Windows 7 File Management: The Library System

Compared to the Taskbar and the System Tray, Explorer hasn’t changed much in Windows 7. However, its left pane does sport two new ways to get at your files: Libraries and HomeGroups. Libraries could just as appropriately have been called File Cabinets, since they let you collect related folders in one place. By default, you get Libraries labeled Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos, each of which initially directs you to the OS’s standard folders for storing the named items—such as My Pictures and Public Pictures. To benefit from Libraries, you have to customize them. Right-click any folder on your hard drive, and you can add it to any Library; for instance, you can transform the Pictures Library into a collection of all your folders that contain photos. You can create additional Libraries of your own from scratch, such as one that bundles up all folders that relate to your vacation plans. Libraries would be even more useful if Microsoft had integrated them with Saved Searches, the Windows feature (introduced in Vista) that lets you create virtual folders based on searches, such as one that tracks down every .jpg image file on your system. But while Windows 7 lets you add standard folders to a Library, it doesn’t support Saved Searches.


HOMEGROUPS, SWEET HOMEGROUPS?
Closely related to Libraries are HomeGroups, a new feature designed to simplify the notoriously tricky process of networking Windows PCs. Machines that are part of one HomeGroup can selectively grant each other read or read/write access to their Libraries and to the folders they contain, so you can perform such mundane but important tasks as providing your spouse with access to a folderful of tax documents on your computer. HomeGroups can also stream media, enabling you to pipe music or a movie off the desktop in the den onto your notebook in the living room. And they let you share a printer connected to one PC with all the other computers in the HomeGroup, a useful feature if you can’t connect the printer directly to the network. HomeGroups aren’t a bad idea, but Windows 7’s implementation seems half-baked. HomeGroups are password-protected, but rather than inviting you to specify a password of your choice during initial setup, Windows assigns you one consisting of ten characters of alphanumeric gibberish and instructs you to write it down so you won’t forget it. To be fair, passwords made up of random characters provide excellent security, and the only time you need the password is when you first connect a new PC to a HomeGroup. But it’s still a tad peculiar that you can’t specify a password you’ll remember during setup— you can do that only aft er the fact, in a diff erent part of the OS. More annoying and limiting: HomeGroups won’t work unless all of the PCs in question are running Windows 7, a scenario that won’t be typical anytime soon. A version that also worked on XP, Vista, and Mac systems would have been cooler. Federated Search, a new Windows Explorer feature, feels incomplete, too. It uses the Open Search standard (find. pcworld.com/ 63700) to give Win 7’s search “connectors” for external sources. That capability allows you to search sites such as Flickr and You Tube from within Explorer. Pretty neat—except that Windows
7 doesn’t come with any of the connectors you’d need to add these sources, nor with any way of finding them. (They are available on the Web, though. Use a search engine to track them down.)

Source of Information : PC World November 2009

Windows XP: Now and Forever?

Nominally, Windows 7 is an upgrade to Windows Vista. But what everyone wants to know is whether it’s better than Windows XP

THE VAST MAJORITY of PC users never adopted Vista. Eight years after its release, and months after Microsoft officially discontinued it, Windows XP is still beloved. Will Windows 7 convince XP loyalists to switch? In August, we conducted an online survey of more than 8000 people who told us that XP was their primary OS.

The top three reasons they haven’t upgraded to Vista: satisfaction with XP, lack of desirable Vista-only features, and concern over driver and compatibility issues. Vistaphobia ran high among respondents who had tried Vista or who merely knew of it (62 percent and 81 percent, respectively, said their opinion of the OS was somewhat or very negative). Most of our respondents said that they had an open mind about Windows 7.

Of the 26 percent of respondents who said they had already used Windows 7, 73 percent had a somewhat or very positive opinion of Win 7, while 11 percent viewed it very or somewhat negatively. Also, 56 percent said they intended to move to Windows 7 immediately or eventually. Among respondents who had read about Windows 7 but hadn’t used it, 56 percent said their opinion of the OS was somewhat or very positive; only 12 percent said it was somewhat or very negative. Still, 40 percent said that they intended to stick with XP indefi nitely. But when will it become impractical to keep using XP? Microsoft formally discontinued Windows XP on June 30, 2008, and it ended mainstream support on April 14, 2009. But the company will permit PC builders to ship Windows 7 machines with XP downgrades for 18 months after Win 7’s release or until it ships the first Service Pack for the new OS—whichever comes first. But as of April 8, 2014, Microsoft has announced, it will no longer take support calls and issue security fixes for Windows XP. And from that point on, XP holdouts, you’ll be on your own.

Source of Information : PC World November 2009

Windows 7 Interface: The New Taskmaster

The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar—especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and the System Tray get a thorough makeover. The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces Taskbar clutter. If you don’t like it, you can shrink the icons and/or bring the labels back.

In the past, you could get one-click access to programs by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7 eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the Taskbar. Drag an app’s icon from the Start menu or desktop to the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You can also organize icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new positions. To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon—so subtle, in fact, that figuring out whether the app is running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between two icons for running apps.
In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an application’s Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7’s version of this feature is slicker and more efficient: Hover the pointer on an icon, and thumbnails of the app’s windows glide into position above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)

Also new in Windows 7’s Taskbar is a feature called Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones you get when you right-click within various Windows applications, except that you don’t have to be inside an app to use them. Internet Explorer 8’s Jump List, for example, lets you open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently visited Web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists, too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating them. Other Windows 7 interface adjustments are minor, yet so sensible that you may wonder why Windows didn’t include them all along. Shove a window into the left or right edge of the screen and it’ll expand to fill half of your desktop Nudge another into the opposite edge of the screen, and it’ll expand to occupy the other half. That makes comparing two windows’ contents easy. If you nudge a window into the top of the screen, it will maximize to occupy all of the display’s real estate. The extreme right edge of the Taskbar now sports a sort of nub; hover over it, and open windows become transparent, revealing the desktop below. (Microsoft calls this feature Aero Peek.) Click the nub, and the windows scoot out of the way, giving you access to documents or apps that reside on the desktop and duplicating the Show Desktop feature that Quick Launch used to offer. Getting at your desktop may soon be - come even more important than it was in the past. That’s because Windows 7 does away with the Sidebar, the portion of screen space that Windows Vista reserved for Gadgets such as a photo viewer and a weather applet.

Instead of occupying the Sidebar, Gadgets now sit directly on the desktop, where they don’t compete with other apps for precious screen real estate. OLD TRAY, NEW TRICKS Windows 7’s Taskbar and window management tweaks are nice. But its changes to the System Tray—aka the Notification Area—have a huge positive effect.

In the past, no feature of Windows packed more frustration per square inch than the System Tray. It quickly grew dense with applets that users did not want in the fi rst place, and many of the uninvited guests employed word balloons and other intrusive methods to alert users to uninteresting facts at inopportune moments. At their worst, System Tray applets behaved like belligerent squatters, and Windows did little to put users back in charge.

In Windows 7, applets can’t pester you unbidden because soft ware installers can’t dump them into the System Tray. Instead, applets land in a holding pen that appears only when you click it, a much-improved version of the overflow area used in previous incarnations of the Tray. Applets in the pen can’t float word balloons at you unless you permit them to do so. It’s a cinch to drag them into the System Tray or out of it again, so you enjoy complete control over which applets reside there.

More good news: Windows 7 largely dispenses with the onslaught of wordballoon warnings from the OS about troubleshooting issues, potential security problems, and the like. A new area called Action Center—a revamped version of Vista’s Security Center—queues up such alerts so you can deal with them at your convenience. Action Center does issue notifications of its own from the System Tray, but you can shut these off if you don’t want them pestering you. All of this helps make Windows 7 the least distracting, least intrusive Microsoft OS in a very long time. It’s a giant step forward from the days when Windows thought nothing of interrupting your work to inform you that it had detected unused icons on your desktop.

Source of Information : PC World November 2009

Windows 7’s Ten Best Features

For once, Microsoft has focused on putting the user in control.

1. THE TASKBAR RELOADED: Windows 7’s version of the Taskbar is less cluttered than Vista’s, and it handles both running and nonrunning apps with equal aplomb.

2. SLICKER, QUICKER TASKBAR PREVIEWS: Now they show you all of an application’s open windows, all at once.

3.THE CONVENIENCE OF JUMP LISTS: These context-sensitive Taskbar menus let you start accomplishing things in applications before you even open them.

4. A SYSTEM TRAY YOU CAN LOVE: New controls prevent the System Tray from overflowing with unwanted apps and distracting you with unhelpful, irrelevant messages.

5. A MORE MEDIA-SAVVY WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER: Love Apple’s iTunes Store but hate iTunes? New file-format support enables Windows Media Player 12 to play back unprotected audio and video from Apple’s online store

6. ALERTS VIA ACTION CENTER: Windows 7’s version of Vista’s Security Center queues up system messages so that you can respond to them on your schedule—not when Windows feels like interrupting you.

7. USER ACCOUNT CONTROL THAT YOU CONTROL: If you’re okay with this security feature’s raison d’être but can’t stand the rapid-fire prompts in Vista, take heart: You can tune Windows 7’s versions to make them less paranoid and intrusive.

