Is using old machine really worth it?

You can do all sort of things with the old hardware. Here's some nice article about it, as well as you can check on few of my earlier posts. However there is one reason not to use old hardware for any of those purposes.
Plain and simple - old hardware tend to die at some point. Add a Murphy's law to that, it will die when you least expect and desire it to happen.
A death of experimental web development server will probably only cost you a small disappointment (yeah, and I do hope you backed your code up), while a file server with the family movie collection can really be upsetting.
The best way of dealing with that is firstly to decide how critical this machine will be. If its a file server, make sure to have new hard disks for it (and make a backup!).
If its a firewall machine, keep another one like that in case of a major failure.
I actually came across the situation whenever old machines were used as a firewalls, and every time they failed, it caused a major disaster with the few hours downtime for the whole business (home business I should add, so it wasn't that bad).
The components you really should look out for are

• Hard disks. Normally they live for 3 years, no more. (yeah yeah, I know, you probably have one that lived for 12, but not if the machine is constantly on). Therefore 3 years is what you can rely on, after - you're on your own.
• PSUs. They break a lot. Especially the cheap ones. Especially if the computer is not on UPS. Especially if you don't even have surge protected power board. Especially in the countries like Australia, where you have power surges every summer, quite a few times.
• RAM. They used to break a lot in the old machines, for newer machines its no longer the case. In fact most of the new RAM you buy these days comes with the lifetime warranty.
  For old machines its still the case so beware.

To conclude, if you really want an appliance for a mission critical tasks, and don't want to spend too much money, I'd strongly suggest you buy a low-end, but a brand new machine. Saves you some headache, at least for next couple of years. If you're enthusiast, and you want to screw around to with the old junk, feel free to do so, but keep the backups.

Correcting Red-Eye effect - easy, free, and quick

And best of all, you don't need to install any software if you run Windows XP or newer. You really can quickly get rid of a Red Eye effect within few seconds using MSPAINT!

Okay, here's what you do. Open image you want in MSPAINT

(I use a picture of a girl with a red-eye effect from google images), and draw two black circles around the eyes (don't worry, everything is under control!). Three seconds work with the brush and the girl is now wearing a pair of fancy mean sun glasses.
You can alter the shape and the size, just play around with that a bit.
But what if the person on the picture already wearing glasses? Like that guy here -
All you gotta do, is to carefully select it, and paint it black.
And there you go. Now you're fully equiped on the superb technique on how to get rid of a red eye effect on a windows computer

How to remove virus/malware from your Windows computer

There are million of software you can use to remove a virus from your machine, but question here is, how much time do you want to spend on it?

Here's the simple procedure that I use, and it so far worked for me at 100% cases, require 1 - 3 hours, and it doesn't require you spending any money.

1. Uninstall current AV you have. Since it couldn't do the job for locating the virus infected your machine, its no use for us at this stage.
2. Download and install Malwarebytes anti-malware. This one works good particularly against rogue anti-viral programs like Green AV, and Antivirus XP 2009/2010 and so forth. Run a quick scan, and once its finished, remove the threats. Test your machine after. If there are any signs of viral activity, like if the machine is running slow, or browser take you to a wrong place go to part 3, otherwise make a backup of your computer, and enjoy.

3. Download and run combofix. It takes 10-20 minutes, and works very well against hacked browsers, and some rootkits on your system. Same test once it is finished (and rebooted)

4. If its still not good, don't waste any more time. The infection is too severe and its time for plan B. First thing to do is to backup your computer. I do it with Acronis TrueImage, but you can use free CloneZilla for this purpose.

5. Re-install your machine. Make a fresh install, drivers and software. Use the backup to recover your files.

6. If its still not good(!), it a very rare cases there's an infected BIOS. Take the battery out of your motherboard (if you're on the desktop), wait for 5 minutes, reconfigure the BIOS, and reinstall system again.

Should be crystal clear at this stage.

