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My thoughts on Surface RT

After a week, here's my thoughts on my Surface RT so far ...

Speed up your Surface ...

A possible settings change to make your Surface even nicer ...

Windows 8 RT Phone - what do you plan?

It slices! It dices! It will clean as it blends! Or will it?

Nature of the Beast

How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you explain an idea like AuTechHeads?

Here be dragons - AuTechHeads v3.0!

AuTechHeads is 3 years old .. and the website is now at v3.0!

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How to add your KMS keys for Windows 8 and Server 2012

Get your KMS Server ready for your new Windows 8 clients and Server 2012 OS's!

AVM Fritz!box 7390 – the ultimate home or small business router!

What's red and silver all over, and does everything for you, bar the dishes?

Top 5 Office 2010 features

This blog entry is not meant to be an IP transfer nor a thought provoker; rather this is more of a "did you know you could...." kind of blog.

Consolidated list of Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Hotfixes

An updated list of hotfixes for DPM servers, consolidated into a standard list of hotfixes for Win2k8 R2 SP1!

AuTechHeads 1st Anniversary Party - Registrations Open!

It's time to get your registration on. We're ready to party - are you?

Multiple Xbox 360 consoles and the Xbox Live Family Pack!

I was very lucky and privileged to have the help of some great AuTechHeads members in getting an Xbox 360 S. I've had fun getting it up and running with...

Empty users’ Recycle Bin with PowerShell and GPO

Want to force-empty domain user Recycle Bins (sounds like a Jedi power)? Can be done with PowerShell and GPO.

Windows Home Server 2011 Review

In which I install WHS 2011, and try to work out who Microsoft's target market are ...

Fixing the Blackberry Enterprise Server Administration Service

Lost your ability to administer Blackberry Enterprise Server? Here's a way to gain access, and a heads up on a bug ...

The Case for Breaking Up TechEd Australia 2011

Teched Australia 2010 has just ended, but is having 3100 delegates in one place just too much of a good thing? 

Recent Comments

  1. My thoughts on Surface RT - AuTechHeads Blogs

    Yep, I wasn't especially clear on that. I am aware there's an ability to work around this (and assume this is the reference). I meant a 'supported' configuration option, perhaps one that optionally submits sites for review to include in the official whitelist...

    -- Matt Marlor

  2. My thoughts on Surface RT - AuTechHeads Blogs

    You can add sites to the flash whitelist, There is a whole thread on the xda forums about it. I tested it myself and it does indeed work. How long the loophole stays open for is the big question

    -- Si

  3. Speed up your Surface ... - AuTechHeads Blogs

    It was late at night, so this post probably wasn't the greatest/most coherent .. but changing the page file minimum and maximum setting to Recommended definitely seems to have made a substantial and noticeable difference, and I've now had a few confirmations...

    -- Matt Marlor

  4. Windows 8 RT Phone - what do you plan? - AuTechHeads Blogs

    I agree Matt. The push towards "If you can't do something in Metro, just switch across to Explorer" will fail horribly on a touchscreen tablet or RT device. I can't imagine running OS X on an iPad, it would be terrible. But for people that want a device to...

    -- Nigel Wadsworth

  5. Coalface Tech Episode 29 - Eh? U TechEd! - AuTechHeads

    that is hillarious. Thanks for letting me sub in on the show and chatting!

    -- Rick Claus

  6. Coalface Tech Episode 29 - Eh? U TechEd! - AuTechHeads

    thanks for the shoutout guys. And Rick, at least you got to do the AD session in NZ, and you got the better evals this year - share the joy! ;-)(and I did mention what the 31st bit was for during the AD session!) :-P

    -- Pete Calvert

  7. Tips for First-Timers - AuTechHeads Blogs

    Thanks for this post. I too was debating if it was worth bringing my laptop along to the sessions, good to see I won't be alone when doing so.

    -- Rebecca Adamson

  8. How to add your KMS keys for Windows 8 and Server 2012 - AuTechHeads Blogs

    Is also worth noting that you MUST have SP1 installed. Because our KMS server was on a dedicated VM, it somehow got missed on our patching cycle (we basically forgot it existed). We soon found out when we got the "This update is not applicable to your setup...

    -- Colin Smith

  9. Windows To Go - AuTechHeads Blogs

    It's actually an SSD drive with a USB interface. I dare say that supporting any USB is too risky due to the high failure rates of crappy USBs, which in turn won't look good for Microsoft.

    -- Adam Fowler

  10. Windows To Go - AuTechHeads Blogs

    I wonder why they've "locked it down" to those two USB keys ? I have a perfectly good 64Gb key I could use...

    -- moldor

  11. Tips for First-Timers - AuTechHeads Blogs

    thanks.. my 3rd teched this year and almost forgot the business cards!!

    -- Brent England

  12. Tips for First-Timers - AuTechHeads Blogs

    Awesome post Brownie. Much wisdom.. wish I was going :-)

    -- Matt Marlor

  13. Tips for First-Timers - AuTechHeads Blogs

    I'm really going to miss it this year. Some great sessions, great products, and of course the party.

    -- Nigel Wadsworth

  14. Tips for First-Timers - AuTechHeads Blogs

    Yeah, I like to use a laptop for a) furious tweeting and b) taking notes. Occasionally a bit of c) keeping up with work emails (still on the clock!).Good point about the wireless!

