I actually did what makes me the happiest today ~ I gave a new client the gift of technology

The client in question, is a down to earth businessmen, plying his trade as best he can.

Amazingly he managed until recently WITHOUT email, fax or a decent Internet connection
This was quite a difficult thing to get my head around – especially being a geek.

Still, after our little visit this afternoon they now have, secure wireless broadband, email to his own domain, fax and colour printing and a shiny new laptop to play with

We left him able to email all his contacts and send / receive the plans and orders he needs.
Yeah!

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Just a quick note for the historians out there…
How long do you think this industry of ours has been going eh?
20 years?
30 years??
50 years!?

The truth is longer than we probably realise. Britain’s oldest original computer, the Harwell, is being sent to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley where it is to be restored to working order. The computer, which was designed in 1949, first ran in 1951 and was designed to perform mathematical calculations; it lasted until 1973.

That they had a computer in 1951 is amazing to me – that’s nearly 60 years of computing :razz:

WOW!!!

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I had an interesting issue the other day ~ redirecting the print job in a terminal services session!

Ok, that sounded WAY too geeky for the majority of readers so I’ll attempt to explain (bear in mind I AM a geek, so this might not make any sense at all!)

Terminal Services (TS) is a technology which enables users to log into a ‘session’ on a server and use resources from that machine instead of the local machine.
It’s a great technology for businesses with a head office and branches, as it means that the branches can use the same resources as the HQ.

In practice, imagine a business with several branch offices and one HQ all trying to share a database like Act! for instance.
Terminal Services allows the branch offices to log into a ‘session’ on the server and use the database as if they were in the HQ ~ mainly to speed up the process and configure specific security.

Now that sounds interesting :?:, but what happens when you print? You might think that the system would simply use your own local printer, but it’s not that simple. By logging in to a TS session you are using the server as a PC and not your local machine so in theory, if you print, it would use the SERVER’s local printer, not yours. In practice, it should use your PCs local printer, thanks to some clever technology called ‘Easy Print’.

Easy print, simply detects you local printer and sends the job to that instead of the servers printer. Microsoft say you don’t even need a printer driver whist using this (though I found out that is not true )

In my case, one branch office could print locally, another could only print out at the head office (pretty useless, this branch office was in Leeds, the HQ in Dewsbury!)

The solution was to configure the TS server as a printer manager and install the drivers for the local printer on to it ~ the EXACT version of the driver is important as any difference stops it from working. Once I realised this, then everything worked as expected
Simply using the same driver as I installed on the print manager worked fine, and any future printers will just need to have the drivers added to the print manager.

Let’s hope this little nugget saves some other techies’ some frustration

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On a more personal note…
My GF has the week off – this is a good thing BUT – usually I get to leave the house later than her and get a good lie in whilst she gets ready and heads off.
Not this week
She’s left luxuriating whilst I drag myself to conciousness and head out into the world at large…

I don’t think I like it! :eek:

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