Yeah but the guy with a black box may think he's safe because he pays for basic cable, but the black box decodes all the channels including the pay per view stuff so he's really not paying for it all.
A person using this while paying for basic cable service is theft. It's no different then walking into a store, shoplifting a bunch of stuff and paying for a pair of socks!
To steal cable without paying at all requires running a cable a splicing it to the pole. This happens but it's less likely due to the technical issues. It's also easier to get caught.
The Real Problem is not the technology... But the availability of refilling the fuel cell much like a cigarette lighter and being easily able to find the fuel in stores everywhere.
If the fuel cell depletes after 6-8 hours and you can't find fuel cells or fuel then it's not gonna sell at all!
If the fuel cells cost more then a few cents then they won't sell either. I for one will not buy fuel cells for over $1 that only last 6-8 hours! Also there would need to be a recycling program for spent cells.
Otherwise, I will sacrifice portability and weight and go with a traditional recharge-able battery.
BTW, my Palm Vx may not be so flashy but it's got more then enough RAM and the rechargeable battery lasts many weeks before I need to recharge it. My earlier Palm III used two AA batteries and that lasted months so did an old PSION!
MSAccess is the biggest piece of crap I've ever run across! You would not believe the stupid crap I have to deal with because of Access. It's SQL support is rather limited so I end up having to code VB routines to do anything useful.
SQL server is better but it's also very vulnerable to attack and virus/worm exploitable!
The real solution would be to drop in a Linux box, setup telnetd or sshd and let the students telnet into their own shell accounts. Then have them run PostgreSQL and experience a real freaking database! Then install Windows compiled versions of the psql tools so they don't have to telnet into the Linux box.
Next setup ODBC and use MSAccess to make a connection to the PostgreSQL Linux Server. Just make sure you turn on PostgreSQL debugging because MSAccess tends to optimize your already optimized SQL statements thereby causing them to fail. Once the ODBC is working you can use MSQuery tools.
All of the above will show how the real world works with databases. Using MS Access as a cheap frontend will teach quite a bit. Next setup Apache and PHP so you can build web pages that process SQL queries. Then I suppose you could show how ADO/DAO/ODBC works inside an application using VB.
For advanced course, run Java Tomcat on the server and then you can get into JDBC stuff.
Seriously, one has to ask themselves why teach MS Access and SQL Server when the rest of the world is using Sybase, Oracle, UDB, and mostly Unix systems that are all moving towards Java J2EE architectures involving XML/Soap/etc???
I mean learning MS Access and/or SQL Server will not do anyone any good whatsoever other then learning improper SQL syntax and working with non-scalable systems. (yeah you can scale but it's very very expensive with MS solutions). We have very few MS SQL production servers.
Teach MS Access if you want to teach MS Access, but don't expect to teach SQL along with it.
"Why grant them a patent? I assume it's because they were the first to think of taking the technology out of the web browser, rearranging it in this novel way, and thereby providing a facility that wasn't there before."
I would say it's because Longhorn will be full of this sort of HTA interface technology. The entire GUI appears to be based on quite a bit HTA containers.
I once saw the on screen scrolling Guide (now owned by TV Guide) crash and it was sitting at an AmigaDOS console prompt.
It's since had a face life but I think it's still running on an Amiga! This is strange in that I didn't think there were many Amiga systems still in production usage. I am sure there are Amiga systems still in use all over the place but I was surprised to see it being used for the TV Guide.
I've hooked them up to an AS400 via Coax. If memory serves, it supported ethernet, serial, parallel, and several other interfaces as installable options.
A Windows software package could graphically design the label and create fields (merge codes) then you exported that to an EBCDIC or ANSI datafile. Then you pasted the code into a variable in the code. You output the variable text to the printer and it would load into RAM on the printer. Then you just sent data associated with the label fields. The printer would simply print each label. A knowledgeable VMS sysadmin could probably code this up readily. At least on an AS400 it was simple. Suppose you could use Perl or some other scripting language to do the work. Not familiar with VMS though...
It's not that complex, but you will need to get the software from Intermec. You can also get a service manual for the printer and install the NIC of choice.
There are also Windows drivers available so one could spool on a Windows box as well.
I suggest you upgrade the NIC to something that can do 10Mbps ethernet and code the app appropriately.
If you could catch them! Or if they don't decide to hop up and down and beat the crap out of you at the same time. Watching the videos, those suckers move you really fast and you can jump huge heights.
"Some of this is due to a firmware bug that causes 3rd party RAM to wreak havoc, but a lot of it also appears to be related to USB hubs and various USB devices causing kernel panics."
That's nothing new with Apple! All of Apple's systems are rather sensitive to third party RAM. Actually, all RAM is third party, not like Apple make's it's own RAM! But there are enough people looking for a bargain and trying to buy the cheapest RAM who get into trouble.
I had a problem with bad RAM (or at least RAM that was sensitive inside a Mac motherboard). I ordered a replacement 512MB DIMM from Crucial and the problem stopped happening. It was a wake from sleep problem but everything worked fine if I didn't sleep the desktop.
Buy an Apple? Don't buy el-cheapo RAM! Crucial works rather well and is extremely competitive price-wise.
I will agree with not buying RAM from Apple! All manufacturers mark up RAM to the point that you are throwing money away.
Bought a Sun Blade 100 and stupidly ordered a 128MB RAM stick. It came in it's own box (user installable) and it was clearly marked "Crucial". I ran a check at Crucial's website and it was less then half the price! I swallowed my pride and ended up buying an additional Gig of RAM for a rather low price direct from Crucial!
I just installed the updates this morning on two computers. PowerMac Dual G4 1Ghz MDD and a PowerBook G4 550Mhz.
No problems, encountered but I installed the updates and ran a Repair Permissions afterwards.
The only problem: The PowerMac screen saver went to sleep and would not wake up after the Software Update mandatory reboot. I had walked away from the machine after telling it to reboot and did not even login to it. It froze with the screen blanked. I ended up SSHing into it from another computer and doing a sudo shutdown -h now then powered it back up. This is when I ran the Repair Permissions.
The PowerBook was upgraded after this and it didn't have a single problem. I didn't have a chance to test it though.
Hope they roll out an updated 10.2.8 soon so whatever major bug(s) were let loose; would get reined in quickly.
Serves me right in not waiting 2 days before I applied the updates. Some were having problems but most were do to people running haxies.
Cincinati Time clocks. Badge style reader, RS-232 data feed (modem mounted inside clock if necessary) converted to RS-485 for long distance runs (4,000 ft).
The clocks are literally quite dumb. They just log everything and upload to a software package which was DOS based when I was installing them.
The DOS application allowed an HR person to edit and upload the data to a company like ADP (automated payroll) to cut the checks.
The software allowed for easy editing and various rounding rules (usually 7min before and after).
