appears that most of them have been updated to work with the new version. The time has come to move (cautiously) to the new version :) . Also available for MAC.

Firefox Themes

Noia Extreme 2.0 (or above)

Firefox Add-Ons

Video Download Helper - ever wanted to download that video from YouTube to show your friends or family? This little add-on makes it a breeze to do just that.
PicLens - A great picture viewer for websites with heaps of new multimedia functionality being built in daily. It displays pictures from websites in a very dynamic and enticing manner. Just check it out and you will see what I mean.
Fast Dial - I have seen this on the Opera Web Browser before, this version is for Firefox V2 and well worth a look. It allows you to place visual bookmarks or web links on your Firefox start page... (make sure you set Firefox to blank start page if you want Fast Dial to be the first screen you see when you start the browser up)

Media Player

VLC Media Player - excessively basic looking player but plays nearly every darn multimedia / video file there is. VLC is also available in MAC edition.

Office Suite (Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations etc.)

OpenOffice.Org - compatible with Microsoft Office suite of products and best of all - it's FREE!!!

Codecs
If you have ever tried to watch a video you have downloaded from the internet and not been able to (or only hear the sound and not see the pictures, or vice versa), there is a good chance you do not have the appropriate CODEC (codec is short for COmpression / DECompression) to watch it with. Download the CCCP codec pack, install, restart your PC and try the file again. 99.9% chance that this will fix it :P

Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP)

Photo sorting, touch up and uploading

Picasa (from Google) is your best bet for a well structured digital photo album with in-built web upload capability (you need a Google account to upload your pics).

Clean up Duplicate Files with DUPE KILLER

If you have a headache trying to sort files and find duplicates (especially photos), this is one awesome program that will help you find and get rid of the duplicates. NB: care needs to be taken when using this program, run this on a test folder to familiarise yourself with what it does before going all out.

... to be continued

AVG Antivirus - Friend or Foe?

2008-06-18T16:32:00.009+08:00

Many of us have been hit by a computer virus at some point in time. The solution is simple, stop visiting 'dodgy' websites, stop opening suspicious emails and definitely - invest in a good security program.

Now, here is the most common answer I hear when I ask if a user has antivirus protection - "I have AVG antivirus, and it's free". This is all good and I have nothing against getting free stuff, but the question is "How effective is AVG antivirus?"

I am all for free and open source products (mind you, not all free software is safe so be mindful of this), but when it comes to PC security is this 'free' software good enough to keep 'nasties' off my PC which may be trying to hack into my banking details or key log my credit card info - is this 'free' software going to do the job well enough to protect me?

Based on all the blurb that I have read and user reviews, AVG Free appears to be the best bang for buck antivirus (seeing that you pay no bucks for it). AVG has it's merits and has won many awards - but if you delve a little deeper, many of these awards are for the 'paid' version and not the 'free for personal use' version.

AVG Free lacks a few security components required for effective PC protection including anti-rootkit, anti-spam, instant messaging filter and more, (Grisoft - the company that produces AVG - actually states this on their website - http://free.grisoft.com/ww.download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition). This would therefore imply that AVG Free is not a complete security solution. The full version (which sells for US$54.99 p/a) is a complete version but when it comes to paying that price - wouldn't you have been better off just considering any other commercially available software in the market e.g. Trendmicro, BitDefender, CA or Norton (Symantec) antivirus?

My greatest gripe (and fear) with AVG Free is that it offers unsuspecting users a false sense of security as they believe they are fully protected when they could well have a 'nasty' on their PC sending out their personal details to a 'well intentioned' hacker hell bent on emptying their bank account. I cannot count the number of times we have had a client PC with AVG Free, start acting strange, and when scanned with a commercial product, we find a myriad of malware that have slipped through AVG's defenses.

(BTW - when I say unsuspecting users, I refer to those users who have downloaded AVG Free because their friends or colleagues swear by it, but have not read about what it covers on the AVG website or ignore the fact that the paid version provides more effective protection)

For something as precious as your personal data, credit card details and banking info - I hesitate to see why anyone would skimp on purchasing a good security software (be it AVG or any other).

If you do nothing but use your computer for the odd email, game, Google or document - AVG Free is probably going to be sufficient to help stave off simple viruses. But if you use your PC for business, banking, buying and selling (e.g. eBay), invest in a full security software suite which does a more thorough job than the freebies.

Hewlett Packard HP2133 Mini Note Ultraportable Notebook

2008-06-10T10:20:00.027+08:00

After months of waiting and putting off the purchase of the Asus EePC, the long awaited Hewlett Packard Mini Notebook has arrived at my favourite tech place.

At first looks, it is a formidable unit with a nice sturdy shell, unlike my Sony Vaio VGN-TX46GP notebook (which I have nothing against, bar the flimsy feel of the screen - its paper thin). It sports a light gunmetal finish and pretty much feels like a large aluminium cigarette tin. I was initially stumped as to where the on button was but soon found it on the front of the unit (near the headphone jack).