8. LIBRARY PRIVILEGES: You can bundle folders from locations all across your hard drive into Libraries designed to provide one-click access from the left pane of Windows Explorer to related files.

9. REASONABLE HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS: Historically, new versions of Windows have gobbled up twice the amount of CPU power and RAM that their predecessors did. But Windows 7 runs a bit better than Vista on the same system; it’s even tolerable on a netbook.

10. THE POTENTIAL OF TOUCH: Windows 7’s support for multitouch input doesn’t change anything overnight—but it does lay necessary groundwork for thirdparty developers to build their own software. If they build killer touch apps, Windows 7 deserves some of the credit.

Source of Information : PC World November 2009

Roxio Creator 2010 Does Everything Disc-Related

ROXIO’S CREATOR SUITE for optical-disc burning lets you produce professional looking disc menus, labels, and the like without a lot of artistic eff ort. But the $99 Creator 2010 does more than just burn discs; it also im proves on its predecessor’s interface and feature set, though perhaps not enough to justify the up - grade cost for current users. When augmented with the separately sold Blu-ray plugins (a $20 add-on), Creator 2010 is as comprehensive a burning suite as you can find. It covers all aspects of video/ audio capture and editing, disc authoring, and everything else disc-related. The most noticeable change: The launch screen has a Learning Center option hosting tutorial videos covering some of the more-complex tasks that Creator handles. Otherwise, appearance and workflow are much as in Creator 2009. A major convenience is the new smart-encoding feature, which re encodes only the parts of a video you’ve edited and changed. This makes encoding much faster and may help preserve image quality. All versions of Creator 2010 can save Internet audio and video, back up AVCHD video to DVD and Blu-ray, perform BD-RE editing on disc, and support nVidia CUDA and ATI Stream video conversion acceleration. The $130 Creator 2010 Pro includes the Blu-ray plug-ins and adds bundled apps such as LightZone, which corrects lighting problems in images. If you have the most recent previous version of Creator, the $60 upgrade price may be too high. Upgrading from an older version will cost $70. And if you want Blu-ray playback, count on paying another $30 for Roxio CinePlayer BD. The suite costs significantly more than the equally powerful Nero 9 ($70 without Blu-ray playback); and even Cyberlink’s DVD Suite 7 Ultra with Blu-ray playback ($130) is competitive, although the plug-ins included with Roxio Creator 2010 Pro help make it good value.

Many free programs can handle basic burning and even audio/video chores, so spend your dollars carefully on any soft ware that aims to make video editing, disc authoring, and Blu-ray playback easy. Creator 2010 shines in those areas, but so do a host of less expensive individual competitors.

Source of Information : PC World November 2009

Microsoft security goes free

MICROSOFT HAS re-entered the security software market, releasing a Beta (testing) version of its new free Security Essentials tool. The company scrapped its previous anti-virus program, the paid-for Microsoft Onecare, last year. Microsoft said it wasn't looking to compete with other security vendors but wants to persuade more people to install antivirus programs. The software is basic but light on system resources although users will need a separate Firewall such as the one built into Windows. It will only work on PCs running genuine verified copies of Windows. Julia Owen of Microsoft said: "After working with the Government online safety initiative Get Safe Online, we felt too many people were not using or updating their security software regularly, which is why we have released Security Essentials." Security Essentials has been welcomed by other security firms, including AVG, which also offers free security software. However, the Czech company has hit back with a new version of its paid-for security suite, AVG 9. Symantec has also released a new security suite, with its Norton 2010 products using some interesting techniques. Its Quorum technology provides information on all executable files, such as the file's prevalence, age and other attributes. This builds a profile of a file and the user can then decide if they want to download it: files with a poor reputation are automatically blocked.

Source of Information : Computer Active Issue 304 October 28 2009

Banking by Phone: Convenient and Safe?

WITH THE introduction of an iPhone app that lets you deposit a check by taking a picture of it, options for mobile banking are growing. And though you might think the boost in convenience comes at the expense of security, banking on your phone can be safer than using your PC if you take basic precautions. You have three options for mobile banking: downloading a program for your cell phone, using your phone’s browser to access a mobile version of your bank’s site, or simply sending an SMS message.

Downloadable programs vary, but an iPhone app from USAA is at the cutting edge. Qualified USAA customers (limited to credit-approved military personnel) can use it to make deposits by taking a picture of a paper check, which they then void and toss. But while the USAA app allows for sending money to a predefined payee, it doesn’t let you create a new payee (though you can do so on the USAA Web site). It’s a common restriction among downloadable apps, intended to prevent someone else from grabbing your phone and sending themselves your cash. Online banking via a phone’s browser generally offers all the same options as on a PC. Both downloadable apps and mobile sites typically require logging in with the same user name and password you’d use on your PC. They also encrypt communications to and from the bank. SMS messages are the least secure method, as SMS doesn’t normally use encryption. This option is also limited. Wells Fargo’s SMS service, for example, allows only for low-risk activities such as checking your balance or finding an ATM. Using any of these options on a device you might easily lose may seem inherently insecure. But any phone option is largely safe from malware, one of the biggest threats to online banking. Also, the variety of mobile operating systems and other factors mean that, for now, you have no real risk of leaving your phone open to baddies. Tom Wills, a senior analyst for Javelin Strategy and Research, says mobile banking can be safer than banking on a PC—as long as the phone’s security features are enabled. Because your phone may someday end up in the backseat of a taxi without you, those precautions go beyond the ones you’d use on a PC.


Practice Safe
Mobile Banking Using a PIN or a password to lock your phone is the first step; just knowing which bank you use can help a potential ID thief. Next are remote-wipe options that let you clean out your phone should you ever lose it. Wills says some banks offer the feature for their downloadable apps. You can wipe BlackBerrys and iPhones (if you pay for the MobileMe service), too, and some apps such as Kaspersky Mobile Security offer the feature for Symbian OS or Windows Mobile phones. Finally, SMS messages can provide security support if you instruct your bank to text you after large or potentially suspicious transactions. Considering how much personal info most people keep in their e-mail, losing your phone can be a risk even if you don’t use mobile banking. But the combination of power-on passwords and safeguards from the banks can make mobile banking just as secure as it is handy.

Source of Information : PC World November 2009

Get Ready for the E-Reader Rumble of 2010

THINKING OF BUYING an e-book reader such as Amazon’s Kindle 2? You might want to wait. An impending e-reader war will give you a bevy of new models to consider, at lower prices and with diverse designs. A handful of companies, including Asus, Plastic Logic, and a British startup named Interead, are planning new devices intended to get you hooked on digitized books and newspapers. Their prices are expected to range between $165 and $400, compared with $300 for the Kindle 2 and $490 for the Kindle DX. Some of the devices, such as Interead’s Cooler, may be available in time for the holiday season. (Sony has already begun shipping its newest Digital Reader models.) For the other offerings, you’ll have to wait until early next year.

A word of caution, though: Competition is great, but it also could lead to compatibility issues among the various readers. For example, books and periodical subscriptions that you buy at Amazon’s online Kindle store are currently not compatible with non-Kindle readers. Before you buy, examine the fi le formats and digital rights management (DRM) that each reader supports, as well as the breadth of the reader’s associated online bookstores. And watch Google’s role in the e-book market. A battle has erupted over Google’s scanning of millions of out of-print books, which it wishes to make available through Google Book Search for e-book readers. Amazon doesn’t want Google to do this, out of concern that Google’s deal makes it difficult for other e-book sellers (that is, Amazon) to scan and distribute these public domain books themselves. In any case, the wave of new e-book readers means that publishers should soon see an end to Amazon’s e-reader dominance, and consumers should see lower prices and more options. The looming e-reader war can’t begin soon enough. For a look at some of the coming e-book readers, go to find.pcworld.com/63712.

Source of Information : PC World November 2009

Will Win 7 Leave Users Champing at the Bits?

HERE WE GO again! Welcome to the hoopla, hype, and hubbub that invariably accompanies the release of any full-blown Microsoft operating system. I’m not saying that the excitement is unjustifi ed. For many PC users, the release of Windows 7 is a big deal; and it may be the event of the year or (considering its predecessor) the decade. After all, Win 7 promises to shake up the computing landscape in ways that Windows Vista didn’t: forcing upgrade decisions on consumers and businesses, while selling boatloads of new PCs, laptops, and netbooks to users who long ago highlighted October 22, 2009, on their Outlook calendars. I understand the enthusiasm. As our hands-on testing demonstrates, Microsoft ’s latest operating system is a winner and well worth the upgrade, even if you choose to take your sweet time about adopting it. Still, I can’t help feeling vaguely disappointed. Why? Because Windows 7, for most of us, will be a 32-bit operating system.

Given that desktop hardware has been capable of supporting 64-bit operations since 2003, we should be expecting more by now. Yes, the Windows 7 installation disc ships with a 64-bit version of the OS. But if you’re running 32-bit Windows now (and you probably are), there’s no easy way to upgrade to 64-bit Win 7. So by default, most of us will be eschewing the brave and zippy new world of 64-bit computing.

