Author Archives: Petar Mitrevski

Misc. Notes on Windows 7

Windows 7 Ultimate is consumer-grade and thus gets 5 instead of 10 year life cycle.
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1515612,00.html?track=sy160

Making a better image:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/stephenrose/archive/2010/07/17/improving-your-image-sector-based-file-based-and-sysprep-what-makes-the-most-sense-part-1-terms-and-windows-tools-primer.aspx

Some notes of default user profile template:
If you set the ‘copyprofile’ option in your sysprep XML file, the settings from the ‘Administrator’ account get copied to the default profile. The problem is that you have to build your ‘master’ machine from that Administrator account, not the account you create when you first fired-up the machine. This put me back a few weeks when I started.

So here’s the procedure:
1. Install Windows (create user in the Out-of-Box Experience)
2. Once you’re in, -re enable- the ‘Administrator’ user and give it a password
3. Blow away the OOBE user you created
4. Build your box
5. Sysprep with ‘CopyProfile’

Kudos to Marc Doughty

Videoconferencing and Telepresence

Overview of Web Conferencing Tools:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgJkAm8YfFJndFRMdnZIRnVOYzE0VXNkV2RnWXFidlE&hl=en&pli=1#gid=0

Useful articles for videoconferencing and telepresence solutions:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/06/22/jansson
http://www.nitle.org/help/telepresence.php.
http://www.uvccompatiblewebcams.com/
http://www.tandberg.com/video-conferencing-case-studies/distance-learning-videoconferencing-education.jsp

iOS Configuration Utility

As we get more and more Apple iDevices (iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches), we may want to consider leveraging the iPhone Configuration Utility (which Apple should really rename).

This utility allows us to create a “perfect” and “recommended” configuration profiles that can be uploaded on a web page or shared via email. When a customer clicks on such a profile, the following tasks (and more) can happen fairly automatically:

  • setup ActiveSync with a pre-defined (correct!) server name. Customer just needs to enter email address, username and password.
  • setup VPN pointing to pre-defined vpn server (but only pptp and cisco protocols supported)
  • setup a predefined wireless (like Midd_standard — can even push a password… Or not…)
  • prompt customer to configure a secure pass code to lock the device

More details:

  • http://support.apple.com/kb/DL851
  • http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/