I am now required to fill out timesheets on a web based system managed by eLabor which is part of ADP (ironically)... It's used for project tracking mostly (I'm salary not hourly).
Far as I can tell, no one really uses these numbers they just require everyone to fill out their timesheets. It's stupid really... It's not used for payroll. I figure only 5% of the IT workforce actually logs useful data, the rest is worthless. For example, I've logged 40 hours a week for months for nothing special.
I suppose one could get the data file spec and protocol for just about any time clock and write a web based tool or Linux native application with a little bit of effort.
The market for these devices is still out there but many of the small customers are going with those timeclocks listed in the bag of computer magazines, etc. Same with bar-code readers. There are a ton of companies selling the stuff dirt cheap.
The software is where it's at. It's not that complicated either.
Take NT 4, there was a critical update for NT 4 which I applied due to patching against Blaster and it killed the RAS services in NT. No RAS services would start after installing this particular HotFix.
The user attempted to remove and re-add RAS and did not apply the SP6 and hotfixes afterwards, so the box blue screened with the infamous KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED blue screen of death at every single boot.
I had to have her ship the NT Desktop across the country, recover her data, and rebuild her system to fix it. Then ship it back. Hundreds of dollars in shipping fees and a week of down time to boot.
All thanks to Microsoft's Windows update and a faulty CRITICIAL UPDATE not a driver.
Ironically, I read about it on the Register the day after it happened. It was not easy to find the Microsoft documentation. Apparently, MS re-released the patch a few days later but by that point I was already TOAST.
Oh and before you go on and on about how this should not be running NT 4. Know that they are running old legacy software and have no choice but to continue to run NT 4. The legacy software vendor is out of business and to replace it would cost on the order of 5 million dollars we don't have. The software won't run on Win2k/XP So looks like I will be supporting several thousand users stuck on NT 4 for years to come while MS grandfathers NT 4 and refuses to support it!
Just another fact of life for real world Windows Admins. We have no choice but to upgrade but we can't upgrade half the time. Heck, they just upgraded from DOS/Win311/Novell to NT 3.51 when Win95 had been out for 3 years and NT 4.0 just started shipping.
If we were running Linux we would all be happily running away for 10 years at a time without an upgrade on the workstations. There is little benefit for users to upgrade from NT4 to Win2k or XP. It's just a bunch of bells and whistles that add a heck of a lot more bloat to an already bloated system. In addition to the bloat, they move all the options around like a three card monty shell game so users and tech's alike have to remember where the stupid folder options have been moved to now.
Give me a custom Linux build any day! I have built custom Linux systems and I am sure I could customize a corporate build right now that would be very easy to support.
Everyone who uses a keyboard on a daily basis should be able to type at least 40 WPM without looking at the keys. Otherwise you are really impacting your productivity.
I took a typing class in High School circa 1987 on IBM electric type writers. It was only a half semester class but I was able to get up to about 60 WPM and over the years, I have increased that amount to about 80 WPM and I am happy with that speed. I can type faster when I transcribe text from a printout, magazine, or handwriting then I do when I type from my head to my fingers.
Co-workers are constantly looking over my shoulder in complete disbelief when they see me really typing fast. The funny thing is, I've witnessed people who can type 130 WPM and they are more then twice my speed. Typing really should be a required class in schools because most jobs require computer work and the keyboard is still the most important interface on a computer.
Programmers on this thread have stated that they don't think that learning touch typing is important and that the syntax of programming languages is too cryptic to type easily. While the cryptic nature of code is more difficult you will get better at it if you have a touch typing foundation and you merely practice entering code from magazines, etc.
Good programming editors have extensive keyboard commands. EMACS, ViM, Visual Studio, etc. These allow for one to quickly select options while actually typing. This keeps your hands on the home row of the keyboard. ViM is a bit better at this then EMACS but I don't want to start a flamewar. Use whatever works for you. Just know that both EMACS and ViM both use keyboard commands extensively and both will improve your productivity if you can touch type without looking.
I really cannot understand why so many refused to learn to touch type without looking. It's really not that hard, anyone can do it.
Mavis Beacon teaches typing for Windows works quite nicely, but as others have mentioned there are several Open Source tutors as well.
It's a whole lot of:
hjk lfgd lkd las lkj etc, etc, etc, till you get the home row down and then start inserting letters off the home row, then changing case and using symbols.
It is boring to learn but once you get some speed you will see the advantages. It kills me to watch someone fumble about with a keyboard or two finger it (even rapidly). All the head bobbing and finger hunting is killing your productivity. It's so much smoother when you know how to touch type the right way.
I used to work a great deal in the bar-code field. I remember connecting Intermec printers to AS400 systems. This involved using Windows software to design a label graphically, then export to some data files that were kinda like XML but a proprietary format. Two files, one with the printer instructions and the other with data. The data file would be pasted into AS400 programming code and every time a label was to be printed, the label layout and the data stream would be sent to the printer. I believe the language was JCL.
I am sure Zebra has ways to do what you are looking to accomplish. I doubt seriously, there are many Open Source packages that can do all that you need to do. You need to find a vendor who does value add and works with multiple manufacturers.
It make take some work to find such a vendor, most are simply selling equipment and not providing any value add whatsoever.
Call the Zebra printer manufacturer and they should be able to locate a vendor that can work with you. A simple looksee at their website details the following:
BAR-ONE 5.1 with Accelio Present Central (formerly JetForm Central)
Easy, Cost-Effective Bar Code Printing from ERP Applications
The combined power of BAR-ONE bar code printing software and the Accelio Present Central (formerly Accelio Present Central (formerly JetForm Central)) output-management solutions make integration of bar codes into ERP systems a snap, no matter what the platform. Traditionally, transforming ERP data from existing reports and other ASCII formats into high-quality bar code labels has been an expensive and time-consuming custom programming task. But now it's as simple as a point and a click, thanks to a groundbreaking software pairing developed jointly by Zebra Technologies and JetForm Corporation.
Looks like JetForm is not dead but in partnership with Zebra and the new system is called Accelio Present Central.
I've also met some very very weird people. Think, Silence of the Lambs weirdo's! Bodies in the basement, etc. Be prepared to show up and walk or run away quickly!
Watch out for problem customers. i.e. the one's who call you every week and try to be cheap about paying you. Don't accept food for work. Don't accept checks until you have verified their ability to pay you. i.e. never take a check on the first couple visits. If they bounce a check on you, terminate future business with them until they pay you for the check they bounced plus interest. Always charge them per hour the same rate.