P.S. If you were looking for a silver bullet here, sorry there isn't any.

how to restart groupwise service on linux

It should answer the question of the guy bounced from the query 'restart groupwise 8 linux'

So, in order to restart groupwise on linux, login on the machine as root and do the following:

# /etc/init.d/grpwise stop

# /etc/init.d/grpwise start

(Send 'Thanks' to Captain Obvious)

Important things to know about Buying Business Computers - Warranty

Whenever you are about to acquire new computers for your business, you are looking into a quite a fortune of money to spend. In a recent days, it could be especially painful for small and medium business, so here's a simple guide on how to invest your money wisely, in regards of acquiring new computers for your business.

Whether you have an in-house IT department, or you outsource it, you should listen to their advice, but not always take it as the truth in last instance.

Here are the common troubles you could end up with:

Scenario 1:

A local IT guy/department decide to buy Components and build some computers by hand, reducing a cost of the machine. This scenario is a no-no. You don't want an assembly line, and a components warehouse anywhere near your office, unless you run a data center (which is whole other story!)

There are too many downsides of this scenario. For instance you run out of supplies and the IT guy moved on or got fired, so you wouldn't know who the supplier was, and how the warranty was handled.

So as I said, its a bad practice. Don't do it.

Scenario 2:

An IT company who's taking care of your business propose computers that they build themselves. This scenario is a bit of a gray area, since it might end up, that they really do a good job, and it might end up that they could really make a cut on the price, and provide a better service then some vendors (especially if they are at your local). But the questions you want to ask them are: who's providing a warranty on these boxes, and how it will be handled.

To match a big vendors, you are looking into a long term (2-3 years warranty per workstation), and it should be repaired by a next business day.

The important thing here, that every single component is on warranty is not good enough. Here, I tell you why: If say hard disk is broken, somebody will have to first diagnose that its a hard disk, find out from the company who manufactured it about the warranty procedure, and submit the procedure. With some hardware vendors, the warranty returns could take days or even weeks, and your machine is not anywhere close to being repaired yet. It ends up, you'll have a bigger downtime, and you'll have to pay extra for it.

So, to sum up, if the computer vendor who you get computer from is taking care of the warranty, then its good, otherwise, don't do it.

Scenario 3:

An IT department or outsourced IT company propose a branded machines for the good price.

This scenario is usually 'yes-yes'. But there are still few things to look out for. As I said, look at the warranty conditions on the offer proposed. Sometimes, some vendors (not pointing any fingers, but it starts with D.) like to propose a ridiculous deals with a 90 days warranty. Not good enough for business – 2-3 years onsite, NBD – that's what you should be looking for.

Missing Outlook Quick Contacts!

If you are just copied over your pst files after some migration or re-install, your quick contacts will still be missing. The best way to get them back is to go to your backed up (or old) machine, and get the nk2 file out of your old profile. It should be located in Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.nk2

 

Copy it to your new installation - same location, and Voila.

SUSE Studio Review

SUSEStudio is a new web application that allows to package, pre-configure, customise and brand your OpenSUSE or SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution. It is very useful for those who want to create their own servers or appliances for both real or virtual hardware.
The configuration process is very easy to use, especially if you are familiar with the SUSE standard installation process, which is also fairly easy.


From the first glance, it was very easy to follow, though some limitation were already quite visible on the Configuration section. The part that did upset me the most, is that you cannot pre-configure any (or most) of the services you install. Like I cannot configure Samba, or Apache or anything like that.
Upseting, but acceptable, I'd say. Later I discovered that you can do these things, while actually running the Test Drive. Which is indeed a hot function - you can run your Operating System right off your web browser, and make all changes live!

To sum up, SUSE Studio is that it is a easy to use, professional tool for customising, branding, packaging and pre-configiure custom OpenSUSE or SUSE Enterprise distributions.
The only disadvantages I have found so far were the fact that you cannot pre-configure things, and the build time is not exactly that quick.

Before you can use it, you'll have to apply for it here