Of being lucky to work for mid-sized company...

• As a IT addict I'm on the process of moving my personnal computer at home from MS Windows XP to Windows 7... I'll assume the consequences !

• Due to the mass marketing on this product from Microsoft, I have some private clients requesting - and insisting -to come in order to switch toward this new system... I'll not complain : they'll have a backup of their data made by me , and by reformating the computer from scratch , they'll feel to have a faster computer... and they'll pay me !

• On my main job activity I 'll not . Why ? because I'm lucky enough working for a midsize company which is not rich enough to jump immediately on every new blinking solution ! That's said, I'll do my way : setup one computer with all application; test them all; chose one   test user  and work with him on this new setup; and IF SUCCESS, we'll plan to implement it slowly...  until then the company will not spend a cent , will not have lost data, end user will not be disturbed... My point of view will remains " better to have a little old system that works , than jumping on the unknown".
  

 My key goal about Windows 7 for now ? convince all requester (from enduser to managers) that it has to be done with methode and not in emergency, despite the internet and media buzz !

What do you think of my position ?

Of basic security reminder...

Sometime security depends on end users in the company ! This concerns all employee with a mail address whatever the system is.

Ask them do not leave emails (webmail or pop mail with local client) containing : password, login, (mot de passe, profil, identifiant mot de passe en Français) and all other account information. These emails can come from eCommerce websites, bank website (poor security there!) or web 2.0 sites ...  Please just kill these emails once noticed login and password... and empty email trashbin.

Also kill the ones requesting a login to reset password...

Do it NOW : there is obviously one or two pending...

PS Don't keep this information on an excel or word file saved on the desktop with name 'passwords'! or worth on a postit! over your screen or keyboard.

Difficulty to say 'No, It is impossible'...

This morning a user wanted to recover à file saved with problems on the networkyesterday at 7:30 PM. She thought having saved it... but the file was nowhere ! We both scanned file server, local drive, temp folders and trash bin... without result.

I had then to say : "No it is impossible to recover your file , you have to do it again"
She Answered : "I was almost sure it was a problem, thanks for helping"

This means I saved a lot of time by saying "NO , I can not"...and of course explaining this answer !

Not only on support, but also regarding projects, I'm only starting on this : being able to say "No".When it is impossible whatever the reason is : technical, out of time, unknow process for me, and then I save time.

What is your experience on this ? Are you able to say "No" ?

Du site de la SNCF...

Il nous arrive de plus en plus de faire des réservation de train en ligne via le site dédié aux voyages de la sncf

C'est un des plus gros sites de France et qui génère le plus de revenus !

Mais quelle pagaille : annonces et publicités, clignotements et liens inutiles polluent le déroulement de la réservation. A tel point que je conseille à tous sa version pour mobile : http://voyages-sncf.mobi/

Comparez :

Sobre et efficace, il fonctionne aussi sur votre ordinateur !

C'est peut-être (chacun ses gouts) plus joli, mais certainnement pas plus clair, donc plus efficace...

Serons-nous bientot tous obligé de rechrcher partout la version mobile des sites pour gagner en efficacité ?

Messieurs les "créas" des 'web agencies' à vos copies !

PS : une astuce : utilisez Firefox et AdBlock Plus pour déjà supprimer la plupart des publicités...

Shame on you computer store !...

Today I had to fix a personnal computer : HP slimline :

According to the user, it is so slow that his son never used it well... prefering his father laptop !..even to watch pictures.

I first reinstalled the computer from scratch with standard VISTA ; in other words, no additionnal crapware (*). Then I installed Avast and MS Office 2003.

But, despite 2 Gb of memory, MS Vista performance reported 1/5 !!

I discovered the graphic card is the bottom neck : only 64M of memory when a laptop today is running an integrated 256 MB...

I do not blame HP, as when using it with MS Office it runs ok. However, everybody knows tday that a family computer will be used for games...

Don't you think that the vendor should have warn the end user ?

(*) all software installed by computer makers - supposed free- that in fact slow down the computer. Typically here the full last version of Norton.... that end user never paid for updates so probably infected his computer...

De la bibliothèque peu fournie...

Je reviens de la Bibliothèque de ma ville. J'ai encore constaté que la rayon informatique est -encore- sous dimensionné.

Pourquoi, alors que une bonne dizaine de poste connectés à Internet prouve une bonne volonté des responsables pour les nouvelles technologies, ce rayon est si petit : une cinquantaine d'ouvrages seulement ! Les rayons bricolages et jardinage sont amplement plus fournis.

Cette bibliothèque n'est pas la seule dans ce cas. J'ai constaté cela dans bien d'autres villes. Bien sur aucun livre sur les théories de management informatique , ni sur le budget informatique, la gouvernance ou autre sujet de fond...

