Run multiple OS's- inside your current PC! Too cool (& free!)...

I finally had a few minutes to test-drive the free "VMWare player" from the good folks at vmware.com- & it's very cool, very fun!

Unlike "dual-booting" a PC- which involves partitioning the physical hard drive & dealing with bootloader issues & other possible snags...VMWare's player gives you the freedom to test & run however many OS's you'd like without danger of somehow screwing up your "real" PC.

Basically, you download & install the player, download & add an operating system (OS) of your choice, & run it. Your actual PC is known as the "host" for the added OS, known as the "guest". These OS's are considered "virtual appliances" or "virtual machines".

What the player is actually doing is "emulating" a set of virtual hardware for these OS's to run on. It's like having a PC within a PC. The various OS's exist within a folder- whenever you want to ditch them, delete their folder.

You have options, at install, to designate how much memory (RAM) to allocate (the RAM in your real PC is utilized- so leave enough for the host). Depending on how much physical RAM you have, you can have more than one OS running consecutively.

You can set it up to auto-connect to the internet & you'll also have the ability to "drag & drop" files between the host & guest OS's.

In addition to the OS offerings directly from the Vmware Co., there are also community-built OS's available for download from the site. Once you download an OS to your PC's hard drive, just open the player & "import" the downloaded file.

Check it out- it's really phenomenal...

Norton breaks AOL

I only list this fiasco as it happens to relate to me, personally.

The previous week's McAfee incident gave me no grief- as I service mainly home users who have no idea what Excel is. My condolences to the businesses in the US who lost mega-important data as McAfee decided their Excel docs were vermin- & deleted them...

This week I was asked, by a relative, to "look at" their PC- an AOL box that could no longer access the internet. I spent quite a while trying to discern why this happened. A free account to Netzero (which I keep exactly to figure this sort of case out) connected without issue? Then, I happened upon this story:

This gaff, by Norton Antivirus, decided that the mechanism for AOL users to connect to the internet was suspect- & so, unceremoniously booted all AOL users who attempted to connect to the WWW to be "kicked off". Worst still, is the fact that in order to know there's a fix, these AOL users will need to know to disable Norton to receive the "untainted" update. My experience w/home user Norton is horrible- I would rather see the free AVG & Zonealarm in it's place. Much less resources used & very sleek & streamlined, by comparison.

So- if you happen to read this blog- dump Norton & get AVG/Zonealarm free. You'll be so much better off. I am on cable internet, always on, 24/7- & have never had an issue in 8 years...

Perfect Pairing- if you like music? Legal music swapping is here!

I was recently sent a link to check out a new, free music service called Pandora.

Pretty neat- I set out to "teach" it the sorts of music I already like & it set out to search & play other, similar music. It's a very cool way to find new artists/music. I have it playing as I type this.

Ok, now just a couple of days ago, I read about a new CD swapping service called "la-la" (silly name- whatever...).

I put my name in to join & got an "accepted" email yesterday. I went to the site & registered (free).

The deal is this: you list CD's you want & CD's you have to swap. The entire transaction costs you $1 + .49 to ship. The 1st CD you want is free (though you have to wait to see if anyone has it- I listed 6 just so my odds were better). After that, in order to be on the eligible-to-swap list, you must list at least 5 CD's you have to trade. My 1st "want" is on it's way to me now (Zero 7- When It Falls).

I've just gone through my very large CD collection to weed out the "seldom listened to" discs & will add them to la-la after I make sure the hubby concurs.

The neat thing about la-la is that it's legal, it's cheap, & they are giving 20% of the proceeds to the artists whose CD's are traded.

Interesting?

Tracy ;)