Even if you’re willing to go the extra mile of backing up your data, wiping your system clean, and performing a 64-bit install from scratch, you’ll probably have trouble with device drivers,
utilities such as antivirus, and maybe
even some browser plug-ins—in which
case your upgrade could turn into a
downgrade in a hurry. In other words,
we’re still stuck in 32-bit land, and I
don’t see that changing anytime soon.



The Business of Bitness
In case you’re not familiar with the implications of 32- and 64-bitness, I’ll keep it simple. A 64-bit machine can handle far more data and memory at any instant than a 32-bit machine can. And the rule of thumb for computing is: more bits, better; fewer bits, worse. Any PC or Mac built today has a core architecture designed to run in 64-bit mode. When you operate it instead in 32-bit mode, you let some of the system’s power go to waste. In addition, 32-bit Windows (or Linux or Mac) can’t take advantage of more than 4GB of RAM. In view of the minuscule prices of memory today, limiting yourself to 4GB represents a missed opportunity. The speed advantages of more bits may seem largely theoretical at this point, since the hardware, the OS, and individual applications must support 64-bit operations in order to show real improvement. The first two items are a given; the last…not so much: Most everyday apps are still compiled for 32 bits. They’ll run on 64-bit Windows, but they won’t give you any noticeable performance boost. Still, the fastest machine PC World has tested for this issue—an overclocked 2.66GHz Core i7 920 PC running at 3.6GHz—was a 64-bit powerhouse. If we had thrown any 64-bit apps at it (for compatibility, we used our standard WorldBench 6 test suite of 32-bit apps), it would have screamed.

Despite the potential advantages, we’re still at least one computing generation away from a common 64-bit experience. Though plenty of brand-new machines, unencumbered by legacy drivers and soft ware, will ship with 64-bit Windows 7, the vast majority of PCs are not new. Furthermore, workplaces around the world are chockablock with machines that will stay at 32 bits for the rest of their useful (and in some instances not-so-useful) lives. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Without a critical mass of vocal users who demand better-performing systems with more than 4GB of usable RAM, vendors won’t bother developing the drivers and soft ware that would make 64-bit computing a popular option. And we’ll continue to be trapped in this 32-bit morass for years to come. Maybe it’s time for impatient PC users to make some noise, bit by bit.

Source of Information : PC World November 2009

Ubuntu - Scanners

In the digital world it seems like we’re always having to convert paper documents into a digital format. Whether it’s scanning old pictures to save as digital images or scanning important documents to save in PDF format, a scanner has almost become a necessity for any home workstation. Ubuntu provides the XSane application to interface with most of the scanners available. This section walks through the things you’ll need to know to get the most out of your scanner and Ubuntu.



Detecting the Scanner
Before you can start using your scanner you need to ensure that XSane can work with it. Here are the steps to do that:

1. Connect your scanner to your Ubuntu workstation, then turn on the scanner.

2. After starting Ubuntu and logging in to your desktop, start XSane by selecting
Applications -> Graphics -> XSane Image Scanner. The XSane splash screen appears, allowing you to select the scanner.

The opening splash screen displays a list of the scanners XSane detects that are connected to the system, along with a default scanner.

3. Select your scanner, if it has been automatically detected.

4. The XSane workspace opens, with four separate windows We’ll talk more about each of the windows in the XSane workspace a little later.

5. Click the Acquire Preview button in the Preview window. Your scanner should automatically start up and begin scanning the document. When the scanner finishes scanning, the document should appear in the Preview window display area.

If you can see the scanned document in the Preview window display area, you’re ready to start using XSane..



Detecting the scanner is often the hardest part of using XSane. The XSane program is a graphical front end for the SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) commandline utility, which detects and interacts with scanners based on a standard interface protocol. Many scanners have interfaces written to interact with SANE, but there are still those that won’t work. Although there are many types of scanners available, they break down into five basic categories, based on how they connect to the workstation:

• Parallel port scanners: Parallel port scanners connect to the LPT1 printer port on a workstation. These scanners are notoriously slow and often use low-resolution scans.

• SCSI scanners: The small computer system interface (SCSI) is a popular interface for older scanners. Some scanners come with their own SCSI card that you must install in the workstation to connect the scanner. The key to using SCSI scanners is that Ubuntu must detect the installed SCSI card. For the more-popular SCSI cards this isn’t a problem, but SCSI cards that often come with older scanners can be an issue.

• IDE scanners: Some older scanners require an integrated device electronics (IDE) connection on the workstation. This is the same type of connection that most hard drives and CD drives use. If your scanner connects directly to the IDE port on your workstation, you may have to purchase a separate IDE card to support it.

• USB scanners: Most modern scanners connect to the workstation using a standard universal serial bus (USB) port. Ubuntu automatically attempts to detect USB devices connected to the workstation, and it often configures the scanner as a USB device before SANE even starts.

• Network scanners: Network scanners use proprietary software on Windows workstations to detect and connect to a scanner across the network. The Windows software used for this connection usually doesn’t have a Linux counterpart. SANE has its own network protocol for sharing a scanner connected to a workstation on the network with other workstations, but it can’t connect to network scanners that use a proprietary protocol.

The best source for SANE scanner information is the SANE Project web site at http://www.sane-project.org. Select the Supported Devices link to search for supported scanners.


Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Ubuntu - Modifying Printer Properties

You can modify the properties of any printer on the system, whether Ubuntu automatically created it or you manually created it. If you double-click the icon for the printer you want to configure.

The window on the left contains five main properties groups that contain printer information you can modify. The main groups are
• Settings
• Policies
• Access Control
• Printer Options
• Job Options
Some printers contain a sixth group for setting specific options for the printer.



Settings
The Settings group provides some basic settings you can change for the printer. From here, you can change the description and location tags for the printer, the URI of the printer, and the PPD file used for the printer. There are also three other buttons that you can use:

• Print Test Page: Provides an easy way for you to test whether the printer and PPD file are working properly.

• Print Self-Test Page: Some printers support an internal self-test page. If your printer supports that feature, this button will be enabled.

• Clean Print Heads: Some printers support an external command to clean the print heads. If your printer supports that feature, this button will be enabled. That covers the general settings for the printer. The other groups provide more advanced settings.



Policies
The Policies group contains three separate sections. The State section allows you to control the state of the printer:
• Enabled: Lets you take the printer offline if there’s a problem.
• Accepting Jobs: Allows you to temporarily suspend processing print jobs.
• Shared: Allows you to set whether the printer is a shared resource on the network.

There are four policies (or rules) that control printer behavior. Two of the policies control banner pages for print jobs; the other two control how the printer operates.

There are two operation policies that you can set:

• Error Policy: Determines how the printer reacts to an error in the printing process.
The choices are Abort-Job (giving up on printing the job), Retry-Job (trying again after manual intervention), or Stop-Printer (preventing all other print jobs from printing). The default value is to retry the job because the problem most likely can be resolved with an easy fix, such as turning the printer on or setting it as online.

• Operation Policy: Determines the mode the printer runs in. At this time, the only setting is default.

Banner pages allow you to print a special page describing the print job. The Starting Banner page prints out before the print job. This option allows you to print a cover sheet for the print job. Theoretically, it’s supposed to provide some privacy, blocking people from seeing the first print page on the printer, but, really, who wouldn’t just look under the banner page? There are several banner pages you can choose from.

The Ending Banner page allows you to print a page that signifies the end of the print job. If you’re in a high-volume printing environment, using a starting or ending banner helps keep everyone’s print jobs separate. In a workstation environment, it’s pretty much a waste of paper. The default is to not print either of the banner pages.



Access Control
The Access Control group provides a method for you to restrict access to the printer. There are two ways to do this. First, you can list every user account that the server will prevent from using the printer. This option means that any user not on the list can print and that any user on the list can’t print.

The second method is to list the user accounts that are allowed to use the printer. This option means that only the users on the list can print. Obviously, which method you choose depends on whether you have more people you want to allow to print or to restrict from printing.

Be careful when setting this feature. Notice how the two radio buttons are labeled:
• Allow printing for everyone except these users.
• Deny printing for everyone except these users.

If you click the Allow Printing radio button, the user accounts you list will be denied access to the printer—and vice versa for the Deny Printing radio button. That’s just a bit backward, if you ask me!



Printer Options
The Printer Options group allows you to set some physical properties for the printer. The properties available for you to modify are based on information provided by the individual printer’s PPD file and depend on the physical characteristics of the printer. These properties are divided into separate categories, depending on the printer’s capabilities.

The General settings handle properties such as types of paper the printer can handle,
print qualities it can produce, and number and types of input trays. You can force the
printer server to request a specific paper size for all print jobs or to request which paper
tray to take paper from.
The Printout Mode settings control the default print quality used by the printer. Again,
these settings depend on the capabilities of the particular printer, but usually there’s a
range of dots per inch (dpi) and color settings to choose from.



Job Options
Finally, the Job Options tab allows you to set the default properties for print jobs sent to the printer. When you request an application to send something to the printer, a standard GNOME Print dialog box appears.

You can select several printing properties for the specific print job, such as whether to print in landscape mode, how many copies of the document to print, the paper size to use, and so on. If you prefer to use any of these settings by default, you can set them in the Job Options tab. Many more print job options can be specified. The job options are divided into four sections:

• Common Options: Sets common printer options, such as number of copies, page orientation, and number of printed sides (for duplex printing).

