There seems to be vulnerability with the server service. Most home machines will not use the server service but if you have or have ever had a file share on your computer then you probably have this service renabled on your Windows based computer

Oh, and judging by the hype and scrambling it would be very prudent to patch this as soon as possible. fast install, one reboot and your are safe.

• Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 patch download
• Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or 3 patch download
• Windows XP 64-bit Edition patch download
• Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or 2 patch download
• Windows Server 2003 64-bit Edition patch download
• Windows Vista with or without Service Pack 1 patch download
• Windows Vista 64-bit Edition with or without Service Pack 1 patch download
• Windows Server 2008 32-bit Edition patch download
• Windows Server 2008 64-bit Edition patch download

I have installed Apache the Web Server a few times at home just to serve sites and to have a functioning web server but had never done anything with Apache Tomcat.

So why do we need Apache Tomcat? Well one of my roles is the support of a Tier 1 app here at the anonymous place that I work. This application has interfaces that point to other systems that we either puch data to or more commonly consume data from. Our interfaces were all built using a third party EAI system with Oracle stored procedures to access these interfaces. The vendor has now changed the format that they want to use and we have a contractor in to rewrite the interfaces.

Now Apache Tomcat is going to be the application layer that speaks to the app as well as speaking to the interfaces. This should be a lot of fun as I try to get my head around how to admin an Application Server

This new notebook has the standard 9 inch screen that we have seen on the otheer netbooks on the market but is a little smaller hard drive and memory wise than I had hoped.

The hard drive is a solid state drive (flash?) and comes in sizes from 4 to 16 gigs and the memory starts at 512 megs which I feel is not enough to run Windows XP and I can not speak to the Ubuntu option so you need more memory.

So, If you get down to what is really acceptable I guess the starting price is more like $449. This $449 mini laptop has 1 GB of ram and a 16 Gig hard drive. The $349 version is only half a gig of ram and a 4 gig SSD drive running Windows XP or Linux

Now the gloves are off and we can see what everyone is going to do now that all the big players HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Acer as well as of course Asus have at least some models of mini netbooks out.

So is Google Chrome worth the hype?

Here are a few tidbits that I picked up and just wanted to highlight if you do indeed install and try out Google Chrome.

Fast and faster Javascript - The browser itself is really fast at rendering pages and the really new part is the new javascript rendering engine that makes all of those web 2.0 sites come up really quick

Add a homepage button - As you start to use Google Chrome you will notice that it is missing a lot of stuff on the top, the only thing that I really wanted was to add a homepage button. go to the wrench, to options, and in the middle of the basic tab you will find a “Add Home Page Button” button

Drag out windows - One neat feature is that you can drag out a single tab to become a new Google Chrome app so that you can have it independent of the original one you were running, also the tabs moving around very smoothly

No Firefox extensions - Something that stops me from moving from FireFox to Google Chrome is that there is no support yet for Firefox extensions, and the extensions, I think, are the best part of Firefox they really allow me to customize my web environment

Each tab is it’s own process - One good plus to Google Chrome is that each tab is it’s own process so if one tab is having trouble loading some code or a page it will not affect the rest of the Google Chrome tabs. I have had trouble in the past with FireFox with one bad tab hanging everything in FireFox.

Omnibox navigation - I am not too sure about the Omnibox, the idea of the omnibox is that you can type in a web address or a search query and Chrome will automatically see what you want and bring up that result, in Firefox it will do a “I feel lucky” and in the case of a search query it will return the first result from Google.

No Autospell checker - This is a real failing of Google Chrome. I am a crappy speller and in Wordpress or even when doing forum or blog commenting i love how FireFox will automatically underline errors in my spelling and give me the correct spelling with a simple right click.

Memory Hog? - I just read a great article by Andrew Wee about how the Chrome browser is a real resource hog and I can imagine that it is. If you had 10 or 15 tabs open there would be one process for the browser itself and then another process running independently for every one of those tabs. I have run the Google Chrome browser on a bunch of machines over the last day or so and really I have not seen any problems with performance, the browser loads quickly and renders pages just as queickly with one or 10 tabs open from what I have seen so far.

