April 2011

I have made it a habit to use the latest and greatest of any software that is released. When the newest version of whichever product it is comes out, I immediately install it and am usually the first of anyone around me using whatever it is. This is true with browsers, operating systems, and any update to daily used software.

So, as is customary, as soon as Internet Explorer 9 was released as a final product, I put it right onto my work laptop ignoring any thoughts of the headaches this might cause in a completely untested environment. Hey, I did the same thing with Vista the day it hit our MSDN site and found out how little drivers had actually been created to work with that. So if I survived that, this couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as that was. And it wasn’t. What I found was a great browser that sort of ‘gets outta the way’ and lets you browse the web.

I won’t turn this into a full review about IE9, but I did want to mention something that has been an issue since installing it. I manage several servers at my job on a daily basis. This sometimes involves connecting to a management card installed in each server that gives me a console view without having to actually walk to the server. And there are functions that require me to press F12 during server boots and other things. Well, IE9 added this new ‘debug’ feature. For website developers, I’m sure this is great. When I’m awake at 2am and trying to get something done, it’s a killer that instead of it passing F12 to the server, it opens up the debug window for me. So, I’ve found a way to turn this off.

First, make sure you have admin rights on your computer

Next, go to the run prompt and type gpedit.msc

In the left pane, click on to expand Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Internet Explorer, and Toolbars.

In the right pane, double click on Turn off Developer Tools

Select Enabled

Go back to the run prompt, and type in “gpupdate /force” (minus the quotes)

Your option under tools should now be grayed out and F12 will perform as it did previously

I hope this helps others out as it was killing me for awhile trying to get this to work as it did prior to the upgrade.

So Apple updated the MacBook Pros about a month or so ago with Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors and the Thunderbolt ports. I will say, a guy at my work purchased one (his first Apple Computer purchase ever sans iPods) and has been blown away by the speed and processing power inside of the laptop.

This laptop was replacing a desktop tower computer in his house that he used for video editing and media center functionality. Other than the learning curve of a completely new operating system, paried with his misunderstanding of how iTunes works as an application (I’ve been helping out alot in those area) he has loved it. It wasn’t until we were working to encode some digital movies he had into a format that would play on his 5th generation iPod that I realized the speed of this processor.

He was able to completely re-encode this movie, getting from point A to point B, in less than 7 minutes. In comparison, my computer at home would take around an hour to do the same task. Mine is an iMac 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo machine with 3GB of RAM. Once I saw this, I knew that my current iMac would have to be replaced by a machine running the new Intel processor architecture.

So, now I ask Apple, how long will I be waiting for this iMac to be released… (and after that, how long before Thunderbolt hard drives become avaiable at decent prices)

Steve's Stuff

Random postings of tech and other life things…

Month

Internet Explorer 9 F12 debug feature disabled

New iMacs… waiting…