Sean Deasy

Microsoft have made Windows Vista Enterprise available as a Virtual PC image for a 30 day evaluation.  This is great for those of us that would like to try it out but don’t want to upgrade our systems yet.  Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is available as a free download so you have everything you need to get going.

I downloaded it onto my Windows XP Pro machine and I had it up and running with no issues.  One thing to watch is the virtual network card is not connected and you will need to modify this in Virtual PC before starting the image.

Download details: Windows Vista Enterprise 30 day Evaluation

Backing up your important files is something everyone knows that they should do but not too many people actually do it. My backup strategy at the moment consists of regularly burning DVDs or copying files to my portable HDD. Definitely far better that not backing up at all but not exactly bullet proof. I am a firm believer that you should try and automate as much as possible because when things are left to humans they don’t always get done.

I have looked into online backup solutions, especially www.mozy.com where you download a client to your PC and it continually backs up your stuff. The main issue I have with an online solution is security. Mozy say that they use 128-bit (during transport) and 448-bit Blowfish encryption (on our server) so it sounds pretty secure. So maybe I would be willing to backup my digital photos but I would still be a bit slow to backup any files which I don’t want other people viewing (letters, documents, source code, etc.) Obviously there are huge benefits of the online backup strategy, your data backup is held offsite for one.

Another online storage solution is www.box.net – they have just released an MS Office integrated toolbar to allow you to save your documents directly online.

What is your current backup strategy? Do you use an online backup solution and if so do you worry about security ?

Sometimes you just need to get your hands on a previous version of a popular software application but it is no longer available from the official website. Take for example, web browsers, let’s say that you had to test your new website on Internet Explorer 5. If you go to Microsoft’s download section you will only be able to download Internet Explorer 7 at this stage. Well if you head over to http://www.oldversion.com/ then you can download all the previous versions of many of the world’s most popular applications. Take Internet Explorer for example, you can download versions of it right back to version 1.0 (that’s going back a while now).

I just took Internet Explorer as an example (I’m an avid Firefox fan) there are many other popular apps on the site.