Invest in the tools you are going to need. It's going to be expensive. You need to be a pro and recover almost any data and fix dead systems. Therefore, you are going to need spare hardware and a ton of software tools such as Winternals Admin Pak, etc. ($699 license) XP & NTFS is the need for this cost. NTFS is a real pain to mount and work with there are no decent free toolsets for NTFS. You can get around it but believe me, you need the AdminPak it has saved my bacon a bazillon times already and it's worth every damn penny! A really good laptop and possibly a small miniture desktop system so you can pull an IDE hard disk and mount it in your own semi-portable system, etc.
Not everyone has broadband, start building CD-R's full of drivers, etc. You may have to stop by a customer site and do a survey to find out what hardware they have so you can then go back to your office and download everything to CD because they have a 28.8kbps modem and it's barely working.
The reason the pro's charge so much is they have had to buy insurance to protect them against lawsuits. They have to invest in training and tools both hardware and software. They have rent and taxes to pay. Remember, in the USA you have to file tax returns quarterly with Uncle Sam even for a small consulting business.
I know a whole lot of kids and others who did what you are contemplating for a few years. Few made any money at it and most burned themselves out in less then 3 years; finally saying screw this and getting a real job. (something better then bagging groceries). Once you are out of High School and you get a real job, you will see how futile it was.
It's good training to put your feet to the fire and you will get a ton of experience. But watchout! One customer with a lawsuit and you are toast! Then get tagged by the IRS because you are dealing under the table and not paying taxes, etc.
You will have to deal with complete idiots who have 4 or 5 computers, broadband, and the boxes are full of spyware, trojans, viruses, etc. The user will have run ethernet cable outdoors and literally used two patch cables connected with an RJ45 splitter and wrapped in duct tape! This was hanging outside the house in Connecticut! It will be exposed to temperature extremes (contraction & expansion) and his connection will come and go, plus it will corrode (not gold plated). When I got there all of his boxes were so full of crap, viruses, trojans, and I am pretty sure they were all hacked and spending spam! It took me 2 weeks to rebuild everything and restore all his data, change all his passwords, install a firewall, and updated NAV licenses. I also offered to rerun the ethernet cable with a single run of cable rather then his mickey mouse patch cables + duct tape solution! Meanwhile, I had to contend with his Jesus Freak rhetoric and being happy about the end of the world!
Bottom line, get insurance (all it takes is for you to break something simply by accident, it happens to the best of tech's), get bonded, get the tools, get a car and not a bicycle, get a whole lot of patience, and be prepared to turn away customers who are trouble! Don't give anything away for free. Charge less then the competition but don't undercharge too much! Look for small business outfits rather then home consumer users. Start your own business rather then run under the table.
Oh and get a gun permit and carry a box of condoms!... Yeah, I've made house calls to horney woman and I've shot rats the size of small dogs in dirt floor basements. I've also met some very very weird people. Think, Silence of the Lambs weirdo's! Bodies in the basement, etc. Be prepared to show up and walk or run away quickly!
G3 with file and print serving will probably not see much of a difference in speed. Sure the G5 has a much larger bus and Serial ATA drives but the bottleneck is the Network!
I'm running an NT Server 2000 on very old hardware and all it's used for is file sharing and storage. Unless I put two Gigabit Ethernet Cards into it and put it on a fast Gigabit Cisco Switch then activate both NIC's and ensure the switch is properly configured, it's not going to make much of a difference in performance in regards to file sharing. Besides most of the workstations accessing it are at most 100Mbit NIC's so all that will do for me is allow more machines to connect. It won't speed up the file copy process all that much.
You want speed for file sharing? Then get a highend SCSI card, new drives, and a higherspeed NIC. Then upgrade your hub to a gigabit switch and make sure you use Cat5 cabling. Or you could go Fibre Channel for the disks. But again, the bottleneck is the network!
CPU has very little to do with network file sharing performance. It will make a difference with a Application Servers but not with simple file servers.
Bottom line, a P-90 first gen Pentium with 128MB's of RAM and a fast NIC running Linux will keep up with faster server hardware when it comes to file sharing. Heck, you could probably run it with 32MB or 64MB's of RAM!
When OSX refuses to upgrade on that aging G3 then install Yellowdog Linux and it will out perform OS 9!
No need to buy a G5 for server duties of this nature, it's a waste of money. Wait for the G5 to make it to the XServe if you have enough clients to make it worth while. Otherwise piece together a Linux box instead. Keep it the PowerPC G3 if you want. Run it headless...
That's the great thing about Apple! Give Apples to the creative types and they will live and breath Unix on the network! Works just fine in RedHat and other Linux environments! Heck it even works in Sun environments!
The tech's may be running RedHat on the servers but you just know some of them have Apple Powerbooks so they can easily manage the network even from home!
Sony did it right, they shipped a DVD player with the PS2. It was really quite smart because at the time DVD players were still expensive and the cheapest ones were complete crap.
Most US kids who get a Playstation from Mom & Dad already have their own TV in their room, at the time they didn't have a DVD player. (maybe a VCR but no DVD). So the ability to rent one's own movies and view them in one's bedroom along with games was what helped sell the PS2!
The real buyers of the PS2 were the 18-30 somethings who could afford the expense of the PS2. This crowd already had DVD because they had jobs that paid real money! But they only had ONE DVD player on the main TV in the house. The 20-30 portion of this crowd may actually be married and have children. This means they don't have time to play games that often and they may just fight with the wife over watching Lifetime channel shows. So they retreat to another TV with their PS2 and play games as well as watching guy movies the wife won't watch.
Nintendo blew it! First they targeted the younger crowd and second, they neglected to put a DVD player in their inexpensive console. Do you have any idea how many Disney movies on DVD the average kid has?!?! It's incredible, I think my sister's 5 year old has just about every damn movie and she's watched them 8 million times! Parent's simply don't want to watch them again and again! Had Nintendo simply included a DVD player the parents would have freaking loved it! Just get the kid a small cheap TV and let the kid play in their room the next time you rent an adult movie! They can play games and/or watch their movies.
It's too late now for DVD to make a difference in anyone's buying decision until games start getting shipped on DVD and using the added space. DVD players are very very inexpensive, you can get one at Walmart for under $50! So that's why Ninetendo blew it! They also didn't ship fast enough nor could they compete with Sony or Microsoft on the hardware. They missed the Window!
I seem to remember that being mentioned during the last Bush tax cut and that that little loophole was going to be closed so citizens working abroad would be taxed normally like local citizens.
Enjoy it while you can, because it may get pulled out from under you next year or the year after...
OS 10.1 & 10.2 would be considered service packs in the Microsoft world, and Apple is charging for 'em like they're a major upgrade to the OS.
That's where you are completely wrong! They are major upgrades! The jump to Jaguar (10.2.x) and the next jump to Panther (10.3.x) are paid upgrades because they include a whole bunch of new features. Jaguar included literally hundreds of updates. It would be like going from WinME to WinXP in comparision.