La bibliothèque est un lieu fréquenté par les étudiants et les enfants actuels. Alors les volumes sur Multiplan (ancêtre de MS Excel) ou sur des traitements de texte dépassé n'ont aucun intérêt.

Une amélioration cependant : des ouvrage sur la dernière version de la suite MS Office 2007, les outils Web 2.0... et même la programmation JAVA !

Pensez-vous aussi que les bibliothèques devraient être plus fournies en ouvrage sur l'informatique ? La bibliothèque de votre quartier est-elle bien achalandée en volumes traitant de l'informatique ?

Of knowing geography !

No, France is not part of Africa, as seenon VOA web site today , but on my point of view more a key member of Europe !


This is browsing Internet pleasure : the joy of dicovering some major mistake !

... by the way this is supposed to be THE voice of America ;-)

What is the biggest mistake you've found ?

Encore une Erreur Installation inexpliquée ...

Ce matin je voulais essayer Google Chrome, en remplacement éventuel de Firefox, pour ce que cela pourrait m'apporter dans l'utilisation des services Google. Ma configuration est ultra classique : MS Windows XP-sp3...

Téléchargement sans problème, mais message d'erreur à l'installation:

Ces deux produits phare des deux leader du marché (google et microsoft) désirent consolider leur position de monopole ...

Pour les particuliers, pour les TPE, voir toutes les PME sans service informatique, ce genre de message est inconcevable ! Aucune explication, aucun recours possible... Tant que ce genre d'erreur se produira, le métier de dépanneur informartique, le support informatique , les hotlines... auront de beaux jours devant eux.

Comment faire pour qu'une application s'installe sur tous les environnements standards du marché ?

Quel profondeur donner à un message d'erreur ?

Vous êtes éditeur, programmeur, testeur, qu'en pensez-vous ?

Of Torrent risky downloads...

I recently discovered that some people I know, some Geek as they call themselves, are using Torrent downloads to get free MS Windows 7 and free MS Office 10 !

Two of them already got some major infections ! A third one had to completely reinstall his computer...

I was quite sure that Microsoft did not give any new product for free... Specially if the product is not stable ! RC programs and test phases are important project process...

This has been confirmed on the new blog of the new MS Office 10 team blog !

I never use torrent to download fake software and other 'free' tools, do you ?

Cloud Computing Meeting tonight !

Le cloud computing vague de fond ou mode ?

Le cloud computing et le web 2.0 sont les thèmes de mon mémoire à l'IMI. Alors ce soir j'assiste à un meeting dont les détails sont ici : cloudcamp-paris

En dehors du discours des fournisseurs, je suis interessé par trouver des infos dans ce domaine et observver l'engouement des intervenants et des auditeurs !

Alors , tous les informaticiens professionnels au CloudCamp de Paris ?
...Ou alors juste des pationnés et des geeks ?

Admin Passwrod Change Poll

Hello

as you might know , I'm a ZOHO application addict...

Today I discovered a tool allowing poll for free.

Immediate test : how often you're changing server admin password ?

...As in fact our has to be changed soon.

PS : didn't sucess to find such a tool on Google gadgets ? any suggestion ?

Didn't suceed to connect to my zoho accound so this poll is in demo mode, any idea why ?

Of an Alternative to...

'Please as we have no more credit, find a free equivalent to this software as we won't pay licences anymore ?

'Please find this tool running under Linux as we have this IT team using only Linux from now ?

'What can I use instead of MS Office at home ?

We, IT Lovers, are facing these questions daily...I discovered today , (thanks to lifehacker) , an excellent and just starting fantastic website :

AlternativeTo

Despite the system (win,MacOs,Linux... and even online !) you will find there a solution for any replacement. Not only software, but also solution or application (I've done a test to replace Facebook and Twitter !!!)

The top : this is a 2.0 view website : we can all improve it for better results !

I'll now keep it in my bookmarks just in the same tab that filehippo.com ! Will you ?

My only suggestion : please do this website multilanguage ;-)

Of Google Dashboard

I discovered today that Google has a good dasboard :Apps Status Dashboard

This allows anybody to have a clear view on Google Applications health... But some Google tools are missing , very important for me : Blogger !

Ok : there is for a status on Blogger service, but a way less clear !

Please, Mr Google, can you please add Blogger to the above dashboard ?

Risque de virus du au débat sur la loi HADOPI

Actuellement le débat sur la loi HADOPI fait couler beaucoup de bruit, ici en France et sur le web.

En resumé (désolé pour les puristes), un accès internet pourra être coupé pendant un an , en cas de téléchargement illégal...y compris (et surtout ?) pour les particuliers.

Je ne veux pas discuter ici Je ne reviendrai pas ici sur cette loi (*), mais sur une conséquence inatendue.

