Tis’ the season to jolly up your desktop with Vista Christmas icons. This set of 25 icons are perfect for getting in the holiday spirit. Incredible quality icons.
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This is the steps to get 3DMark 05 to run in Wine 0.9.49

1) Download the 3DMark patch found here and recompile wined3d.dll with this hack included.

2) Download 3DMark 05 and install the benchmark into Wine.

3) Run regedit and add the “Direct3D” key and set “OffscreenRenderingMode” to fbo there is further info about this here.

4) When you run 3DMark 05 “disable post processing” as it is (very very slow)

A recent score:

Image Quality in 3DMark 05 with Wine:

Feel free to comment about this post at the wine-forum.

Realtek High Definition Audio drivers for Vista/2000/XP/2003 .

Every week I make an ASR backup of my Windows 2003 R2 servers, some of them are physically located at another site.
Due to that fact I had to think of a secure way to get my data over the WAN to my office.
Just plain copying is not an option because we all know if one bit falls over my complete ASR backup is rubbish.
And I would have wasted precious bandwidth.

A solution I could come up with was to use plain old WinRar, I found out that there was a command line version as well.
But the help that comes with that version is kinda cryptic.

Below is my command line that I came up with.
rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

I will explain it in full detail:
rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

a = add files to archive, that really speaks for itself I think.
we are going to add files to an archive.

rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar = this is the name of the archive we are going to create.

rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

-ri1 = this gives the archive process a priority of 1 which is the lowest, this way archiving will not degrade the performance of the server to much.

rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

-mt2 = Multithreaded: If you have a multithreaded cpu then with this command you give both threads work.

rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

-ag[yyyy-mm-dd] = here you give the archive a name with [2007-11-22] attached to it.

rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

-rv10 = This is for me the most important option: this switch create recovery volumes called REV files the number indicates how many REV will be made.

rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

-v51200 = here we specify the maximum size of a rar archive (we are creating an archive that will span a number of archives. The number 51200 is chose because it will show as 50.000 KB nicely in explorer (1024×50)

rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

-m5 = This is how you specify the compression level 5 is maximum compression 0 is just store no compression at all.

rar a d:\asr-bu\done\asr_server.rar -ri1 -mt2 -ag[yyyy-mm-dd] -rv10 -v51200 -m5 d:\asr-bu\*.bkf

d:\asr-bu\*.bkf = here we specify what to store in the Archive we create. My ASR backup is stored at this location, I use also a date in my naming of ASR’s so I must use a wildcard here.

All of this results in the following set of rar files

asr_server[2007-11-22].part001.rar
asr_server[2007-11-22].part002.rar etc…

I hope this helps you.

———–

RAR 3.70   Copyright (c) 1993-2007 Alexander Roshal   22 May 2007
Shareware version         Type RAR -? for help

Usage:     rar <command> -<switch 1> -<switch N> <archive> <files…>
               <@listfiles…> <path_to_extract\>

<Commands>
  a             Add files to archive
  c             Add archive comment
  cf            Add files comment
  ch            Change archive parameters
  cw            Write archive comment to file
  d             Delete files from archive
  e             Extract files to current directory
  f             Freshen files in archive
  i[par]=<str>  Find string in archives
  k             Lock archive
  l[t,b]        List archive [technical, bare]
  m[f]          Move to archive [files only]
  p             Print file to stdout
  r             Repair archive
  rc            Reconstruct missing volumes
  rn            Rename archived files
  rr[N]         Add data recovery record
  rv[N]         Create recovery volumes
  s[name|-]     Convert archive to or from SFX
  t             Test archive files
  u             Update files in archive
  v[t,b]        Verbosely list archive [technical,bare]
  x             Extract files with full path