There's still confusion for the MS crowd about how the versioning works. 10.x.x is the brand name of the OS. It's OS Ten. The.x release is the operating system version. 10.0 was practically a beta. 10.1 was the first major release. 10.2 was Jaguar and soon there will be 10.3 which is Panther. In between you have the.x.x releases. These are completely free and for the most part don't add features per se. The.x.x releases are like Service Packs.
When was the last time you ended up with major features being added to Windows due to a Service Pack upgrade? I would venture little to none. You would get improvements like bigger disk support and bug fixes but not major changes or new features.
Then why is Apple dropping the ball w/OSX on the G3?
Because it was a CLASS ACTION Lawsuit and they decided to settle it. Originally Apple stated that OS Ten would run on G3's then they back peddled a little bit and the OS exceeded the hardware abilities of these older machines. I believe it was a combination of a few factors.
Major advances in Video card technologies at the time. i.e. new cards every couple of months. Hey day of 3D accelerators.
Processor speeds were advancing very fast at the time as well.
Memory prices were dropping like a rock.
Apple engineers showed Jobs what Eye Candy was possible with newer hardware.
I have no doubt that if you strip out of the eye candy and turn off some of the other features those older G3's would actually run OS X rather well. The early 10.0.x beta was quite capable of running older systems.
The same thing happened in the PC world as well. Suddenly 133Mhz / 233Mhz / 266Mhz machines were left in the dust by 500Mhz / 650Mhz/800Mhz and then the Pentium 4's!
What happened to the older PC's? They are running Linux in places or being dumped on the trash pile or getting donated to schools, etc. I doubt that we could gang up on MS and sue them with a Class Action stating we want a refund because XP won't load on my Pentium II!
Yeah, it's evil but it get's the job done. Setup a bunch of standard ID's and groups in a buddy list and distribute it around. It's only used for quicky communications because we are all tied to a phone headset and hard to get a hold of.
So when there's an outage, etc. we get IM'd from folks all over the country in other data centers looking for more information. It's primarly used for this purpose and we never send anything important. It's used for instant quick communications and little else.
NET SEND {name | * |/DOMAIN[:name] |/USERS} message
It will pop a fully modal dialog box that will annoy the hell out of the user interupting whatever they may be doing at the moment, stealing keyboard focus and making an annoying DING sound.
This is being abused by SPAMMERS so most people just disable the messenger service in NT/Win2k/XP but this is what you are looking for and it comes with Windows already.
It's designed to send msg's from servers when they are being shutdown, offline, etc. Caution is advised as it could broadcast to all users at once if you don't use it properly.
A GUI could be whipped up pretty easily using VB.
Other then this, why not use the IM program of choice? i.e. Jabber, AIM, Yahoo, etc?
It's not so much that the content is available for free as it is that the guides cost on the order of $20+ USD and that's quite expensive! I really don't care about the glossy print nor artwork on a guide. It means nothing to me. The ASCII format is wonderful because I can format it if need be and I can search it easily too.
I have console gaming friends and I would always be printing out GameFAQ guides and cheat codes for them. Once they found out they could just ask me for the content, they stopped buying the crazy guides. Half the time they are so gaudy you have trouble reading the damn things due to lack of contrast!. i.e. Dark page with dark print or very tiny print.
I use GameFAQ constantly! I generally try not to use it until I've beaten the game on my own but sometimes you get stuck on something really stupid and can't figure out how to get past it. I look up what I need and I go back to the game. This mostly happens with poorly designed levels that are darn near impossible to understand without a guide.
Ratchet Screwdriver - Buy a Snap-on along with a large variety of different bits (phillips, flat, hex, torx, etc.) It will last a lifetime and if it should ever fail (even the bits) you can get them replaced for free. The screwdriver without any bit can be used on the standard PC style case screws. Most cases are tool free nowadays.
Needle nose pliers, 2 or three types, small precise snips, butane solder iron, electronics solder, RJ-45/RJ-11 crimp tool (cat5 and phone cable), cat5 cable tester. Quality multi-meter. Laminated cards with cabling pin-outs. Long flexible screw retriever (used to pick up small screws dropped in hard to reach places. Fox and Hound cable tracer (clip transmitter on one end of cable and then detect the other end of cable several hundred/thousand feet away).
Spare parts, including an assortment of cooling fans, a couple of power supplies, floppy drive, CD-Rom drive, hardisks, etc. Couple of different NIC's and some wireless cards. USB Zip drive (still have parallel model for older PC's), Firewire/USB2.0 external disk for backups.
Laptop IDE to Desktop IDE cable adaptor. i.e. remove laptop hard disk from mounting system and attach this cable to a desktop IDE chain and you can boot a desktop to read the laptop hard disk. This makes life so much easier!
A very compact and portable desktop system. Can be a very low cost system, useful for mounting a customer's disk and getting their data backed up. A small lightweight portable laptop with a CD-RW drive so you can create new CD-R/RW tool discs from ISO images. Include wireless on the laptop so you can test their network. I have an Apple PowerBook for this task. I can plugin or attach to any network in seconds and test a system and I don't have to reboot the laptop to do it. i.e. slide out PowerBook from backpack and flip open the lid to wake it, plugin a cable or detect the wireless network and then test. When done, close the lid and put the laptop back into sleep and back into the bag. Easy as pie. Also handy for remote serial consoles on those systems that support it. ie.. Headless Unix servers (USB to Serial adaptor).
Software: Boot floppies, Bootable CD-R (http://www.nu2.nu/bootablecd/), command line virus scanner, Partition Magic, Norton Ghost. Winternals Admin Pak (absolute best emergency repair disk for NT/Win2k/XP! worth every damn penny - not cheap $699) Boots and networks any dead NT/Win2k/XP system and can read the NTFS, registry, etc. Can recover damaged lost partitions, NTFSPro, etc. Buy an MSDN Subscription and you get just about everything Microsoft makes. Yeah, it's not cheap but it will save your ass sometime down the road. At the very least you can use it for what it was intended for; testing and gaining experience with their platforms and applications.
Build a few driver CD's; i.e. download as many drivers as you can and load them onto a few CD-R's. I have HP, Epson, Lexmark, ATI, Nvidia, IBM, Intel, etc. You might not be able to download them and some of them are quite large. I generally find out what a customer has before I get there and download all the drivers ahead of time.
I have a variety of soft cases loaded with gear that I can place in my car's trunk on a moment's notice. I have a road warrior's bag full of things like extension cords, every adaptor known to man, and 2 or 3 of everything! I have CD-ROM cases holding hundreds of CD's. I have toolkits full of tools. I have spare equipment up the wazoo. I have tools to fix tools.
Bottom line be prepared. These systems take years of experience to figure out all the different things you can bring with you. You never know what might come in handy in a pinch. I constantly add to my bag of tricks with new items.
