Leo A. Notenboom

With all the issues surrounding Microsoft Windows, do you think the day might come in the near future where those of us in the middle ground of technology, those home users who know enough to keep our boxes up and running and to tinker here and there, might want/be able to switch to one of [...]

Listen to the podcast: Winternals is Assimilated.
Hi everyone, this is Leo Notenboom with news, commentary and answers to some of the many questions I get at askleo.info.
News arrived this week that Winternals Software, creators of the extremely popular free utilities site SysInternals.com, has been purchased by Microsoft.
Now, I love Microsoft - they were very good to me, [...]

I’ve got a new Motorola E815 with EVDO and I pay an extra $20 per month for unlimited Internet, text messaging, and more.
This thing can supposedly provide a fax and high-speed Internet connection. So, at $20 a month for this service, why not dump my regular at-home Broadband ISP which costs $40 on top of [...]

A social service organization I work with lost its connection to the Internet. It was more critical to their operations than they realized.
Listen to the podcast: What if your connectivity goes away?
Hi everyone, this is Leo Notenboom with news, commentary and answers to some of the many questions I get at askleo.info.
Last week, in a moment [...]

Someone’s telling me not to use tabs in code files. Why? He mumbles something about “cross-platform issues.”
Is this even true!? is it even *possible* for (say) a Mac or a Unix to botch the reading of a Windows file (or, most likely, I’d think) a Mac or Unix to botch the other?
I do know that [...]

Over here, or overseas, incompetence knows no boundaries.
Listen to the podcast: Outsourcing Tech Support - Good, or Evil?
If you call the tech support lines for many major companies these days, you can’t really be sure that the person you’re talking to isn’t a few miles away or on the other side of the planet. We’ve [...]

I have two computers: one a laptop, and one a desktop. They are connected wirelessly through a network hub - that’s not a problem - but I have estimating software that requires a wired connection between the two computers. Tech support has explained to me that this is due to the high volume of data [...]

This is another case of Windows being particularly obscure. You see (and I’ll say this several times), appcompat.txt is not the problem.
I can hear a crowd of people saying “Yes it is! It’s right there in this error message!” That’s what I mean by Windows being obscure. Read the error message carefully and you’ll see [...]

I just read your 10 Quick Steps to Interviewing For Tech Jobs. In it you make no mention of Certifications. Are they not important?
Let me put it this way: they’re “nice,” but for the real in-the-trenches programming positions I was hiring for, I’d have a hard time saying they were important, at all.
Let me explain [...]

How can I keep my e-mail safe from sniffing? I recently heard of a scenario where an individual was able to “sniff” or listen in to the wireless network traffic within range, and from that determine the account name, server, and passwords from everyone who happened to check e-mail while he was looking.
Scary, huh?
And [...]

The situation is this: you have a working Web site, and you’re about to move it, or make dramatic changes to it. So, you make a copy of the Web site, at a different IP address, possibly with a different temporary domain name. You make all your changes, and then want to test it out [...]

How should I use RSS in my enterprise? I am an administrator for a large school district (295 schools) and am tired of e-mail for communication. I am sold on the use of RSS and would like to know your opinion regarding using RSS for this endeavor and what obstacles and/or pitfalls I should [...]

See What Linux Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do for You
O’Reilly Releases Test Driving Linux: From Windows to Linux in 60 Seconds.
“It’s a good idea to test drive an operating system before
you switch to it full time,” says Linux expert David Brickner. “The OS is
at the heart of everything you do on [...]

With most mobile equipment like laptops and tablets coming with a wide range of network connection options built-in, like 10/100, dial-up modem, 802.11 a/b/g and the ability to also add cellular modem capabilities to them as well, it opens the possibility of having more than one connection at any one time. For instance, I could [...]

Is it possible to connect a PCMCIA external hard drive to a laptop via a USB connector?
With all the different types of interfaces that exist, or have existed, it’s not at all unreasonable to expect that there might be an adapter that would convert just about anything to just about anything else. USB is a [...]

Given that an IP address must be unique for every computer attached to the Internet,how is it possible that we do not plug in IP addresses for the computer we want to connect?
Well, every device connected to the Internet must have a unique IP, it’s true. And they’re assigned one of two ways: static or [...]

How can I use two IP addresses from one cable modem? I have a high speed internet via a cable modem. I received 2 IP addresses from my provider. Can I use 2 different routers: Linksys and Watchguard Firefox Soho, and still have dhcp enabled on both?
Well, you certainly can, but in most cases [...]

Where do you get your answers?
Unlike search engines such as Google, or “natural language query” engines like Ask Jeeves, Ask Leo! is a real person: me, Leo Notenboom. That means when I get a question (and I get lots of questions), there are various steps I take to come up with the answers before I [...]

“A Cabinet file necessary for the installation cannot be trusted” is actually the full message, and results most commonly when folks are attempting to download DirectX 9.0c for use with a new game, commonly “The Sims 2.”
Wow. Forget all the business uses of computers… just don’t get in between a person and their game. Lots [...]