What exactly does it do?

This program will order all your programs in the start menu, and keep them there. They will not move around. I always found this annoying, because I would go to look for a program, and I wouldn’t be able to find it right away, because the order changed.

This program also gives you a command and search option right on the start menu. The search function will try and find the program if you input it into the box. This is very helpful, I have been down a road where I couldn’t find a program I wanted to launch!

The start menu has also been made more friendly to using a keyboard 100% and not having to touch the mouse. For instance, I can hit the windows key and be presented with the programs menu. There are then different areas in the program list assigned letters. Once I hit that letter, some numbers for each program in that area show up. Then I can hit the number, and that program is selected. Then I can launch the program. This is very cool. In fact, I like this feature the most.

There are also tabs in place, so you can move to the quick start menu easily, and put in programs you use often.

New programs are highlighted, for quick reference. This is very helpful, because I would look around for a newly installed program for ages sometimes. If too many programs take up the screen, then they are scrolled through. I’ve never had this happen to me, but I suppose if it got to that point it would be useful.

I also really liked being able to re-size the menu and move it around wherever I wanted.

There’s a few different skins to choose from, such as Vista start menu classic, Windows classic, and Windows XP. Depending on what skin you’re using in windows, one of these skins will obviously blend better.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed using this software, I think everyone who runs windows should give it a shot. It really does make things easier to manage. It is basically the way the start menu *should* have been setup to begin with. I did not test the Pro version, but from their site it has some extended features like quick launch, quick uninstall, and menu customization. A lot of the complaints seem to be that you can’t customize the free version. However, the free version seems to have most of the features you would really want. In case you’re wondering, there was no spyware/adware attached to this program, and I’m actually surprised about that. It is very easy to uninstall if you don’t want it anymore, it doesn’t change any system settings.

You can check it out for yourself here: http://www.vistastartmenu.com/

Here’s the real kicker, Comodo is free! ZoneAlarm Pro is not. The regular ZoneAlarm doesn’t come with nearly as many features as the free version of Comodo does. I think I have just found my new favorite software firewall and antivirus. Anyone not running something like ZoneAlarm or Comodo needs to go get one of the two now. No matter how savvy you think you are, there are a lot of strange things on the internet that could trick you, and Comodo or ZoneAlarm will block such things.

In conclusion, Comodo gets my vote now, ZoneAlarm is good, but I don’t think it’s as good as Comodo even in the “pro” version.

I have found, that for chatting Irssi can be very powerful. You can connect to any number of networks, and rotate through them with ctrl-x, in the same window. Then you can join any channel on that network. It uses an interesting window system, where you change windows with /window #. There are many other features like auto connect etc.

I find myself rotating through the windows a lot to see what’s going on in each, but that’s expected. It’s really not a problem. I like to have my SSH/FTP or whatever else right next to each other in the command prompt. Tabbing programs is great.

There are many plug ins available for Irssi, that are perl scripts. They are very easy to install and run. One thing many people do not like to start is there is no user list off to the side. This can be remedied by installing a user list plug in, something like this http://www.bellot.net/cyril/contribs:irssi-nicklisthoriz . I have yet to use it, since I haven’t really found a need for a nicklist. When you join a channel, it gives you a list of users, that you can generally use the PgUP button to see.

In conclusion, Irssi is a very useful command line based IRC application. I believe the developers did a great job. I’ve enjoyed using it quite a bit, since it keeps my programs more organized, and it’s easy to use. Check it out!

Yep.

You’ll find that with me, I often take things to an extreme level and I’m not satisfied with people doing things for me. Before I launched this website, I had no previous knowledge of how servers worked. I get curious, and I do things, kind of like a kid. I wanted to know what it was like to manage my own server, without having to pay the high costs associated with dedicated servers.

What have I been doing? I’ve been playing with VPS technology for quite some time now. Now that I have finally set everything up, and learned quite a bit, I would not recommend an unmanaged, no control panel VPS to the average user. Why? Well it’s really not that easy to setup if you don’t know what you’re doing. Especially if you have no Linux knowledge, it might seem downright impossible. I did have past Linux experience, but this did not excuse me from screwing up.

Still, I did not do everything manually. ISPConfig is helping me out with the Bind9 configuration files, FTP, website statistics, e-mail, SSL, etc. ISPConfig isn’t easy to setup in the first place if you’re not familiar with all of the programs it comes with, there is quite a bit of manual configuration that needs to be done *before* you compile ISPConfig. Also, try to not install other control panels before ISPConfig as this WILL cause you problems. Other control panels play with configuration files on all the host essential programs. What’s that mean? Well, when you go in and install ISPConfig after having a previous control panel, some configuration files are messed up, and the program will not work with ISPConfig. My e-mail was screwed up because of this.

Yesterday the site was basically down. Why?

Apache and MySQL seem to think you have unlimited resources, they allocate way more than what you actually need. This caused MySQL to crash, thus causing the database error you may or may not have seen.

If you have a low memory VPS, or any VPS for that matter, you probably need to go in and edit the apache2.conf. It’s not hard to find the values that need to be modified, google it. Next, you’ll want to configure MySQL as well to allocate less resources, it really doesn’t need that much. Again, just google this as well, there are plenty of articles about this. If you’re lazy and don’t know how to use google, here’s an article that basically shows what you need to modify for MySQL and Apache.

These modifications made my server go from crashing constantly, to having plenty of free memory. I don’t know what the default values are for, perhaps sites that are getting an unlimited amount of unique hits per day. I think this is  possibly why people complain about VPS performance being worse than shared – they have yet to properly configure everything.

There you have it. I own my host, I have full control to install whatever software I wish. Something I did not have on my shared host. I have a dedicated IP, I have my own name server. I have my own mail server. All of this for only about $60/year. Amazing, huh?

Of course for regular people I believe shared hosting is the best option Either that or get a managed VPS with a control panel.

Setting up a multiple OS platform for is pretty straightforward. I recommend you buy another hard drive, because in my experience partitions are nothing but trouble. If you want to go with partitions, then just use tools to do so, there are many of them out there I used to use Partition Magic, but you can easily do this from the DOS prompt as well.

Linux

Linux is a highly useful operating system, with many programming tools pre-installed, and it’s really not that hard to get used to. (for me)

I’ve tried many different distributions of Linux, including SuSe, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Slackware Linux. Slackware Linux is my favorite Linux distribution. Why? It’s stable, it gets the job done. I don’t need all the fancy tools they include in Ubuntu. Often I will also install Dropline Gnome onto Slackware, and choose whether I want to run KDE or Gnome. Slackware Linux also offers a few other GUI setups that are less resource hungry, if your PC isn’t up to date, Linux and slackware is the best bet for you.

Linux generally requires an Ext3 file system, but there are others that it uses as well, so in partition magic select that when you go to make the partition, if you’re doing it that way, if you’ve purchased an entirely new hard drive, then continue on.

Now, you’ve successfully partitioned your hard drive or bought a new one. What’s next? Well, just download the distribution you want, burn onto a CD and look into your motherboard for directions on booting from the CD drive.  Insert the disc during start up, and wallah start installing Linux.

You might need to format your hard drive to Ext3, or if you made a partition, it should already be formatted. Just install everything, it will also most likely install grub or lilo, (I’ve used both) install that to your boot sector on your main drive. You should be about done now, the PC will restart, and you will be prompted to select Windows or Linux. Depending on your distribution, it may require some setup to get into the gui. Slackware linux generally requires a bit of command line work before you can access the GUI, so you’ll have to read a bit. (here) That guide helped me when I first took on the challenge of installing slackware, interestingly enough, slackware was the first distribution of Linux I ever installed.

Hackintosh

Hackintosh is another story alltogether, the same applies for setting up partitions or a new hard drive however. You may have to try multiple discs of hackintosh before the automated installer works for your system. You also have to check to see if your computer components are compatible with Hackintosh. To do this, I advise you read over a few things at insanelymac. There’s also a “legality” issue with running hackintosh, so I’m not promoting it or anything I may or may not have installed hackintosh, I can’t remember

You’re going to have to create a “blank” partition, where it has not been formatted. This is because Partition Magic does not format to the Mac OSX file system, and neither does any other utility. This is done through the installation. Also, if you’ve purchased a different hard drive, then just leave it unformatted. Hackintosh is quite touchy with hardware compatibility, because it’s expecting your computer to be a mac, and macs basically just have USB ports. You’ll have to look for modification scripts on insanelymac, or if they don’t exist, then your hardware wont work and don’t continue. Many people purchase certain components on purpose to make it 100% hackintosh compatible, because their system will be MUCH cheaper than a Mac, but a lot of manual work is required. I’ve never been 100% hackintosh compatible myself.

Anyway, once the installation is done, then you might have to go into the bios and select the drive that hackintosh was installed on to be booted first. There are some utilities that can be modified to make dual booting with hackintosh work without doing it this way, but it is somewhat difficult.

Windows

Multi-booting with different versions of windows is a real pain. I currently have Vista and XP installed on separate hard drives, and have not had any issues, but it’s a real pain to setup. Each windows version will vary, Vista is very difficult to get working with dual-boot configurations. It requires some editing of the boot.ini file. Also, some of the boot files from windows XP have to be transferred to the Vista hard drive. This is because it is booting Vista first, and using the Vista bootloader. From there you select either XP or Vista. I can try to help you if you really want this kind of setup, but I’m not going to delve into it here, unless I get a request then I will edit this with the needed info. (Maybe I’m being lazy not wanting to look things up.. What you see here all came from my head )

There are some tools out there that can help you out with multiple Windows versions, I believe that every version except Vista works similar to Linux, but you have to edit the boot.ini file, or install one of the many OS selector applications out there.

Thanks, I hope you enjoyed reading this, and if you need help, I’m here, just go post in the forums

A goal of mine someday is to go Quad Boot. I love to mess around with different operating systems and have a choice when I boot up This is a general overview, to get you started on the road to multiple OSes, if I get a good response on this article I might make a more complete tutorial.

Small update: It seems Ubuntu has made it so you no longer have to partition your hard drive in order to install it. It will run with windows, apparently. I’m going to test this out soon.