Couple of hours ago, after a two and a half month wait, I finally received the GateKeeper Card Pro from Yoggie.

Some of you may have heard about it when Engadget mentioned it on April 23rd. That's actually the first time I found out about it - and the good guys from Yoggie promised they'll ship one out for a review as soon as they have them available.  I must mention - they've been more than kind ;)

For those who do not know what it is: GateKeeper Card Pro is a Linux-based Mini-Computer integrated onto an Express Card. This little computer is a hardware-based security appliance in charge of your laptop's security from the moment it is plugged in.

It comes with Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, Anti-Spyware, Firewall, Intrusion Prevention, Anti-Phishing, Web Filtering / Parental Control, Transparent Email and Web Proxies, even a VPN Client, and more!

You might ask yourself WHY in the world you need this - when you can simply install all of these applications onto your computer and have it take care of itself?

There are many answers but one I like the best is - less bloating for your machine! All that software takes valuable resources from your laptop which could be used for giving you more performance.

This is the main reason why corporations do not use software-based firewalls and security systems, but rather, hardware devices which offer physical separation from network. This is exactly how the GateKeeper Card works.

Before any data is accepted for processing by [your] computer’s operating system, a low-level driver redirects it to the Gatekeeper Card Pro unit where a full security check is performed. Security breach attempts are identified and thwarted, and only safe, secure data is passed back to the computer.

GateKeeper simply sits between your network connection and your computer and intercepts all the data coming through - in either direction. It gets installed into your Network Adapter configuration right next to the "Client for Microsoft Networks" and "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks", as "Yoggie Personal Security Appliance" (see the picture in gallery).

What is ClickaPost anyway?

It is an on-line classifieds system, similar to Craig's List and in some ways to eBay, but with a twist. It is really pretty, free to use, and you may include both pictures and videos with your posts. People can leave comments about your post and if they wish to talk a bit more about it - we provide an integrated Forum for this! All forum posts can be easily linked to "ClickaPosts" so everyone always knows what you're talking about.

While you can upload your own videos directly, if you already have them somewhere else on the Internet (say YouTube, Blip.TV, WellcomeMat, MetaCafe, etc.) you can easily embed them into your posts.

What can you post?

Pretty much anything! We separated over 400 different subcategories into the following 9 categories: For Sale, Vehicles, Services, Community Events, Real Estate, Personals, Jobs, Resumes and Wanted.

If you are selling a laptop or looking for one, getting rid of some old books, looking for a babysitter, organizing a community event, or simply looking for a job - ClickaPost.com is a place for you.

What now?

Head over to ClickaPost.com and register. If you already registered while we were in private beta - your account is still there so you may simply log in!

If you like what you see please tell your friends and family.

If you need help - just reply to this post and I'll help you out with anything.

If you have any feedback - we're all ears. Especially now ;)

Note on web browser compatibility...

While in beta, ClickaPost is best viewed using either FireFox or Internet Explorer 7. Support for Internet Explorer 6 is coming very soon! If you do not have FireFox installed, you can get it for free. FireFox 3 has just launched today and it is by far the best and fastest web browser ever made!
You may download it at the following address:
http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US

P.S>
ClickaPost.com is a project I developed for my clients from New York.
Need PHP development? Check out Peconi.com and give us a call!

Overall it did seem a little bit snappier than usual too, and this was just a beta. I bet this new Service Pack will greatly improve stability of the overall system and (finally) user's satisfaction with Vista. I do still prefer XP when it comes to working on Windows.

Oh, and the main thing about SP1, while still not fully available from Microsoft as a download (they shipped the RTM to manufacturers first), you can get it on the lovely Torrent Network. PC World reports on the stats of that right here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142231-pg,1/article.html

While I do not support illegal downloading of software, Vista's update belongs to you if you have Vista anyway, so fire up those torrent applications ad get yours.

Here's the best torrent search engine you can find, click the logo ;)

Good torrent programs:

• For Windows: utorrent
• For Mac OS X: Transmission

• It does seem I am not being asked as much for a permission to do some things (finally)
• I LOVE that Vista now sees 4GB of RAM (the correct amount) and is not showing it as 3GB... It's nice to be able to use what you paid for :)

When I see more things I'll let you know, but for now ... it seems fine :)

As with every "beta" software, you should be careful and not install this on any mission critical systems, but if you are like me - you won't care less and just go for it and see what Microsoft's kitchen has in store for us.

Here's the download link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=529d992a-d69e-4c73-9213-7a7f3852c0ca&displaylang=en&tm

Also, you might be interested in reading up about it first on ZD-Net: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1106

P.S. Is Microsoft trying to show us how good Vista is meant to be just a day before the MacWorld 2008? :)

This was annoying the living hell out of me... I disabled the Dream Scene package and now it all works like a charm. Also, with the Dream Scene out - I do not get the random Windows Manager restarts due to some video driver failures.

So, if you are having some issues - try getting the Dream Scene out. It sucks without it, but what can one do? I rather have a stable system than 5 minutes of pretty animated desktop :)

P.S. - Scratch out where I said Dream Scene works in last post. :)

Why wasn't I writing anything for such a long time? I am not a hypocrite; I wrote about Vista when I was using it and while I still expected Microsoft to fix those little issues which were found mostly everywhere.

In the meantime I even moved to Mac - the moment I got my first iMac (the day Aluminum iMac came out) I never looked back. Leopard came and I fall in love :)

Also, since I cannot live without some kind of Windows - I used Windows XP (with SP3 beta lately) on the iMac in Boot Camp... It works like a charm! I've always used Windows machines for my web development taks, and Mac and Leopard have opened my eyes to ease of managing all of my Multimedia, from Music to Movies and Pictures. Nothing comes close to Mac when it comes to this; for everything else there's Windows :)

So, why am I writing today? Well, I am back in the Vista World! I think right now is a Really Good Time to get back to Vista. A lot of little issues and bugs have been solved, those Ultimate Extras I paid for long time ago are slowly crawling in (at least DeamScene seems to work good now). Hey, drivers work finally too :)

Also, with the news of Vista Service Pack 1 coming out within a month or so - I'm ready to give it a try.

The main reason though is the amazing WACOM Cintiq 12WX Tablet I got which combined with Vista's Tablet PC features makes my life SO WONDERFUL!

Vista's Tablet PC features are simply amazing. I love using the Wacom tablet, but I also love being able to write with the digital pen instead of typing. Not that it is more practical, but any change is welcome.

So, I will try to bring you some more news and tips about Vista when the time permits. Now that I am using it again, I bet I'll stumble upon something eventually.

Happy New Year Everyone!

- Great Wacom Review by Jesus Diaz on Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/338021/wacom-cintiq-12wx-lcd-pen-tablet-video-review-verdict-simply-amazing-updated

While some of you might need to do such thing, you should know what the consequences of such action are as well as the alternatives to it.

I knew this all along - that's why I will never limit the amount restore uses on my system, but it didn't cross my mind that some users might run to take action so they can get more space back on their drives. You may be risking more than you are gaining since system restore in Vista works a bit different than in XP and it is very closely connected to your system backups and "previous versions" of files you have.

Not to reinvent the wheel as my Computer Science teacher Fred Smith from UIC long time ago used to say, Ed Bott has a really nice and in depth article about this which I think all of you who are considering changing the amount system restore uses should definitely read before you do so.

Check out: ZDNet.com

By default Vista allocates 15GB of hard drive space for system restore points. If you like to experiment with new drivers and software like I do - then you should definitely leave that right where it is, but if you just simply use your computer for day-to-day purposes - you can optimize this and have some more HDD space for your other things.

LifeHacker has a very nice writeout about this, and here's what they say:

To recover some of that System Restore disk space, start up Vista's command line as an administrator, and run vssadmin list shadowstorage to see the current allocation. To change it, use:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

That is, to limit System Restore to 2 gigabytes on the C: drive, use:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB

Of course, limiting System Restore's drive footprint also limits how far back it can store points, so do so carefully. Here's more on rolling back Windows with System Restore.

Thanks Gina!

Via: LifeHacker

Not that Beryl is being ported to Vista or anything, but thanks to Joe Shepherd who kindly pointed me in the right direction, there seems to be a bit limited but still fun 3D environment for Windows users as well called Yod'm 3D (Yet anOther Desktop Manager 3D).

It is quite limited since it is quite young at the moment, it allows you to move the virtual desktops around (only horizontally though), and some other features. Fun to try but it does need a lot of work.

I hope these guys keep up the good work or that someone ports Beryl to Windows environment. It really is a huge productivity boost as well - not just the eye candy - trust me on this!

Thanks Joe!

http://chsalmon.club.fr/index.php?en/Yod-m-3d-abou...