Daily Cup of Tech

OK. I know they are called weekly polls but I completely forgot! So, this week, I am asking our readers to tell me how technical they consider themselves to be.

Are you a noobie still wondering why anyone would build a cup holder into a computer? Or are you an uber-geek wondering why £337 1$n’7 m0r3 p0pµ£4r? Either way, let me know where you are at in this week’s poll.

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It has recently come to my attention that there are several applications online that perform a number of the same tasks that some of my big, bloated, expensive desktop applications do. I thought, “I wonder what else it out there?” So my quest began!

The result of that quest is 35 Web Based Application Alternatives. It provides a number (35 to be exact) of applications that you can use online either when you do not have your desktop version available to you or in replace of the desktop version all together. Very cool!

Oh, by the way, did I mention that they are all free?

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My entry is going to be quick today as I lost most of my day to hardware failures and bad customer support.

Today was a living example of how to and how not to provide customer service. To begin with, I got great service from Dell and Telus today and I got horrible service from Wal-Mart.

Dell
I had a hard drive failure in one of my server drives. The short story: Contacted Dell at noon, had a new server and tech installed at 3:PM. Excellent service.

Telus
Was thinking about going to a different carrier for cell phone coverage. The short story: cut my present plan by $12 per month and a free phone on a two year plan that should have cost me $50.

Walmart
Went to get pictures of my three year old at Walmart. Session was to last 15 minutes. The short story: did not get into out 3:40 appointment until 5:00. When asked the problem, was told they were instructed to overbook by manager. When called manager, got answering machine that cut me off after about a minute. Still waiting to see if they get back to be in the guaranteed 24 hours.

Verdict
Will buy more Dell products. Will stay with Telus. Could not pay me to go back to Walmart.

Whew! I feel better. I promise more tech related stuff tomorrow.

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Someone screwed up and I needed to fix it. A file needed to be edited on every computer on the entire network. What a pain!

But, with my trusty “when life gives you lemons, make lemon-aide” attitude, I turned it into a cool automation project with AutoIt and had the entire task done in about an hour (Take that Lenscrafter!).

I throught the whole story, script and all, into Modify Every Computer on the Network. It’s a quick read and a good script to have on hand.

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People often ask me how I get my USB drive to automatically run a program or set up specific options in the contect menu. In fact, changing the USB drive icon is probably one of the most frequently asked question. All of these questions are answered in USB Drive AutoRun.inf Tweaking.

This is a very in-depth article but it will let you make your USB drive do exactly what you want it to do. I even include an Autorun Dabbler’s Toolkit that you can load onto an empty USB drive and play with!

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