Of course, all of the above is mute if it's Linux! I have Linux/Solaris/Darwin/OSX software tools as well. Nothing is as easy to fix as Unix based systems. I started buying Mac's because of all the pain, suffering, and expense of supporting Windows systems
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Yeah but the guy with a black box may think he's safe because he pays for basic cable, but the black box decodes all the channels including the pay per view stuff so he's really not paying for it all.
A person using this while paying for basic cable service is theft. It's no different then walking into a store, shoplifting a bunch of stuff and paying for a pair of socks!
To steal cable without paying at all requires running a cable a splicing it to the pole. This happens but it's less likely due to the technical issues. It's also easier to get caught.
The Real Problem is not the technology... But the availability of refilling the fuel cell much like a cigarette lighter and being easily able to find the fuel in stores everywhere.
If the fuel cell depletes after 6-8 hours and you can't find fuel cells or fuel then it's not gonna sell at all!
If the fuel cells cost more then a few cents then they won't sell either. I for one will not buy fuel cells for over $1 that only last 6-8 hours! Also there would need to be a recycling program for spent cells.
Otherwise, I will sacrifice portability and weight and go with a traditional recharge-able battery.
BTW, my Palm Vx may not be so flashy but it's got more then enough RAM and the rechargeable battery lasts many weeks before I need to recharge it. My earlier Palm III used two AA batteries and that lasted months so did an old PSION!
MSAccess is the biggest piece of crap I've ever run across! You would not believe the stupid crap I have to deal with because of Access. It's SQL support is rather limited so I end up having to code VB routines to do anything useful.
SQL server is better but it's also very vulnerable to attack and virus/worm exploitable!
The real solution would be to drop in a Linux box, setup telnetd or sshd and let the students telnet into their own shell accounts. Then have them run PostgreSQL and experience a real freaking database! Then install Windows compiled versions of the psql tools so they don't have to telnet into the Linux box.
Next setup ODBC and use MSAccess to make a connection to the PostgreSQL Linux Server. Just make sure you turn on PostgreSQL debugging because MSAccess tends to optimize your already optimized SQL statements thereby causing them to fail. Once the ODBC is working you can use MSQuery tools.
All of the above will show how the real world works with databases. Using MS Access as a cheap frontend will teach quite a bit. Next setup Apache and PHP so you can build web pages that process SQL queries. Then I suppose you could show how ADO/DAO/ODBC works inside an application using VB.
For advanced course, run Java Tomcat on the server and then you can get into JDBC stuff.
Seriously, one has to ask themselves why teach MS Access and SQL Server when the rest of the world is using Sybase, Oracle, UDB, and mostly Unix systems that are all moving towards Java J2EE architectures involving XML/Soap/etc???
I mean learning MS Access and/or SQL Server will not do anyone any good whatsoever other then learning improper SQL syntax and working with non-scalable systems. (yeah you can scale but it's very very expensive with MS solutions). We have very few MS SQL production servers.
Teach MS Access if you want to teach MS Access, but don't expect to teach SQL along with it.
I would say it's because Longhorn will be full of this sort of HTA interface technology. The entire GUI appears to be based on quite a bit HTA containers.
I once saw the on screen scrolling Guide (now owned by TV Guide) crash and it was sitting at an AmigaDOS console prompt.
It's since had a face life but I think it's still running on an Amiga! This is strange in that I didn't think there were many Amiga systems still in production usage. I am sure there are Amiga systems still in use all over the place but I was surprised to see it being used for the TV Guide.
I've hooked them up to an AS400 via Coax. If memory serves, it supported ethernet, serial, parallel, and several other interfaces as installable options.
A Windows software package could graphically design the label and create fields (merge codes) then you exported that to an EBCDIC or ANSI datafile. Then you pasted the code into a variable in the code. You output the variable text to the printer and it would load into RAM on the printer. Then you just sent data associated with the label fields. The printer would simply print each label. A knowledgeable VMS sysadmin could probably code this up readily. At least on an AS400 it was simple. Suppose you could use Perl or some other scripting language to do the work. Not familiar with VMS though...
It's not that complex, but you will need to get the software from Intermec. You can also get a service manual for the printer and install the NIC of choice.
There are also Windows drivers available so one could spool on a Windows box as well.
I suggest you upgrade the NIC to something that can do 10Mbps ethernet and code the app appropriately.
If you could catch them! Or if they don't decide to hop up and down and beat the crap out of you at the same time. Watching the videos, those suckers move you really fast and you can jump huge heights.
That's nothing new with Apple! All of Apple's systems are rather sensitive to third party RAM. Actually, all RAM is third party, not like Apple make's it's own RAM! But there are enough people looking for a bargain and trying to buy the cheapest RAM who get into trouble.
I had a problem with bad RAM (or at least RAM that was sensitive inside a Mac motherboard). I ordered a replacement 512MB DIMM from Crucial and the problem stopped happening. It was a wake from sleep problem but everything worked fine if I didn't sleep the desktop.
Buy an Apple? Don't buy el-cheapo RAM! Crucial works rather well and is extremely competitive price-wise.
I will agree with not buying RAM from Apple! All manufacturers mark up RAM to the point that you are throwing money away.
Bought a Sun Blade 100 and stupidly ordered a 128MB RAM stick. It came in it's own box (user installable) and it was clearly marked "Crucial". I ran a check at Crucial's website and it was less then half the price! I swallowed my pride and ended up buying an additional Gig of RAM for a rather low price direct from Crucial!
I just installed the updates this morning on two computers. PowerMac Dual G4 1Ghz MDD and a PowerBook G4 550Mhz.
No problems, encountered but I installed the updates and ran a Repair Permissions afterwards.
The only problem:
The PowerMac screen saver went to sleep and would not wake up after the Software Update mandatory reboot. I had walked away from the machine after telling it to reboot and did not even login to it. It froze with the screen blanked. I ended up SSHing into it from another computer and doing a sudo shutdown -h now then powered it back up. This is when I ran the Repair Permissions.
The PowerBook was upgraded after this and it didn't have a single problem. I didn't have a chance to test it though.
Hope they roll out an updated 10.2.8 soon so whatever major bug(s) were let loose; would get reined in quickly.
Serves me right in not waiting 2 days before I applied the updates. Some were having problems but most were do to people running haxies.
Cincinati Time clocks. Badge style reader, RS-232 data feed (modem mounted inside clock if necessary) converted to RS-485 for long distance runs (4,000 ft).
The clocks are literally quite dumb. They just log everything and upload to a software package which was DOS based when I was installing them.
The DOS application allowed an HR person to edit and upload the data to a company like ADP (automated payroll) to cut the checks.
The software allowed for easy editing and various rounding rules (usually 7min before and after).
I am now required to fill out timesheets on a web based system managed by eLabor which is part of ADP (ironically)... It's used for project tracking mostly (I'm salary not hourly).
