Learn about managing AD using PowerShell and AGPM with the Active Directory UK user group

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Mark Parris is organising another meeting of the Active Directory UK User Group for 16 September 2009 and this time the topics will be:

  • An introduction to PowerShell, demo-heavy and presented by Richard Siddaway. In this session Richard will looking specifically at the new AD provider and cmdlets in PowerShell v2, which is included in Windows Server 2008 R2.
  • Managing GPOs with Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) 3.0, where Jane Lewis will present AGPM (part of MDOP), investigating and discussing some of its key features and looking at how it can help customers manage, control and secure Group Policy.‬‪

Registration is required.

Hackintosh netbook revisited

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Hackintosh Finder Icon by ~3ncA few months ago, I wrote about the installation of Mac OS X on my Lenovo IdeaPad S10e netbook. Whilst I was pleased to have a working installation of OS X there were still a few things that didn’t quite work as I’d have likef. This post details a few more tweaks I’ve made to the Hackintosh.

My S10e is a Hackintosh, rather than a Macintosh, so I replaced the standard Mac OS X Finder icon with the Hackintosh Finder Icon by ~3nc using LiteIcon.

I thought that the fans weren’t running as often as they had been under Windows… in fact I’m not even sure they were running at all. Furthermore, iStatMenus would only tell me the hard disk temperature so I wasn’t sure how warm the CPU was running, or how fasts the fans were turning. Thankfully, before I fried my netbook, a comment on this blog pointed me back to The Kitch and ultimately to a post on the Lenovo IdeaPad S Series Forums which linked to an updated version of AppleACPIPlatform.kext, which I then installed using Kext Helper. After a reboot, my fans have been running to keep the netbook cool(er), although it’s still pretty hot and I seem to have lost Bluetooth.

I had a play with a few options to scale the screen resolution; however the results were not really fantastic. I did eventually settle on using defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.96 to make the screen appear to be 600 pixels deep but some of the icons (e.g. the battery on the menu bar) were screwed up.

I also have a UK keyboard, so I followed Liquid State’s advice, using Ukelele‘s LogitechU.K.Intl.keylayout (copied to /Library/Keyboard Layouts and selected in the International system preferences) and then adjusting the modifier keys as described by Phil Gyford (alternatively, I could have swapped the Windows key and the alt key to keep them the same way around as on a Mac keyboard). Incidentally, Apple keyboards still have the ” and @ reversed (even with a UK layout) but at least with this configuration the labels on the keys matched the resulting output.

The biggest letdown was Ethernet connectivity. There was a project working on porting the Broadcom BCM57xx and 59xx Linux drivers to OS X but nothing is happening fast and it really seems to be one guy working with limited spare time and limited collaboration. Wireless is fine but wired Ethernet is more reliable (and often the only option in a hotel room) so this was probably the final nail in my Hackintosh’s coffin.

Now the S10 has been replaced by the S10-2 and Gizmodo reports that it’s not really suitable for hackintosh conversion. My Hackintosh was a fun experiment but ultimately I’m not finding it as useful as I would if it was running Windows. It’s not that there is anything wrong with Mac OS X but I use Macs for my digital media work and a netbook is not really the right computing platform for that. In addition, I’m missing out on things like reliable Bluetooth, sleep, and Ethernet connectivity – all of which I could get in a Mac… if I was prepared to pay the money. Let’s see if the Apple iPod tablet really does make it to market this winter.

In a few hours, I’ll take a final disk image of the Hackintosh for posterity and rebuild it to run the final release of Windows 7 (thanks to Microsoft for my complementary copy) – which is, after all, what I originally bought it for!

Yet more confusion on Windows 7 E Edition

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Various portions of the IT press are reporting that Windows 7 E Edition has been killed off. I sincerely hope so – it’s always been a daft idea created to satisfy bureaucrats in Brussels and the creators or a certain minority web browser that appears to be fighting a battle in the courts after its business model has failed – but I’m yet to be convinced that E Edition is completely dead.

On Friday, Microsoft issued an announcement about the inclusion of a browser selection ballot screen for European Windows users (note that this affects XP, Vista as well as 7). There are still some unanswered questions though:

  • How will it be determined that this is a European installation of Windows? IP address (unreliable)? Product SKU (in which case E Edition is still required)? Regional settings?
  • Will this just apply to EU member states? What about the rest of the EMEA region (Microsoft views Europe as EMEA – not just the EU) or even European countries that are not members of the EU (e.g. Switzerland)?
  • Will this even satisfy the regulators? The EU Competition Commission has not fully approved Microsoft’s proposal and Opera (who brought the case to the courts) are reported to be unhappy about the use of icons to represent browsers. Apparently Internet Explorer’s E icon is synonymous with the Internet for many users (does that make it iconic!) and Opera would prefer an alternative solution (well, Opera comes after Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox whether you base the order on the alphabet or on market share… so I don’t know what would please them – a random selection of browsers perhaps? Please no!)

The dominance of Internet Explorer does not seem to have hurt Mozilla, Apple, or Google in gaining market share with their web browsers but it seems Opera still wants more – they want Microsoft to apply the same solution on a global basis (as well as Apple and Ubuntu!).

Maybe Microsoft will offer further concessions to the courts – I can’t help thinking that they have other things to worry about right now and their actions to date are designed to show that Microsoft has changed and, in doing so, to remove the danger of various anti-trust rulings. But has anyone considered that the potential impact of the browser wars is not really good for consumers? Competition is healthy. Web standards are to be applauded. Interfering in commercial markets because someone cried foul when no-one wanted their product should not be encouraged, however good the product may be.

So, is Windows 7 E Edition dead? Probably, but the key statement in Microsoft’s press release is this:

“We’ve been open both with the Commission and with our customers and partners that if the ballot screen proposal is not accepted for some reason, then we will have to consider alternative paths, including the reintroduction of a Windows 7 E version in Europe”

For those of us working on global Windows 7 solutions there are still some questions unanswered, and the 7E uncertainty may continue for a while yet.