Is it time for Vista? Solutions for upgrade problems and advice for deployment and maintenance

Operating systems are constantly being updated. Sometimes it’s to deal with security issues, sometimes to improve performance and sometimes to add new, must have, features.

Deploying and supporting XP SP3: use our expert tips to resolve incompatibility and installation issues

The third service pack (SP3) for Windows XP was released in May this year and while it’s a relatively stable and straightforward cumulative upgrade, there are some minor installation issues that you’ll want to be aware of before you roll it out — and if SP3 is already there, they might already be generating support calls.

Get better security with Vista by implementing best practices for using User Account Control - UAC

Operating your PC when you’re logged in with an Administrator account is an inherently insecure thing to do. If you’re a user with highly-elevated privileges across multiple machines or an entire Active Directory domain, running your everyday processing with these privileges can be dangerous to the point of negligence.

Spacemonger - pinpoint what’s taking up the space on your hard drives

The best thing about Spacemonger (www.sixty-five.cc/sm, $24.95) isn’t that its intuitive display of how space is used on a hard drive allows you to pinpoint what’s taking up the space on your hard drives in a matter of seconds. The screen area shows a colour-coded and hierarchical treemap where the size of the box for each directory or file is in proportion to the space it takes on the drive. Hover the mouse over any element to see a popup with more detail, and scroll the mouse wheel to zoom down to level of individual files.

Mac printing in a Windows world

When a Mac turns up at a previously Windows customer, one of the things you’ll need to help them do is get it to print to the existing network printers rather than buying a new printer just for the Mac.

Remote Support

The phone rings; “My email isn’t working.” Now you have to decide: do you drive across town to give in-person support, or try to find a solution from where you are sitting? Personal visits for every support request are impractical, but telephone support can be frustrating and, at worst, a waste of time when a visit proves necessary after all.

Macs in a Windows world

Helping your Apple users become full-time network citizens – without doing a lot of extra work

We IT professionals are seeing more and more Apple Mac computers on our comfortably Windows-based networks. In the past, it’s been easy to ignore them – after all, in many cases they belonged to just one or two users, none of whom tended to be an influential manager or executive. But today it’s just as likely to be the boss with a new Mac.