Waterfox–The fastest 64-Bit variant of Firefox

This is a great upgrade to Firefox

http://waterfoxproj.sourceforge.net/

Definitely “feels” snappier than Firefox, although I have not run any benchmarks.

Parallels Workstation 6 for Windows and Linux released!!

It’s been a long time since Parallels gave the Win/Linux community any workstation love!

I bought the upgrade to 4 back in 2009!  They had a small booth at the Cloud Expo in Santa Clara.

Too bad I missed Kurt S. from the Connectix days.

http://www.parallels.com/products/workstation/

Top Features Include:

Tested and certified on a wide variety of Windows editions and  Linux distributions to support your efforts across multiple environments.

• VM configuration capabilities for CPU and RAM allocations on a  per VM basis to help enforce good neighbor policies.

• Configurable VM isolation for advanced testing scenarios.

• Adaptive hypervisor improves performance for active window  applying the computers power where you need it most.

•  Fast virtual machines with Intel VT-x2 support (VPiDs, EPT & Flexpriority) taking  advantage of the latest hardware improvements.

• Plug and play support for a wide range of USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices.

• USB smart connections remember assignments or default to your desired configuration  eliminating reconfiguration.

• Easy virtual networking to enable moving between offices, networks and more.

• Drag and drop, copy and paste, share files between Virtual Machines as well as the host OS to simplify the movement of data.

• Coherence simplifies interaction by integrating application from multiple VMs onto the host desktop for easy access.

• Configure undo-disks to automatically reset VMs to their original starting state enabling rapid testing scenarios and share computer support for labs and  classrooms.

• Remotely start, stop & reset virtual machines without physically sitting at the computer extending administrators management reach.

• Access VMs and their applications from iPads and iPhones with Parallels Mobile allowing you to take your workstation with you, virtually.

• Easily convert physical environments into virtual machines with the Parallels Transporter application.

• Automatically encrypt virtual machines to improve privacy and security.

Supported Host OS Software

32-bit:

• Windows 7

• Windows Vista SP1, SP2

• Windows XP Pro SP3

• Windows XP Home SP3

• Debian 6.0

• Fedora 14, 15

• RHEL 6, 6.1

• SLED 11 SP1

• Ubuntu 10.10, 11.04

64-bit:

• Windows 7

• Windows Vista SP1, SP2

• Windows XP Pro SP2

• Debian 6.0

• Fedora 14, 15

• RHEL 6, 6.1

• SLED 11 SP1

• Ubuntu 10.10, 11.04

Google Apps Sync for Outlook gsync.dll error on x64 system

Anyway, my company just moved to Google Apps Premier for their email solution, sorry MS.  I’d been using the IMAP client for quite a while, but now that we’re Premier we get access to this new tool to sync your Outlook info with Google, which I then sync to my phone.

But, after importing 1GB of email I closed Outlook to come home, upon restarting Outlook, I got a gsync.dll error.

 

Fortunately, the solution is simple.  I copied the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google Apps Sync” folder to “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Apps Sync” and added this path, “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Apps Sync,” to the system environment variables.  Note that the path for the (x86) folder was in the path, apparently Google Sync just doesn’t like 64 bits.

Thanks to the Google forums for the pieces of info I needed for this.

Toshiba M400 tablet, Windows 7 x64, and fingerprint reader

I struggled with this for quite a while.  No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the fingerprint software to recognize the reader on the Windows 7 x64 install (x86 works fine).  The drivers were installed, everything looked ok, but I would get a “fingerprint device not installed” error when launching the Upek Protector Suite software.

Turns out, Upek has a newer version out (Protector Suite 2009 for Windows 7)  and its free to download.  I uninstalled the driver and old software, rebooted, then installed the new Upek software, and lo and behold, the reader is recognized and I was able to add my fingerprints.

UltraMon Multi-Monitor Utility

This is another nice little tool I like. Allows for a taskbar across multiple monitors, spanning wallpapers, etc.

A really nice thing is the licensing.  If it’s for personal use, you only need 1 license for the household.

http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

p.s. The reason I’m posting all this utilities is that I was having a lot of problems with my main Vista x64 box, VPC just stopped working after I’d swapped out the video card and some other apps started to fail, so I decided to format and to a fresh install.  Now, I’ve got to dig up all the apps and utils that I’d installed over the past 2+ years.

Slysoft Virtual CloneDrive

This is another great little tool I like for mounting ISOs on my PCs, works on Vista x64 and W7 x64, and it’s free.

http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

Desktop Icon Position Saver (DIPS) x64

I love this little tool, works for Vista x64 and W7 x64.  It allows you to save and restore your desktop icons.  Very helpful when upgrading certain vendors video drivers.  This is a rewrite by Serge Baranov of the one written by Jeffrey Richter.

http://amip.tools-for.net/files/dips64/ 

http://amip.tools-for.net/files/dips64/readme.txt

Exposé Clone for Vista/Win7

The other day I saw someone at work using a Mac and they pulled up Exposé and I thought, why doesn’t Win7 have this along with Flip3D.  Turns out, there’s a free tool, Switcher 2.0.0 that does what Expose does. Press Windows+` to bring up the Exposé-like menu.

Apologies for the screen-capture, my Dell e6500 has a 1920×1200 screen resolution.