• Image Options: Sets imaging options such as scaling and hue adjustment.

• Text Options: Sets features that affect the printed text, such as characters per inch, lines per inch, and margins.

• Advanced Options: Allows you to set options available for a specific printer. The complete list of options appears within the Printer Configuration Properties window.

If you decide to revert to the default setting for an option, click the Reset button, and the option will return to the default value.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Ubuntu - Adding a New Printer

One amazing feature of Ubuntu is its ability to automatically detect printers connected via USB cables, parallel cables, and even serial cables. If you have one of these printers, you most likely don’t need to add it to the system. You should already see an icon appear under the Printers window. Just move on to the next section to configure it. If you are not fortunate enough to have your printer automatically detected, you’ll have to manually add it. Here are the steps for doing that:

1. Click the New button on the toolbar. The New Printer wizard appears and lists your printer options. Before the New Printer wizard appears, the Printer Configuration tool scans your workstation and the local network for any accessible printers. If it detects any, they’re added to the top of the connection list.

2. Select the connection type of the new printer. Although the printer is defined as a local printer on your workstation, this utility also allows you to configure six types of printer connections (besides the currently connected printers) to make a printer available to the system. As you select each connection type in the left side of the window, a different Properties area appears in the right side. For example, if you select Windows Printer via Samba, text boxes appear where you can enter the printer name, a userID, and a password to access the network printer. Click the Browse button to browse your local network to locate shared printers. After you’ve selected the connection type and changed any Properties settings, click Forward to continue with the wizard.

3. Select the printer manufacturer or the location of the PPD file. Ubuntu uses PostScript printer description (PPD) files to format files for printing. PPD files are based on the same concept as the standard printer drivers you’ve probably used in Microsoft Windows. Each printer must have a PPD installed for CUPS to know how to format text and graphics sent to the printer. This wizard window allows you to select the PPD file to use for the new printer. You have two options:

• Select the printer manufacturer from the list of installed drivers.
• Install your own PPD file for the printer.

If you’re lucky enough to have the PPD file for your printer, copy it to a location on your workstation and select the Provide PPD File option. Browse to the location of the file and select it, then click Forward. If you don’t have the PPD file for your printer, you’ll have to hope that Ubuntu has your specific printer make and model defined in its library. If you find the printer manufacturer listed, select it and click Forward.

4. If you selected a printer manufacturer, the next wizard window provides a list of specific printer models and PPD files. Select the printer model and (optionally) the proper PPD file. This wizard window asks you to select the specific model for your printer. Hopefully, your printer model will be listed. If not, you must go back a step and find your own PPD file to install. If your specific model is listed, select it, and a list of available PPD files is shown. Some models may have only one PPD file, but others may have two or more files to choose from. In that case, one is usually marked as recommended. Try that PPD file first. If it doesn’t work, select a different PPD file. Clicking the Forward button takes you to the final wizard window (some printer drivers also have an optional window, which appears before the final wizard window, for setting individual options).

5. Define a printer name for the printer, and add the optional description and location if you want to include more information about the printer.

6. Click Apply in the Summary window to finish adding the new printer.

The new printer is added as an icon in the Printer Configuration window (even if you mapped to a remote printer). You should now see the new printer when printing from applications on your system. However, before getting too carried away with printing, it’s a good idea to check how the printer is configured.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Ubuntu - Printers

Even though technology gurus keep predicting a paperless society, for now we’re stuck having to print some things out. In the past, printing was one of the dark areas in Linux. Trying to get modern printers working with Linux was a challenge. However, recently there’ve been some amazing advances that make Linux more printer friendly. Possibly the biggest advance in this area has been the common UNIX printing system (CUPS). CUPS provides a common interface between UNIX (and Linux) systems and printers. It runs in the background as a service, connecting to any defined printers and waiting for applications to send print jobs. Because it runs in the background, CUPS can communicate with remote printers and accept print jobs from them. Ubuntu provides a simple tool to access and set up the CUPS server running on your workstation. The Printer Configuration tool provides a graphical interface to add, configure, and remove printers on your Ubuntu workstation. This section describes how to use the Printer Configuration tool to manage your workstation printers.


The Printer Configuration Tool
The Printer Configuration tool provides an easy way to configure the CUPS server running on the system and any printers you’ve defined. Selecting System -> Administration -> Printing from the desktop menu starts the Ubuntu Printer Configuration tool.

There are two things you can configure from the Printer Configuration window:
• Server settings: Allows you to set features controlling how the CUPS server manages system printing features.
• Local and network printers: Displays icons for all of the printers defined on the system and allows you to change individual printer properties on them.

The following sections describe how to use the Printer Configuration window to set the CUPS and printer properties for your system.


Printer Server Settings
Selecting Server -> Settings from the menu bar in the Printer Configuration window produces the Basic Server Settings window.

There are a few different settings you can play with here to help out with printer administration:

• Show printers shared by other systems: Displays printers found by browsing the network.

• Share published printers connected to this system: Allows local network clients to connect to any of the local printers marked as shared.

• Allow printing from the Internet: Allows remote network clients to connect to any of the local printers marked as shared.

• Allow remote administration: Enables remote clients to connect to the CUPS server running on this system.

• Allow users to cancel any job (not just their own): By default, users can cancel only their own print jobs. Enabling this feature allows any user to cancel any other user’s print job. Although this is a handy feature, it can be dangerous in a multiuser environment (especially if your users like to play tricks on one another).

• Save debugging information for troubleshooting: By default, the CUPS server generates a moderate amount of logging information to monitor printer use or problems. If you’re having trouble with a specific printer configuration, you can enable this feature to produce more (lots more) information in the log files. After determining the settings appropriate for your CUPS server environment, you can add and set up individual local printers.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Resolving the IP Address

The most basic of all DNS services provide the ability for a client system to send a query to the DNS server, asking it to return the IP address of a host system. This type of resolution is referred to as forward name resolution. DNS provides this functionality by hosting resource records that specify the IP address for each of the host systems within the DNS namespace. The namespace is referred to within the DNS server as the zone. For instance, if your DNS namespace is zygort.lcl, and you have a server named APFS01 with an IP address of 192.168.29.75, your zone name would be zygort.lcl and the server would have a resource record that tied the name APFS01 to IP address 192.168.29.75. When a client sent a query to the DNS server looking for APFS01.zygort.lcl, the DNS server would reply to the query with a response containing the IP address.

This is the most fundamental purpose of DNS, and probably the most utilized function—finding an IP address when a client sends a query. There is another resolution type known as reverse name resolution. Reverse name resolution allows a client to query for a host name when it knows the IP address of the system in question. This works in much the same way as the caller ID system on your telephone. When you receive a phone call, the phone number corresponds to a “friendly” name that you may recognize. Since it is much easier to remember names than a long numbers, this makes it much easier for you to determine exactly who is calling. If a name is not associated with the phone number, then only the phone number will appear. There are several programs and utilities that use reverse name resolution, and you may find it beneficial to make sure you have the correct information included within the zone.

DNS servers will resolve queries within the zones that are configured on them. You can have more than one zone on a server, and the server will accept and respond to queries for records in those zones. When a client sends a query for a zone that is not hosted on the DNS server, the DNS server has to perform additional tasks to respond correctly to the client. The DNS server will search all the way to the top of the DNS hierarchy, known as the root, for help. These root DNS servers are listed within the Root Hints tab of the DNS server’s properties page. The DNS server will send a query of its own to one of these root servers, asking for resolution. The root servers will refer the DNS server to the appropriate TLD DNS server. The DNS server will then query the TLD DNS server for assistance. The TLD server will refer the DNS server to the appropriate second-level domain DNS server. This process will continue until a DNS server with the resource record resolves the request, either with a successful lookup or a failed one.

There are problems that can be encountered with the typical DNS resolution methods. First off, not every namespace is accessible from the Internet. Our zygort.lcl is a prime example of that. If you were to perform a lookup on a server name within that namespace using conventional DNS methods, the lookup would fail. There needs to be another method of resolving the DNS queries for these zones. The other problem lies with companies that do not want their DNS servers to query outside of their organization. Because DNS servers look to the root of the Internet as the de facto starting point for name resolution, in this case you need a way to keep them from doing so. New options have been introduced to address these issues.

Windows 2000 DNS servers introduced forwarders to the Microsoft DNS world. Using forwarders, you can specify another DNS server that will attempt to resolve queries when the local DNS server cannot. By default, a DNS server will use the DNS servers that are configured within the Root Hints tab of the DNS server’s properties page. If your DNS server cannot reach the root servers or if you want to control the servers that perform the iterative queries from your organization, you can enter the server’s IP address within the Forwarders tab on the properties sheet for the DNS server. Once configured, the queries that cannot be resolved by the DNS server will be sent to the first DNS server listed in the Forwarders tab. Sometimes when you define a forwarder, the DNS server identified as the forwarder will have to take on the task of resolving all the queries outside of the DNS server’s zones. This can be a considerable amount of traffic. Another problem occurs when the forwarder does not have the ability to query for certain zones. Windows Server 2003 introduced another method of forwarding: conditional forwarding. Using conditional forwarding, you can specify a DNS server that will be used to resolve queries based on the domain name in question. For example, if a user needs to resolve an address for zygort.local and if a conditional forwarder is created for the zygort.local domain, the DNS server will send a recursive query to the server specified within the forwarder setting

For more information on conditional forwarding, see the TechNet article 304991 at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=304491&product=winsvr2003.