<Switches>
  -             Stop switches scanning
  ac            Clear Archive attribute after compression or extraction
  ad            Append archive name to destination path
  ag[format]    Generate archive name using the current date
  ao            Add files with Archive attribute set
  ap<path>      Set path inside archive
  as            Synchronize archive contents
  av            Put authenticity verification (registered versions only)
  av-           Disable authenticity verification check
  c-            Disable comments show
  cfg-          Disable read configuration
  cl            Convert names to lower case
  cu            Convert names to upper case
  df            Delete files after archiving
  dh            Open shared files
  ds            Disable name sort for solid archive
  e[+]<attr>    Set file exclude and include attributes
  ed            Do not add empty directories
  en            Do not put ‘end of archive’ block
  ep            Exclude paths from names
  ep1           Exclude base directory from names
  ep2           Expand paths to full
  ep3           Expand paths to full including the drive letter
  f             Freshen files
  hp[password]  Encrypt both file data and headers
  id[c,d,p,q]   Disable messages
  ieml[addr]    Send archive by email
  ierr          Send all messages to stderr
  ilog[name]    Log errors to file (registered versions only)
  inul          Disable all messages
  ioff          Turn PC off after completing an operation
  isnd          Enable sound
  k             Lock archive
  kb            Keep broken extracted files
  m<0..5>       Set compression level (0-store…3-default…5-maximal)
  mc<par>       Set advanced compression parameters
  md<size>      Dictionary size in KB (64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096 or A-G)
  ms[ext;ext]   Specify file types to store
  mt<threads>   Set the number of threads
  n<file>       Include only specified file
  n@            Read file names to include from stdin
  n@<list>      Include files in specified list file
  o+            Overwrite existing files
  o-            Do not overwrite existing files
  oc            Set NTFS Compressed attribute
  or            Rename files automatically
  os            Save NTFS streams
  ow            Save or restore file owner and group
  p[password]   Set password
  p-            Do not query password
  r             Recurse subdirectories
  r0            Recurse subdirectories for wildcard names only
  ri<P>[:<S>]   Set priority (0-default,1-min..15-max) and sleep time in ms
  rr[N]         Add data recovery record
  rv[N]         Create recovery volumes
  s[<N>,v[-],e] Create solid archive
  s-            Disable solid archiving
  sc<chr>[obj]  Specify the character set
  sfx[name]     Create SFX archive
  si[name]      Read data from standard input (stdin)
  sl<size>      Process files with size less than specified
  sm<size>      Process files with size more than specified
  t             Test files after archiving
  ta<date>      Process files modified after <date> in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS format
  tb<date>      Process files modified before <date> in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS format
  tk            Keep original archive time
  tl            Set archive time to latest file
  tn<time>      Process files newer than <time>
  to<time>      Process files older than <time>
  ts<m,c,a>[N]  Save or restore file time (modification, creation, access)
  u             Update files
  v             Create volumes with size autodetection or list all volumes
  v<size>[k,b]  Create volumes with size=<size>*1000 [*1024, *1]
  vd            Erase disk contents before creating volume
  ver[n]        File version control
  vn            Use the old style volume naming scheme
  vp            Pause before each volume
  w<path>       Assign work directory
  x<file>       Exclude specified file
  x@            Read file names to exclude from stdin
  x@<list>      Exclude files in specified list file
  y             Assume Yes on all queries
  z[file]       Read archive comment from file

Microsoft highlighted a number of customer migrations it says signify that users are gearing up to switch to the year-old OS.

Microsoft Tuesday assumed sales of Vista have hit 88 million and the company highlighted a figure of customer migrations it says signify that users are gearing up to change to the year-old OS in spite of recent surveys that say many are taking a careful approach.

Company officials say the ebb and flow of new contracts and expiring contracts means the overall number of volume licensing copies of Vista doesn’t alter radically from quarter to quarter.

In addition to the 88 million copies of Vista sold, Microsoft said 42 million PCs now have Vista licenses via amount licensing contracts signed by corporate users. Microsoft used the same 42 million number back in July when it discussed Vista uptake at its annual meeting for monetary analysts.

The Vista numbers were tabulated during Microsoft’s first fiscal quarter, which ended Sept. 30. The monetary results of that quarter were reported October. 25.

The numbers of copies sold represents nearly a 47% boost over the 60 million copies sold that was reported by Microsoft in July.

Vista shipped to corporate users on Nov. 30, 2006, after five years in development.

A recent survey by King Research, which was funded by systems management vendor Kace, showed that 90% of 962 IT professionals surveyed said they have concerns about migrating to Vista and more than half reported they have no plans to do so.

The respondents showed concerns that Vista would reduce stability and introduce too much complexity into their environments.

“Stability in general was repeatedly cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would require to run on Vista,” says Diane Hagglund of King Research. “Cost was also cited as a concern by some respondents.”

The report showed the 43% of respondents have considered non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux and Macintosh, to avoid the Windows Vista migration.

A recent Forrester report showed that 52% of respondents have no plans to roll out Vista or don’t know at what time they might do it. The study shows 11% don’t plan to start a even out until 2009, and another 6% are waiting until 2010.

The study also shows that 88% of companies with 5,000 to 20,000 users have standardized on XP. In fact, stipulate for XP is still so strong that users forced Microsoft in September to extend XP’s availability another five months.

Microsoft’s continued hopefulness over Vista adoption is likely in part fueled by the fact that it plans to ship Vista Service Pack 1 around the end of February 2008.

Last week, it released an RC Preview of SP1 to 15,000 testers.

Service Pack 1 is historically a milestone many users wait for before they consider migrating to a new Microsoft operating system.

Source: networkworld.com

• Latest GetaMac Web Ad - Don’t Give Up on Vista
  This is the latest Getamac Ad, new web-only advertisement from Apple that has appeared on a number of sites, including News.com, pcwizkid.blogspot.com , and PCMag.com. The Apple advertisement features "Mac" and "PC" as played by Justin Long and John Hodgman