Month: October 2006

Top 10 Geek Business Myths

Ron Garret has posted are rather clever article, The Top 10 Geek Business Myths.

Although I don’t think it’s just limited to Geeks. I have people come in from time to time wanting a quote on a website that, in their eyes, will be the next big thing. Some are extremely reluctant to tell me about their idea “in case I steal it”! (How can I possibly do up a propsal for them if they won’t tell me what they’re wanting to do???)

And I look through this list and they are making all the same assumptions that are listed here.

Think I’m going to hang onto this link and print it off for the next one that comes in!

Top 5 Command Prompt Tips

Typing commands instead of mouse-clicking… sound a bit old-fashioned? It’s true, once upon a time all computing was done this way. It may not be pretty, but the command line can still be pretty handy. Here’s a few commands I use:

  1. PING
    If you need to check your connection to something, this is the basic check. You can either ping a name or an IP address.
    ping http://www.sitename.com
    or
    ping 127.0.0.1
    are both valid. If you ping a name, you can also see what IP address that name resolves to.
  2. TRACERT
    This will trace the route to another computer. Again, you can use a name or an IP address.
    tracert http://www.sitename.com
  3. SHUTDOWN
    This one will shut the computer down. (Pretty obvious, hey!) Really handy to put at the end of a batch file that does a backup or something similar. Heaps of switches, so type shutdown /? to display all the options available.
  4. IPCONFIG 
    Displays the IP address of your computer, plus the address of your gateway (eg your ADSL modem or the computer that’s actually connected to the internet).
  5. XCOPY
    Great for quick and easy batch backups. Check xcopy /? for all options available.

That’s 5 that I use a fair bit – got any others?

If you’re really bored, here’s Microsoft’s A-Z Reference.