Another item to note: if a DNS server is configured as the root server for the organization, you cannot configure it to forward requests to another DNS server. If you have a DNS server configured to forward requests to another DNS server, simply delete the root zone from the DNS server, which is specified by the dot (.). In the case of a Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 server, the root zone is designated by.(root. Once the root zone is deleted, you can enter external root servers into the root hints and can configure forwarders. This “root zone” behavior does not occur within a Windows Server 2008 DNS server when you promote the first domain controller. This doesn’t mean that you need let Dcpromo install the DNS service; you could configure the DNS zone first and then promote the domain controller. Doing so will allow you to configure the zone the way you want and then allow the domain controller to register. There are other considerations to take into account if you create the zone first when promoting the first domain controller for your forest, and we will discuss those options later in the chapter. First and foremost, if you create the zone manually, make sure that you configure the zone for dynamic updates; otherwise you will receive an error message stating the domain is not configured.

Source of Information : Sybex Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2008

An Overview of Windows 7

Windows 7 is the successor to Windows Vista. As such, it takes its place as the latest corporate desktop and workstation upgrade, and also sets its sights on the home office and even home entertainment/gaming console, as Microsoft did with its ill-fated Windows Vista. This time, though, Microsoft has gotten it right. In fact, we’re sure you’ll really grow to like Windows 7 as you use it.

The goal Microsoft set for Windows Vista was quite ambitious. That probably explains why it took Microsoft so long to get it to market. During development, more and more features worked their way into Microsoft Vista and the project became increasingly unwieldy. The code kept ballooning, and the process couldn’t be stopped. This pushed out the delivery date of Vista, first to 2005, then to early 2006, and finally to late 2006.

Worse, when Vista did appear, its reception was lukewarm at best, and customers complained long and loud about their preference for Windows XP, even as it remained an older, less-attractive interface with more security problems. Even six months past its January 2007 public release, it was clear that Vista wasn’t attracting widespread adoption. To satisfy a continued desire for Windows XP, Microsoft ended up trying to fix Vista while simultaneously working on XP Service Pack 3 (released in mid-2008).

In an attempt to convince customers that Vista was better than its industry reputation, Microsoft remarketed it as “Mojave,” a campaign that highlighted the many superb features of this system. It didn’t work, so plans for a follow-on to Vista were accelerated. That successor is what has been released as Windows 7. Think of Windows 7 as “Vista, fixed” and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how it compares to both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Many of the most important improvements in Windows 7 are under the proverbial hood, including dramatic performance improvements and a far greater level of reliability over a similarly configured Vista system. Enough history, though! Let’s talk about what Windows 7 is and is not. Following in the footsteps of Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home Edition, Windows 7 comes in six flavors (perhaps more, if versions without Internet Explorer are created for the European market as with Vista):

• Windows 7 Starter (available only pre-installed on netbook class PCs)
• Windows 7 Home Basic
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Windows 7 Professional
• Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows 7 Ultimate

As with Windows Vista, Windows 7 flavors benefit from being very much the same under the hood. Recall that between 1993 and the release of XP, there were very separate home-oriented (Windows 3.x/9x/Me) and corporate-oriented (Windows NT/2000) Windows versions with drastically different internals. A common core for all Windows 7 versions makes program and device driver development much easier because device drivers and software programs need to be created only once, not twice.

Vista’s design mandate was a tough one: to create a more-secure, flashy-looking, reliable, easy-touse operating system with functionality ranging from an excellent gaming and home entertainment platform all the way to a full-blown highly secure, mission-critical business networking machine. Vista needed to be more attractive, more capable, and much more robust than XP; incorporate all the latest technologies; and be far less susceptible to attack from viruses, phishing, spam, and the like. Malware has kept legions of IT professionals in business, but it has grown nightmarish for all Windows-based IT departments.

Vista succeeded for the most part, but at the price of performance and compatibility. That’s where Windows 7 comes in. Thus, for example, many of the apps previously included in Vista are now in a separate Windows Live Essentials bundle available online, including Windows Calendar, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Mail.

Unlike the completely reworked user interface (UI) that we saw when making the jump from XP to Vista, Windows 7’s UI is quite similar to Vista. Windows 7 adds enough nuances to deliver a better computing experience, but enough basic similarities that if you’ve used Vista, you’ll be ready to go instantly. If you’re coming from Windows XP, however, you might be surprised that many of the menus XP users have grown accustomed to are gone, replaced by a much more web-like view of the computer, with phrase-like links that imply their functions—for example, “See what happens when I press the Power button.” Vista also included the option of switching to a “Classic” Start menu, but Windows 7 axes that. If you move to Windows 7, you’ll need to get used to the new Start menu, even if it feels a bit odd at first.

Windows XP was designed for application and hardware compatibility with products made for older versions of Windows, even MS-DOS games and graphics applications. Windows 7, like Vista, carries this same compatibility over in its 32-bit versions, but Windows 7 64-bit versions have abandoned that legacy. The time has come to put those old dogs to rest. There are ways around this, using Virtual PC, for example, so you don’t have to jettison your favorite Windows 9x or DOS programs in Windows 7 64-bit versions.

If you’ve worked in the Windows XP world, you’ll also be glad to know that Microsoft listened to its customer base and added a Windows XP compatibility mode that you can install into some Windows 7 versions (Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate) to run your favorite Windows XP programs. At some point in the future, Microsoft’s vendors will upgrade these apps and Windows XP will take the Big Sleep, but until then, this will doubtless be a lifesaver for many.

Source of Information : QUE Microsoft Windows in Depth

Other Windows Media Player 11–Compatible Music Stores

Although URGE is pretty exciting, it isn’t the only online music service game in town. To access other services that are compatible with Windows Media Player 11, you have to dig a little bit: Open the Online Services menu (by clicking the small arrow below the URGE button in the Media Player toolbar) and choose Browse All Online Stores. This will present you with options to install support for other services. It isn’t possible to cover them all here, but a few do stand out, described in the following sections.

Audible.com
Audible.com, now owned by Amazon, offers over 40,000 audiobooks and other content, including newspapers. There’s not much Windows Media Player integration here. Basically, what you get is the plain vanilla Audible.com Web page, loaded inside the Media Player. If you’re interested in listening to Audible audiobooks on a portable player, you should ensure that the device is compatible: Audible maintains a useful database of devices that work and can help you download correctly formatted audiobooks.

eMusic
Like Audible, eMusic loads a basic version of its Web site inside Windows Media Player, but eMusic tackles a decidedly different market than Audible. This service focuses on low-cost unprotected MP3 music, and it offers billions of tracks. The catch is that most of these tracks are from no-name independent groups that you’ve probably never heard of. On the other hand, the tracks are cheap. Some eMusic songs can be had for as little as 33 cents. Furthermore, eMusic offers a subscription service—for a monthly fee, you can download a set number of songs.

Movielink
Movielink rents and sells digital video content, including TV shows and movies, both big budget and independent. The selection is somewhat sparse, at least compared to your local Blockbuster, but it’s not horrible. As with other video services, Movielink encodes its films with DRM—in this case, Windows Media DRM, which is completely compatible with Windows Media Player and most Media Player–compatible portable video devices, but not much else. Note that if you do purchase a movie or TV show from Movielink.

MusicGiants
MusicGiants is a high-end music service with a twist: Its songs are all encoded in a perfect, pristine format known as lossless. This type of music is compressed, as are virtually all digital music files, but in a way in which none of the original quality is lost. MusicGiants utilizes the lossless version of Windows Media Audio (WMA) and markets it as High Definition (HD) Music, in order to cash in on the current craze surrounding HDTV. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend purchasing any WMA-encoded music, but because MusicGiant’s tracks are lossless, you can burn them to CD and then re-rip them back to the computer using a more compatible format, such as MP3, without a huge loss in quality. If you’re an audiophile, this is the service for you.

Napster
The predecessor to Napster was the original file-sharing phenomenon and the reason why peer-to-peer (P2P) networking solutions still have such a bad name. The current version of Napster shares only the name with its predecessor, however. Today’s Napster is a more traditional music service, offering both “a la carte” downloads of individual songs and albums and a subscription service that enables you to access any of the company’s millions of songs for as long as you’re paying. A Napster To Go service extends this offer to dozens of compatible portable audio devices. Unlike the other services, Napster requires a small software download, though you’re also free to access the service via your Web browser. Frankly, if you’re new to the online music service market, Amazon.com is the best choice, thanks to its compatibility and Windows Media Player integration; but if you already have an account at Napster or another service, they’re all still available—if somewhat deprecated—in Windows Media Player 11.


You can switch between any of the Media Player–compatible online music services at any time. After you’ve installed and confi gured any of the music services that are available from within Windows Media Player 11, you can simply open the Online Services menu and pick the service you’d like to use. You’ll see an entry for each configured service.

