The UltraTech Zone

I’ve said it for a few years now, but host-based antivirus is really not working out anymore.  Not with its reliance on signatures to detect malware. Recently, several prominent antivirus vendors have experienced problems with faulty virus definitions:  Faulty McAfee update burns IT execs BitDefender update breaks 64-bit Windows ...

I’ve said it for a few years now, but host-based antivirus is really not working out anymore.  Not with its reliance on signatures to detect malware. Recently, several prominent antivirus vendors have experienced problems with faulty virus definitions: ...(read more)

This is the sixth part in a series of articles tracking the implementation of virtualization on my home network.  Planning for the project originally started at the end of 2007, with some equipment purchased in early 2008, but the bulk of the work was completed in the past 2 months. For those interested in seeing how this all played out over ...

It has been a very productive year so far, as it pertains to my ongoing Home Network Re-Engineering Project.  In fact, the past few days have been especially productive. I was finally able to fix the hardware problem that prevented my old domain controller from booting, and since the boys’ old Windows XP machine began to fail (spontaneous ...

For the first time in over a decade, my home network saw no major improvements for almost 2 years. Let’s just say that the past few years have been interesting…  From March 2008 until December 2009, several major undertakings that I had planned for my networking environment were put on hold.  Additionally, I suffered a few hardware ...

Software as a Service, or SaaS, is seen and marketed as a way to remove or reduce the complexities and cost associated with local enterprise software deployments, especially where such software has a desktop installation facet to it. As is typical with all (relatively new) technologies – especially in recent years – there comes the inevitable ...

I experienced a wide range of emotions as I read this allegedly tech savvy article in the Wall Street Journal, written by someone who is deemed a journalist for reasons which clearly have no basis in reality.  Mostly, I was surprised, because this is not the caliber of information that I expect from a publication such as the Wall Street ...

The prevailing wisdom says that technology is supposed to be getting simpler all the time.  This belief appears to be pervasive with many corporate leaders who insist that there should be less of a need for expensive technology experts in an organization over time, since technology is becoming simpler and less error prone. I touched on this ...

The prevailing wisdom says that technology is supposed to be getting simpler all the time.  This belief appears to be pervasive with many corporate leaders who insist that there should be less of a need for expensive technology experts in an organization...(read more)

Today, I came across a very interesting tool for generating a word cloud – basically, a visual representation of the frequency of words in a block of text, just as you might find in the tag cloud of a blog.  I was first made aware of this tool from this LinkedIn Answers question, which then led me to the following blog post. It looked cool ...

Two of my favorite tools for online storage and collaboration are DropBox and Box.net.   Because each product offers features that the other lacks, and because they appear to be attacking the challenges of collaboration different perspectives, I make use of both products, albeit to achieve slightly different objectives.  Due to ...

Two of my favorite tools for online storage and collaboration are DropBox and Box.net .   Because each product offers features that the other lacks, and because they appear to be attacking the challenges of collaboration different perspectives,...(read more)

It’s only the second of April, and already I’m dealing with chaos.   And not the kind I expected, either. We’ve all been waiting for Conflicker to do something this month, but so far, nothing has occurred.  This is not a bad thing, mind you, as long as we realize that we need to be equally vigilant about all subsequent ...

As the connectivity between various systems becomes more intricate and complex, the risk of tricky configuration problems grows considerably.  When such problems finally manifest themselves, they are usually harder to identify and resolve.  They also have a tendency to remain dormant for a longer period of time. My home network sports ...

I’m interested in finding out how many people want to test Windows 7, either for their home networks or their business networks (small or large). I have created a poll via LinkedIn where I hope to capture this information.  If you are a LinkedIn user, please feel free to participate. Thanks!