Your Chromebook As The Ultimate Travel Device

If you’re trying to decide what sort of lightweight device to get for your next big trip, you may consider checking out Chromebooks. But why choose a Chromebook for travel specifically? Because, when it comes to travel, they are spot on.

No Data On Your Device

Since Chromebooks are designed to be used mostly online, you’re not lugging around a device full of applications and files. This means you’re not likely to lose all your coveted photos if someone steals your laptop. It also means no-one at border security will be able to arrest you for pirating software or entertainment (if you’re the sort of person who has that stuff on your computer).

Most importantly, the Chromebook setup means no-one can get access to your data – neither thieves nor border security. Border security could ask you to log in, but if you’re really concerned about this, you could reset the device or remove your account yourself before going through border security. A thief would have to break into your Google account in order to get anything sensitive out of having your laptop in their possession. Meanwhile, you could reset your password and would soon be able to replace your Chromebook, with everything just as it was.

Either way, there is not a lot of data stored locally, so this is ideal for travel. Security of your data is one of the most important things to keep in mind when you’re travelling with a laptop.

Offline Access

Chromebooks have built-in media players, so you can load up a USB full of music or video for watching while you’re in transit. With seamless access to your Google Drive account, you could also potentially add files you will want to Google Drive, then download them when you can during your trip. Check out Google’s full list of supported media files for Chrome OS.

You can also use apps like Gmail offline to write email while you’re disconnected. There are dozens of other useful offline-enabled apps for Chrome, too. Check out everything you need to know about switching to a Chromebook and check out Google’s guide to apps you’ll need for your Chromebook.

Chrome Travel Apps

Chrome has a great line in useful travel apps and extensions to use. Before your trip, you can use Chrome extensions to help you learn the language, you can use Hipmunk and TouristEye to help you plan the trip, Mapnificent to check our the transit situation of your holiday destination, Al-Jazeera to keep up with news in English. You can also use Google Street view to check out the airports before you arrive. Also check out our Geek bucket list and international travel guide sites while you’re preparing.

Gadgets To Have With You

Matt has written a great guide on using a Chromebook to work anywhere cheaply, detailing useful peripherals you should consider getting for your setup. In particular, consider getting a mobile hotspot device and a pocket router. Those things could be really handy when travelling. Especially if you hope to make money while you travel.

What do you think of Chromebooks? Would you consider them ideal for travelling or not? Why?

What would happen if the sun disappeared?

If the sun disappeared, for eight-and-a-half minutes we’d have no idea that the sun had gone. We’d still see it – lingering, like a ghost – in the sky above Earth’s day side. As soon as the last of the sun’s light reached us – eight-and-a-half minutes after the sun itself disappeared – the sun would blink out and night would fall over the entire Earth.

Not until that instant would Earth sail off in a straight line into space. Einstein’s special theory of relativity tells us that no signal in the universe – not even the tug of gravity – can travel faster than the speed of light – about 300,000 kilometers, or 186,000 miles, per second. Though free from the sun’s gravity, we’d be traveling at the same speed as before – about 18 miles, or 30 kilometers per second. So Earth would be traveling at the same speed as always into eternal night.

If you were on Earth’s night side when the sun disappeared, you might not notice anything … at first. But then the night sky would begin to change. For example, if there were a full moon – which shines with reflected sunlight – its light would disappear a few seconds after the sun’s light blinked out. Over the course of several hours, the planets would wink out one by one, as they reflected the last of the sun’s light to us.

How to change SID on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 using sysprep?

In last post I described how to check SID on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, today I’ll describe you how to change SID on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 using sysprep. I see many of you are looking how to change SID using NewSID, but New SID is not officially supported by Microsoft. You could use NewSID on Windows Server 2008, but when you try to use it on Windows Server 2008 R2 it won’t work, actually, it will “destroy” operating system. I didn’t test it on Windows 7, but still my advice is to use sysprep. Changing SID using sysprep is also very simple, just follow few steps as described below…

 

I tested sysprep on Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter edition, but same steps apply for Windows7 also.

First, click to Start->Run, type sysprep and press OK.

 

This will open sysprep folder which is located in c:\Windows\System32. Open sysprep application.

 

This will open System Preparation Tool 3.14 window. As a System Cleanup Action select Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE). Important: select Generalize if you want to change SID, it’s not selected by default. As Shutdown Options select Reboot.

 

It will take some time for sysprep to finish, so grab a cup of coffee and wait.

 

After rebooting you’ll have to enter some data, for example, Country or region, Time and currency and Keyboard input.

 

Also, you’ll have to accept EULA. And that’s it. After booting, in Server Manager you’ll see that everything is changed, if you had some settings set now they’re changed.

