On some systems even when you check to not use the remote desktop wallpaper you still have to wait for the wallpaper to load at the login screen.  If you are comfortable editing the registry of the machine you can quickly fix this issue by setting the following value to NULL or Empty.

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Removing this image should speed up the time it takes for the remote login box to appear.

Oh, and as a disclaimer editing the registry incorrectly could render you machine unusable so please use caution.

Filed under: Microsoft, Tips and Tricks, desktop, rdp, registry, remote desktop | 1 Comment

So, I recently crossed to the dark side (apple) and got an iPhone 3g. I previously had an AT&T tilt, HTC 8925, and loved it! But my wife needed a new phone and she never really got the hang of windows mobile, she kept saying well my Treo… After showing her how to use it I found my self liking it more and more. Before I knew it I was picking up her phone to do stuff (ie: check my fantasy score, look up the nearest BBQ joint, and etc)

Well, I’ve had it for about 2 weeks now and I’m loving it. I’ve gotten over my “I hate iTunes” fit and things are working pretty smooth. During the iPhone/iTunes switch I decided to do away with her windows profile and just combined it with mine, mainly because I was tired of doing everything twice (setting up iTunes & Picasa3.)After a little work, I am happy to say I am syncing 2 iPhones to the same iTunes with different contacts and calendars while syncing to Outlook 07. It was pretty easy, I just had to create a group for each of us and import her contacts and calendar.  Anyway back to the phone. Lets start with “Things the iPhone doesn’t do.” (yet hopefully)iPhone 3g; firmware: 2.2; non-jailbroken (I know some of these things can be done to a jailbroke phone)

• Forward text messages
• Record video
• Send & receive mms
• Play .avi video files (or any other video file besides .mp4)
• Completely copy & paste through out the entire phone
• Transfer files via bluetooth
• Can only send 1 picture in an email

Ok, it seems you can overlook a lot when it does the things you like better than anything else.”Things I Like”

•  The App Store (I couldn’t imagine having an iPhone with out it)
• Mobile Safari (the best mobile browser I’ve used and I’ve tried everything for windows mobile)
• Google Maps with GPS (It freaking puts a dot where you are and it moves with you) <- that’s amazing
• Mail – I connect to my gmail and it really integrates well using Gmail’s imap
• Remote – this is an app that will connect you to your iTunes library and controls it on that local computer (really handy if you have a(few) airport express)
• As said before my wife has an iPhone too, and I installed Remember the Milk and linked both our phones to the same account so she can add my “honey-dos”

For those of you who are like me and ragged on the iPhone and now have one, I bet people are giving you that hard time back. Well I made a wallpaper to help me feel better and let mac users know where I stand. Feel free to download and use it yourself.

Filed under: Apple, iphone, outlook, profiles | 7 Comments

 If you use remote desktop at all you’ve probably ran into the need to send ctrl + alt + del to the remote system.  The problem is when you press those keys it causes the action to occur on your local machine.  My current solutions for you are the following

CTRL + ALT + END
This should send the command to the remote desktop and not your local machine.

Another solution which doesn’t get the exact same effect but might get you where you need to go is to right click the taskbar and choose “Task Manager …” from the context menu. On some machines from the task manager window you will be able to click “Shut Down” from the file menu which will let you shut down, restart or log off the machine.

Filed under: Microsoft, Tips and Tricks, rdp, remote desktop | Post a comment

Google released their browser named Google Chrome a few weeks ago. It is still in BETA but Google has done a really good job. I have used it over the last few weeks and really like it. If you’re a Google fan you will love this browser. [Download]

Filed under: Blogging, Web | Post a comment

If you are a Windows user who switched to Mac OS X you may miss the Alt-Tab feature from Windows. Mac has its own feature, using the Command + Tab keys. You can also use Expose to quickly switch between opened programs.

Filed under: Apple | 4 Comments