Source of Information : Wiley Windows Vista Secrets SP1 Edition

Accessing Online Music Stores - Amazon MP3

At a very basic level, online music services all perform the same functions. They provide music for sale (so-called a la carte downloads, whereby you can purchase individual songs or albums) or, in some cases, provide subscription music services, which enable you to access all of the service’s music, on a number of PCs and even portable devices, for a monthly or yearly fee. Music services also typically offer editorial content—ways to discover new music or find out additional information about your favorite artists and albums. They often supply custom playlists, and other content. Amazon MP3, which, as the name suggests, is part of the Amazon.com online retailing site, is actually fairly bare bones, in keeping with Amazon’s policy of keeping things simple. That is, the service is offered only via the Web. There’s no deep integration with Windows Media Player, as was the case with many previous online music services, and there’s no downloadable media management application (though Amazon does offer a very simple PC-based song downloader, as you’ll soon see). What you get is access to millions of unprotected MP3 tracks, either individually or within prepackaged digital albums, using Amazon’s familiar interface.


Accessing Amazon MP3
To see Amazon MP3 in action, open Internet Explorer or your favorite Web browser and navigate to www.amazonmp3.com/. You can browse Amazon MP3 in several ways. The service highlights new and notable albums, top songs and albums, and editor’s pick selections, and you can browse via genre, album price range (there’s a surprisingly good selection of low-cost MP3 albums available), and via a variety of promotions. This being Amazon, of course, one of the best ways to find content is to use the site’s integrated search functionality. If a particular song or album isn’t available digitally, Amazon offers you a chance to purchase it in a more traditional (albeit less instantly gratifying) CD based format.


Purchasing Music from Amazon MP3
When you’ve found an album you might be interested in, you’ll see some surprising niceties. As with more traditional online music stores, Amazon MP3 offers 30-second previews of each song, accessed from directly within the Web browser. Just click the little play button next to any song name. Amazon also offers a wealth of customer reviews, its patented one-click ordering capability, and links to related music, including music that was purchased by people who also purchased the album you’re currently viewing.

To purchase an album, click the button labeled Buy MP3 Album (or Buy MP3 Album with 1-Click). Alternately, you can purchase individual tracks by clicking the Buy MP3 button found next to each track name. Amazon provides a handy Amazon MP3 Downloader application that you can install on your PC, which you’ll be prompted to do the first time you purchase a song or album. This application manages music downloads from the service. More important, it integrates with Windows Media Player (or, if you prefer, Apple iTunes), automatically adding any music you purchase from Amazon MP3 to your Windows Media Player–based media library.

Because it offers some configuration options, you may want to manually download the
Amazon MP3 Downloader before purchasing any music. To do so, navigate to the Amazon MP3 store and click Getting Started. Then locate the link for downloading the Amazon MP3 Downloader and then download and install the application. Next, open the Start Menu and type Amazon MP3 Downloader to manually launch the application. (It will later launch automatically whenever you download music from Amazon.) From this application, select File -> Preferences. In the Media Library section, choose Add It to Windows Media Player from the drop-down list box so that songs downloaded from the service are automatically added to Windows Media Player. Then click OK and you’re good to go.

Now, when you purchase songs or albums from Amazon MP3, you don’t have to worry about any management issues: They’ll be downloaded directly to your Music folder (under an Amazon MP3 subfolder) and added to your Windows Media Player media library. Voilà!

Source of Information : Wiley Windows Vista Secrets SP1 Edition

Connecting to a Shared Music Library with Xbox 360

With Xbox 360 game consoles now found in tens of millions of homes worldwide, Microsoft has found a perfect way to share PC-based music libraries with a device that is probably connected to the best TV display and stereo system in the home. Thankfully, the process is simple:

1. After you’ve confi gured Windows Media Player 11 to share its media library, ensure that your Xbox 360 is connected to the home network, and then turn it on. You will see a Found Windows Media Center Extender balloon window, but you can ignore this for now (unless you’re using your Windows Vista–based machine as a Media Center PC).

2. You will also see a balloon window appear for sharing with the Xbox 360. Doubleclick this icon and click Allow in the resulting dialog box. Alternatively, access the Media Sharing dialog box described earlier and make sure the Xbox 360 is configured to allow sharing.

3. Access your Xbox 360 and navigate to the Media blade. This part of the Xbox 360 user interface enables you to interact with PC-based digital media, connected portable devices (e.g., iPods and other MP3 players), and even external hard drives with stored digital media files. Right now, of course, you are just concerned with sharing media content from a Windows Vista–based PC.

4. To play shared music, select the Music option to display the Music page. Then select the name of your Vista-based computer from the source list on the left. (You’ll also see options such as Console, Current Disk, and Portable Device.) If this is the fi rst time you’ve done this, Xbox 360 will need to download Windows Media Connect, which is the same software many devices use to stream media from Windows Vista–based PCs. After this download is completed, Xbox 360 will automatically connect to PCs that are sharing media libraries. Just select the correct PC from the list to continue. Now you can access your PC’s media library using a simple menu that consists of albums, artists, saved playlists, songs, and genres (see Figure 11-43). Xbox 360 also includes a decent media player for playing back this content.

As you might expect, photos and videos are accessed in a similar manner.

If you attempt to access photos or videos from an Xbox 360 or other Windows Media Connect device and receive a “No photos found,” “No videos found,” or similar message, then you’re not sharing any content of this type. To add photo or video content to Windows Media Player, you can either add it via Windows Photo Gallery or use the Find Media steps to manually search folders that include photo and video content.

The Xbox 360 isn’t the only electronics device that can access digital media content on your Vista-based PC over the home network. A variety of hardware makers, such as D-Link, Linksys, and others, sell so-called digital media receivers, which are simple set-top boxes that bridge the gap between your home stereo and TV and your PC. Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) also offers Xbox 360–like media connectivity functionality, also using Microsoft Windows Media Connect technology. Increasingly, it’s getting easier and easier to access your content regardless of where you are.

Source of Information : Wiley Windows Vista Secrets SP1 Edition

How DNS and AD DS are Tied Together

When implementing Active Directory within your environment, DNS is required. Active Directory cannot exist without it. The two entities are like trains and railroad tracks. The train’s engines are mighty-powerful machines that can pull thousands of tons of equipment, but without the tracks, they cannot move. If the tracks are not aligned correctly, the train may derail. If the tracks are not switched in the right direction, the train will not arrive at the correct destination.

If you haven’t immersed yourself in the finer details of DNS, now is the time. If you think you understand how DNS works, you should still review all of the new options that have been added to the DNS service in Windows Server 2003 (including R2) and Windows Server 2008. Where Windows 2000 added some fancy new features into the Microsoft DNS world (such as support for dynamic updates and service locator [SRV] records), Windows Server 2003 upped the ante even more with support for stub zones and the ability to use application directory partitions for Active Directory–integrated zones.

As we mentioned previously, you are not required to use Microsoft’s implementation of DNS; UNIX BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) DNS will work just fine as long as it meets certain criteria. As a matter of fact, several companies are already invested deeply in a BIND DNS solution and are not about to completely restructure with a new DNS implementation. As the old saying goes, don’t fix what isn’t broken. We will look at using BIND within your.

Looking at the correlation between your Active Directory and DNS, you will find the two share the same zone-naming conventions. If your Active Directory domain name is zygort.lcl, the DNS namespace will also be zygort.lcl. Notice that the top-level domain (TLD) name for DNS, in this case lcl, does not have an equivalent domain within Active Directory. That is because, for most companies, the top-level domain is not unique and is not owned by the company. Take for instance a company that is using widgets.com as its Active Directory namespace. The TLD used in this case (com) is owned by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and is shared by hundreds of thousands of Internet-based websites. When designing Active Directory, the designers decided to make sure that the root of the Active Directory forest could be unique; they required the domain names to take on two domain components: the company’s DNS domain and the TLD that it resides under.

As a domain controller comes online, part of its startup routine is to attempt registration of the SRV records that identify the services that are running on the domain controller. The only requirement for a DNS server to work with Active Directory is that the DNS server support SRV records. It does not matter to Active Directory clients if the records are entered manually by an administrator or automatically by the domain controller itself; all that matters is that the records are correct. If the SRV records are not listed within the zone or are entered incorrectly, the client will not be able to locate the domain controller. If the SRV records are correctly listed within the DNS zone, the host name of the server that is providing the service is returned to the client. The client will then query the DNS server for the A record (hostname record) of the domain controller to resolve the IP address.

Source of Information : Sybex Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2008

Active Directory Services

Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) allows administrators to create small versions of Active Directory that run as non–operating system services. Because AD LDS does not run as an operating system service, it does not require deployment on a domain controller. Any workstation or server can host an instance, or multiple instances, of AD LDS. Instead of building a domain controller so that developers have an Active Directory database to work with, you could create an instance of AD LDS on their workstations for them to test against. You could also use it as a repository for data used by a customer-relations management program or an address book directory. If you need a directory to hold data instead of a database, you may want to consider using AD LDS.