 

Now you can again use PsGetSid to check that your OS has new SID.

How To Create A Custom Windows 8 Installation ISO

What makes re-installing Windows painful is the waiting around for a few keystrokes and post-installation chores. Windows 8 installs in mere minutes, but you still have to accept the EULA, manually enter your 25 digit serial number, and apply Windows updates once the installation itself is completed. If you’re eager to optimize this process, here is a way to customize your Windows 8 installation.

Preparation

Before we start, you need a couple of ingredients to make this work:

• Running installation of Windows 8 or 8.1
• Option 1: Windows 8 or 8.1 ISO file (Unfortunately, the Windows 8.1 ISO file available from Microsoft does not seem to work.)
• Option 2: Copy the files from a Windows 8 or 8.1 installation disc to your computer.
• 7zip (install)
• ImageX and Oscdimg (remember where the WAIK toolbox saves to)
• Resource Hacker (install)
• SetACL (remember where it saves to)
• WinReducer 8 or 8.1 (install)

The main tool you’ll be using is WinReducer, but it’s of no use until you prepared and installed all the other items. Note that WinReducer itself comes with ReadMe and HowTo PDF files, which cover WinReducer’s features and can be helpful when you get stuck.

Setting Up WinReducer 8.1

When you first launch WinReducer, it will most likely display an error message and point you to its configuration.

In the Configuration window, make sure all the software needed by WinReducer is detected. Click on the software name and point the tool towards the file’s location. Note that you need to point it to two different files in the case of 7zip; both are located in the program folder. When all is done, the Configuration should look like the screenshot below.

WinReducer Overview

When you launch WinReducer after a successful configuration, you will be greeted by the proper Welcome screen.

Under Options, you can check for software updates, return to the Configuration window, and set your Windows theme.

The HowTo PDF reveals that an Easter egg is hidden in the Info page (available via Options) that apparently grants you access to a Lifetime VIP Edition. If you find the Easter egg, please share in the comments!

Under Start, you can open Windows 8.1 using an already extracted folder, extract an ISO file, and via Tools you can download Windows updates, create an ISO file or a bootable USB, and launch the Preset Editor.

Creating Your Custom Windows 8.1 ISO

Go to > Start > Tools > Updates, select the x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) Windows update package, depending on your version of Windows 8.1, click Update, and select the updates you would like to download.

Option 1: When this is done, close the window and go to > Start > ISO and select your Windows 8.1 ISO file to extract it, so it can be customized by WinReducer. This can take a moment.

If you get an error message, like “You are trying to use an unsupported Windows 8.x Upgrade DVD“, you won’t be able to proceed. Try again, try another ISO file, or try another method.

Once your ISO file was extracted, the Preset Editor should open automatically.

Option 2: Alternatively, you can copy Windows installation files from the original installation DVD to your computer, then to go > Start > Folder, select the folder that contains the extracted files, then click Mount. This will copy the files into the Extract folder and should launch you into the Preset Editor.

You can also open the Preset Editor manually. Go to > Start > Tools > Preset Editor and click Launch. Here you can customize Windows 8.1 to your heart’s desire. You can remove features and services, change the appearance, or set up your unattended installation.

As the name suggests, WinReducer’s main objective is to make the installer and the resulting installation smaller. If you are going to create a DVD, don’t bother. You are more likely to regret removing a certain feature, than to appreciate the time you saved during the installation or the drive space you preserved. Rather focus on customizing your installation.

First, however, integrate the updates you downloaded earlier. Go to > System > Integration and point the tool to the respective download folder. You can do the same for drivers and .NET Framework.

To include and automate the installation of third party software, you could prepare an OEM folder and have WinReducer add it to your custom ISO. The option is available under > System > WinReducer Post Installation. The details of how to set this up, however, are beyond the scope of this article.

Don’t forget to set up the Unattended installation. Remember that if you add the serial number, the resulting ISO file will be set to your computer. Trying to use your custom Windows 8.1 installation disc on another computer would be a violation of the Windows license agreement and you would run into issues activating Windows.

 

When you are done, you can save this preset for future use on another ISO file. Go to Start and click Save. Here you can also Load a previously saved preset.

To apply a (preset) customization to your Windows installation ISO file, go to Finish and click Apply.

WinReducer will direct you to the ISO File Creator, where you can save your custom Windows installation media as WIM or ISO file.

Click Save and when the tool is done, you can pick up your ISO file in the respective folder.

