Darthpenguin's Blog (7)

How to Keep Your Music Synchronized on an External Disk and Listen to it on Your PS3.

If you use iTunes and have a Playstation 3 you have probably banged your head against the wall or thrown you controller across the room in frustration when trying to share music from your Mac to your PS3. I have run various media servers on my mac and run windows XP and vista in virtual machines and on desktops, nothing has served my music to the PS3 with any degree of stability. I have never found the ultimate media manager but iTunes dose the best job so far so I would like to stick with it. S… Continue

Added by darthpenguin on May 16, 2009 at 1:30pm — No Comments

The Ultimate Media Manager

The Ultimate Media Manager My first computer ran Windows 95. But it wasn't until I got a computer with Windows XP that I started using media managers. Windows Media Player was the first one I tried, I eventually learned to hate it. Then I tried Winamp, perhaps my favorite media player but it still didn't do everything I wanted. I experimented with Linux and decided to try some open source media managers while I was at it. None truly impressed me. I tried Songbird on Linux, Windows, and Mac. It… Continue

Added by darthpenguin on April 8, 2009 at 12:41pm — No Comments

Dual Boot or Virtual Machine?

Why would you ever want to run multiple operating systems on one computer? A computer / network technician may need access to many OSes, possibly all at once. But what would a regular user want with more then one OS? There are many reasons why someone may want to do this, the most common of which is that the user prefers Linux or Unix (Mac OS X) for the speed, security, and stability but occasionally need to run Windows specific programs. Now, you can run some apps under virtualization without W… Continue

Added by darthpenguin on January 31, 2009 at 11:46am — 12 Comments

How to Stay Secure Online

I know that there are many opinions out there about how to keep yourself free from malware and the truth is, aside from possibly not being online at all, there is no way to be 100% protected. Not being online is not usually an option so here I will discuss briefly and simply some ways to protect yourself. This article is mostly directed at novice users but power users may read on as this may be helpful to anyone. You never know. First we will discuss firewalls. Wikipedia defines a firewall as "… Continue

Added by darthpenguin on January 31, 2009 at 9:18am — 2 Comments

What is the Best Backup Software?

Ubuntu has OpenOffice.org. It has Firefox and Evolution. It has Rhythm Box and The Gimp. You can install Inkscape and VLC. It plays mp3 and now YouTube videos play flawlessly. Ubuntu looks better then Windows or Mac, especially with desktop effect enabled. And, if you wish, you can run Windows or any other OS using Virtual Box. Ubuntu is free and will run on most hardware. So why do so many people use Mac? I’m not talking about people in the movie or graphics industry who need to use Phot… Continue

Added by darthpenguin on December 24, 2008 at 12:17pm — No Comments

What is the Best OS?

What is the Best OS? It is a debate that will never end. Just what is the best operating system? There isn’t one really because it depends on what you are using it for. Here I have focused on desktop operating systems for home use and some important points to consider. Specifically I will be focusing on three separate operating systems; Windows (XP/Vista), Mac OS X Leopard, and Ubuntu 8.10 (a Linux distrobution). The four important points we will consider are user interface, available pr… Continue

Added by darthpenguin on December 22, 2008 at 9:11am — 4 Comments

How to Network Windows XP and OS X Leopard, VNC and File Sharing

I have spent months attempting to set up a usable network between a MacBook running OS 10.5.5 and a Desktop PC running XP. I was rather surprised when I could not find a simple yet complete article on this subject anywhere. So I decided to write one. Please feel free to leave any comments. There are at least two things everyone wants to do in any home network; VNC (Vertual Network Computing) and File Sharing (I won’t get in to home network backup solutions in this article). First VNC. XP does… Continue

Added by darthpenguin on December 18, 2008 at 10:00am — 5 Comments