With much deliberation, umm'ing, arr'ing and figuring out where I'd whangle the AUD$999 to pay for it, I decided to purchase this little beast to have a play with at my leisure.

Upon getting it home, I unpacked the unit and found very little in terms of anything in the box - 1 x HP2133, 1 x battery, 1 x power cord, 1 x power supply, 2 x booklets and some packaging.

The front of the unit sports the power switch (to the right of picture) and the wireless switch (to the left), with a little hard drive indicator in between (next to the power switch).

The left side of the unit sports the ExpressCard slot, SD Card slot (just below the Express Card Slot), USB port, Ethernet port, power adaptor port and security cable connection port.

The right side of the unit presents a VGA connector, cooling vent, USB port and a microphone and headphone jack.

On the inside, it sports a shiny 8.9" gloss screen with good picture quality (depending on how you angle the screen). The keyboard has a nice tactile feel and has a full range of keys (less the keypad) and being a touch typist, I found the keyboard akin to a full sized keyboard and could happily, type on it for hours. The trackpad mouse has its buttons to the side of the pad as opposed to the traditional bottom of pad position, this takes a little getting used to but nothing that couldn't be mastered over time.

After several seconds of marvelling over the presentation of the unit, I proceeded to run through my usual regime of plugging it in and running installs of software for the unit - antivirus, anti spyware, Adobe Acrobat, Winzip, multimedia codecs, Service pack 1 for Vista etc.

Testing time!!! I proceeded to put this unit through its paces. I connected my Palm Treo 750 via Bluetooth (which was quite easily achieved using the base Bluetooth software provided by Microsoft in Control Panel), and primed the 3G internet connection. Internet was moving at an agreeable pace and the HP2133 breezed through the web with ease. I tried my usual web haunts - Outlook Web Access, Log Me In, Google etc. All good.

This was followed by a simultaneous multimedia test which proved a little too much for the processor. During movie playback I found the video and sound sometimes out of sync, and at times the movie just started speeding up or slowing down for no apparent reason - likely to be the algorithms trying to re-sync the show and the CPU not keeping up. This was when the unit started to dissapoint me a little.

Although it came prepped with a nice 160GB hard drive and 2GB RAM - it was the 1.6GHz VIA C7M processor and the integrated VIA S3 video processing that proved to be the Achilles heel of the unit. Calculations and processing were slow and the HP2133 was not suited to running multiple processes simultaneously. To be fair I had checked it earlier and found that the Vista rating for calculations for this processor only rated 2 out of 6.

I believe the strain of running the antivirus, antispyware, bluetooth, internet and the multimedia file was a bit too much for it - so I did not try running a word processor in the mix for now.

I continued to run portions of the video and internet including downloading and installing Java and using Log Me In to connect to the office PC, till, an hour and a bit later, the battery started to call out for a refill - I started using it at about 0900 hours and by 1015 hours it was at 5% battery life. Being used to my Sony Vaio (which normally lasts about 3 and 1/2 hours), I could not help but feel a bit dissapointed - mind you I did pay AUD $2900 for the Sony as compared to AUD$999 for the HP2133 - so for the price, the HP2133 was not bad. The standard battery was a 3 cell litium ion battery and HP has a 6 cell battery available which I believe would double the operating time.

Conclusions: I think that this is a good carry around for anyone who wants to have a small portable unit for times when they want to take a coffee break but would like to keep an eye on the stock market and emails. Performance leaves a bit to be desired, but if you run one program at a time, the system is capable - it just gets a bit strained when multitasking. The HP2133 is tops for being lightweight and portable.

Pros: Small yet user friendly footprint with a usable sized screen. sturdy, well presented. has Windows Vista Business (you can also get this unit with Ubuntu Linux), excellent keyboard.

Cons: Poor battery life (running on 3 cell lithium), mediocre processor, fair media playback. no DVD/CD rom drive.

For more detailed specifications, please click on ... http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13009_na/13009_na.HTML

Speed up copying of Large files in Windows Vista

2008-06-10T10:11:00.002+08:00

You may have noticed that Vista has a tendency to take time calculating the size of the file when copying. This is caused by a new 'feature' called Auto Tuning which by default is set on by Microsoft.

To disable this feature, do the following...

1. Open up a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges
2. Type in ... netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
3. The prompt should read... OK
4. You may have to restart the PC for the effects to take hold.

If this does not solve your problem, the autotuning feature can be re-instated by typing...

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal.

