After you have successfully installed your Windows Operating System such as Windows XP, most settings are placed on default. Normally included in this would be the auto shut off options for your hard disk and your video card. Depending on your preference, they can be good power savers and can help a lot in reducing the stress of computer parts concerned when you happen to leave your desktop or laptop idle for some time.

But overall, they are meant to help safeguard you computer as far as leaving it open for quite some time. The computer parts such as your video card and your hard drive are taking heat when they are operational. Unless you are the type that needs the computer to be operational most of the time due to instances such as long hour downloading of large files like videos, it would be wise to save on the wear and tear as well as the energy you are consuming. Energy in the sense that we are all aware of the fast dilapidating of our energy sources and each small help counts a lot.

For the techie freaks these days, many would turn these options off for their own reason. One is that they don’t want to go through the trouble of having to tap a key on their keyboards which may take some time to refresh and function as well. Besides, for these people, if one of the two, the hard disk or the video card, conks out, getting a new one of higher specs can be pretty much rewarding.

• Fact: Shell scripting is a must for any serious IT admin managing a server. From automating backups to checking logs and keeping server performance and load in check, scripting is a must.
• Fact: Shell scripting on Windows sucks. Monad (Microsoft Power Shell) attempts to fix that, but so far the results are mixed.
• Fact: Shell scripting on Linux and other *nix operating systems is powerful, well-documented, and quite straight-forward.

Most people take a look at these three facts, and instantly come to a conclusion.. the wrong conclusion: you can’t properly manage a Windows server because it’s inherently lacking in the shell scripting department.

Following our coverage of the Windows XP SP3 beta leak almost a month ago in August, here’s some more info on the official beta, which just had its first authorized distributable released earlier today. Say hello to Windows XP SP3, build 3205!

While the newly-released build and the one leaked a month ago (Build 3180) may share the same name, we can exclusively reveal that they are not identical releases. This release, also shipped as windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu.exe, is 334.2 megabytes and has been made available to tier-one Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 beta testers. Hashes are as follows:

CRC: 56e08837
MD5: c8c24ec004332198c47b9ac2b3d400f7

Along with the standalone installer redistributables (in English, Japanese, and German), Microsoft also provided the usual release notes and a list of all the hotfixes included in this release. Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with all-new features - not just patches and hotfixes, most of them backported from Windows Vista: