Checking if a computer supports Intel vPro/Active Management Technology (AMT)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

One of my many activities over the last few days has been taking a look at whether my work notebook PC supports the Intel vPro/Active Management Technology (AMT) functionality (it doesn’t seem to).

Intel vPro/AMT adds out of band management capabilities to PC hardware, integrated into the CPU, chipset and network card (this animation shows more details) and is also a pre-requisite for Citrix XenClient which, at least until Microsoft gets itself in order with a decent client-side virtualisation solution, I was hoping to use as a solution for running multiple desktops on a single PC.  Sadly I don’t seem to have the necessary hardware.

Anyway, thanks to a very useful forum post by Amit Kulkarni, I found that there is a tool to check for the presence of AMT – in the AMT software development kit (SDK) is a discovery tool (discovery.exe), which can be used to scan the network for AMT devices.

Unfortunately, vPro/AMT only seems to be in the high-spec models for most OEMs right now… until then I’m stuck with hosted virtualisation solutions.

Removing crapware from my Mac

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been rebuilding my MacBook after an increasing number of “spinning beachballs of death” (the Mac equivalent of a Windows hourglass/doughnut/halo…).  Unfortunately, its not just PCs that come supplied with “crapware” – it may only be a couple of items but my OS X 10.5 installation also includes the Office for Mac 2004 Test Drive and iWork ’08 Trial.  As it happens, I do have a copy of Office for Mac 2008 but I don’t need it on this PC – indeed the whole reason for wiping clean and starting again was to have a lean, clean system for my photography, with the minimum of unnecessary clutter.

“What’s the problem?”, I hear you say, “isn’t uninstalling an application on a Mac as simple as dragging it to the trash?”  Well, in a word: no. Some apps for OS X are that simple to remove but many leave behind application support and preference files.  Some OS X apps have installers, just as on Windows PCs.

I ran the Remove Office application to remove the Office for Mac Test Drive and, after searching for installed copies of Office, it decided there were none, leaving Remove Office log.txt file on the desktop with the details of its search:

***************************
Found these items:
OFC2004_TD_FOLDERS: /Applications/Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive

It seems that, if you’ve not attempted to run any of the Test Drive apps (e.g. by opening an Office document), they are not actually installed.  Diane Ross has more details on her blog post on the subject but, basically, it’s safe to drag the Test Drive files and folders to the trash.

With Office for Mac out of the way, I turned my attention to the iWork ’08 Trial.  This does not have an uninstaller – the application files and folders for Keynote, Numbers and Pages can be dragged to the trash but there is another consideration – there are some iWork ’08 application support files in /Library/Application Support/ that may be removed too.

These resources might not be taking much space on my disk, but I don’t like the idea of remnants of an application hanging around – a clean system is a reliable system.  At least, that’s my experience on Windows and it shouldn’t be any different on a Mac.