One of the biggest benefits of using AD LDS is its administrative benefits. Because AD LDS is a user version of Active Directory, anyone familiar with how to manage objects within Active Directory should be at ease when working with objects in AD LDS. And as in Active Directory, you can control your replication scope and the systems with which you replicate objects. If you have three systems that need to host the directory, you can specify that the AD LDS partitions be hosted on those systems. Until the release of Exchange 2007, developers were more interested in AD LDS than were most administrators. For developers, the possibilities provided by AD LDS are limited only by imagination. If an application’s primary use of data is reading that data and performing queries against that data rather than making mass changes, AD LDS should fit the bill.

Exchange 2007 introduced a new Exchange server role, the Edge Transport role. An Edge Transport server is not a member of your Active Directory domain and usually sits in your demilitarized zone (DMZ). Among other functions of the Edge Transport role, you can configure AD LDS in the DMZ to help facilitate the Active Directory account lookups.


Active Directory Federation Services
Many organizations are partnering with businesses to efficiently deliver products and services. As businesses form these alliances, there needs to be a secure method of authenticating users from the partners’ organizations. Part of the challenge to allowing authentication into your network is the security needed to maintain the connection between partners while keeping hostile entities at bay. In the past, this was possible with several tools and utilities, none of which appeared to work well with each other.
Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) extends Active Directory to the Internet while guaranteeing the authenticity of the accounts attempting to authenticate. Using this technology will not only enable organizations to work with partner organizations more efficiently; it will also allow interoperability with a with range of applications and platforms, such as Netegrity, Oblix, and RSA, as well as leverage client systems that can utilize Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)–based command sets. When using AD FS, an organization can allow users that exist within separate forests, as well as among partner organizations, to have access to the organization’s web applications and use a single sign-on. AD FS is based on the Web Services (WS-*) architecture that is being developed with the cooperation of several companies, including IBM and Microsoft.


Active Directory Rights Management Services
Microsoft released Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) a few years ago. Windows Server 2008 introduces a pretty significant update to this product and has changed the name to Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS).


Active Directory Certificate Services
The Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) allow you to create and manage certificates used in environments that employ public-key technologies. AD CS allows you to associate the identity of a person, device, or service to a private key.

AD CS is not a new technology, but it is new to the Active Directory family. One of the biggest changes is the addition of Cryptography API: Next Generation (CNG). CNG allows administrators to use custom algorithms with Active Directory, with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and with Internet Protocol Security (IPSec). This is accomplished by using the U.S. government’s Suite B cryptographic algorithms. Enhancements such as Online Certificate Status Protocol support, Network Device Enrollment Service, web enrollment, restricted enrollment agent.

Source of Information : Sybex Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2008

Active Directory - What’s in a Name?

With the release of Windows Server 2008 and the inclusion of several enhancements to AD, Microsoft has decided to realign all of its “identity” technologies under the Active Directory umbrella. Some items have simply been renamed; other technologies have been moved into the Active Directory Family. With all of these changes, and in typical Microsoft fashion, there are some new names to get familiar with. (These new technologies are discussed in subsequent subsections.)

• The Active Directory that we’ve all grown to know and love is now known as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). AD DS stores all information about resources on the network, such as users, computers, and other devices.

• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) is the latest version of Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM).

• Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) provides Web single sign-on (SSO) technologies to authenticate users to multiple web applications in a single session.

•Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) is an information-protection technology that works with RMS-enabled applications to protect and secure information from unauthorized use online and offline, inside and outside of the environment.

• Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) allows the mapping of users and resources to a private key to help secure identity in a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) based environment.


Along with renaming and restructuring these technologies, Microsoft (MS) also updated all of the existing Active Directory technologies. Following are some of the major updates to Active Directory:

• Read -only domain controllers (RODCs) allow organizations to easily deploy a domain controller in locations where physical security cannot be guaranteed.

• Windows Server Core has introduced a new edition of Windows Server titled “Server Core”. Server Core is a Windows 2008 server that is command line–driven and does not possess a GUI.

Source of Information : Sybex Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2008

The Basics of Active Directory

When you break it down, Active Directory is a type of database, but one built as a “directory.” The difference between a relational database and a directory is that the former is optimized for updating, while the latter is optimized for reading. In this manner, Active Directory was developed with the understanding that the objects contained within the directory would not be changing often, but would be used for users, computers and administrators to control, manage, and discover the organization’s resources.

One of Active Directory's most basic functions is that it provides a centralized repository for user account information. When an administrator creates a user account, the account information is held on a domain controller within the domain in which the user resides. All of the domain controllers within the domain will receive an identical copy of the user account so that the user is able to authenticate using any domain controller in the domain.

Any changes to the user account are made on one of the domain controllers and then sent to every other domain controller within the domain. This transfer of data is called replication. Replication of information can be a burden on the network, especially in environments with several thousand users, groups, computers, and other objects. To alleviate the replication burden on the network, Active Directory replicates only the attributes that have been changed, and not the entire object.

To get a good understanding of how Active Directory works, you must first understand what the schema is and the role it plays in the directory service. The following section will outline the major roles of the schema.


Schema
The schema (i.e., a structured framework or plan) acts as the building blocks of Active Directory, much like DNA molecules are the building blocks for our bodies. Just as our DNA holds all of the information necessary to build our leg, ears, hair, ear hair, etc., the schema holds all of the information needed to create users, groups, computers, and so on within Active Directory. The schema defines how each attribute can be used and the properties associated with the attribute. Take, for instance, a child’s toy that we have grown up with: LEGOs. When you first take a look at LEGO bricks, you see hundreds of tiny pieces that really don’t seem to represent anything. Some are short, some are long, and some are special shapes. These are the individual pieces, or building blocks, that will go into creating the buildings, cars, airplanes, and dioramas.

The Active Directory schema is pretty much the same thing. If you look within the Active Directory Schema snap-in you will see hundreds of entries that are used when creating objects within Active Directory. As you expand the Active Directory Schema section of the tool, you will see the window that contains classes and attributes. The entries known as attributes allow you to create new objects or modify existing objects within your directory. To add the Active Directory Schema snap-in to a Microsoft Management Console (MMC), you will first need to register the dynamic link library. To do so, open the Run line or use a command prompt on the domain controller and type in regsvr32 schmmgmt.dll.


Attributes
To standardize Active Directory, the schema defines the attributes that can be used when creating objects. Unlike our LEGO bricks, however, these attributes are defined only once and can be used for any object. Defining the attribute once and using it for multiple objects allows for a standardized approach of defining objects, especially when searching for the attribute. Take the name attribute, for example; whenever an object uses the Name attribute you know that the name has to be at least one character in length and cannot exceed 255 characters. You would know this because of the syntax and rules that are applied to the attribute. There is a lot of information within this page, but right now we are interested only in the Syntax and Range area. Notice that the attribute is a Unicode string that has to be at least one character in length and cannot exceed 255 characters. Each attribute within the schema is defined in such a manner, although the syntax for each of the attributes could be different.

The properties for Bad-Pwd-Count are another attribute that makes up a user object. Notice that the X.500 Object Identifier (OID) is different from that of the name attribute.
Each attribute within the schema has to have a unique OID. These are registered and maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Once assigned, the OID should not be used by any other attribute. Within Active Directory, the default attributes are already assigned OIDs, and those OIDs are protected in a way that will not allow another application to overwrite them. New attributes will need to be assigned an OID. If you are adding an attribute for use in an object, you should register it with the IANA to safeguard the attribute and to make sure that it does not step on any other attributes. Registration is free, and as long as your OID is unique, you should be issued an OID for your attribute. The attributes that Microsoft uses are all within their own OID range, which starts with 1.2.840.113556. For a complete list of the registered OIDs, visit
http://asn1.elibel.tm.fr/oid/index.htm and perform a search on the OID. If you have registered an OID, it will appear in this database once the entry is added.

Within an attribute’s properties, you will find several check boxes that you can select. Each of them is described in the following list:

Attribute Is Active
You can deactivate attributes that you no longer need within Active Directory. Note that the default attributes cannot be deactivated, nor can attributes that are still in use within an object.

Index This Attribute
If this is an attribute on which you are going to allow searches, you may want to index the attribute to increase the search responsiveness.

Ambiguous Name Resolution (ANR)
When you select this option, you allow a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)–based client to resolve a request when only partial data is available.

Replicate This Attribute to the Global Catalog
Not every attribute needs to reside within the global catalog. The rule of thumb is, if you need to locate an object based on an attribute or if the object’s attribute is needed within another domain, you should add it. Otherwise, to reduce the total size of the domain partition you should not add in any superfluous attributes.

Attribute Is Copied When Duplicating a User
When you copy a user account, several attributes are copied from the original account to the new account. If you want the attribute to copy, select the box. Do note that many attributes are unique to a user, so select this option with care.

Index This Attribute for Containerized Searches
If you select this option, the attribute can be indexed for searches within containers, such as organizational units (OUs), in Active Directory.


Object Classes
An object class is a defined grouping of attributes that make up a unique resource type. One of the most common object classes is the user class. Use the user object class as the template for a user account. When you create a user account, the attributes that are defined for the user object class are used to define the new account. Information that you populate within the Add User wizard or enter within the command line become the properties within the attributes. If we go back for a minute to the LEGO metaphor, you can use some of the brown blocks available to create a roof on a house, some red bricks to make the walls, and tan bricks to make a door.