The new Google Browser is a very simple install and you should try it. Download it and see if the hype machine is right in saying that it is the best browser ever or if the hype is a little unjustified for your taste. I am finding it a great secondary browser today but it has a long way to go to get me to ditch FireFox.

I am not sure what Google can offer to make me move from FireFox, I am a web junkie and all the extensions that FireFox gives me are something that I can not live online without now. Saying that though I am still very excited as a company as big and innovative as Google could have a lot of ideas inside that no one has really thought of for a browser.

Apparently Chrome will only be available for Windows today but there will be ports for other operating systems coming.

Tech Crunch has pics of the new browser even before the release.

I am planning to buy another Dell Inspiron 1525 for the kids to fight over and am still waiting for the Netbook 910 to be announced and come out so that I can get one at the same time just for me.

So the first question anyone (including my wife) ask is “What is a Dell Netbook?” Dell is apparently releasing this mini notebook computer with a small 8.9 inch screen for people while on the move. This is the new version of a big PDA with the ability on a 120 gig hard drive to compose, save and view any type of file and to hook into hotspots.

The Dell Netbook will just be a small version of a notbook computer, as you can see in the picture above, with an onboard graphocs card and up to 1 gig of Ram. The OS is apparently going to be either Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux (think I will opt for Windows).

Of course I have not used a Dell Netbook yet, I have tried others including the one by Acer but lots of companies have one. Here is what I found.

Graphics - can be very slow, this is more of a small corporate type machine so it is not for gaming really but surfing instead.

Screen size - The netbooks have an 8,9 inch screen with 1024×600 resolution so the width is ok but the screen is a little short. I envision having to turn off a lot of toolbars

Keyboard - The keyboard on these units is a little smaller than a regular keyboard so it takes a bit of getting used to. I am sure that after an hour or so it will seem pretty natural.

Rumor has it these mini notebooks will be starting at $299. I hope that is the price as it will be perfect for what I am looking for.

This is the perfect little online laptop to travel with. the Dell Netbook i am hoping will be nice and light, able to save and forward messages, blog posts, save and sync files with a home network and really be the idea that laptops were going to be years ago, truly portable.

The Dell was supposed to be released on August 22nd but so far they are late. Today is August 26th and still no word from Dell or a mention on the website so the wait in my house continues.

I always like getting more info when I am looking at stock charts even if I am not buying any stocks.

Here is the Dell stock as an example, the new tabs are in the top right side where it has news stories about DELL.

Ten Tech Solutions To Improve Your Productivity

The list of the top 10 tips includes services that you may know like Jott but also has some little apps that are great like Texter and some app launchers. One of the great things I found in the article was a bunch of tips for cleaning up your inbox. My work inbox has 3500 messages and home is about the same.

I just found a page on the American Pai blog that show a few ways to make your computer look like a Mac. There are a few ways, changing browsers, adding a dock, adding Yahoo widgets and of course iTunes and a Leopard background.

One of the problems that I always have with a lot of these changes is that although they may prettify your desktop they are usually built with a sacrifice to performance and even productivity. I am at this very moment working on my trusty laptop that is slow as hell because of all the little and big apps that I have installed in the name of productivity. If I have to do it over, and I often do, then I just install Windows XP and add a few addons.

• Firefox +some extensions
• Office 2007
• Winrar
• Filezilla
• Foxit Reader
• Notepad++
• Microsoft Streets and Trips

This looks like a way to reclutter my computer but in reality these are all the tools that I really need on my machine and a few months later I remember that agian and blow away the computer to go at it again. I would love to find a way to speed up my PCs and laptops after I have installed and uninstalled but it seems that even Ccleaner and Perfect Disk can never even help me.

What do you use for that fresh new computer feel without a reinstall?

I am looking at this as the second step, maybe the 2.0 version of Wordpress 2.5. I put 2.5 on a couple of my blogs including this one but did not like the look of the interface as much as I liked Wordpress 2.3 so I waited. I am now very happy with the release candidate of Wordpress 2.6 that I have been using throughout the day on one of my blogs so i am confident in my being an early adopter of the software.

Before I have done the upgrade though I did a full backup. I grabbed a Wordpress backup plugin and did a backup of the files to the server and also did a backup of my local files to my desktop.

Better safe than sorry I guess.