Create A Bootable DVD

To turn your custom ISO file into installation media, you need to create a bootable DVD. Use a DVD burner tool like ImgBurn to write your ISO file to a blank DVD. To avoid errors, be sure to burn the DVD at a very low write speed, like 2x. Check the verify option, so ImgBurn will double-check for burning errors. Finally, test your custom Windows 8.1 installation DVD.

Custom Installation To A Point & Alternative Solutions

WinReducer is great to create a custom Windows 8 installation. Unfortunately, you still need to download and install all your third party apps, as this process can not be embedded in WinReducer.

If a complete setup including third party applications is important and if we’re only talking about a single computer, you should prepare a perfect Windows installation and then create a system drive image (aka copy or clone), which you can flash back when it’s time to re-install Windows. Alternatively, you could look into third party software that offers an unattended installation of the applications you need, for example Ninite. Or you could automate tasks with AutoIt.

For deployment of Windows 8.1 to multiple computers, turn to Microsoft TechNet for instructions.

Who Needs Dropbox and SkyDrive? Host Your Own Files With FTPbox

If you had a million dollars, would you rather store it in a safe at someone’s house or at your own place. It’s nice to have control of your own assets. Why wouldn’t the same be true for data?

The whole reason most people choose to host a website or blog on their own web hosting account is because there’s more of a sense of “ownership” than if you’re hosting pages you’ve written on a site like WordPress.org or on Blogger. The beauty of having a web hosting account is that it’s basically a perfect file storage location for any files that you need access to on the Internet. Sounds a bit like Dropbox doesn’t it?

Here’s the thing. Sure, services like Dropbox and Skydrive are extremely popular “cloud hosting” services, but when you boil them right down, they are nothing more than locations where you can securely store and share files on the Internet. For years, the way everyone did this was basically hosting the files and then using FTP tools to transfer them back and forth.

Really, all you need to do is find a tool that automates the whole FTP process for you, and you can continue hosting your files on your own hosting account, rather than entrusting your data to some other service. That’s exactly what FTPbox does for you.

Setting Up FTPbox

The first step is to download and install FTPbox. The first part of the setup is to type in the FTP login credentials for your hosting account. If your hosting service offers encrypted FTP, by all means make use of it for your own security. Also, I wouldn’t recommend selecting “Always ask for password” or it kind of defeats the purpose of automating the process, but if you’re paranoid about security, then feel free to select it.

Next, choose a local folder on your computer where the remote files will be synced to. By default, the path is in the Documents folder under FTPbox, and then a subdirectory with the name of the hosting domain prefaced with the login ID.

You can use the default, or you can create a customized path of your liking. It can be anywhere at all on your PC, there are no limitations.

Then pick the remote hosted folder that you want to sync with your computer. One smart use of FTPbox, if you are hoping to share files with people on the Internet often, is to sync the public FTP folder on your web hosting account with a folder on your PC.

This allows you to quickly drop a file into a folder on your own computer, and it’ll be automatically hosted on the Internet for anyone to grab. All you have to do is give someone the FTP login credentials for the public FTP folder, and they can grab the file using their favorite FTP client. Better yet, they could also sync with the folder from their PC using FTPbox, and you essentially have an automated link between two folders on two PCs across the Internet. Cool huh?

In the next setup step, you can choose to sync everything in the folder you selected (including subfolders), or you can manually select files to keep updated.

Once you’re done with the setup, FTPbox opens up to the Options menu. Here, you’ve got a few more tabs to work through if you want to further customize how the syncing behaves.

Setting Up FTPbox Options

In the options under the General tab, FTPbox lets you define how the notification icon behaves when you click on it, and a few application features like auto-start, notifications and logging.

The Account tab basically shows you the account settings you’ve just configured.

The Bandwidth tab is pretty cool though – it gives you the flexibility of defining an automated interval when the remote folders get synced with your local PC folders.

You can also put kb/s limits on the download and upload speeds so that FTPbox doesn’t end up chewing up all of your home network bandwidth trying to keep all of your files synced constantly.

Using FTPbox

So that’s it. You’ve got FTPbox set up, it’s syncing your folders, and everything is cool. You can change those settings at any time, or manually trigger syncing whenever you like by right clicking on the FTPBox icon in the notification area.

Now, if you want to make any changes to those files that are stored on your server, just open up your local FTPbox folder and edit whatever files you like.

Some cool uses for this would be to make sure you have a local backup of your scheduled WordPress backup archives that are stored on your web server and updated daily.

All you have to do is sync with the backup folder and you’ll always have a local copy safely stored on your computer, should anything happen to the server.

Or, better yet, you can sync with the entire base directory of your WordPress blog, and make tweaks to your theme or other files any time you want by editing the files in your local folder. It sure beats having to mess around with FTP clients all the time. FTPbox automates everything!