The clear pieces can be used as windows and the white pieces form the porch. Each of these individual items (the bricks, the color of the bricks, the shape of the bricks, and the placement of the bricks) is considered an attribute. Putting these attributes together forms the object class “house.” When you build your first house, you have built your first object. Subsequent houses will have the same attributes, but you may build the porch with tan pieces instead of white ones. So, when I create a user account for Maria, that user account will have unique values stored within the attributes for her user account. Bob’s user account will be created using identical attributes, but will not have the same values within each attribute. Maria’s phone number may be 555.1234, and Bob’s 555.9876.

Not all of the attributes that make up an object class are shown within the administrative tools. Many of them hide behind the scenes and will rarely, if ever, need to be changed. One such attribute is the user’s Security Identifier or SID. The user’s SID will change when a user is moved from one domain to another, but will not change while the user remains within a domain. The Active Directory Users and Computers management tool does not have the ability to change this attribute. A default set of attribute fields appears within the utilities, and if you decide to make an attribute available for updating, you may need to programmatically add the fields to the utilities.

Attributes are defined as mandatory or optional. Mandatory attributes have to be populated, or the object will not be created. One such attribute is a computer’s name. Optional attributes do not necessarily need to have values. Attributes such as Manager within a user object does not need to be populated, but it is always nice to include that information. The more complete the information, the more useful Active Directory becomes.


The Two Sides of AD
Active Directory has both a logical side and a physical side, and each one plays a very important role. The physical side is made up of the domain controllers and physical locations where the domain controllers reside. When you promote a system to domain controller status, you will usually place that domain controller close to the user population that will use it for authentication and access. Domain controllers need to communicate with one another to share the information they have. The logical side is a little more nebulous; as well as containing the objects that define how the resources are organized and accessed, the logical side contains objects within Active Directory that define how the domain controllers will communicate with one another. Active Directory sites and site links define which domain controllers will replicate directly with each other and which ones will have to communicate indirectly through other domain controllers.
Domains dictate the replication scope. When you create a domain, the domain partition is replicated only to domain controllers from the same domain. The domain partition is not copied to domain controllers outside of the domain. This allows you to partition your directory service and reduce the size of the database file that holds all of the forest’s objects.

Organizational units are used to organize objects for easy administration and to manage those objects easily using group policies. To have efficient administration of resources, you should design your Active Directory with administration in mind. If you are in the process of rolling out Active Directory, be sure to develop a detailed plan for the rollout. Without a good design, Active Directory may not work efficiently for your environment. If your design does not meet the needs of your organization, you may be faced with either suffering through working with an inadequate design or rebuilding your Active Directory infrastructure from the ground up. Neither of these options will sit well with your user base or the management of the company.

Source of Information : Sybex Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2008

Do I Need Active Directory?

Active Directory is the database (think of a directory as a collection of information, like a phone book), whereas a domain controller is a single computer or server that controls Active Directory. There are typically multiple domain controllers that host Active Directory. How do you know if you need Active Directory? There are factors that you should address to determine whether you should defer installation of a domain controller. Following are some of the questions you should ask:

Do I want to centrally manage access to resources such as printers, users, and groups?
Do I want to control user accounts from one location?
Do I have applications that rely on Active Directory?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you undoubtedly will want to take advantage of the features that Active Directory provides. Taking each one of the questions into account, you will find that your life as an administrator will be much easier if you use Active Directory over using no directory service whatsoever. The tools that become available when you implement Active Directory will ease your administrative load, although there is an inherent learning curve associated with any new technology.

If you answered “yes” to the last of the three questions just posed, you have no choice but to implement Active Directory. Most of the Active Directory–enabled applications on the market rely on the installation of a full version of Active Directory within your network. There are some Active Directory–enabled applications that can take advantage of using Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) –based systems.

The first two questions relate to something for which administrators have strived over the years. Having one central location to manage users and resources makes an administrator’s life easier. If you have to continually move from server to server to administer the resources contained on them, you will spend more time tracking down the resources than you would performing your job. If you have to maintain user accounts on several systems, you must make sure you have an efficient method of cataloging the accounts so that you know where they reside.

With Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, and now Windows Server 2008, you can use Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) as the central repository for user, group, and computer accounts as well as for shared folders and printers. Having the ability to manage these resources from any domain controller within your domain allows you to greatly reduce your administrative overhead.

Source of Information : Sybex Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2008

Active Directory Fundamentals

Since the inception of network operating systems, the men and women who are responsible for administering and managing them have wanted an easy way to do so. Networks have gone through a natural evolution from peer-to-peer networks to directory-based networks. Directory-based networks have become the preferred type of network because they can ease an administrator’s workload. To address the needs of organizations, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) developed a set of recommendations that defined how a directory service should address the needs of administrators and efficiently allow management of network resources. These recommendations, known as the X.500 recommendations, were originally envisioned to include a large centralized directory that would encompass the entire world, divided by geopolitical boundaries. Even though X.500 was written to handle a very large amount of data, designers reviewing the drafts of these recommendations saw merit in the directory and soon the recommendations were adopted by several companies, including the two best known, Novell and Microsoft.

Active Directory is Microsoft’s version of the X.500 recommendations. Battles rage between directory services camps, each one touting its directory service as the most efficient one. Because some of the directory services, such as Novell Directory Services (NDS) and eDirectory, have been around longer than Active Directory, those that are familiar with NDS will attack Active Directory. Their attacks are usually focused on the idea that Active Directory does not perform functions the same way that NDS does.

When it is all said and done, companies that develop X.500-based directory services can interpret the recommendations and implement them to fit their design needs. Microsoft interpreted and employed the X.500 recommendations to effectively manage a Windows-based network. Novell did the same for a Novell-based network, and the two for years have been at odds over which is more efficient. All that notwithstanding, Microsoft has enjoyed great success with Active Directory. It has been adopted by thousands of organizations and will more than likely continue to be used for many years to come.

Source of Information : Sybex Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2008

Advantages of Google Docs

Using online apps has many advantages. First, you’re never bound to your PC. Google gives access to your docs anytime you need them from any computer in the world through any Internet connection. Second, Google Docs is platform independent, which means you can work on a PC or Mac with equal ease. Third, there’s no software to install because Google Docs works inside a Web browser. Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari provide the support necessary to use Google Docs.

Here’s a list of six additional advantages that we detail in the pages that follow:

• Docs are easy to launch, easy to use, and secure your files in Google’s massive data centers.

• Innovative search and folder naming schemes in the Docs Home ensures that you’ll never misplace a doc, spreadsheet, or presentation again.

• A single-document approach (that is, singledocumindedness) empowers superb sharing, team collaboration, and revision control.

• Online publishing to Sites and blogs makes docs a key part of your communications strategy.

• Seamless conversion and support for other file types throws docs into the mainstream.

• The ability to work offline presents you with powerful new ways to work.


You can launch Docs Home in several ways:
• Enter a Web address: You can start your Google Docs directly from the Web by clicking the address bar and entering docs followed by your partnered domain name.
• Google Account users: Enter http://docs.google.com and log into your Google account.
• Team, Standard, Preferred, and Education Edition Users: Enter http://docs.google.com/a/yourdomain.com or http://docs.yourdomain.com. For example, http://docs.google.com/a/ardsleybooks.com or http://docs.ardsleybooks.com. Log into your Docs account.

• Use a Start Page gadget: You can launch Docs conveniently from a gadget on your Start Page. To add a gadget, follow these steps:
1. Click the Add Stuff link near the top left of the Start Page.
2. Click the Add It Now button below the Google Docs option. (While you’re here, you may as well add a gadget for your Gmail and Calendar apps!)
3. To return to your Start page, click the Back to Homepage link on the top left of the Add Stuff screen. After you add your gadget, click the Google Docs link at the top of the gadget. This takes you directly to the Docs Home screen. The gadget gives you one-click access to a half dozen of your most-recently opened files in a short list. There’s also a link to create new docs. Look closely and you notice there’s even a search box. If the document you need does not appear in the list, click the All Docs link and go directly to the Docs Home.

• Click the Documents link from other open Google Apps. Regardless of which Google App you’re using, if you peer at the upper-left corner, you can see a series of links. Click the Documents link to go straight to your Google Docs Home.

Your Docs account is protected by your login and password, just as they are on any other network. You can use the same login and password for all of your online Google Apps: Gmail, Sites, Calendar, Picasa, you name it. Click the Sign In link and input your secret password.

If your computer crashes and your hard drive dies, your files are still safe online. As long as you have access to the Internet, you can access your files. You can even access your Google Docs from your smartphone browser as long as your phone account supports a higher-speed connection to the Internet.

If you can’t use your computer, you can use any other computer that happens to be lying around and log into your private Google account online. Even if you login to your account from someone else’s computer, you won’t sacrifice your security if you sign out properly at the end of your session. However, you should beware of one thing when using a computer other than your own; never click the Remember Me on This Computer check box. Save this convenience for your personal computer.

Google is constantly making improvements to Docs. The software is constantly being updated, but for the most part, you hardly notice. Because Google Docs is Web based, the most recent version of the software loads instantly. There’s nothing for you to install. In fact, Docs is in a constant state of improvement.

Source of Information : Google Sites and Chrome FOR DUMMIES