RHFtech™ Write on Tech » Uncategorized

Simple way to wipe Windows user data

Richard Frisch — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:50:06 +0000

People often ask me how to wipe their old computer that they want to give away.

An easy way to do this is to:

Open Control Panel
Go to User Accounts
Create a new administrative user account.
Log out of your existing account.
Log into the new account you created in step 3, above.
Go Control Panel > User Accounts
Delete the old account(s). Answer yes when asked if you want to delete the user files.

Your personal files are deleted when the old user account is deleted. The operating system and installed applications remain intact and the new user can immediately make use of the machine.

You can also find free utilities online that will wipe the free hard drive space, obscuring the detritus of the old user accounts.

Broadcasting television is complex

Richard Frisch — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:28:01 +0000

One of my gigs is managing the government cable TV channel for my town. Broadcasting a simple town meeting is complex. Last night I thought about it as I was setting up for the Board of Selectmen meeting.

How complex is it? It takes over 20 pieces of equipment in our facilities, working properly, to create a successful broadcast. This does not include the numerous cables and connectors that also have to do their jobs, the cable company’s equipment, nor the operator who needs to know what all these things do and needs to stay awake and hopefully alert during the broadcast.

Rebroadcasting is another story.

Twitter’s biggest star is a man in his 70s

Richard Frisch — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 13:54:15 +0000

The content previously published here has been withdrawn. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Snow Leopard, snow job or honest upgrade

Richard Frisch — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:24:16 +0000

Apple recently released Snow Leopard ("SL") the latest iteration for OS X, the Mac operating system. It replaces Leopard, the previous version. The price, $29 for a single license or $49 for a family five pack, is modest by Apple standards.

Should you upgrade?
The simple answer is yes, but with caveats.

Your Mac must be a relatively recent vintage that uses Intel chips rather than the older PowerPC architecture. Apple says you must be running Leopard and not Tiger, an earlier OS, to use the inexpensive upgrade. If you have Tiger you are supposed to buy the more expensive Snow Leopard Box Set, $169 for a single license or $229 for a family five pack. There are reliable reports that the $29/$49 Snow Leopard DVD works just fine with Tiger.

Snow Leopard reminds me of when Microsoft first released Vista. Vista was fine if installed on a new machine and surrounded by new hardware with Vista drivers. Many applications worked without modification on Vista. Many others needed to be upgraded. However, if your hardware lacked a Vista compatible driver or your application was incompatible, you found yourself frustrated and angry.

If you are a typical Mac user who uses a few applications—a browser, an office application suite, and a few others—you will be done after the upgrade. You may not notice much difference but you won’t be frustrated by incompatible hardware or software. If you are a power user, a graphics designer, or a videographer, you will find that many of the applications you rely on need to be upgraded or replaced.

Since this is a major system change, it is important that you backup your data at a minimum. I recommend a complete system drive backup if you have a large enough backup device.

I suggest you upgrade your software before installing Snow Leopard. Run the Software Update… link under the Apple menu icon . Run the Microsoft AutoUpdate app if you have Microsoft Office installed.

You can also install the Dashboard widget App Update, from Georg Kaindl. It automatically checks for updates to your installed software and advises you if updates are available. It provides links to the update at http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/.

You can find more compatibility information for most applications at http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/.

I installed Snow Leopard on two machines, a MacBook Pro 15" (vintage 2007) and a Mac Pro (vintage 2008) with minor issues, mostly application related. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to run the upgrade.

The MacBook Pro is my Mac testing machine. It has lots of applications, many of which have older PowerPC code. These programs needed to be upgraded and needed me to load Rosetta, an optional Snow Leopard install. It is a dynamic translator that allows legacy PowerPC applications to run on Intel processors.

The Mac Pro is used as a media server. It has video display issues because of the limited video drivers in Leopard. I had hopes that SL would remedy this problem because it comes with enhanced HDTV display resolutions. It did not. The same driver display resolution issue continues.

Note: See I should have gotten a Windows computer instead of a Mac Pro and Follow-up to the Mac Pro post for more information on this problem.

Is Snow Leopard worth the price?
I am underwhelmed by SL. I wonder if Apple wanted to rain on the Microsoft Windows 7 parade and this was the best they could do. If so, it is a mist, not a downpour. Windows 7 is a huge leap forward for the user. Snow Leopard is not.

Is Snow Leopard worth the cost? No. It feels like what Microsoft would call a service pack, which is always free. Many of Snow Leopard’s enhancements, particularly the accessibility enhancements, should have been released long ago. Yes, SL feels snappier than Leopard. Faster is good. It has some user interface (UI) improvements, like the new Exposé, yet you will be hard pressed to notice any difference after installing it. But go ahead buy it. Install it. Apple will be happy if you do.

For some additional information on what is new for the end user see Gina Trapani’s Snow Leopard’s Four Best Improvements (for Civilians).

CopyPasteCharacter.com makes Windows Charmap less necessary

Richard Frisch — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:09:43 +0000

Which tool is better Windows Charmap, Mac OS X Character Palette or the web-based CopyPasteCharacter.com?

Five years ago I wrote the following tip:

Charmap – Oddball Characters

We all need to insert strange characters into our text from time-to-time, whether it’s the copyright © symbol or the symbol for degree °, or a fraction. You can use Word’s Insert Symbol menu command to accomplish this or charmap.exe to search for that character. One problem with both of these methods is that you are presented with a table of all the characters and it is often hard to find that special graphic symbol when looking at so many.

The solution to this conundrum is

1. Run charmap (Select the Start button, then Run…, type in ‘charmap’ and press OK or hit Enter on the keyboard)
2. Check the Advanced View checkbox
3. Select Unicode for the ‘Character Set’ combobox
4. Select Unicode Subrange for the Group by combobox
5. A small Group By window will open with a list of choices to group characters by.

Now all you have to search through is a subset of the characters rather than the several hundred characters in the font.

–End of old tip–

CopyPasteCharacter.com
If you want to quickly grab some of these characters from any computer point your browser to http://www.copypastecharacter.com/

When you select a character on this Adobe Flash page it is automatically copied into the computer’s copy/paste buffer. Select Paste from the cursor context menu to put it into your document.