J'ai connais plusieurs boites aux lettres (yahoo,gmail, ...) qui recoivent un email :

Your internet access is going to get suspended

The Internet Service Provider Consorcium was made to protect the rights of software authors, artists.
We conduct regular wiretapping on our networks, to monitor criminal acts.

We are aware of your illegal activities on the internet wich were originating from

You can check the report of your activities in the past 6 month that we have attached. We strongly advise you to stop your activities regarding the illegal downloading of copyrighted material of your internet access will be suspended.

Sincerely
ICS Monitoring Team

Quand j'ouvre l'email on me confirme qu'une liste de mes téléchargements illégaux est jointe ! Et bien sur c'est un virus !

Alors restons vigilants : n'ouvrons pas ces emails et encore moins les documents attachés !!

(*) Juste une question : si je suis chez un FAI et que j'utilise une boite aux lettres Yahoo ou Gmail, recevrais-je les emails d'avertissement avant coupure ?

My own Eeexperience !

I had to attempt a meeting on 'cloud computing' ( a wonderful state of the art day from 01 Infomatique) (*). I decided to take notes on my new net book : the eeePC 900 , running Xandros system (linux).

I have been very positively surprise by the battery power : 3 hours long ! Here are the settings I configured :
- no wifi : Fn+F2
- no sound : Fn+F7
- decrease light : Fn+F3
- I did not used webcam of course !

Despite the chair were big , and very comfortable, the Netbook was on my knees... I have been very positively surprise by the heat from the boo tom of the computer : I've been able to work without suffering from hight temperature on my legs.

PS :did I mention it was running Xandros (linux) system (not MS Windows power consumer...), did I ? Yes, I did ;-)

I've been dispointed by the keyboard : may be because my fingers are to big, I mistyped very often some keys on the AZERTY keyboard... Specially with the key fn+End , they keys combination Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy and past...

Is this netbook one answer (among other...) to green coimputing ?

(*) I was there in order to get the more information as possible for my publication 'cloud computing and web 2.0' for my one year training at IMI...

Of not having emails

I'm reading this blog : ZenHabits and today discovered an interesting discussion about not using emails (Read article) !

I guess that with three professional email addresses , two personnal , one job hunting address and one junkspam address, I couldn't spend more than a week without reading mails !

More over, in the company I'm working at the moment, we're facing a huge problem of corrupted attachments inside MS Exchange 2003 server...

The Management Board requested me to be fully dedicated on this issue now as email is a key tool for daily work...

So , No , I think we could not leave emails today. What about you ?

Of opensource in daily work...

Once again , open source tool helped me.

I had to merge huge existing pdf files, without spending a money .

I discovered (thanks to Framasoft pingu !) the amazing free tool :

PDF Split And Merge Basic

Why use expensive Adobe tools, as this one is free and works perfectly !

On your side, are you using an pen source tool to replace expensive software ?

Of program size increase...

I think that some basic programs/tools will be definitly replaced by open source ones because of their size : like 2007/2008 19 to 26 M in one year for quicktime ! What about Acrobat Reader 9 : 25.4 Mb !...

We all need these great tools for what they're doing the best : multimedia/reader... Who cares about all improvement ?

Here's what I'm using : VLC (13.8) and FoxIt reader (2.56 Mo) ! They're only so simple without any extra ! Thy're doing their job, and doing it well...

The buzz is all about tiny computers called netbook with tiny ram disk space. These tools would be also my favs if I could have one of these.

Are you still using these sisk space killers ?

Of risky Win XP SP3...

To avoid anoyance with Win XP:

A little warning about auto-update your computer with Windows XP SP3... as one of my friend had to remove it ! It seems in some case this update makes computer to permanently reboot.

So except if you are working on a test platform, may I suggest to urgently wait before autoinstalling it .

If you're facing some problems, it is simple as a program to remove it !...back to reliable SP2.

Now to be honest , I installed it at work on a new fresh install without any problem since days... but was a virtual computer !

PS : please no comment about MAc or Linux here ;-)

Of long term backup...

Last week-end I was lucky enough to have a conference from a forest admin here in france and he pointed a curious fact : to manage our forest we have readable and valuable information (on papers, sometime only painted !) around 200 years old... but we are unabled to read data only 15 years old, since computers are used to manage this forest !

We , IT guys, are all aware of the backups necessity. The best practice of keeping backups in safe area, in at least two location and to try full restore from time to time. OK with that ?

Who tried to restore data only 5 years old ? then 15 years old or more ??

Some cloud solutions appearing now (Amazon S3) ; other SAN with fiber chanel ; they are only answering the technological question of today...what about in the future ?


... but in some years , how will we recover data from there ? Once software and systems will be updated... Should we all keep a paper version of every file ?

How do you plan to manage long term backups ?