Configuring Entourage to access Exchange

2008-05-27T11:53:00.002+08:00

According to Entourage MVPs

http://www.entourage.mvps.org/exchange/exchangeathome.html

Blog Under Construction

Joining Mac to SBS 2003 Domain

2008-05-27T11:39:00.002+08:00

Software Version Used OSX 10.5.2

I have researched into how to connect the Mac to a Windows Domain and according to Microsoft's Technet the instructions are as follows. However due to Mac Updates the naming conventions for some of the items may differ.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160813.aspx

Macintosh Direct Access Client Configuration
Open the Direct Access Utility.
Click Enable next to Active Directory, and then click Active Directory.
Click Configure, then enter your Active Directory Forest and Domain.
Enter a computer ID for your Mac client.
Click Unhide Advanced Options, and select the Cache Last User Login for Offline Operation and Allow Administration by: check boxes.
Add the usernames and groups that you want to give administrative access to your Mac in the format domain name\user or group, and then click Bind. You will be prompted for a user account with rights to join your domain.
Click OK and then click Authentication at the top. Make sure Active Directory is still highlighted.
Click Custom Path in the Search dropdown list, and then click Add at the bottom.
Select your Active Directory Domain from the list and click Add.
Click Contacts, and then Add.
Click Apply and close the Directory Access window.

Connect Windows Printer to Apple Mac OS X

2008-05-27T11:18:00.003+08:00

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6873260&tstart=0

Ok Only works with latest version of Mac. The Version I am working off is 10.5.2 OSX.

Make sure that you download the Mac Drivers for your PC and Install.

First Open up Safari and type into the the address bar http://localhost:631 and click on Add a Printer

Type in the appropriate Names Locations Etc. and Click on Next.

Choose Samba and click on next.

Ensure that you type in the URL as smb://username:password@(IP address)/sharename

Backups - How long does it take?

2008-05-19T11:08:00.009+08:00

Data backups are part of our digital lives (or at least they should be). The question is...

"How long does it take to do a backup?"

Before I answer this, a quick explanation - many backups are done via USB nowadays, as can be seen by the myriad of USB backup drives that are available and with sizes varying anywhere from 1GigaByte (1GB = 1000MB) up to 1 TerraByte (1TB = 1000GB).

With USB there are 2 types USB1 and USB2. If you have a PC (or MAC) that has a USB1 connection, the maximum speed you can achieve, theoretically, is about 25MB/s. USB2 gives a better rate at 50MB/s. Though this is so, just like a car that accelerates from standing to max speed - it takes a little time for the speed to reach it's peak i.e. it does not start at 50MB/s straightaway, thats why an 3MB music or MP3 file still takes a few seconds to transfer to your USB device.

Theoretically speaking, at 50MB/s you can transfer 3000MB/minute (2.9GB/Min) or 180000 MB/hour (175GB/hour). The reason why I say theoretical is because the speed can be hindered by other factors, programs or services that are running on your PC e.g. antivirus, antispam, system services, if you are still using the PC to browse the internet, etc. These items contribute to the time it takes and the speed of the transfer. In laymans terms, if you take the car analogy, even if your car can do 280KM/h - unless you have a straight road with no bends and ideal traffic conditions - it is unlikely you will be able to stay constantly at 280KM/h.

So - when backing up large amounts of data, always remember to do it at appropriate times e.g. run your backup overnight, and leave and extra half hour or so to accommodate for other things that the PC may need to do.

Print Screen with Apple MAC (OS X 10.5 - Leopard)

2008-05-15T16:58:00.007+08:00

For those of you who are used to the Print Screen (PrtScn) function in Windows you will know that you will get the whole screen if you just press PrtScn and you will get the selected window if you press ALT+PrtScn. You then have to paste the captured screen into an appropriate program e.g. Word Pad or Microsoft Paint.

Apple Mac has a different approach to this. (I have tried this on OS X 10.5 Leopard only)

To print screen on the Mac
Press the combination of the - SHIFT + Mac COMMAND Key (Flower Key) + 3
This will give you a full print screen.

To print a selection of the screen
Press the combination of the SHIFT + Mac COMMAND Key (Flower Type) + 4
The mouse pointer will turn into a selection target, click drag and release and it will printscreen the selected area for you.

The files of the printscreens are typically placed on the desktop as .PNG files

COM SURROGATE STOPPED WORKING Error

2008-05-13T09:13:00.002+08:00

Have you got your hands on a new video file only to find that it is causing your system to crash coming up with a - COM SURROGATE STOPPED WORKING - issue..?

There are several possibilities, however the most likely issue would be incompatible CODECS being used on the VISTA operating system. When you open the folder containing the video you want to view, VISTA automatically tries to preview the file for you. If you have loaded on an older codec e.g. XP Codec Pack, then the COM SURROGATE error emerges. This is because the VISTA is trying to run the preview using the older codec which is not compatible and stops the system.

There are two main ways of overcoming this issue.

Disable automatic preview or thumbnails for the folder / operating system
Download the latest codec pack

If you are like me and like to load up all the codecs so that you can watch all the necessary videos that travel past your desktop, then it is best you get your hands on the latest codec pack. The one I have found works best for my needs is VISTA CODEC PACK which you can download for free. The download is about 18MB so be patient (if you have a mediocre broadband connection).