VMware acquire Thinstall

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Nice, Microsoft is about to get some healthy competition to their Softgrid software virtualization.  VMware just bought Thinstall, for those of you who have no experience with Softgrid / Thininstall the brief description of what is is all about would be something like this;  Software virtualization is more or less the same as VMware Server / Microsoft Virtual Server is to OS virtualization, it allow you to run an application without installing it and without polluting the host os with registry entries and config files stored all over, an other cool thing is it will allow you to eg. install Office 2000, 2003 and 2007 all at the same time.. 

Goto http://www.vmware.com/whatsnew/thinstall.html to watch a demo or try http://www.thinstall.com/.  Thinstall has the upper hand over Microsoft as Thininstall does not require client software to be installed in order to use a virtual application, Thinstall also include the option to create .msi files (just as softgrid).

vmware1.jpg
Visual tour; http://www.thinstall.com/demos/intro_dec11/
Very cool, and pice of pie… thrust me….

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Unpack .EXE files (uniextract)

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If you ever worked with deployment, you know the issue where you need an .MSI file or other driver files but all the vendor is supplying is a SETUP.EXE file.

Well many .EXE files can via some obscure parameters /Extract /B or whatever be extracted, but as all vendors use different utilities to create their .EXE files it can be hard to figure out how to expand them, plus some .EXE files actually can not be extracted (or is not designed to)..  Usually WinRAR is a good bet, it can actually extract many .EXE filetypes..  but not all 🙁

Fear no more, Uniextract to the rescue…  maybe it wont extract ALL but atleast it extracted many of the files I had problems with, so big thumbs up from me..  It is quite easy to use, once installed just right click on the .EXE file and select extract to subdirectory..  Easy as pie 😀

http://legroom.net/software/uniextract

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LZArc – Poor mans WinRAR replacement

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For those who can not afford a copy of WinRAR (www.rarlabs.com) to open .rar files a compatible freeware program is available called LZArc (not to be confused with LHarc from the good old Amiga age).

It will not win any awards for its simple but useful layout, but hey you cant get everything for nothing.

Download it from here
http://www.izarc.org/

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Windows Server 2008

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Just finished installing my first Microsoft Windows 2008 Enterprise server, nice 🙂

Most disturbing is that it will actually go into production right away, we need some of the new group policy management features..  oh well..

Looks quite nice btw.

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SP for Windows XP/VISTA

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So you cant wait to try out SP3 for XP or SP1 for Vista!?

Well, there is a way to squeeze your way into the MS-Beta program 🙂

http://4sysops.com/archives/download-windows-xp-sp3-rc1-with-this-little-hack/

I am still thinking about it, I had some problems with IE7 beta so I am slightly reluctant.  For XP users however it should according to some posts be quite a boost in performance.

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