    -- chrisbrownie

  15. Tips for First-Timers - AuTechHeads Blogs

    These are great tips! This is going to be my first TechEd and I've been wondering whether people are actually going to bring their laptops in during the sessions and whether there are charging stations etc. I'm also gonna bring my D-Link mobile companion...

    -- Michael Aulia @CravingTech.com

FIM 2010 - Identity Management meets mainstream!

What is Identity Management? "Identity management (ID management) is a broad administrative area that deals with identifying individuals in a system (such as a country, a network, or an enterprise) and controlling their access to resources within that system by associating user rights and restrictions with the established identity." (source) This is not a technical deep dive, but it is more than a 100 level overview which will give you a good idea around some of the concepts surrounding FIM. In subsequent articles, i will delve into each concept in more detail.

Why is this iteration of Microsoft's (Forefront) Identity Management suite of products exciting the Sys Admin community? Put simply: It works, and its easy to implement!

OK! When I say "easy", I should say it is "easy. Once you get your head around a few key concepts and terms". Here go's!

Synchronization Service
... is The central nervous system of FIM. The Synchronization Service Manager is where you configure your Management Agents (MA's) to do 'stuff'. I will gloss over some concepts (such as importing, synchronizing and exporting) to keep it simple and will try to relate this to a real world scenario.

Management Agent
FIM uses Management Agents (MA's) to connect to 'stuff' (ok, you get the picture i am trying to keep this general, right?). Some of the things you can connect to right out of the box are: Active directory (of course), SQL, SAP, Text files, Novell eDirectory and the FIM Service Management Agent (Se ...

Good To Great: The Service Desk

In this edition of Good to Great, I will discuss several tips that will help any service desk go from one of those places where users love to hate, to a fully functioning department that any organisation will value. You may not work at a service desk, but this info is still useful if you are part of the IT services team.

In this edition of Good to Great, I will discuss several tips that will help any service desk go from one of those places where users love to hate, to a fully functioning department that any organisation will value. You may not work at a service desk, but this info is still useful if you are part of the IT services team.

A lot of the information below has been put together through experience and research over the years, as well as from the IT manager’s best friend, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). For those who might not be familiar with the ITIL, it is a framework of best practices for service delivery.

ITIL: the IT service delivery bible
I have had experience with and qualifications in both V2 and V3 editions of ITIL, and in my opinion, while V3 focuses on continual service improvement which is a very functional model, I think the V2 framework was easier for an IT manager to implement ...

Good to Great: Printer Installation Scripts

One thing that can make your life easy as an IT Ninja *network manager/administrator* is to script the printer installation. This means that no matter what you do to a PC, weather you are re-imaging or replacing it, the printers will be installed automatically. This Good to Great blog entry will guide you through the process.

In this day and age, you would think most corporate networks are at least at the rationalised level of Core Infrastructure Optimization model, however if you are running a small office, school or a medium-size business, there are some things you can do as a good IT guru to make things easier on you. This is the first post in a series of tips to allow you to go from 'Good to Great'.

Printers! Cant live with them, cant live without them, unless you're this random : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhnLZ3Ryccg

One thing that can make your live easy as an IT Ninja *network manager/administrator* is to script the printer installation. This means that no matter what you do to a PC, whether you are re-imaging or replacing it, the printers will be installed automatically.

I am making two assumptions in this tip.
1: You are running a print server and have shared your printers with the appropriate printer drivers installed.
2: You are ru ...

Top 5 Office 2010 features

This blog entry is not meant to be an IP transfer nor a thought provoker; rather this is more of a "did you know you could...." kind of blog.

If you've attended a recent Microsoft roadshow or conference, then you would have probably seen the following features, but feel free to send this to your mother, sister, child, colleagues, grandmother or anyone apprehensive about yet another release of the Microsoft Office package.


This is not a fully comprehensive list of features. I’m not going to tell you how to do this. It's just meant to be a primer. I will link to another blog or two with a more comprehensive list of features, but these ones are WAY COOL!

Office 2010 is not as big of a paradigm shift as the upgrade to 2007 was from 2003/XP. Most people are now used to the ‘dreaded ribbon’. The Ribbon is present in most applications now (including Outlook). In fact, you are now able to customise and ...

Managed wireless - mine's great! Are we all right?

Intro: As this is my first blog post here, I thought I'd better introduce myself. My name is Kent Walker. I am the IT Manager of an independent school on the north side of Brisbane. We are not currently a 1:1 laptop school, but we plan on rolling out a program over the next three years. Notwithstanding this, we are currently a moderately technology-rich school and lucky to be experiencing very low downtime numbers after a major infrastructure refresh at the beginning of 2009. We have&n ...

Intro: As this is my first blog post here, I thought I'd better introduce myself. My name is Kent Walker. I am the IT Manager of an independent school on the north side of Brisbane. We are not currently a 1:1 laptop school, but we plan on rolling out a program over the next three years.

Notwithstanding this, we are currently a moderately technology-rich school and lucky to be experiencing very low downtime numbers after a major infrastructure refresh at the beginning of 2009. We have doubled our PC deployment numbers over the past two years with over 1000 PCs in the wild comprising of 130 laptops in the hands of our teachers, 200 laptops in trolleys for student access and the rest in desktop PC's used by students in classrooms, computer labs and admin staff.

As mentioned, our infrastructure is currently up to a level that I am comfortable with, but there ...

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