Far as I can tell, no one really uses these numbers they just require everyone to fill out their timesheets. It's stupid really... It's not used for payroll. I figure only 5% of the IT workforce actually logs useful data, the rest is worthless. For example, I've logged 40 hours a week for months for nothing special.
I suppose one could get the data file spec and protocol for just about any time clock and write a web based tool or Linux native application with a little bit of effort.
The market for these devices is still out there but many of the small customers are going with those timeclocks listed in the bag of computer magazines, etc. Same with bar-code readers. There are a ton of companies selling the stuff dirt cheap.
The software is where it's at. It's not that complicated either.
Take NT 4, there was a critical update for NT 4 which I applied due to patching against Blaster and it killed the RAS services in NT. No RAS services would start after installing this particular HotFix.
The user attempted to remove and re-add RAS and did not apply the SP6 and hotfixes afterwards, so the box blue screened with the infamous KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED blue screen of death at every single boot.
I had to have her ship the NT Desktop across the country, recover her data, and rebuild her system to fix it. Then ship it back. Hundreds of dollars in shipping fees and a week of down time to boot.
All thanks to Microsoft's Windows update and a faulty CRITICIAL UPDATE not a driver.
Ironically, I read about it on the Register the day after it happened. It was not easy to find the Microsoft documentation. Apparently, MS re-released the patch a few days later but by that point I was already TOAST.
Oh and before you go on and on about how this should not be running NT 4. Know that they are running old legacy software and have no choice but to continue to run NT 4. The legacy software vendor is out of business and to replace it would cost on the order of 5 million dollars we don't have. The software won't run on Win2k/XP So looks like I will be supporting several thousand users stuck on NT 4 for years to come while MS grandfathers NT 4 and refuses to support it!
Just another fact of life for real world Windows Admins. We have no choice but to upgrade but we can't upgrade half the time. Heck, they just upgraded from DOS/Win311/Novell to NT 3.51 when Win95 had been out for 3 years and NT 4.0 just started shipping.
If we were running Linux we would all be happily running away for 10 years at a time without an upgrade on the workstations. There is little benefit for users to upgrade from NT4 to Win2k or XP. It's just a bunch of bells and whistles that add a heck of a lot more bloat to an already bloated system. In addition to the bloat, they move all the options around like a three card monty shell game so users and tech's alike have to remember where the stupid folder options have been moved to now.
Give me a custom Linux build any day! I have built custom Linux systems and I am sure I could customize a corporate build right now that would be very easy to support.
Everyone who uses a keyboard on a daily basis should be able to type at least 40 WPM without looking at the keys. Otherwise you are really impacting your productivity.
I took a typing class in High School circa 1987 on IBM electric type writers. It was only a half semester class but I was able to get up to about 60 WPM and over the years, I have increased that amount to about 80 WPM and I am happy with that speed. I can type faster when I transcribe text from a printout, magazine, or handwriting then I do when I type from my head to my fingers.
Co-workers are constantly looking over my shoulder in complete disbelief when they see me really typing fast. The funny thing is, I've witnessed people who can type 130 WPM and they are more then twice my speed. Typing really should be a required class in schools because most jobs require computer work and the keyboard is still the most important interface on a computer.
Programmers on this thread have stated that they don't think that learning touch typing is important and that the syntax of programming languages is too cryptic to type easily. While the cryptic nature of code is more difficult you will get better at it if you have a touch typing foundation and you merely practice entering code from magazines, etc.
Good programming editors have extensive keyboard commands. EMACS, ViM, Visual Studio, etc. These allow for one to quickly select options while actually typing. This keeps your hands on the home row of the keyboard. ViM is a bit better at this then EMACS but I don't want to start a flamewar. Use whatever works for you. Just know that both EMACS and ViM both use keyboard commands extensively and both will improve your productivity if you can touch type without looking.
I really cannot understand why so many refused to learn to touch type without looking. It's really not that hard, anyone can do it.
Mavis Beacon teaches typing for Windows works quite nicely, but as others have mentioned there are several Open Source tutors as well.
It's a whole lot of:
hjk lfgd lkd las lkj etc, etc, etc, till you get the home row down and then start inserting letters off the home row, then changing case and using symbols.
It is boring to learn but once you get some speed you will see the advantages. It kills me to watch someone fumble about with a keyboard or two finger it (even rapidly). All the head bobbing and finger hunting is killing your productivity. It's so much smoother when you know how to touch type the right way.
FYI,
I used to work a great deal in the bar-code field. I remember connecting Intermec printers to AS400 systems. This involved using Windows software to design a label graphically, then export to some data files that were kinda like XML but a proprietary format. Two files, one with the printer instructions and the other with data. The data file would be pasted into AS400 programming code and every time a label was to be printed, the label layout and the data stream would be sent to the printer. I believe the language was JCL.
I am sure Zebra has ways to do what you are looking to accomplish. I doubt seriously, there are many Open Source packages that can do all that you need to do. You need to find a vendor who does value add and works with multiple manufacturers.
It make take some work to find such a vendor, most are simply selling equipment and not providing any value add whatsoever.
Call the Zebra printer manufacturer and they should be able to locate a vendor that can work with you. A simple looksee at their website details the following:
BAR-ONE 5.1 with Accelio Present Central (formerly JetForm Central)
Easy, Cost-Effective Bar Code Printing from ERP Applications
The combined power of BAR-ONE bar code printing software and the Accelio Present Central (formerly Accelio Present Central (formerly JetForm Central)) output-management solutions make integration of bar codes into ERP systems a snap, no matter what the platform. Traditionally, transforming ERP data from existing reports and other ASCII formats into high-quality bar code labels has been an expensive and time-consuming custom programming task. But now it's as simple as a point and a click, thanks to a groundbreaking software pairing developed jointly by Zebra Technologies and JetForm Corporation.
Looks like JetForm is not dead but in partnership with Zebra and the new system is called Accelio Present Central.
http://www.zebra.com/SD/barone_jetform.htm
Hmm Truncated my post...
Remainder:
I've also met some very very weird people. Think, Silence of the Lambs weirdo's! Bodies in the basement, etc. Be prepared to show up and walk or run away quickly!
Watch out for problem customers. i.e. the one's who call you every week and try to be cheap about paying you. Don't accept food for work. Don't accept checks until you have verified their ability to pay you. i.e. never take a check on the first couple visits. If they bounce a check on you, terminate future business with them until they pay you for the check they bounced plus interest. Always charge them per hour the same rate.
...
Invest in the tools you are going to need. It's going to be expensive. You need to be a pro and recover almost any data and fix dead systems. Therefore, you are going to need spare hardware and a ton of software tools such as Winternals Admin Pak, etc. ($699 license) XP & NTFS is the need for this cost. NTFS is a real pain to mount and work with there are no decent free toolsets for NTFS. You can get around it but believe me, you need the AdminPak it has saved my bacon a bazillon times already and it's worth every damn penny! A really good laptop and possibly a small miniture desktop system so you can pull an IDE hard disk and mount it in your own semi-portable system, etc.
Not everyone has broadband, start building CD-R's full of drivers, etc. You may have to stop by a customer site and do a survey to find out what hardware they have so you can then go back to your office and download everything to CD because they have a 28.8kbps modem and it's barely working.
The reason the pro's charge so much is they have had to buy insurance to protect them against lawsuits. They have to invest in training and tools both hardware and software. They have rent and taxes to pay. Remember, in the USA you have to file tax returns quarterly with Uncle Sam even for a small consulting business.
I know a whole lot of kids and others who did what you are contemplating for a few years. Few made any money at it and most burned themselves out in less then 3 years; finally saying screw this and getting a real job. (something better then bagging groceries). Once you are out of High School and you get a real job, you will see how futile it was.
It's good training to put your feet to the fire and you will get a ton of experience. But watchout! One customer with a lawsuit and you are toast! Then get tagged by the IRS because you are dealing under the table and not paying taxes, etc.
You will have to deal with complete idiots who have 4 or 5 computers, broadband, and the boxes are full of spyware, trojans, viruses, etc. The user will have run ethernet cable outdoors and literally used two patch cables connected with an RJ45 splitter and wrapped in duct tape! This was hanging outside the house in Connecticut! It will be exposed to temperature extremes (contraction & expansion) and his connection will come and go, plus it will corrode (not gold plated). When I got there all of his boxes were so full of crap, viruses, trojans, and I am pretty sure they were all hacked and spending spam! It took me 2 weeks to rebuild everything and restore all his data, change all his passwords, install a firewall, and updated NAV licenses. I also offered to rerun the ethernet cable with a single run of cable rather then his mickey mouse patch cables + duct tape solution! Meanwhile, I had to contend with his Jesus Freak rhetoric and being happy about the end of the world!
Bottom line, get insurance (all it takes is for you to break something simply by accident, it happens to the best of tech's), get bonded, get the tools, get a car and not a bicycle, get a whole lot of patience, and be prepared to turn away customers who are trouble! Don't give anything away for free. Charge less then the competition but don't undercharge too much! Look for small business outfits rather then home consumer users. Start your own business rather then run under the table.
Oh and get a gun permit and carry a box of condoms!
Yeah, I've made house calls to horney woman and I've shot rats the size of small dogs in dirt floor basements. I've also met some very very weird people. Think, Silence of the Lambs weirdo's! Bodies in the basement, etc. Be prepared to show up and walk or run away quickly!
G3 with file and print serving will probably not see much of a difference in speed. Sure the G5 has a much larger bus and Serial ATA drives but the bottleneck is the Network!
I'm running an NT Server 2000 on very old hardware and all it's used for is file sharing and storage. Unless I put two Gigabit Ethernet Cards into it and put it on a fast Gigabit Cisco Switch then activate both NIC's and ensure the switch is properly configured, it's not going to make much of a difference in performance in regards to file sharing. Besides most of the workstations accessing it are at most 100Mbit NIC's so all that will do for me is allow more machines to connect. It won't speed up the file copy process all that much.
You want speed for file sharing? Then get a highend SCSI card, new drives, and a higherspeed NIC. Then upgrade your hub to a gigabit switch and make sure you use Cat5 cabling. Or you could go Fibre Channel for the disks. But again, the bottleneck is the network!
CPU has very little to do with network file sharing performance. It will make a difference with a Application Servers but not with simple file servers.
Bottom line, a P-90 first gen Pentium with 128MB's of RAM and a fast NIC running Linux will keep up with faster server hardware when it comes to file sharing. Heck, you could probably run it with 32MB or 64MB's of RAM!
When OSX refuses to upgrade on that aging G3 then install Yellowdog Linux and it will out perform OS 9!
No need to buy a G5 for server duties of this nature, it's a waste of money. Wait for the G5 to make it to the XServe if you have enough clients to make it worth while. Otherwise piece together a Linux box instead. Keep it the PowerPC G3 if you want. Run it headless...
That's the great thing about Apple! Give Apples to the creative types and they will live and breath Unix on the network! Works just fine in RedHat and other Linux environments! Heck it even works in Sun environments!
The tech's may be running RedHat on the servers but you just know some of them have Apple Powerbooks so they can easily manage the network even from home!
Sony did it right, they shipped a DVD player with the PS2. It was really quite smart because at the time DVD players were still expensive and the cheapest ones were complete crap.
Most US kids who get a Playstation from Mom & Dad already have their own TV in their room, at the time they didn't have a DVD player. (maybe a VCR but no DVD). So the ability to rent one's own movies and view them in one's bedroom along with games was what helped sell the PS2!
The real buyers of the PS2 were the 18-30 somethings who could afford the expense of the PS2. This crowd already had DVD because they had jobs that paid real money! But they only had ONE DVD player on the main TV in the house. The 20-30 portion of this crowd may actually be married and have children. This means they don't have time to play games that often and they may just fight with the wife over watching Lifetime channel shows. So they retreat to another TV with their PS2 and play games as well as watching guy movies the wife won't watch.
Nintendo blew it! First they targeted the younger crowd and second, they neglected to put a DVD player in their inexpensive console. Do you have any idea how many Disney movies on DVD the average kid has?!?! It's incredible, I think my sister's 5 year old has just about every damn movie and she's watched them 8 million times! Parent's simply don't want to watch them again and again! Had Nintendo simply included a DVD player the parents would have freaking loved it! Just get the kid a small cheap TV and let the kid play in their room the next time you rent an adult movie! They can play games and/or watch their movies.
It's too late now for DVD to make a difference in anyone's buying decision until games start getting shipped on DVD and using the added space. DVD players are very very inexpensive, you can get one at Walmart for under $50! So that's why Ninetendo blew it! They also didn't ship fast enough nor could they compete with Sony or Microsoft on the hardware. They missed the Window!
I seem to remember that being mentioned during the last Bush tax cut and that that little loophole was going to be closed so citizens working abroad would be taxed normally like local citizens.
Enjoy it while you can, because it may get pulled out from under you next year or the year after...
That's where you are completely wrong! They are major upgrades! The jump to Jaguar (10.2.x) and the next jump to Panther (10.3.x) are paid upgrades because they include a whole bunch of new features. Jaguar included literally hundreds of updates. It would be like going from WinME to WinXP in comparision.
There's still confusion for the MS crowd about how the versioning works. 10.x.x is the brand name of the OS. It's OS Ten. The .x release is the operating system version. 10.0 was practically a beta. 10.1 was the first major release. 10.2 was Jaguar and soon there will be 10.3 which is Panther. In between you have the .x.x releases. These are completely free and for the most part don't add features per se. The .x.x releases are like Service Packs.
When was the last time you ended up with major features being added to Windows due to a Service Pack upgrade? I would venture little to none. You would get improvements like bigger disk support and bug fixes but not major changes or new features. Then why is Apple dropping the ball w/OSX on the G3?
Because it was a CLASS ACTION Lawsuit and they decided to settle it. Originally Apple stated that OS Ten would run on G3's then they back peddled a little bit and the OS exceeded the hardware abilities of these older machines. I believe it was a combination of a few factors.
- Major advances in Video card technologies at the time. i.e. new cards every couple of months. Hey day of 3D accelerators.
- Processor speeds were advancing very fast at the time as well.
- Memory prices were dropping like a rock.
- Apple engineers showed Jobs what Eye Candy was possible with newer hardware.
I have no doubt that if you strip out of the eye candy and turn off some of the other features those older G3's would actually run OS X rather well. The early 10.0.x beta was quite capable of running older systems. The same thing happened in the PC world as well. Suddenly 133Mhz / 233Mhz / 266Mhz machines were left in the dust by 500Mhz / 650MhzIt's quicker and easier then Illustrator or Photoshop. It's also a lot cheaper.
http://www.stone.com/Create/Create.html
Yeah, it's evil but it get's the job done. Setup a bunch of standard ID's and groups in a buddy list and distribute it around. It's only used for quicky communications because we are all tied to a phone headset and hard to get a hold of.
So when there's an outage, etc. we get IM'd from folks all over the country in other data centers looking for more information. It's primarly used for this purpose and we never send anything important. It's used for instant quick communications and little else.
The syntax of this command is:
/DOMAIN[:name] | /USERS} message
NET SEND {name | * |
It will pop a fully modal dialog box that will annoy the hell out of the user interupting whatever they may be doing at the moment, stealing keyboard focus and making an annoying DING sound.
This is being abused by SPAMMERS so most people just disable the messenger service in NT/Win2k/XP but this is what you are looking for and it comes with Windows already.
It's designed to send msg's from servers when they are being shutdown, offline, etc. Caution is advised as it could broadcast to all users at once if you don't use it properly.
A GUI could be whipped up pretty easily using VB.
Other then this, why not use the IM program of choice? i.e. Jabber, AIM, Yahoo, etc?
It's not so much that the content is available for free as it is that the guides cost on the order of $20+ USD and that's quite expensive! I really don't care about the glossy print nor artwork on a guide. It means nothing to me. The ASCII format is wonderful because I can format it if need be and I can search it easily too.
I have console gaming friends and I would always be printing out GameFAQ guides and cheat codes for them. Once they found out they could just ask me for the content, they stopped buying the crazy guides. Half the time they are so gaudy you have trouble reading the damn things due to lack of contrast!. i.e. Dark page with dark print or very tiny print.
I use GameFAQ constantly! I generally try not to use it until I've beaten the game on my own but sometimes you get stuck on something really stupid and can't figure out how to get past it. I look up what I need and I go back to the game. This mostly happens with poorly designed levels that are darn near impossible to understand without a guide.
Ratchet Screwdriver - Buy a Snap-on along with a large variety of different bits (phillips, flat, hex, torx, etc.) It will last a lifetime and if it should ever fail (even the bits) you can get them replaced for free. The screwdriver without any bit can be used on the standard PC style case screws. Most cases are tool free nowadays.
Needle nose pliers, 2 or three types, small precise snips, butane solder iron, electronics solder, RJ-45/RJ-11 crimp tool (cat5 and phone cable), cat5 cable tester. Quality multi-meter. Laminated cards with cabling pin-outs. Long flexible screw retriever (used to pick up small screws dropped in hard to reach places. Fox and Hound cable tracer (clip transmitter on one end of cable and then detect the other end of cable several hundred/thousand feet away).
Spare parts, including an assortment of cooling fans, a couple of power supplies, floppy drive, CD-Rom drive, hardisks, etc. Couple of different NIC's and some wireless cards. USB Zip drive (still have parallel model for older PC's), Firewire/USB2.0 external disk for backups.
Laptop IDE to Desktop IDE cable adaptor. i.e. remove laptop hard disk from mounting system and attach this cable to a desktop IDE chain and you can boot a desktop to read the laptop hard disk. This makes life so much easier!
A very compact and portable desktop system. Can be a very low cost system, useful for mounting a customer's disk and getting their data backed up. A small lightweight portable laptop with a CD-RW drive so you can create new CD-R/RW tool discs from ISO images. Include wireless on the laptop so you can test their network. I have an Apple PowerBook for this task. I can plugin or attach to any network in seconds and test a system and I don't have to reboot the laptop to do it. i.e. slide out PowerBook from backpack and flip open the lid to wake it, plugin a cable or detect the wireless network and then test. When done, close the lid and put the laptop back into sleep and back into the bag. Easy as pie. Also handy for remote serial consoles on those systems that support it. ie.. Headless Unix servers (USB to Serial adaptor).
Software:
Boot floppies, Bootable CD-R (http://www.nu2.nu/bootablecd/), command line virus scanner, Partition Magic, Norton Ghost. Winternals Admin Pak (absolute best emergency repair disk for NT/Win2k/XP! worth every damn penny - not cheap $699) Boots and networks any dead NT/Win2k/XP system and can read the NTFS, registry, etc. Can recover damaged lost partitions, NTFSPro, etc. Buy an MSDN Subscription and you get just about everything Microsoft makes. Yeah, it's not cheap but it will save your ass sometime down the road. At the very least you can use it for what it was intended for; testing and gaining experience with their platforms and applications.
Build a few driver CD's; i.e. download as many drivers as you can and load them onto a few CD-R's. I have HP, Epson, Lexmark, ATI, Nvidia, IBM, Intel, etc. You might not be able to download them and some of them are quite large. I generally find out what a customer has before I get there and download all the drivers ahead of time.
I have a variety of soft cases loaded with gear that I can place in my car's trunk on a moment's notice. I have a road warrior's bag full of things like extension cords, every adaptor known to man, and 2 or 3 of everything! I have CD-ROM cases holding hundreds of CD's. I have toolkits full of tools. I have spare equipment up the wazoo. I have tools to fix tools.
Bottom line be prepared. These systems take years of experience to figure out all the different things you can bring with you. You never know what might come in handy in a pinch. I constantly add to my bag of tricks with new items.
Of course, all of the above is mute if it's Linux! I have Linux/Solaris/Darwin/OSX software tools as well. Nothing is as easy to fix as Unix based systems. I started buying Mac's because of all the pain, suffering, and expense of supporting Windows systems